These movies were mostly made in Italy and some in Spain. Italian moviemakers modelled peplum movies on the big budget Hollywood epics like Charlton Heston's "Ben-Hur" (1959) or Kirk Douglas' "Spartacus" (1960). The genre was very important in Italian moviemaking from 1957 to 1965, but was shoved aside in 1965 by the "Spaghetti Western".