Hercules vs. Moloch (1963)

Original title: Ercole contro Moloch

aka The Conquest of Mycene

Once, in semi-mythical ancient Greece. The second version of he city of Mycenae – the first one burned down because of some godly business between the Earth Goddess (never named anything else in the English dub of the film at hand) and the town’s other patron god, the evil Moloch – is striking fear into the hearts of the other city states of Greece. Ruled by the evil queen Demetra (Rosalba Neri with very fetching white streaks in her hair), Mycenae seems militarily unbeatable, pressing the rest of the Greek world for the delivery of hostages. Hostages, mind you, that tend to disappear completely never to be seen again, for Mycenae MKII houses the earthly incarnation of Moloch. It has taken form in Demetra’s son, and living gods need sacrifices, as you know. This particular living god dwells in a cave below the city with “his favourite slave girls”, is fond of Bava colours, torture, and disfiguring beautiful people who aren’t his slave girls. Moloch isn’t exactly well-loved by all of Mycenae's populace, however, and most of the commoners would really rather return to the worship of the less cruel and hands-on Earth Goddess. They’d also rather see young Medea (Alessandra Panaro), daughter of the old king who wanted a life without Moloch for his people and Demetra’s step daughter, sit on the throne, but since the military, the nobility and the priests are all under Demetra’s (and Moloch’s) thumb, there’s little hope for a successful revolution at the moment.

The last Greek town standing against Mycenae is Tyros. Alas, its king has taken rather too long with a policy of outward appeasement and secret attempts at building an alliance against Mycenae. Eventually, after Tyros’s best potential ally falls, there seems little hope of anything but to also deliver hostages to their enemies. Things aren’t quite as hopeless as they seem, though, for Tyros’s crown prince Glaucus (Gordon Scott) has a plan. It’s not a terribly good plan, mind you, for it mostly consists of him becoming an incognito hostage going by the name of Hercules (so we can get the proper, cash-grabbing name into the film’s title) and trying to see if he can’t find allies in Mycenae while attempting to gain the trust of Demetra.

Fortunately, the Earth Goddess is with the good guys.

I thought I had basically seen all the peplums worth seeing (and quite a few not), but along comes Giorgio Ferroni’s Hercules vs. Moloch to prove me wrong. Not that I’m complaining.

Anyhow, this one’s a pretty great little movie, even though its not-actually-Hercules main character doesn’t do random hearty manly belly laughs and generally leaves pillars in peace to do their thing. Well, at least one has to admire the chutzpa used to get Hercules into the movie’s title.

The film stands at what could be a somewhat awkward point between the more fantastically minded branch of the peplum concerning itself much with mythological beast (that is to say, guys in monster suits and sometimes dubious, sometimes wonderful bigger monsters), gods, and half-gods, and the more mundane business of palace politics and revolutions, spending certainly more time on the latter, less fun part of these films to boot. However, Ferroni actually integrates these elements well, finding reasons for the palace intrigues in the supernatural stuff, solving some of the problems arising during the course of the plot through a very cool moment of literal deus ex machina perfectly appropriate to ancient Greece, all the while making the film’s world convincing as one in which the Gods are actually real. Even though Moloch junior probably isn’t much of a god.

The film turns out to be genuinely good at both sides of the equation, with fights and battle scenes of a quality not always found in peplums. Ferroni must have had a rather high budget for the genre, too, for the battle scenes and fights actually feature a decent amount of combatants and horses (some of which may or may not come from library footage, but if so, it’s excellently integrated) involved in what looks like actual fight choreography. There’s a good amount of sets and locations, too, and while they aren’t exactly lavish, they also never feel cramped and too much like cardboard, the filmmakers demonstrating a good eye for filming around the holes in the illusion.

And even though the Moloch parts of the film are not quite as plenty as I would have liked, the guy is a perfectly creepy Gothic horror type villain, wearing an excellent creepy mask, cackling while he’s disfiguring women and ranting about wanting to destroy all beauty, and living in a most excellent multi-coloured cave full of women pressing themselves against walls looking intense.

At this point in his career, Gordon Scott had become a very capable leading man too, striking the correct righteous poses for the properly righteous dialogue he gets as the most righteous manly man around, going through the usual stylized romance (with Medea, as if I need to tell anyone who has seen even one of these films) with the proper stylized conviction. He’s also a pretty convincing fencer and screen fighter here, making up for the rather low-powered Hercules he is playing by doing the business of people who aren’t half gods with a nice degree of intensity. Rosalba Neri for her part makes a pretty great evil queen, doing the sexy evil glowering, the increased unhingement, and all the other expected bits of business with fun enthusiasm.


All in all, it’s a pretty wonderful achievement, Ferroni and company turning what could have been a complete dud in the wrong hands into a very fun peplum.

Past Misdeeds: Teseo Contro Il Minotauro (1960)

aka Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


Life isn't pleasant in Ancient Crete. For a generation or so, the Cretans have made yearly human sacrifices to the Minotaur, whom its priesthood sees as a protective godhood rather than a monster with a tragic backstory roaming a labyrinth. Crete's king Minos (Carlo Tamberlani) changes his mind about the whole human sacrifice thing when his wife begs him on her deathbed to abolish the practice. After all, she even has proof the gods don't care about these sacrifices, seeing as she secretly hid away one of their twin daughters with foreign peasants to protect her from being sacrificed as the later born of every twin pair in Crete should be, and was not punished by the gods for it.

That argument is enough to convince Minos, and while he's planning on breaking with traditions, he also decides to bring that twin daughter, Ariadne (Rosanna Schiaffino), to court. Alas, his other daughter Phaedra is not very happy with another claimant on a throne she already sees at hers, and the man Minos sends out to find Ariadne, Chiron (Alberto Lupo), is all too willing to fulfil her wish to see her sister dead rather than rescued.

Chiron's tactics as a political assassin are bad, though, for instead of locating Ariadne and then silently letting her disappear, he hires a horde of bandits to snuff out the whole village where she lives. Fortunately for the forces of justice, hero and prince of Athens Theseus (Bob Mathias) and his best buddy, the Cretan noble Demetrius (Rik Battaglia), are in the area. As Greek heroes, they are quite willing and able to push back a mere horde of bandits, even though Ariadne's adoptive parents and a lot of villagers die in the attack before the duo can get in on the action.

Since Ariadne is a bit of a stunner, and Theseus really a nice guy, he takes the now orphaned girl to Athens to be taken into his father's house and romanced. Demetrius's confused reaction to the girl looking exactly like his princess our hero just laughs off.

Of course, this won't be the last attempt on Ariadne's life, and of course Theseus and Demetrius will sooner or later have to set out to set things right in Crete. However, things will become more dangerous and complicated than anyone could have expected, with Phaedra falling in love with Theseus, the involvement of the Cretan resistance of people who sit around drinking wine instead of acting, and war and doom coming for Athens.

Silvio Amadio's Teseo came as a bit of a positive surprise to me. I do love my peplums, but I generally don't expect too much of them, so when a film delivers as much of interest as this one does, I tend to get a little giddy. It's only fair, too, for there is much to be giddy about here.

Some of the film's positive aspects are easily explained by the fact that it came relatively early in the peplum cycle, when the budgets for films of the genre often were a bit higher, so the productions could afford to hire extras for mass scenes and put more effort into their production design, which is always helpful in films as soundstage based yet in need of spectacle as these tend to be. Consequently, there are often more people on screen here when the script needs it than one would expect, giving the handful of battle scenes and the obligatory storming of the bad guys' throne room (though it's the sacrifice chamber here) a bit more weight and believability through the sheer number of participants. Compared to classical Hollywood monumental epics, there aren't still all that many participants, but when you have seen enough of these films, you become rather thankful when an army consists of more than ten people. Depending on your taste in historians, you may even see the not quite as large armies as more realistic, though I doubt anyone involved here was interested in historical authenticity as much as in producing as much of a visual spectacle as the budget allowed.

Weight and a bit more believability seem to have been important when it came to the production design too, for every set and every costume is created with a love for telling details, from the walls of the houses of nobles actually being adorned with pictures and wall hangings, to the ubiquitous minotaur and bull depictions in Crete. This extra effort helps make the film's Mythical Greece feel more like a world with its own coherence and its own rules than a series of sets.

Yet even an army of extras and the most beautiful production design in the world need a director equal to the task of using them properly. Amadio is more than equal to it, with a sometimes painterly eye for the staging of scenes to the greatest visual effect, and a wonderful sense for the use of vivid colours. Amadio's Mythical Greece may not be as dream-like and magical as that of Mario Bava, but it never is bland or colourless, and always vivid and larger than life.

The word "bland" unfortunately does lead me to the film's greatest weakness, Bob Mathias as Theseus. His performance isn't bad at all, but rather painfully neutral, as if that awesome (in the classic sense of the word) hero Theseus the other characters are speaking of had just stepped out for a moment only leaving his body there. Mathias's blandness isn't enough to ruin the film or even to annoy me much, yet it may be a stumbling block for some.

The rest of the cast is much stronger, with Schiaffino able to play her double role well enough to keep Phaedra and Ariadne believable as two distinctively different persons; even though the script tends to make Ariadne a bit too virtuous and Phaedra a bit too evil for my tastes. But that sort of thing is part of the genre, and on the other hand, Ariadne is a bit spunkier than peplum heroines usually are. It's probably not necessary to mention that Alberto Lupo could play the type of heel he's playing here in his sleep; he's clearly not asleep here.


On the script side, the film underplays the mythological elements of the story for most of its running time, making this a very entertaining and melodramatic story of Mythical Greek palace intrigues with an influx of swashbuckling, that just happens to include a surprise rescue by Amphitrite, and the battle against a not very threatening but rather lovely Minotaur with a very mobile but also very confused looking face. I also have to applaud the writers for their use of interesting and not always the most obvious parts of Greek myth here. They take their freedoms with it, but they sure do seem to know what they are doing and why.

Past Misdeeds: Gladiators 7 (1962)

Original title: I sette gladiatori

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


After being let go from a Roman arena thanks to a very tenacious performance during a fight that was supposed to kill him for helping in the escape of five other gladiators, noble Spartan Darius (Richard Harrison) returns home, fully expecting a more pleasant rest of his life.

But things have changed in Darius's years of absence: his father - a very democratically minded leader beloved by all - has been murdered by the evil would-be tyrant Hiarba (Gérard Tichy) who made the whole thing look like a suicide committed because Dad was supposed to have ambitions on becoming a tyrant. Before Darius has even really arrived home, and has been warned off by his wet nurse, Hiarba sends some of his men to secretly assassinate the ex-gladiator. The blackguard, however, has not counted on his enemy's superior fighting abilities, nor on the fact that the son of Darius's wet nurse suddenly pops out to lend a sword.

Hiarba is a flexible guy, though, and, once he's realized Darius has the curious yet strangely plot-convenient habit of letting his sword - even if it's the only thing he inherited from his father - stick in the dead bodies of his enemies, changes his plans to frame Darius for murder, the sword standing as proof enough for the young upstart’s clear evil. While he's at it, Hiarba also uses said weapon to kill the father (also a co-conspirator in changing the murder of Darius's father into a suicide who now starts to develop a conscience) of Darius's childhood love and woman-Hiarba-would-like-to-marry-if-she-just-weren't-so-devoted-to-Darius Aglaia (Loredana Nusciak). Getting rid of a less than enthusiastic confidant, giving Aglaia reason to hate Darius, and framing his rival for murder all in one stroke is not a bad result of a failed assassination attempt, or so Hiarba smirks to himself while trying to woo the now Darius-averse Aglaia standing next to her father's corpse. In a surprise to sociopaths all over the world, that wooing attempt does not endear him to Aglaia very much.

Of course, the tyrant may be smirking too soon anyhow, for Darius escapes all attempts at arresting him, and spends the next half hour riding through the countryside, recruiting the five former gladiators (remember them?) who owe him their freedom as his own, private, tyrant-crushing fighting force. These five - the thief, the pretty one, the strong one, the alcoholic, and the bald one who doesn't like shirts - plus Darius and wet nurse Junior make up the seven gladiators of the title (even though wet nurse Junior technically never was a gladiator), and are all too capable of fighting through whatever Hiarba throws at them.

The title of Spanish director Pedro Lazaga's Gladiators 7 (an Italian-Spanish co-production that for once really seems to belong to both countries on a creative level, too) may suggest a peplum variation of the Seven Samurai/Magnificent Seven school of film, but it's not a tale that keeps so close to the structures and motives of its predecessors all of the time as to be called a rip-off. Sure, there's the number of heroes, and the ritual assemblage of the group by Darius well-known from other movies of this type. The rest of the plot, however, is more in a typical peplum vein than in that of a Whatever Seven film; there is, at least, no poor village that needs protecting.

And, unlike those other films, Gladiators 7 is strictly centred around its hero Darius, with the rest of the gang getting somewhat effective one-note character types and no character development whatsoever. Six of these seven are strictly there to have characteristic fighting styles that make the action sequences more interesting and let Darius seem like a more rounded character. Look, he even has friends!

While I prefer the slightly more egalitarian ways of those other Seven movies, as well as their interest in questions of personal morality (something the film at hand just waves away with a disinterested expression), I'm certainly not going to call Gladiators 7 a bad movie, for it is a film doing perfectly well what it actually sets out to do: using the story of one shirt-hating guy's personal vendetta against an evil tyrant to show off some quite exciting, diverse, and often shirtless action sequences in front of very photogenic sets and locations, spiced up with scenes of genre typical, competent melodrama. The film fulfils the action part of its agenda without much visible effort. There's an obvious influence of the fights from swashbuckling adventure movies on display, so there is none of the lame action choreography many peplums suffer from (alas also none of the pillar wrestling), and instead there's a lot of jumping, swashing, and buckling, all performed by actors who may not be the greatest thespians on Earth, yet sure know how to look as if they knew how to handle a sword. Which, of course, is something you expect from a film starring Richard Harrison, who has never been known to be much of an actor, but always was quite an action actor.


Gladiators 7 also features manly belly-laughs, jokes that aren't completely horrible, and an entertaining bad guy whose particularly evil brand of evilness I attribute to Bruno Corbucci, one of the Scriptwriters Five responsible here. If someone wanted to call Gladiators 7 the platonic ideal of the non-mythological peplum (for alas, gods, rubber monsters and destructible buildings have no place in it), I would not have it in me to disagree.

La vendetta di Spartacus (1964)

aka The Revenge of Spartacus

aka Revenge of the Gladiators

Spartacus isn’t dead! A band of his surviving companions led by Arminius (Gordon Mitchell) cut him down from his cross (this is Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus, not the historical one who most probably died in battle, you understand), giving hope to slaves and the victims of Empire everywhere. There’s no full-on slave revolt this time around but various small groups of rebels are hitting the power of Rome with guerrilla tactics.

The Roman senate is set on not letting this new slave revolt grow into a full-grown war, and does attempt to quell the revolution with proper Roman military might from the get-go, though with less success than they’d hope for. Particularly senator Lucius Transonius (Daniele Vargas) is pushing the matter hard, though part of his eagerness is obviously bound up with an attempt to make his son Fulvius (Giacomo Rossi Stuart with very distracting hair) the general of the legion(s) quelling the insurrection. That part of Fulvius’s plan isn’t going over too well with the rest of the senate, whose members clearly prefer somebody with more to recommend him than a big head of hair for a military leadership role but Fulvius gives way in that point rather fast. Why, given the rest of his oratorical and political manner, you’d think he has a plan up his sleeve to get Lucius the position one way or the other. For now, Lucius is going to have to play the part of Henchman Number One.

While all this is going on, Roman Valerius (Roger Browne) returns to the family farm from a stint in the legions, only to find his parents and his young brother slaughtered by legionnaires under the command of Lucius. Valerius’s parents were hiding his badly wounded older brother Marcellus (Germano Longo) who had thrown in his lot with Spartacus and was indeed one of the men taking part in Spartacus’s rescue. Somehow, the Romans found out they did, killing the family, even though Marcellus managed to escape. Valerius makes short work of the three legionnaires still plundering his former home, and is left with a whole load of grudges he doesn’t know where to direct. Fortunately, his family’s former slave – set free by his brother – Cynthia (Scilla Gabel) – sent by the rebels to warn the family of the Roman raid – arrives just before he can decide the way to go is to walk right into the rest of Lucius’s cohort and die heroically. Cynthia, who is very right, and very very pretty, convinces Valerius that 1) the slave revolt is a right and just thing and 2) his best chance of at least finding his brother alive is to join with the rebels, so off they go. Valerius, it soon turns out, is rather a natural in the whole guerrilla work thing, so there still might be hope for true freedom in the Roman Empire.

Whew, and this is just the plot of the film’s first half hour or so. As a matter of fact, Michele Lupo’s La vendetta di Spartacus is one of the rare peplum films that very much seems to pride itself on having a sensible and reasonably complex plot where even the historical freedoms it takes will turn out to mostly fit into the gaps of recorded history, where characters are larger than life as are their plans yet still have discernible motivations (yes, even the bad guys).

So, quite atypical for the genre, the film doesn’t tell a series of vaguely related cool episodes (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind you) but an actual story, and while there’s not quite enough money going around here to go for the true epic scale of the Kubrick film on whose coattails the film quite obviously rides – in fact, the footage of the Romans losing various skirmishes against the rebels used in a senate session is clearly from another film, what with the Romans enemies looking rather Teutonic – this is a film that puts all its efforts into making what it can put on screen as memorable as possible.

I had the film’s director Lupo generally pegged as more dependable than exciting, but there’s true enthusiasm on display here, as well as what looks to my eyes like an honest attempt at using the actual history. Not in the sense of Lupo actually aiming for or achieving real historical authenticity, of course - this is still a peplum and therefore a pulpy historical adventure but clearly one working from a consciousness of the actual history, using some of it to good effect (the senate scenes may look a bit small scale but do feel a lot like the stuff I’ve read in Latin class in their oratorical approach and the style of their intrigue, for example), and stepping away from it not out of laziness but because this is supposed to be an exciting and melodramatic adventure.

Consequently, the action scenes are rather exciting too, with some of the better stunts you’ll find in a non-mythological peplum and an energy to them that reminded me pleasantly of the best of US serials from decades past. I was surprised by how good the melodrama - usually the parts when I roll my eyes, raise my eyebrows in these movies - worked here, with many a close-up of Mitchell’s, Browne’s and Gabel’s faces in quite effectively realized states of big emotion. Big emotion even, which resonates with the film’s ideas about freedom, loss and betrayal instead of feeling shoved into the script because you need melodrama in your peplum. In the final act, there are also a few poignant scenes, staged by Lupo with a sense of dignity I didn’t really expect to find in the film, giving the latter stages of the film true emotional weight.

The melodrama also fits into the film’s not terribly difficult to see subtext about a democracy (of sorts) at a point in its development when it is only too easily convinced by a strong man, as long as he’s telling it that it can do no wrong and kicks the people who are weakest. That’s something Italians and Germans know quite a bit about, though it does seem like many of us right no prefer to forgot these lessons of history.

In short: Sansone Contro I Pirati (1963)

aka Samson Against the Pirates

aka Samson Against the Sea Beast(s) (liars!)

The Carribean (Lake Garda), 1630. Shirt-hating trouser-sceptical hero Samson (Kirk Morris; relations to other half naked musclemen named Samson are never explained) fishes Amanda (Margaret Lee) out of the sea. Amanda, the daughter of a Spanish governor, has barely escaped capture and slavery by the pirate Murad (Daniele Vargas), the terror of the easily frightened Spanish Main. Amanda's lady friends haven't been so lucky and are now awaiting to be sold off to slave traders on Murad's - stolen - main base, a place with the more exciting-than-it-actually-is sounding name of Devil's Island.

Samson, being a hero and all, can't help himself and goes to the rescue. He, two friends of no import and Amanda rescue the maidens quite easily, but actually escaping Devil's Island with them turns out to be slightly more difficult. That's for the better, too, for Manuel (Aldo Bufi Landi), the leader of the local resistance against Murad, sure could use a shirtless guy to help him out against the piratical oppressor.

On paper, Tanio Boccia's Sansone contro i pirati sounds like a sure-fire win, seeing as it combines the pirate adventure movie with elements and shirtlessness of the peplum. Alas, what should be a blast is a mostly uninvolving, plodding affair.

The film's problems are easily spotted: its villain is a pudgy alcoholic who is about as threatening as (but less cute than) a puppy. Said villains only way to escape complete lameness is to possess even lamer henchmen, which turns out to be a problem once the film attempts to prove Samson's mythical awesomeness by having him throw a handful of said henchmen around. It's the sort of thing that doesn't really make a hero look so much heroic as like the kind of guy who'd probably win a fight against a bunny rabbit. That impression of Morris's Samson isn't exactly helped when he wrestles a fake crocodile that is unmoving even for a fake peplum crocodile; poor Morris even has to move the creature's mouth while wrestling it. Having a lame villain being fought by a lame hero is ruining any possibility of dramatic or melodramatic weight.

As if to add insult to injury, Boccia's direction lacks in charm and verve. Even the movie's two good ideas - the heroine actually rescuing the hero for once and a boat-and-spears variation of drawing and quartering for Samson to struggle against - are wasted by letting Amanda getting captured in a particularly lame way right when Samson is free, and filming it in the lamest way possible, respectively.

Sansone contro i pirati is one of those films where one can't help but think that nobody involved was actually even trying.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,adventure,peplum,tanio boccia,kirk morris,margaret lee,daniele vargas

In short: The Giants of Thessaly

Original title: I giganti della Tessaglia (Gli argonauti)

After having been robbed of its godly gift, the Golden Fleece, Thessaly is slowly devoured by volcanoes, for the gods are assholes. Thessaly's king Jason (Roland Carey) takes a crew full of heroes and the mighty ship Argo to sail to the other side of the world and steal the Golden Fleece back.

Alas, the voyage is slow and dangerous, and at the point the film starts, Jason and his crew have been gone from home for long months. Jason's cousin Andrastes (Alberto Farnese) is taking care of the throne and Queen Creusa (Ziva Rodann) while the King is away. Unfortunately, Andrastes has long held a dangerous crush on Creusa and power, and uses the opportunity to find fiendish ways to undermine the country's trust in the success of Jason's mission, marry Creusa and buy himself a new kingdom with Thessaly's treasure.

All the while, Jason and his companions encounter bad weather, hunger, witches, a cyclopean ape, young love and other every day troubles of mythical Greece.

I was expecting a bit more of The Giants of Thessaly than I actually got out of it, given the immense reputation its director Riccardo Freda has won over the years.

On a visual level, Giants succeeds quite wonderfully. The film's sets are particularly beautiful, full of interesting details, and clearly constructed to woo the audience with a sense of the monumental. Freda's direction emphasises this aspect of his film greatly, with nary a shot that isn't framed with a painterly eye, and compositions that often have a classicist feel to them, as is only too appropriate in a peplum.

Unfortunately, being beautiful and painterly isn't all a film needs to be. Giants suffers from several problems even Freda's obvious eye for beauty can't distract from forever. It is, to start with, a badly paced film, with the operatic melodrama going on in Thessaly permanently undermining what could and should be the flow of a fast-paced adventure movie. The film's main problem here isn't so much the existence of the melodrama - I for one approve of Freda's wish to also dive into the tragedy and emotion of Greek myth - but how badly it is realized and integrated with the adventure movie elements. There's something too stiff and too operatic surrounding all emotional scenes here that goes beyond the usual peplum stiffness and melodrama, as if the director were neither conscious of the flatness of the writing in these scenes nor of the inability of his actors to play them convincingly in either a naturalistic or a stylized manner. Consequently, the film drops dead in its trail whenever anything related to human emotions comes up, be it Andrastes being ineffectually evil, or Orpheus making a supposedly moving speech on love. It's quite a shame, for it's easy to imagine a film managing to realize these moments convincingly, providing the film they are in with emotional and thematic richness and at the same time making it's adventurous moments more interesting by virtue of given them actual stakes beyond the spectacle.

Alas, that's not what we get with The Giants of Thessaly, and so I'm left with a very pretty movie with okay peplum action that seems to be moving at a snail's pace even though it's just ninety minutes long.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,peplum,riccardo freda,roland carey

The Fury of Hercules (1962)

Original title: La furia di Ercole

aka Fury of Samson

When Hercules (Brad Harris, as possibly the most likeable Hercules in any movie) arrives to visit a city state (whose name I found impossible to understand under the tape hiss and the English dubbing) ruled over by an old friend he hasn't seen in years, he finds things greatly changed.

The hero's friend is dead, and the city is now ruled by his daughter Cynidia (Mara Berni), who uses slave labour with such enthusiasm she looks evil for it even in ancient Greece to provide it with the best walls ever to grace a city. In truth, though, Cynidia isn't the true power in the city. The man behind the throne is the queen's counsellor Menistus (improbably played by Serge Gainsbourg, who doesn't do as much scenery chewing as I had expected of him), a man purely evil where Cynidia seems just misguided, waiting for the right manly man hero to come along and convince her of higher ethical standards. Menistus for his part is not satisfied with his role as grey eminence anymore and plans to have Cynidia killed. Unfortunately for him, his first assassination attempt - made by two assassins disguised as dancers disguised as statues no less - starts just when Hercules is visiting Cynidia.

Needless to say, Hercules drives the assassins away without breaking a sweat. Just as needless to say, Menistus doesn't like this disturbance of his plans, nor the fact that Cynidia nearly seems to have an orgasm whenever she just looks at Herc, and now plans to have the hero assassinated as well; which always works out well in Hercules movies.

Even worse for the bad guys is that the local hapless resistance movement as represented by Cynidia's servant Daria (Luisella Boni) soon makes contact with - and loving eyes at - Hercules to inform him of the true state of affairs in the city. Looks like our hero has his work cut out for him.

Gianfranco Parolini's Fury of Hercules is a strangely unloved peplum in large parts of the Internet, but, as is regularly the case, I have to disagree with public opinion. Sure, I generally prefer the more mythological (read: mad) peplums to the slightly more realist ones like Fury, but Parolini's film actually manages the feat of keeping a Hercules movie interesting without many scenes of people in monster suits or fights against adorable animals. Our hero may have a minor staring contest with a few elephants (spoiler: Herc wins), fight a lion (spoiler: Herc wins), and wrestle a guy in a fluffy ape suit (spoiler: Herc wins), these scenes, however, make up about five minutes of Fury's running time.

More often than not, this is a bad sign in a peplum about a mythological character, and signals total boredom in form of bad melodrama and a lot of tedium in the spaces between the few animal fights. And it is true, Fury has its share of melodrama, but much of it works in the context of the plot, and it's not the only thing the film has to offer. For most of Fury's running time is spent with many a scene of Hercules fighting through various human-sized dangers (so many of them spiky and pointy one can't help but think "penetration, Freud, oh my", or something of that kind), the bad guys doing bad things, and the plot actually moving forward with gusto for once in a peplum. Why, you could think the filmmakers cared about making this a rather exciting adventure movie.

Even better, Parolini seems to have worked under slightly more fortunate production circumstances than typical for this sort of thing. Fury was filmed in Yugoslavia (a part of it now belonging to Croatia), and makes excellent use of the opportunities landscape and buildings (I do at least assume part of the city in the film is a real place and not a set; if it's a set, it's a very convincing one) give him to make his film look more lavish. One also can't help but notice the surprising number of extras in the movie. I'm not talking DeMille numbers here, but it is not every peplum that can show several dozen attacking rebels on horseback at the same time. This slightly larger scale of everything (the interior sets - leftovers from a larger production, I would assume - follow suit) really helps to sell the film's story of oppression and rebellion, and make for a pretty exciting climax.

That climax is even more exciting because Parolini paces his film so well. Peplums in general tend to have rather sluggish pacing, yet Fury goes excitedly from one scene to the next as if the film just couldn't stop itself from showing its audience the next fun thing it has come up with.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,peplum,reviews,gianfranco parolini,brad harris,serge gainsbourg,luisella boni,mara berni

On WTF: Gladiators 7 (1962)

Original title: I sette gladiatori

As a fan of dubious interpretations of mythology and rubber monsters, I often tend to come down on non-mythological peplums a little harder than they probably deserve.

Gladiators 7, starring the somewhat inevitable Richard Harrison, is not a film that gives me much opportunity to indulge in these rude and evil ways, because it's a pretty perfect example of what it is. Let my column on WTF-Film enlighten you what the hell I'm talking about.

Technorati-Markierungen: spanish movies,italian movies,reviews,peplum,adventure,pedro lazaga,richard harrison,loredana nusciak,gérard tichy

In short: Zorro Contro Maciste (1963)

aka Samson and the Slave Queen

(This write-up is based on the Italian language version of the movie, so I have no idea what that "slave queen" business is all about.)

It's the 17th (or 18th?) Century in the kingdom of Norgara (also known as not-Spain). The king of Norgara dies of an illness while visiting an island that's part of his country, leaving two female cousins as hot candidates for his succession. In the white corner is the saintly blonde Isabella (Maria Grazia Spina), and in the grimdark one stands the evil-bad non-blonde Malva (Moira Orfei). Only the king's testament can decide who will succeed him, so the girls are understandably excited to get their hands on it while it makes its way home from said island. Am I the only one disturbed by the idea the king only made his testament when he was ready to croak and far from home when there's no actual line of succession? The queen can only be better than him.

Anyhow, Malva is convinced the king would never leave the kingdom to her, so she - and her lover, captain of the guard Garcia (Massimo Serato) - decide to get a hold of the document beforehand and change it; of course, they'll need a man who is at once a competent hero and a total idiot to get the will for them. Fortunately, Maciste (Sergio Ciani) has stepped out of the TARDIS (warning: movie may not contain TARDIS) without even a shirt to wear and is now - still shirtless, though at times at least wearing a leather vest to protect his nipples - working as a strongman in Norgara, without a clue about the actual political situation, but at once willing to help when he's asked to steal a document. Stealing the will is going to proof more difficult for the dumb slab of meat than he expected, for not only has a bandit named Rabek (Andrea Aureli) already taken possession of it, there's also the fact that Isabella has asked Zorro (Pierre Brice) for help protecting it from her evil cousin.

The heroes will clash repeatedly until Maciste finally gets a clue, and in the end team-up against the true villains of the piece. It's Marvel Team-Up, Italian style.

Leave it to the wonderful and awesome (in every sense of the word) Italian genre film industry at the height of its powers to come up with a crossover possibly more bizarre than Maciste's run-in with Genghis Khan. If you're like me, you will find it a bit unfortunate that the actual execution of the film (directed by Umberto Lenzi in one of his more entertaining moods) is not as bizarre as the title makes one hope for, for while Zorro and Maciste really do fight each other for large parts of the movie, a man of my tastes can't help but hope for some hot Zorro against mythological monster action, too.

That's not what Zorro contro Maciste offers at all, though, because Lenzi's film prefers to put Maciste into a more classic, monsterless (except for a crocodile) swashbuckler of the sort Zorro is usually more at home in, instead of creating a peplum that just happens to feature Zorro, too. Even though that's a bit of a disappointment, the film at hand makes up for it by being a darn entertaining swashbuckler full of swashing and buckling and the expected demonstrations of derring-do, filmed with more spirit than Lenzi's films usually show.

It's a movie that fulfils all the expectation one has for a film of its genre without actually doing much new or exciting with it, yet that is also so good-natured and well done it's impossible not to like it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,adventure,peplum,umberto lenzi,pierre brice,sergio ciani,moira orfei,maria grazia spina

The Big Muscle Tussle: Goliath Against the Giants (1961)

Original title: Goliath contro i giganti

Throughout February, the members of M.O.S.S. have decided to bring some meat onto their exoskeletons by taking a look at film's most beefcake-y heroines and heroes. And what better example of a male slab of meat is there than that guy from the bible?

The intensely heroic Goliath (Brad Harris) leads an army of his hometown Beirath (shouldn't that be Gath?) to free and/or conquer a town that may or may not be Sparta from the evils of tyranny. Or something.

While the notorious do-gooder is away slaughtering people, the evil yet dumb Bokan (Fernando Rey, providing his bad guy with all the menace of a petulant child), usurps the throne of Beirath, killing the old king and his wife in the process. Somehow - and we unfortunately never learn how exactly he manages that trick - Bokan convinces the old king's daughter Elea (Gloria Milland) that Goliath is responsible for her father's death; which really would be quite something even for the highly competent mass murderer Goliath, seeing as he was at the other side of the world at the time. Let's not even talk about the fact that Bokan's acting like a sadistic jerk, letting his men throw people down a cliff, and later even ruining gladiatorial combat through his dickishness, which does make him look about as trustworthy as the real-world dictator of your choice.

Once Goliath is victorious, Bokan at once sends assassins to get rid of him. Obviously, these assassins don't succeed and only manage to convince Goliath that he's really needed back home. So home Goliath tries to go. Alas, travel in ancient times was not particularly safe. Consequently, our hero has to fight sea lizards, amazons, and bad weather and will lose most of his friends before he can return home and have a talk with the usurper. On his way, the muscled hero also picks up Elea, whom Bokan somehow managed to transport onto an island where every ship sailing to Beirath lands to take on drinking water before Goliath can arrive there. Initially, Elea's job is to kill Goliath, but soon enough, his mighty pectoral muscles, his kind heart and possibly his body count win her over to the beefy one's side.

Things don't look good for Bokan (or his wife, who is supposedly the brains in the operation but only compared to her hubby's utter idiocy), even though he still has more than one plan for getting rid of Goliath; too bad for him none of his plans are ever any good.

After the quite atypical for its genre Vengeance of Hercules I couldn't help myself and just had to watch another, altogether more typical, peplum for M.O.S.S.'s Big Muscle Tussle.

In one of the more surprising turns of events when it comes to the naming - or rather renaming - of peplum heroes outside of Italy, Goliath actually is Goliath in the film's Italian version, too. I suspect the producers of the US version were confident that their presumably bible-thumping countrymen would recognize the name of Goliath from their favourite book. But don't worry, gentle atheist friends, there's nothing Christian, and not much biblical about the film at all. Consequently, the only country where this particular film's hero isn't called Goliath is my native Germany. Around here, the film is known as Die Irrfahrten des Hercules which brilliantly translates to "The Odyssey of Hercules", because if Odysseus can have one, Herc can, too. At least, it's not all that less fitting a title than the original one - after all, Goliath fights the titular giants for about one minute, if in fact the cavemen he is fighting right at the end are supposed to be those giants.

Anyhow, compared to Vengeance of Hercules, Goliath is a film much more unified in tone, which is somewhat ironic in a film that's as episodic as this one. However, all the film's episodes at least seem to belong to the same genre and the same film. Plus, director Guido Malatesta (there are stories by writer and production designer Gianfranco Parolini about how Malatesta was fired from the movie and he finished it, but these stories are also full of Parolini telling us how awesome he himself is supposed to be, and how everyone else is an utter moron, so it's a bit difficult for me to see them as true) has decided to concentrate on his hero Goliath and not waste time on horrible emo sons or other horrors, and only leaves his hero's perspective to demonstrate how evil Bokan is.

Where the Hercules movie - possibly helped by its position early in the peplum wave - has ambitions on being something more complicated than your average peplum, Malatesta's film only ever wants to be an adventure movie about a buff and violent but also nice and not too dumb guy throwing people at other people (as a rule of thumb, if there's no scene of the hero throwing a bad guy - dead or alive - at other bad guys, the movie at hand clearly is not a true peplum), wrestling monstrous water lizards, the mandatory guy in a mangy ape suit (nope, I don't know why that one's caged in Bokan's dungeon either), lions that turn into adorable large lion dolls at the drop of a bodybuilder, monstrous land lizards, and rather large cavemen who may or may not be giants. I'm somewhat disappointed there's no scene of Goliath wrestling amazons, but at least his best friend and boring sidekick Blandy McBland (actual character name may differ) acquires a cute girlfriend (Barbara Carroll) there, who then proceeds to do nothing at all, robbing me of the opportunity of declaring this part of The Big Muscle Tussle as the one where muscle-carrying women finally get their moment in the spotlight. Okay, Barbara Carroll isn't muscular at all, but it would still have been a plan better than any of those Bokan cooks up.

Where was I before I was so pleasantly distracted by the thought of violent women? Right, as I was saying, Malatesta's film is a very standard peplum that treats its material like you would an equally standard adventure movie - just with a hero who really, really likes to show off his muscles - shot in a decent and straight style that's entertaining enough to watch but never even strives for the dream-like mood some of the better films of the peplum genre feature. If you're like me, always on the look out for the homoerotic as well as the sado-masochistic elements in these films, this one isn't particular fruitful, either, apart from a scene where Blandy McBland is tortured by what I hereby dub the Wheel With Blades. It's the kind of device that needs half a dozen slaves doing the Conan to work, and effortlessly wins the prize of least probable torture device of the week.

That scene, as well as the complete randomness with which the monsters appear (well, possibly the complete randomness of everything in the script), is of course very silly if one is the kind of viewer who takes herself very seriously, but then again, what business has somebody of those tastes watching a movie called Goliath Against the Giants? I, for one, welcome our half-naked muscular overlords, as long as they wrestle monsters.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,peplum,reviews,guido malatesta,brad harris,gloria milland,fernando rey,barbara carroll

The Big Muscle Tussle: Vengeance of Hercules (1959)

This write-up is based on the Italian language cut of the film that does in fact feature Hercules as its hero. For some - probably mind-blowing reason - AIP decided to do the exact opposite of what all other US versions of peplums did, namely dubbing their hero as Hercules even when he was initially Aristotle, and turned Hercules into Goliath through the highly potent form of magic we know as dubbing. The AIP version is also re-cut and features an additional battle against a sad cardboard dragon head. 

Original title: La Vendetta Di Ercole

aka Goliath and the Dragon

aka Hercules' Revenge

This February, the members of M.O.S.S. have decided to bring some meat onto their exoskeletons by taking a look at film's most beefcake-y heroines and heroes. And who could be more muscular than the king of the Italian peplum himself, Hercules?

When Vengeance of Hercules begins, the demi-god (Mark Forest, one of the more charismatic and more human-looking bodybuilders/actors throwing around pillars and punching guys in monster suits in the nose) is just beginning to fulfil the last of his Twelve Tasks by punching his way into hades, from whence he is supposed to steal a magic jewel belonging to the god of vengeance. Personally, I do remember the mythology quite differently, but then I also don't remember Hades being inhabited by a human-size catbat (or batcat?) that flies about on clearly visible wires. I also imagined Cerberus to be larger and less mangy looking than the film's three-headed doggie, but then, what do I know? At least he is a fire-breathing, mangy looking three-headed doggie.

While Hercules is out and about depopulating Hades, his enemies are making plans to take the wayward hero's city of Thebes. King Eurito (Broderick Crawford acting like an Ancient Greek gangster boss from the Ancient Greek Bronx), usurper to the throne of Eccalia, is trying to talk the various kings of neighbouring cities into an attack on Thebes, for, or so he argues quite logically, people do not tend to came back from the realm of the dead, even when they are demi-gods.

Eurito's buddies are wavering, and are not becoming more confident in his plans when a messenger arrives in Eccalia to report Hercules's victorious return from Hades. Clearly, Eurito needs to make more subtle preparations to get rid of hated Hercules.

As luck will have it, Herc's improbably dumb emo son Illo (Sandro Moretti) might just be the tool (in both senses of the word) that can bring Hercules down. Illo, you see, has fallen for Thea (Federica Ranchi), the daughter of the true (and dead) king of Eccalia. Since Eurito has taken Thea on as an adoptive daughter with the option to marry her later on to legitimize his claim on the throne, Illo's father has never approved of his son's choice of potential partner. Of course, that doesn't hinder melodramatic (and yes, dumb) Illo from sneaking in and out of the town of his father's greatest enemy to spend some quality swooning time with Thea.

Eurito must have known what's up with the couple for some time now, and decides - with the help of his rather evil aid Tindaro (Giancarlo Sbragia) and his sister Ismene (Gaby André) - that now is an excellent opportunity to imprison Illo. At first, it's planned as a demonstration of his lack of care for a potential return of Hercules from Hades, but once it's clear that the hero is indeed back, it is the beginning of a plan to convince Illo to poison his own father. A plan, I might add, that is made quite a bit more easy by Illo being the dumbest guy in ancient Greece.

It's all too bad, really, for upon his return from Hades, Hercules has decided to retire from the adventuring business and only wants to enjoy his retirement spending time with his wife and idiot son, and probably wrestling a bear or pulling a tree down from time to time.

Alas, the gods and Eurito have other plans. It's all enough to wrestle an elephant and bring down the walls of a city.

In its Italian cut, Vittorio Cottafavi's Vengeance of Hercules is a rather peculiar, and a very uneven movie. It starts out quite as you'd expect from a peplum, with our beefcake hero striding through a moody set full of multi-coloured fog and fighting atrociously realized, yet very cute, creatures that don't necessarily have much to do with Greek mythology. But, as soon as one has settled into the groove for this particular type of movie, Cottafavi turns all genre expectations on their head and goes from a suitmation fest to a movie of political intrigue (with some mild godly interventions).

There is, of course, nothing wrong with subverting genre clichés nor with broadening the borders of the genre one is working in (I did, after all, not complain when Maciste met Zorro), but if a director is going to do that, he should do it right. For example, if you make a movie about political plotting in mythological Greece, you should put actual care and thought into your villain's fiendish plots, instead of trying to get by letting it rest on one character - Illo - being so dumb it seems doubtful he can get into his clothing without help in the morning. A pouting romantic lead acting like a stupid teenager does not for exciting or dramatic political intrigue make, it turns out; and it sure does not help when the political intrigue is only uncovered by an actual deus ex machina. Sure, that's Ancient Greek alright, but it also makes the characters look even more like fools, and is just not very exciting.

Because the movie's intrigues are so lacking in actual tension, Vengeance's middle part becomes quite a drag. From time to time, that drag is broken up by Herc wrestling a guy in a mangy bear costume, and Herc hanging onto the leg of an elephant, ahem, I mean, wrestling an elephant, but even that isn't as fun as it should be, surrounded as it is by bottled boredom. Worse, the middle's tedium takes up space that would have been needed for the sexually loaded (and generally quite sado-masochist) aspects of every good peplum, namely scenes of the shirtless and impossibly buff hero getting whipped, scenes of the hero being seduced or mind-controlled by a dominant (and therefore Eeevil) woman, and anything else that brings the parts of sexual politics films usually just love to repress to the surface.

And then, when the tedium of watching non-characters and their melodramatic exclamations about their non-plans threatens to become too strong, the film takes a second drastic turn which - for once - makes the IMDB's writing credits for seven(!) people believable. Suddenly, Vengeance becomes a film actually rooted in Greece mythology, or rather, some of the basic philosophical tenets behind it. Suddenly, Hercules lives in a world where being a demi-god and having a destiny is a bad thing, where the gods just love to use mortals as their playthings, where making a wish at the wrong moment can lead to one's abduction by a centaur who is also a faun, and where Hercules is the kind of guy pulling down the pillars of his own house down when he's angry enough. Just as suddenly, Hercules also becomes a rebel against the gods and the concept of destiny, his wish to retire turning out to be one to be free of all metaphorical chains. If you ignore the (unfitting) happy end, the film's last act transformation into something more dark as well as something more thoughtful points out a direction the peplum as a genre could have taken but didn't - a movie genre based one more than the outward tropes of Greek mythology.

On the other hand, this imaginary genre (hard peplum?), would probably not have had quite as much time for showing people in monster suits lumbering around, nor for bodybuilders getting undressed and whipped, so I'm not sure if I should rail against destiny like Hercules or thank it.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,moss,the big muscle tussle,peplum,vittorio cottafavi,mark forest,broderick crawford

Ursus - The Terror of the Kirghiz (1964)

Original title: Ursus, il terrore dei kirghisi

aka Hercules, Prisoner of Evil

After the death of the great Khan (that must have been a few years ago, it seems) pressures rise in a city state and its surroundings. It's not too surprising that problems arise, for while the city itself is under the domain of the Kirghiz and their prince regent, the evil Zereteli (Furio Meniconi), at least until the Khan's daughter Amiko (Mireille Granelli) will come of age, the surrounding areas belong to the tribe of the heroic, shirt-despising Ursus (Reg Park).

The trouble between the two tribes intensifies when a human-sized, but very hairy monster that also despises shirts but loves capes, begins a nightly reign of terror, killing people wherever it can find them. For some strange reason, it never touches members of Ursus's tribe, though, and all of the hero's attempts at catching it - or even seeing it - come to naught.

Zereteli knows a useful political lever when he sees it, and so decides that the monster is a perfect excuse to start a little civil war and get rid of Ursus forever. After that, it's just a case of marrying Amiko, and he'll be set for life.

Alas, what our bad guy doesn't know is that Amiko and Ursus have had secret lovers' trysts in a hidden cave for months now, and their love just might become a problem for Zereteli's marriage plans.

Zereteli's not the only one not having the full picture of the situation, though, and only with the return of Ursus's much cleverer brother Ilo (Ettore Manni) will various lies and spoileriffic and/or obvious secrets like the identity and use of the monster be unravelled.

House favourite Antonio Margheriti's Ursus - Terror of the Kirghiz is quite an atypical entry into the wild, wild world of the peplum, beginning with the small yet surprising fact that its Ursus isn't exactly much of a hero beyond his awesome ability to not wear shirts and roll around a rock or two. It's not just that he isn't very clever - that's not too surprising for a hero in a peplum - but that he doesn't actually do much to resolve the problems at hand, and even spends about half of the movie unconscious. The main work of the film's protagonist falls to Ettore Mani's Ilo, who does all the thinking, planning, understanding, and problem solving while Ursus sleeps, is manipulated or does nothing of use. Even in the end, when most peplum heroes would be allowed to, you know, do something heroic, the nominal hero of this film doesn't know what was actually going on around him, and does little to resolve the situation. Ilo's not even going to tell him what the situation actually was, to help Ursus sleep at night in the future.

Alas, as great as this overturning of the usual rules of heroism in the peplum sounds on paper, the film's execution makes it more interesting than entertaining. Structurally, the film is set up more like a mystery than a normal peplum. Unfortunately, it is the sort of mystery in which the heroes are utterly confused by the obvious and only solve the central crime after the audience has understood what's going on for over an hour. This not only drags the film's pace down quite a bit, but it also makes it difficult not to lose one's patience with its heroes. It's a bit of a shame too, because the mystery's solution could have been quite riveting and touching on a philosophical darkness the peplum genre not usually bothers with, if it had been handled more succinctly and with a greater emphasis on how horrible the truth actually is. There is much of interest Margheriti could have explored here without departing much more from the genre rules of the peplum than he already did, but as it stands, he's not taking the less typical aspects of the movie far enough; with the consequent use of Ilo's role as that of the film's backdoor hero being the one exception.

On the more positive side, the film is decently acted, has a plot that's a bit more complex than typical, is really nice to look at, and has pretty okay action scenes. I don't think that's enough to make up for the film's wasted potential to make it more than just decent, it is however more than enough to make it worth watching at least once.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,peplum,horror,reviews,antonio margheriti,reg park,ettore manni,mireille granelli

In short: Colossus And The Headhunters (1963)

Original title: Maciste contro i cacciatori di teste

An island tribe of people who seem to stand culturally and technologically somewhere between ancient Greece and the stone age is nearly eradicated when the local volcano erupts. Fortunately for them, Maciste (Kirk Morris) has just arrived on a raft that's improbably large for one person to travel on and evacuates a raft-full of survivors, among them the new king Ariel (Demeter Bitenc). Because there's neither food nor water on board, our heroes naturally decide to follow an old myth and travel to a country a long journey away.

Somehow, the raft and its passengers arrive at their goal without having become cannibals. And they just might have discovered America. Or not.

Once arrived in Peplomerica, our heroes (or whatever they are) soon meet the rather rude people of Queen Amoa (Laura Brown), who have fled from the machinations of a cruel tribe of headhunters (which, in the language of this film, means "people who supposedly love decapitation, but only decapitate someone once during the course of the movie and have no interest at all in shrunken heads or, you know, headhunting"). Amoa thinks Maciste is their prophesied saviour, but our rather jerky hero decides that helping her would endanger his volcano survivors and trots away with them, only to return after Amoa and her people have been attacked and killed or kidnapped by the bad guys. If Maciste had only known that Amoa loves/hates/loves him! Suddenly all heroic, Maciste decides to find the survivors. Will he be able to save Amoa from the main bad guy's (Frank Leroy) attempts to marry her?

Colossus and the Headhunters might be the, well, outright lamest peplum I have ever had the dubious honour of watching. Usually, films in this blessed genre put all their energy into presenting themselves as exciting spectacles, full of manly belly-laughter, toppling of pillars, homoerotic torture and silly monsters. And if the budget can't pay for a mechanical giant snake, then the typical peplum will at least try and pretend that a piece of painted cardboard is a giant snake. Not so, Colossus: Maciste doesn't laugh and he never is tortured - although Kirk Morris' facial expression suggests that acting in the movie was quite painful for him. The only things Maciste topples are a rope bridge and parts of a brick wall, and even this he does with about as much enthusiasm as a child pressed into eating spinach by malevolent parents. Monsters aren't in the movie at all. The latter would be perfectly alright with me if Maciste would spend his time throwing guards around while laughing uproariously, but alas, this version of the hero spends most of his time walking around or running away.

And the "walking around" bit brings me to Headhunter's main problem: nothing ever happens in this movie, and when something happens, it's realized in as anticlimactic a way as possible. The film's big moment is probably the climactic battle in front of four grass huts (one of them even burning!). At least there's a lot of shouting and running around then, and people wave their swords at each other. The excitement!

Even the mandatory dance sequence is absurdly unenthusiastic, the poor actress (yup, no money for more than one dancer - or more than some brown walls in the background - here, sorry) looking for all the world as if someone was pointing a gun in her direction from off-camera to convince her to dance.

Need I even say that the film decides to do nothing at all with the potentially fantastically entertaining "Maciste discovers America" angle? As it stands, I'm not even completely sure the place is supposed to be America. Truth be told, the film's just too boring for it to matter in any case.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,peplum,kirk morris,guido malatesta,in short

In short: Medusa Against The Son Of Hercules (1963)

This Alberto De Martino-directed peplum does some rather peculiar things with poor old Perseus (Richard Harrison, as always very good at the physical parts of his role). For one, it makes his adventures much less fantastic and decidedly lacking in gifts from the gods.

It's not a bad movie, though. De Martino has always been quite good at keeping the cheapskate action up and varied, and does so here, avoiding the dullness some of the lesser peplums suffer from. Although the larger battle scenes and the special effects are held back by the film's impoverished production values, I can't deny the its sense of forward momentum, nor the primal, Tarzan-like call of scenes of men throwing each other through the air or whipping each other.

De Martino is less successful at filming drama, which in his interpretation means having people shout dramatically at each other while wringing their hands, or at creating the sort of dream-like mood the more fantastic elements of the film could use to be a little less ridiculous than they are. Not that I'm complaining about the film's use of two excellent, nearly motionless rubber monsters in ill-advisedly bright lighting. Or am I?

While I'd rather avoid talking about the half-paralyzed dragon Perseus kills in an underwater sequence in which I couldn't see anything beyond milky shadows, I have a certain degree of respect for the medusa sequence. It has an excellent matte painting (probably by Mario Bava's dad Eugenio) dominating the background, some surprisingly cool looking statues and it rethinks the medusa as a slithering rubber tree thing with a single, glowing eye, which shows more creativity in five minutes than the Clash of the Titans remake does in its whole running time. Really, what more could one ask of a film?

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,peplum,alberto de martino,richard harrison

Conqueror of Atlantis (1965)

Hercules (Kirk Morris, this time dubbed into Heracles, which makes sense) is the victim of a shipwreck. Fortunate as he is, he washes up on a desert beach, right in front of beautiful princess Virna (Luciana Gilli). Obviously she can't take her eyes off the mostly naked male beauty before her and promptly falls in love with Herc as does he with her - at least as much as he is able to, having by my count had about 123 girlfriends before her. It doesn't seem to matter much anyway. She has to get to her father's camp, while Hercules should better trot into the other direction. All the longing glances let the two forget things like giving Hercules water and food to help him survive a walk through the desert, but don't fear for him. This is the kind of desert people routinely cross in broad daylight without water or shelter, as we'll see throughout the rest of the film. After Virna and her entourage are already gone, our hero finds a ring belonging to the princess lying in the sand, so he starts to wander through the desert after her caravan. He finds a group of nomads under attack by bandits instead. Being Hercules, he of course helps the nomads fight off their attackers.

His new friends take him to their leader Karr (Andrea Scotti) and after some male bonding procedures no tent can survive (damn, is there a homoerotic subtext here!?) the two become fast friends.

Another bandit attack, during which Herc shows a surprising amount of tactical acumen, and Karr tells the sad tale of his peace-loving people, who are regularly attacked by the men of evil nomad king Assour (Mahmoud El-Sabbaa). Assour is of course Virna's father.

Hercules (after showing un-American insight into the uselessness of torture) promises Karr that he'll take care of Assour.

A visit to Assour is rather fruitful - his attacks are revenge for supposed raids by Karr, raids that only leave dead bodies and stolen gold in their wake.

When Assour, Karr and Hercules finally understand that this is just a plan by a different enemy to keep them separated, said enemy attacks. If Assour and Karr had just talked with each other before. Or had sent each other messages...

The true enemy of the desert people are the Atlanteans, the last survivors of Atlantis, now residing in an underground city on top of a volcano.

The Atlanteans are in dire need of a queen and Virna looks fit enough for the job, so they kidnap her. Hercules and Karr pursue them and stumble into a Flash Gordon serial: The golden skinned men in the blue rompers who kidnapped Virna aren't exactly Atlanteans. They are instead the reanimated and gold-plated corpses of asphyxiated desert nomads, whom the only surviving male Atlantean Ramir (Piero Lulli), obviously the twin brother of Ming the Merciless, uses as mindless slaves.

The Atlanteans have a problem, you see: They are immortal, yet there aren't many of them left - besides Ramir, there is only the queen and barely a dozen female "warriors" with psychedelically coloured whigs. Personally, I wouldn't try to solve my population problem by kidnapping another queen, but what do I know about things like that.

Many (or competent) they are not, but they have great plans. They want to build an army of Golden Phantoms (the official name of the gold-skinned guys) to CONQUER THE WORLD!

A devious plan that would probably succeed if not for Hercules. Or Ramir's hobby to show prisoners around his lab and explain his fantastic contraptions, like a blaster (which Hercules will later put to good use), a machine that robs people of their will or gives it back again (which Hercules will later put to good use) and a machine that regulates the gas streams of the volcano (which Hercules will later - you get the gist).

Before the movie is over the excited viewer will experience many things, including: Feats of strength! Men fighting golden phantoms with the large iron ball and chains that they use like bolas! The explosive truth about cities build over volcanoes! The fact that Atlanteans lose their immortality when they fall in love (because it's forbidden and they get shot afterwards)! Daring escapes! A cackling mad scientist! And more!

 

Young Alfonso Brescia doesn't disappoint. As we all should know, Brescia would later go on to film a few mad and/or dadaist SF films and invent the SF porn genre and has a big place in my heart as one of the great holy fools of cinema.

At the point in his career when he made Conqueror of Atlantis he seems to have been still rather sane. Someone with my lowered expectations regarding logic can't help but call the plot here sensible, even logical, as if Brescia had actually tried to make a film that does make a certain amount of sense. Well, if you are able to overlook a few pesky things, like the dubious intelligence of the bad guys, or the bizarre nature of their culture or their plans, but really, who cares about those things when there is a wonderful lab to look at, and women wearing, um, things and undead cyborgs with golden skin dressed like toddlers and soldiers who use spears when they could use blasters. And so on and so on. Which is my longwinded way of saying that the script is absolutely awesome in its wrongheadedness and that the pulpy nonchalance with which it switches from peplum in the desert into Flash Gordon mode is a true joy to behold.

What else can I say about a Brescia film I have not already said elsewhere? The editing is either grotesquely inept or brilliant: There are important transitions missing and everything seems to move just outside the normal way time and space work. There are actors, some of them even seem to have an idea what they are supposed to be doing. Kirk Morris makes a fine Flash Hercules, even if the does not let him throw any pillars around and Piero Lulli knows what's important when playing an evil genius: Ranting, cackling and ominously staring into the camera.

Conqueror of Atlantis is a fine film when you want to relive some of the beauties of classic serials, or if you want to start your education in the works of maestro Brescia, but don't want to dive into the headier stuff at once. Or if you want to have an exceedingly fun time.

 

Technorati-Tags: peplum,adventure,italian movies,reviews,piero lulli,kirk morris,alfonso brescia

Goliath versus The Vampires (1961)

Maciste (this time dubbed to "Goliath", showing the well-oiled muscles of Gordon Scott) lives somewhere and sometime in a little village. There, he has a peroxided fiancé Giulia (Leonora Ruffo), a mother, and his usual hobby of being incredibly heroic. While he is taking care of a child rescue situation, his home village is attacked by a band of raiders, wearing no armor but some silly black helmets. Even stranger is that they don't steal anything. It seems to be more fun to kill as many men as possible, burn the place down and get away with the women (including Maciste's Giulia).

We'll soon see that they actually didn't even want all women. Once onboard their ship, the elderly and middle-aged meet their destiny as shark-munch.

When Maciste returns and learns about this, he swears to get the people back and avenge the dead. One of the survivors even knows where the kidnapped are brought to, a place I like to call nearly-Baghdad.

Nearly-Baghdad's ruler is the mopiest Sultan around, nothing is fun for him anymore, not even mass belly-dances. This is less surprising when one keeps in my that he isn't the true ruler of the place anymore. Instead, the true power behind the throne is Kobrak (Guido Celani), a masked, blood-drinking fiend who usually appears with his own private supply of Bava-light. Kobrak plans don't end with the possession of nearly-Baghdad - he has started to use his power base there to build an army of featureless and mindless automatons that will someday conquer the world. For this, he needs the bodies of slaves.

Fortunately Maciste and his child sidekick soon arrive in town to set things right.

From now on the film is a cornucopia of fun things: Maciste throwing more pillars than can be good for his back, an early oriental surf instrumental band, said mindless automatons, distrust, treason, two women but only one Maciste, kidnappings, the battle of the two Macistes, the helpful kingdom of the Blue Men (who might be the least effective fighting force on the planet) and many more beautiful nonsense. Oh, and just to prove the script was written by Sergio Corbucci and Duccio Tessari, the death of the kid sidekick. Not that anyone would care afterwards or would at least mention Maciste's responsibility for his death.

Goliath versus The Vampires (who are in truth one vampire) is a fun peplum with many earnestly played moments of utter silliness and a handful of atmospheric sequences. Script and direction never forget the most important things in the genre and incessantly throw lots of strange stuff at the viewer like the hero throws with anything he can put his hands on. (And after one has seen the arm-flaying that is his other combat routine, one is thankful to see him throw things).

Some of those things are even original. The kingdom of the Blue Men, with their blue mask-like faces and their blue bread and wine for example is a nice variation of the underground kingdoms no good film should go without. The torture sequence is also quite singular. Maciste isn't stretched or tied with ropes or chains to show his physique off, instead he's thrown into a hole in the ground. The automaton then place a bell over the hole and start hitting the bell with large hammers. See, the soundwaves will destroy his brain and make him the prototype of an even better warrior for Kobrak. The vampire doesn't take the fact into account that our hero hasn't got a brain anyway. Well, truthfully Maciste's brain (such as it is) is saved thanks to a heroic deed done earlier in the film - a nice deviation from the norm.

If you like this kind of film, you'll like this one a lot. If not, I can't imagine it will change your mind about the peplum.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,peplum,sergio corbucci,duccio tessari,gordon scott,reviews,giacomo gentilomo

The Science!? 18: Sons of Hercules: In The Land of Darkness (1963)

The Peplum-Plot-O-Matic 2000 produced one of its most generic scripts when activated to write SoH: ITLoD.

To make a short story shorter and less boring, Hercules (Dan Vadis) just happens to be around when Telca (Spela Rozin), daughter of "King" Tedaeo (Ugo Sasso) is attacked by a lion, whose incredible dangerousness is more than proven by the necessity of being played by two different lions, one male, the other female. After a short round of wrestling and rock-throwing, the lion is dead and Hercules falls into unconsciousness(!). When he awakes, he is greeted by the people of the kingdom known as Whatever-its-name-may-be, all twenty of them.

Herc is of course absolutely delighted to hear that the local way of rewarding the rescuer of an unmarried woman is marriage (the Greek shotgun wedding). To Herc's and Telca's regret, this rule does not apply to the King's daughter, probably because it's a prince's duty to count all eight of the village's huts, and you never know if your prospective son-in-law is clever enough to count at all. But, since Hercules is soo heroic and soo strong, there might be a way for him to marry the woman he doesn't know at all - he just has to kill one little dragon.

So off the hero goes, meets an oracle, kills a dinosaur, returns to the village only to find it burned to the ground by the Demulus, a race of at least thirty people who live in an underground city and lighten up their diets by eating the flesh of their slain enemies. The only living soul he finds is Babar (John Simons), an odious comic relief so unfunny, even the Demulus didn't dare killing him.

With his new friend Hercules ventures into the land of the Demulus, wrestles a bear, fights some soldiers, gets caught, is nearly quartered by elephants (the thing that saves him is not his brawn or his brains, but an appeal to "the Lord of the Sun" to break his chain), saves the evil queen of the Demulus from her own elephants and blah-dee-blah.

Later on we see treachery, a slave revolt, the underground city destroyed by lava and a happy end.

Nothing of this is the least bit entertaining.

There are many puzzling things about this movie, but the most puzzling of them all may well be the decision of its American distributors to change its original hero from Hercules into a certain Argoles, Son of Hercules. Although, the longer I think about it, the less puzzling it gets: Do we really want the glorious epitome of manliest manliness we know as Hercules to be presented as a wimp, someone who wins his battles by whining to the Gods?

But the doubtful character of its hero is just one of the movies problems. I have seldom seen a peplum featuring a less charismatic or appealing cast. I don't expect all that much from actors in these films but Dan Vadis is a charisma-free zone and only comes to life in the melee combat scenes against human enemies, his love interest is utterly forgettable, the comedic relief someone I try very hard to forget and the villains much too laid back to be of any interest.

The special effects are as dire as usual and filmed with real talent for showing off all their shortcomings.

The direction is especially disappointing anyway - where most peplums get their energy from creatively designed sets and strangely colored lighting as well as from absurd feats of strength, this movie just sits there not even trying do something, anything interesting or strange or entertaining.

 

Technorati-Tags: italian movies,reviews,peplum,fantasy,dan vadis