However, three and a half years later (retitled Attila) it proved to be the vehicle which launched the career of Joseph E. Levine as a producer and distributor of international films, many of them Italian in origin.

While never to be a financially or critically acclaimed motion picture, Attila ultimately achieved the status of a significant product in the evolution of world film markets.

The Huns, a horde of barbarians from the distant plains of Asia, move toward the rich western lands of Germania, led by a savage chief, Attila.

Aetius returns to the Imperial court at Ravenna, where the childish emperor Valentinian III is busy with Roman parties in his palace and enjoying himself, while ignoring the fact that the Empire is beginning to fall apart.

She asks Aetius to join her in a coup d'état, but he has vowed an oath to serve the Empire and refuses, even if he's arrested and stripped of his military rank by Valantinian and Galla Placidia due to his alliance to the Huns.

As Roman legions march to block Attila's path, Honoria slips away from the Imperial court and visits the Hun in his camp.

Joseph E. Levine, a states-rights distributor/exhibitor based in Boston, quickly moved some 90 prints through regional distribution hubs, managing to assemble ad hoc arrays of mostly low-end theaters, where he could book short period playdates with favorable box-office terms.

In the course of its initial release, Levine also spent $590,000 on print and newspaper advertising, and $350,000 on radio and TV spots, enabling the picture to earn back over $2 million in US rentals.

The picture's 1958 US copyright was renewed in 1986, by a Parisian law firm believed to be acting on behalf of Carlo Ponti and the French StudioCanal film library.

An Italian-language version (with English sub-titles) was finally issued to US home video in 2008 as part of a 4-film collection from Lionsgate which contained some of Sophia Loren's earlier works.

This track was also used on Joe Levine's American distribution prints and contains many lines in English which do not match the dialogue spoken in Italian.

Warner Bros. was so impressed with the exhibition showmanship and business acumen that Joe Levine had brought to Attila, they paid him a $300,000 advance to secure the distribution-rights for his pending release of Pietro Francisci's muscleman epic, Hercules.

The dubbed Italian sword-and-sandal film, which was produced for about a half-million dollars (Levine purchased North American rights for approximately a third of this figure), became the 4th highest-grossing US release of 1959, easily surpassing all previous box office takes for a foreign-film in the United States.