Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

I’m rather fond of the peplum genre but it has to be said that on the whole these are movies that you don’t want to try to take too seriously. Mostly they’re enjoyable as silly fun. Colossus and the Amazon Queen (the original title is La regina delle Amazzoni) dates from 1960 and is slightly unusual in that it was intended from the word go as a comedic take on the genre.

The dubbed version which hit the U.S. in 1964 pushes the comic elements even further, in fact it arguably pushes them a little too far.

This movie is also a bit unusual in that its star (or at least one of its two stars) went on to have a real career. That star was Australian Rod Taylor and in the same year that he made Colossus and the Amazon Queen he also made the movie that made him a legitimate movie star, that movie being The Time Machine.

Pirro (Rod Taylor) and Glauco (Ed Fury) are the two heroes. Pirro has the brains while Glauco has the muscles. At least Pirro thinks he’s the one with the brains. They’re broke and Pirro grabs what seems to him to be a great opportunity to earn some easy money. All they have to do is undertake a sea voyage and act as watchmen. The difficult part is tricking Glauco into going along with the idea but Pirro has plenty of experience in such matters.

Everything seems to be going well. They land on a remote island where lots of gold is waiting for them and the rest of the crew. There’s also a feast laid out with plenty of fine wine. Unfortunately the wine is drugged. They’ve been tricked but it’s worse than that - they have been sold to the Amazons. And the Amazons have only one use for men.

This is a Battle of the Sexes movie but with the roles reversed. The women are the warriors and are in control. The men are effeminate slaves who spend their time gossiping and are treated like pets. That is the fate awaiting Pirro, Glauco and their pals.

A worse fate may be in store for Glauco. He has offended the captain of the guard and she wants him put to death.

The Queen of the Amazons is anxious to give up her throne. All the other amazons are allowed to have men but the queen must remain chaste and she’s getting rather tired of chastity. There are two deadly rivals competing for the succession.

And of course there are plenty of romantic complications in store as well. The amazon women are all somewhat man-crazy. There are also some pirates who are mostly there so as to provide the obligatory climactic battle scene.

It’s very hard to judge comedy when it’s been dubbed. The original script might well have been quite witty. The dubbed version goes for broad comedy. Mostly it doesn’t succeed in being especially funny but it does manage to be seriously weird. This movie takes high camp as far as it can be taken and then some. There are some awesomely camp dance sequences. There’s also a cheerful disregard for period. The story is supposed to take place not long after the Trojan War but then we get some medieval jousting, not to mention the jazz-inspired dancing (and even without the jazzy score added for the dubbed version the dance routines are clearly jazz-inspired).

The costumes are absurd but they are amusingly bizarre.

The cast clearly understood that subtlety was not required in their performances.

One of the great things about movies of the past is that the film-makers did not agonise over whether their films might offend somebody. This is a rather good-natured movie on the whole but it sure isn’t politically correct.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen is available on DVD from Retromedia in a two-movie pack paired with Goliath and the Sins of Babylon. Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is an excellent film and it gets a pretty decent anamorphic transfer. Sadly the transfer for Colossus and the Amazon Queen is pan-and-scanned and definitely not so good.

It’s generally rather unfair to deliver a harsh judgment on a movie when you’re seeing it in a poorly dubbed version plus the print is not in great condition and to top it all off it’s pan-and-scanned but I think it’s still reasonable to say that this is a pretty bad movie. Despite this it has a certain goofy charm. It’s a bit like a beach party movie in that you have to be in the right mood but I found it to be oddly enjoyable. Recommended, if you have a high tolerance for camp.

The Conqueror (1956)

RKO’s 1956 epic The Conqueror has the reputation of being one of the worst movies ever made. That judgment is perhaps a little unfair. While it certainly has its problems and cannot in all honesty be described as a good film, it does have a certain fascination.

Part of this movie’s terrible reputation is undoubtedly due to the assumption that any film that Howard Hughes was involved in must be a bad film. There’s also the undeniably incongruous casting of John Wayne as Genghis Khan. The movie’s tendency to play fast and loose with historical accuracy (which it does to an even greater extent than most epics) hasn’t helped its reputation. And lastly there’s the legend (which may or may not be true) that the movie was shot on an old atomic testing site and that as a result almost half of those involved in the production subsequently died of cancer. 

In fact The Conqueror’s failure as an epic has little to do with any of these factors.

The movie opens with Temujin, later to be known as Genghis Khan, still a rather minor Mongol chieftain. He captures Bortai (Susan Hayward) during a raid. Given that her father murdered Temujin’s father it’s perhaps not surprising that initially they don’t hit it off too well. Temujin however is convinced that Bortai really is the woman for him.

Temujin is determined to avenge his father’s murder. He has also been convinced by his blood brother Jamuga (Pedro Armendáriz) that he is a man of destiny who will one day rule a vast empire. That day seems a long way off as most of Temujin’s schemes seem to end in disaster.

Both Temujin and Jamuga have a remarkable capacity for getting themselves captured by their enemies. Temujin’s plans to gain the ageing but powerful Wang Khan (Thomas Gomez) as an ally also face formidable obstacles and dangers, the principal danger coming from Wang Khan’s wily and unscrupulous shaman (played by John Hoyt). Meanwhile Bortai is still far from reconciled to the idea of being Temujin’s wife and is likely to cause trouble.

While the movie is called The Conqueror it has to be said that Temujin doesn’t do much conquering. The decision to focus on the early part of the career of the man who would become Genghis Khan is reasonable enough but it does involve one major problem - it reduces the opportunities for spectacular battle scenes. In fact the movie is a bit light on action in general and most of what there is is small-scale stuff. It’s more like a swashbuckling adventure movie than a genuine epic but there’s still not enough action. Concentrating on Temujin’s relationships with Bortai and Jamuga (which is what this film does) could have provided the chance to explore Genghis Khan the man rather than the legend but if you’re going to make an epic about a great conqueror you do need to provide at least some focus on the military and political prowess that allowed him to build up one of the greatest empires in history.

Dick Powell was by no means a poor director. The Enemy Below, which he made in the following year, is an absolutely riveting wartime adventure. He does not seem quite at home with the epic genre however. In actual fact there were very few directors with a real flair for the epic. It’s not enough to spend a lot of money (and the Conqueror was an expensive film) and it’s not enough to have lavish sets and costumes. A few years later Anthony Mann would demonstrate in El Cid how an epic should be made. Mann captured the true epic feel in a way that Powell fails to do. 

While the scenery in Utah is impressive enough it presents another problem - it just looks too American, too much like the setting for a western. The necessary exotic feel is just not there.

An epic also needs the right kind of star. John Wayne was a much better actor than Victor Mature but Mature would have been a better choice for the lead - he understood the style of acting that epics require. Howard Hughes however wanted John Wayne. Hughes was probably half right. Wayne had the ability to play larger-than-life characters and he certainly had the ability to portray complex heroes (and Hughes clearly wanted Genghis Khan to be a hero). The trouble is that Wayne tries too hard and his performance ends up seeming tentative and confused. Wayne appears to be thinking too much about his performance.

Susan Hayward on the other hand was the perfect female lead for an epic and if you can get past the fact that she looks even less like a Tartar princess than Wayne looks like a Mongol her performance works quite satisfactorily.

The supporting players are quite good. They bring the right kind of hamminess to their roles.

This is, even by 1950s standards, an astoundingly politically incorrect film. If you’re the kind of person who demands that the movies of the past should conform to modern sensibilities than you’ll have huge problems watching this movie. The fact that Temujin believes that the right way to handle women is to handle them roughly, and the fact that this makes him just the sort of man Bortai wants, may well induce fits of apoplexy among some modern viewers. It’s probably worth pointing out however that the real Genghis Khan was probably not a guy who worried too much about political correctness.

The Conqueror doesn’t really work as an epic and John Wayne is definitely not quite right for the title role but this movie is not as bad as its reputation suggests. In its own way it’s quite a bit of fun to watch. Despite its faults its very notoriety makes it worthy seeing and the ways in which it misses the target make it rather entertaining. Recommended.

Son of Samson (1960)

Son of Samson (Maciste nella valle dei re) dates from 1960 and is a fairly stock-standard peplum made slightly more interesting by a non-standard setting in ancient Egypt.

The Egyptians are being oppressed by their Persian conquerors and the Pharaoh is little more than a puppet. When he shows signs of independence he is murdered. Meanwhile the heir to the throne, Kenamun, has had a chance meeting in the desert with a muscle-bound strongman. Kenamun saves the strongman’s life when he is attacked by a lion, and when another lion appears the strongman returns the favour. In the English dub we are told that this muscle-bound hero’s name is Maciste and that he is the son of Samson. One assumes that the son of Samson bit has been added for the English dub and that in the original Italian version he is simply Maciste. Maciste had been a popular hero in Italian movies as far back as 1914 when he featured in the brilliant epic Cabiria and would have needed no further introduction to Italian audiences.

The heir to the throne has some big problems, caused by the machinations of the obligatory beautiful-but-evil Queen Smedes. She is determined to cement her power by marrying Kenamun. Kenamun has rather inconveniently fallen in love with a humble girl named Nofret, one of a party of women who had been rescued from marauding bad guys by Maciste. Smedes makes Kenamun a gift of a necklace, a necklace with magical powers that causes Kenamun to forget his love for Nofret and his friendship for Maciste.

Maciste arrives in the Egyptian city of Tanis and starts causing mayhem by beating up the palace guards and freeing slaves and others oppressed by the wicked regime. Maciste knows that Kenamun is a good man and that he is not responsible for the evil deeds done in his name but he has to find a way to reach Kenamun. Naturally Maciste is given various opportunities to demonstrate his superhuman strength, single-handedly lifting obelisks and performing other similar feats of strength.

The plot is standard for the genre and features two-dimensional villains and two-dimensional heroes. There’s just enough action to keep things interesting.

One thing that is unusual is the level of graphic violence and gore. It seems quite likely that cuts would have been required at the time and it’s rather fortunate that Retromedia have been able to source their DVD from what we can assume to be an uncut print. 

Mark Forest was an American body-builder from Brooklyn who enjoyed a brief period of stardom in Italy during the peplum boom. He was never likely to win any acting awards but he certainly looks the part. The evil queen is played by Chelo Alonso, a striking Cuban actress popularly known as the Cuban H-bomb. She’s also no great shakes in the acting department but like Forest she has the right look for this type of movie. 

The Egyptian settings provide some surprisingly impressive spectacle, the costumes are handsome and the battle scenes are done quite well considering the limited numbers of extras that the budget was able to furnish.

Director Carlo Campogalliani had made his first Maciste movie more than forty years earlier so as you’d expect he handles the job quite competently.

There are no monsters and the only supernatural elements are the magic necklace plus an old guy who seems to have some limited psychic powers that play no part at all in the plot.

Retromedia have released this movie as part of a double-feature DVD, paired with Son of Cleopatra. Son of Samson gets a 16x9 enhanced transfer. Image quality is adequate with very little print damage. Colours are not quite as bright as one could wish for. Sound quality is fine.

If you’re not a peplum fan then Son of Samson is not the movie that is going to change your mind about the genre. If you are a fan you’ll be reasonably satisfied. This is not in the first rank of such movies but it’s enjoyable enough. Recommended.

Gold for the Caesars (1963)

Gold for the Caesars (Oro per i Cesari) is a fairly late and slightly unusual entry in the Italian peplum cycle of the late 50s and early 60s. It was directed by Andre de Toth whose movies are always worth a look.

This is a historical peplum rather than a fantasy peplum so there are no monsters. There’s also not a great deal of action until very late in the film but it holds the viewer’s interest by offering characters with a little more depth than was customary in the genre and with some fairly complex relationships between those characters. If there’s such a thing as a character-driven peplum then this is it.

Lacer (Jeffrey Hunter) is a slave who is building a bridge in Spain in 96 AD. He might be a slave but he’s a very favoured slave who happens to be the principal engineer on the project. He is owned by Maximus (Massimo Girotti), the Roman governor of the province.

Maximus is an ambitious man and those ambitions have been fired by soothsayers’ predictions that by the Ides of January Rome will have a new emperor. Maximus intends to be that new emperor but he has a serious rival in the person of Trajan. If Maximus is to win the purple he will need gold, and in large quantities. Gold is supposedly to be found in a valley in Spain but the valley is located in a part of the province over which Rome has no effective control. The valley is firmly in the hands of the Celtic chieftain Malendi (Georges Lycan). 

Maximus has only two legions under his command and any attempt to wrest command of the valley by force would be likely to result in heavy losses. Maximus has a plan to deal with this. He will make peace with Malendi. No-one seriously expects this to work but Maximus succeeds in persuading Malendi of his good intentions. An expedition is despatched to bring back the gold. The gold is to be found in old mines once worked by the Carthaginians. Getting the gold out will require a skilled engineer and Lacer is the obvious choice. Lacer is put in charge, with Rufus (Ron Randell) in command of the Roman troops. Since Lacer and Rufus hate each other this is always going to lead to problems.

There is of course a romantic sub-plot and on this occasion it’s quite well integrated into the main plot. Lacer and Penelope (Mylène Demongeot) have fallen in love. Penelope is Maximus’s mistress and she is torn between love and ambition. She loves Lacer but Maximus may well be emperor soon and she sees herself as having a pretty good chance of becoming empress. Maximus knows about Lacer and Penelope but he tolerates the situation because he needs Lacer.

The gold-finding expedition proves to be more difficult than expected. The mines are behind a waterfall and getting access to them makes it necessary to build a dam. Lacer is a skilled engineer and is well able to cope with these difficulties but Maximus is aware that time is against him. He has to have that gold if he is to head off the challenge from the increasingly popular Trajan. Maximus’s anxiety for fast results will lead him to interfere with Lacer’s patient efforts and this will prove to be potentially a very serious mistake, provoking the very problems with the Celts that his earlier diplomacy was intended to avoid.

Maximus is an interesting character. He is a ruthless and calculating man but he’s also intelligent and subtle. As time starts to run out for his bid for empire the flaws in his character start to appear and his previous sound judgment starts to go astray. Massimo Girotti was a very fine actor and his performance is well-judged.

Jeffrey Hunter is an adequate hero and manages to bring some subtlety to his performance. Lacer is by nature a careful and patient man but love tends to make a man forget being careful and patient. 

Mylène Demongeot is impressive as Penelope. Penelope is genuinely in love with Lacer but any woman would be a fool to give up the chance to be empress. She really doesn’t know which way to jump.

Ron Randell does his best but Rufus is the least interesting of the major characters. He is vicious and unintelligent and it’s difficult to make him much more than a mere stock villain. 

There’s some good location photography and the engineering scenes involving bridges, dams and mines are impressively mounted. We have to wait quite a while for the action scenes but they’re well-executed. 

The Warner Archive MOD DVD offers no extras and only the English dubbed version but the print is quite good and (a major bonus for peplum fans) the transfer is in the correct aspect ratio and it’s 16x9 enhanced.

Gold for the Caesars is in some ways too psychologically ambitious for its own good. Fans of this genre probably hoped for a bit more action but there’s some effective dramatic tension and those prepared to give this movie a chance will find it a surprisingly effective if unusual representative of its genre. Recommended.

Erik the Conqueror (1961)

Erik the Conqueror is an early Mario Bava effort, release in 1961. The original Italian title was Gli invasori. It was released in Britain as Fury of the Vikings and in the US as Erik the Conqueror. Bava had worked on a number of peplums and had made Hercules in the Haunted World earlier that year so he had by this time accumulated plenty of experience in the making of action-adventure movies and he is clearly very comfortable with this kind of picture.

Like any good historical epic this one plays fast and loose with historical fact, to the point where it can best be described as a historical fantasy.

It is somewhere around the 8th century of the Christian era and the Vikings have been raiding Britain for many years, even establishing their own miniature kingdoms in the British Isles. This is not quite the Vikings vs the British picture you might expect. Both the British and the Vikings are portrayed fairly sympathetically. Indeed it seems likely that there will soon be peace between them, until an ambitious and unscrupulous British lord, Sir Ruthford (Andrea Checchi), sets them at each other’s throats again in furtherance of his own schemes for self-aggrandisement.

I’m using the term British deliberately since it’s not entirely clear if the Vikings’ adversaries are English or Scottish. It seems to depend on which version of the movie you see!

The Viking king, Arald, is slain in battle and his two young sons are separated in the confusion of battle. One son (Eron) is rescued by the Vikings while the other (Erik) is rescued by the British and is raised by the British queen, Queen Alice, as her son. Twenty years later Eron will lead an expedition against the British while Erik, now Duke of Helford, will lead the British defenders.

Eron is in love with Daya, a vestal virgin pledged to the gods. That’s likely to land him in a good deal of trouble but he reckons on becoming king, after which he can release her from her vow. Daya’s twin sister Rama will fall in love with the young Duke of Helford, not knowing that she has fallen in love with Eron’s brother.

Eron and Erik are of course destined to meet again. The circularity of the plot is emphasised by key scenes at the beginning of the movie that are echoed by similar scenes at the end. Both Eron and Erik believe in destiny, and destiny is not something any man can evade.

The scheming Sir Ruthford captures Queen Alice by betraying her castle. Destiny will not only bring the two separated brothers together, it will also bring them both into deadly conflict with Sir Ruthford.

The Viking movie craze in Italy in the early 60s was triggered by the international success of the Hollywood epic The Vikings. The plot of Erik the Conqueror is inspired to a degree by that of the American film. It’s a good story and it offers plenty of potential to someone like Bava.

Erik the Conqueror has the right combination of action, tragedy and romance and when you add Bava’s visual magic you have all the ingredients for success. And in fact the movie proved to be extremely successful at the box office.

The acting is generally quite good. Daya and Rama are played by real-life twins Alice and Ellen Kessler, popular cabaret stars who had appeared in many movies but had never taken on serious acting roles before. They both acquit themselves fairly well. Andrea Checchi makes a fine conniving villain. George Ardisson is adequate as Erik. The acting honours though go to Cameron Mitchell as Eron. Mitchell was an accomplished actor who had enjoyed considerable success on the Broadway stage. His promising American film acting career was cut short by an unfortunate misunderstanding with the Internal Revenue Service which led him to leave the US and seek work in Britain and in Europe. He was certainly a class above the kind of actors you usually find in movies like this and he gives a fine performance as a character who is not always wholly sympathetic but who grows in stature as the story progresses. Bava was obviously impressed by him and stared him in two further movies.

Bava acted as his own director of photography and the movie is full of distinctive Bava visual touches. Bava’s flair for the use of colour, not just for its own sake but to achieve the dramatic effects he desired, is very much in evidence. He was fond of using coloured gels but he always knew how far he could go. The superb visuals enhance the story rather than dominate it. So much has been written about Bava’s genius with colour that there’s little I can add. Bava was equally brilliant at coming up with ways to make a low-budget movie look classy and expensive.

This movie was a very low budget movie although you’d never know that by looking it it. Few directors have ever been able to match Bava’s genius for accomplishing so much with so little. The spectacular sea battle scene looks as if it must have cost a fortune. In fact Bava did it for a total cost of less than a hundred dollars. He uses matte shots and miniatures and blue screen shots throughout the picture and always makes them look convincing. He needed an impressive-looking castle on a hill. He did it with a photo cut out of a National Geographic magazine and a glass matte shot and it’s as splendid a castle as you could hope to see. He even contrived to have a flag flying from the battlements fluttering in the breeze. He had very little money to work with but he had patience and he had a flair for improvisation and that was enough.

There are some great sets, many left over from earlier films (a useful cost-saving measure). Bava’s skill makes them look extraordinarily atmospheric.

The Anchor Bay Region 1 DVD offers a very fine transfer and some worthwhile extras, including a commentary track by Bava expert Tim Lucas and an interview with star Cameron Mitchell (who clearly had great admiration for Bava). It’s a DVD release that is fully worthy of Bava’s talents.

Erik the Conqueror looks magnificent and it’s consistently entertaining. You can’t ask for more. Highly recommended.

Goliath and the Vampires (1961)

Goliath and the Vampires was made in 1961 at the height of the peplum craze in Italy. Sergio Corbucci, later to become well-known to spaghetti westerns fans, co-wrote the script and apparently took a hand in the directing as well although the directing credit goes to Giacomo Gentilomo (who later helmed the incredibly crazy Hercules vs. the Moon Men).

As its original Italian title Maciste contro il vampiro suggests the hero is actually Maciste, but poor old Maciste always ended up being renamed either Hercules of Goliath for the US market and in this case AIP went for the Goliath name.

Whatever the hero’s name this is one of the best movies of its type you’re ever going to see. It has every one of the ingredients that make the peplum (or sword and sandal if you prefer) genre so much fun.

Our hero (whom I might as well just call Goliath for the sake of convenience) is out doing good deeds when his village is attacked and destroyed  by mysterious sea raiders. The raiders are attacking all the nearby villages as well. They do not take any loot - their only interest is in taking the women. The older women are thrown to the sharks. These marauders only want the young beautiful women. In this case the kidnapped women include Goliath’s fiancée. Goliath vows to rescue her and to have his revenge for the destruction of his village.

But what do these raiders want from the women? The women will soon find out. Apart from the usual fate which they expected (being sold into slavery) the raiders also want their blood. As we will soon discover the blood is used to feed an evil monster named Kobrak. He’s not a vampire as such but he does feed on blood.

The women are taken to the city of Salmanak. The sultan of Salmanak is not evil but he’s weak-willed and pleasure-loving (taking a particular pleasure in women) and in any case he does not really rule. Kobrak rules. The sultan would, in his better moments, like to do the right thing but he is too afraid of Kobrak to attempt to do anything. Kobrak is not just immensely powerful but he also seems to know everything that is going on.

This is largely because Astra (Gianna Maria Canale) keeps him informed. The English dubbed version doesn’t make it clear if Astra is the sultan’s queen or merely his mistress but either way she fulfills the role of the evil but beautiful queen without whom no self-respecting peplum is complete. Astra is more than happy to indulge the sultan’s taste for beautiful maidens.

Goliath arrives in Salmanak and starts wreaking peplum-style havoc, throwing the sultan’s soldiers around, knocking down buildings and freeing slaves. Eventually the soldiers capture him by the simple expedient of throwing a net over him. Curiously enough although this works very effectively it never occurs to the soldiers to use this simple tactic again. And of course Goliath knocks down some more buildings and escapes.

He now finds an unexpected ally in the person of the rather enigmatic Kurtik (Jacques Sernas). He’s a scientist with a well-equipped laboratory who has created an army of blue men to serve him. They’re called the blue men because their skin really is blue. Kurtik seems to be the only serious threat to Kobrak’s power but in practice the blue men aren’t particularly effective against Kobrak’s army of robotised zombies. Goliath however needs all the allies he can get. He intends to destroy Kobrak and Kurtik, for reasons not yet clear, is willing to help. Much mayhem and lots of heroic deeds follow in typical peplum style.

One great plus in this movie is that the hero has a really formidable enemy to deal with, an enemy who in fact seems almost unbeatable even given Goliath’s enormous strength and fighting prowess. This gives the movie some real suspense since it is difficult to imagine how even Goliath can prevail against him.

This is a rather dark peplum with a harsher edge to it than is usual (one might suspect Sergio Corbucci’s influence here since his spaghetti westerns are pretty dark). The violence is at times pretty savage by the standards of 1961.

Gordon Scott is quite adequate as Goliath and the supporting cast is solid with Gianna Maria Canale being delightfully wicked and duplicitous (and fairly sexy) as Astra.

This movie throws in everything you could ask for - mad scientists, assorted monsters, zombie warriors, the supernatural, scientific laboratories, fiendish tortures, vampirism, plenty of action and a really evil villain. The special effects are adequate, the sets are quite impressive and the action scenes are handled well. It was probably a relatively low-budget production but it manages to look quite lavish. Cinematographer Alvaro Mancori gives us some nicely moody night scenes and some interesting use of colour. He was no Mario Bava but he was clearly competent.

Wild East’s DVD release pairs this one with another pretty reasonable peplum, Goliath and the Barbarians. Both movies are given quite good widescreen transfers on a single double-sided DVD, non-anamorphic unfortunately but given that peplum fans for years had to put up with shoddy fullframe releases it’s definitely a bonus to be able to see both these movies in their correct aspect ratios. The colours are perhaps just a little faded on Goliath and the Vampires and there’s occasional print damage but in general it’s a more than decent print. Only the English-dubbed version is included. This two-movie set is an absolute must-buy for fans of the genre.

Goliath and the Vampires is enormous fun. Highly recommended.

Goliath and the Dragon (1960)

Goliath and the Dragon (La vendetta di Ercole) pretty much provides everything you could want in a peplum. It has musclemen, it has sinister villains, it has a beautiful but scheming princess, it has action and it has monsters. Including an actual dragon! The monsters are goofy-looking and the special effects are crude and unconvincing. As far as I’m concerned those aren’t faults, they’re bonuses!

As the original Italian title suggests this 1960 production is actually a Hercules movie but presumably the American distributors thought Goliath and the Dragon had a better ring to it than than The Vengeance of Hercules.

Goliath has successfully completed the tasks set for him by the gods and now he’s looking forward to the quiet life with his family. Of course that’s not going to happen. He’s going to be caught up in the machinations of the evil King Eurystheus (or Eurito in the dubbed version). His younger brother will also unwittingly cause him all sorts of grief.

The plot is convoluted indeed. The main plot concerns a woman named Thea, whose father was responsible for the deaths of Goliath’s parents. As you might expect Goliath is less than pleased when he finds out his kid brother Illus wants to marry Thea, but he’s not half as annoyed as the evil King Eurystheus who also wants to marry Thea. He wants to marry her to establish his right to her father’s kingdom.

Eurystheus wants Illus out of the way, but mostly he wants Goliath out of the way. He is cooking up a scheme to carve out a major empire for himself but he can’t be certain of the support of his unscrupulous allies as long as Goliath lives. His chief henchman has come up with a complicated plan to persuade the beautiful but scheming Alcinoe to persuade Illus to poison Goliath. His henchman is in love with Alcinoe but she falls in love with Goliath when he rescues her from a marauding bear and she decides to give up her evil scheming, apart from scheming to get Goliath.

There are numerous other sub-plots which I won’t go into in detail, mostly because I couldn’t follow all of them! Goliath has one other major problem to deal with - the gods have told him his brother will become king of Thea’s father’s kingdom but it will cost the life of the woman who loves Goliath. Goliath assumes (reasonably enough) that this prophecy refers to his wife Dejanira but what he’s overlooked is that the Greek gods like to mess about about with mortals by making ambiguous prophecies.

During the course of his adventures Goliath takes on a monstrous three-headed dog, a bear, an elephant (used by King Eurystheus as an executioner), snakes and of course a dragon. The dragon is about as scary as Barney the Dinosaur. It’s actually a really cute dragon but we’re supposed to see it as a fearsome monster. Goliath also gets to demonstrate his physical prowess by demolishing several palaces, including his own. He’s a rather hot-headed superhero and the gods have made him pretty angry and when he’s angry he demolishes buildings.

Mark Forest plays Goliath. He’s not the world’s most exciting actor but these movies fortunately don’t call for great acting skills. Broderick Crawford sports a rather impressive facial scar and he’s effective enough as the wicked but cowardly Eurystheus. The actresses aren’t required to do much apart from looking glamorous which they manage successfully enough. Alcinoe probably needed to be a bit sexier but that’s a minor quibble.

While the monsters are delightfully lame the movie is in other respects fairly impressive visually. Vittorio Cottafavi handles the directing duties quite competently.

Something Weird Video present this movie on DVD in its correct aspect ratio in a very nice letterboxed print, accompanied by a plethora of extras including a second complete peplum.

If you have any kind of love for this genre then you’ll find plenty to enjoy in Goliath and the Dragon.

Goliath and the Barbarians (1959)

As you would expect fron the peplum genre Goliath and the Barbarians (Il terrore dei barbari) has nothing whatever to do with Goliath. But it’s still fun.

This one is set in the Dark Ages rather than in the world of antiquity. In the 6th century AD Belisarius and Narses reconquered Italy for the Eastern Roman Empire but it was a short-lived triumph. A new barbarian foe, the Lombards, swept into Italy in the latter part of that century. This forms the background to this movie.

The Lombards are the bad guys, but they make a formidable enemy when they kill the father of Emiliano (Steve Reeves). Emiliano vows to have his revenge, and pretty soon he is slaughtering lots of Lombards. Since he’s big and he has the strength of ten men he earns the nickname of The Goliath, thus justifying the English-language release title.

The baddest of the bad guys is Igor (Livio Lorenzon). He’s one of the generals of the Lombard king, Alboino. He’s not just nasty, he also covets the beautiful daughter of another of Alboino’s generals. The very exotic beauty Landa (Chelo Alonso) is the daughter of Delfo (Andrea Checchi), but she’s not interested in the brutish Igor.

Landa soon finds a man she does fancy. He claims to be a simple woodcutter who rescues her when her horse throws her. He’s big and he’s handsome and he’s a nice guy and she falls for him in a major way. He’s pretty keen on her as well. What she doesn’t know is that her hunky woodcutter is actually The Goliath! And thus the enemy of her father. And dear old Dad wants her to be nice to Igor because he doesn’t have many allies at the barbarian court and Igor would be a very powerful ally.

Meanwhile Emiliano continues to cause mayhem in the ranks of the Lombard armies. Delfo actually captures him but releases him after he proves his strength (which seems like a slightly odd command decison). Delfo has other problems - Igor is plotting against him.

Goliath and the Barbarians lacks the supernatural elements and the monsters that appear in so many of my favourite movies in this genre. It’s a fairly restrained offering and while I generally prefer the more outlandish peplum offerings it’s still fine entertainment.

Steve Reeves plays the role the way he always played these roles, which is fine by me. Chelo Alonso is delightfully and outrageously sexy as Landa and gives a spirited performance. Livio Lorenzon is a marvellous villain and most of the supporting actors are more than adequate.

This one is part of a double-header DVD release from a small outfit called Wild East, paired with Goliath and the Vampires. It appears to be a slightly cut version of Goliath and the Barbarians but it’s a very nice letterboxed widescreen print and vastly superior to the usual run of pan-and-scanned peplum releases.

It’s too low-key and too sensible to be a really great peplum but it’s still worth having.

Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World (1961)

Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World (Maciste alla corte del Gran Khan) is a peplum with a difference - it’s set in China during the 13th century.

Making a peplum set in China might seem an odd thing to do but apparently the producers of a relatively lavish movie on Marco Polo felt that it would be silly to use the sets for just one movie so they decided to use them again to make a peplum. They also had quite a few Asian actors and extras available so that made it even easier. Japanese actress Yoko Tani played the female lead in both films.

As the Italian title makes clear the hero of this movie is not in fact Samson but Maciste. Maciste is not a figure from folklore or mythology. He had been the hero of the 1914 Italian movie Cabiria, a movie that has strong claims to being the first movie epic. The character caught on so well that he ended up being the hero of countless sword and sandal movies.

So what is an Italian hero doing in China? The movie solves that problem by simply ignoring it. We just have to accept that he happens to be there. Let’s face it, if you’re going to start worrying about logic in a movie like this you’re watching the wrong type of movie.

China (or most of it) at this time was part of the enormous Mongol Empire. Garak Khan has a problem. He is acting as regent for the young Chinese crown prince and his sister Lei-ling. Of course the reality is that he runs the country and has no intention of allowing a Chinese dynasty to re-establish itself, but the Chinese prince and princess are being used as symbols of resistance by a rebel army dedicated to the overthrow of the Mongols.

Garak decides to do the obvious thing and have them killed, but just as he’s about to feed the prince to a tiger along comes Maciste and ruins everything. Maciste has made contact with the rebels and has offered to help them. The immediate problem is that Garak’s plans to murder the princess having failed he has now decided to marry her instead. To do this he will have to kidnap her.

Garak already has a girlfriend and she is not overly pleased by this new development. She was all set to become the beautiful but evil queen without which no peplum worth its salt is complete but now she’s ready to change sides and fight for goodness and justice. At least until Garak’s marriage plans fall through.

Gordon Scott plays Maciste and he’s a perfectly acceptable muscleman hero. Yoko Tani makes a reasonable princess heroine. Hélène Chanel is a fun would-be beautiful but evil queen and Leonardo Severini as Garak is the smooth but villainous Garak.

There are no supernatural elements or monsters in this movie but there’s plenty of action and mayhem, including an eight-horse scythed chariot used by Garak Khan as a novel method of executing his enemies.

Director Riccardo Freda made some excellent gothic horror films as well as many sword and sandal epics and in fact he had a go at just about every genre going including spaghetti westerns and eurospy thrillers. He was always a very capable director.

The movie itself is a terrific example of its species and is highly recommended.

The same cannot be said for Retromedia’s DVD presentation. The good news is that it’s in the correct Cinemascope aspect ratio and that’s a major plus given the number of Italian genre movies that are only available in terrible pan-and-scan fullframe versions. Unfortunately that’s the only good news. This is an absolutely abysmal print, and even worse it’s cut by about half an hour! Which means the plot is badly rushed and not entirely coherent. Picture quality is lousy.

The English dubbed version is the only soundtrack option but that’s less of a problem since bad dubbing tends to enhance this type of movie.

It’s probably not Retromedia’s fault since it may well be that there are no other surviving English dubbed or subtitled prints, and while image quality is poor it’s watchable and at least it’s not pan-and-scanned. It’s just a pity a better print could not have been found of such a very entertaining peplum.

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963)

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (Maciste, l'eroe più grande del mondo) is a rather good example of the peplum genre, and (rather unusually for this genre) with a very satisfactory DVD presentation, from Retromedia.

The people of Neffer were defeated in war by the Babylonians, and have paid a high price for their defeat. Each year they must send thirty of their most beautiful virgins to Babylon as tribute. as you might expect they’re not terribly happy about this situation.

Actually doing something about it is another matter. The young men of Neffer are brave and willing to fight, but as anyone who has ever watched one of these movies knows they will have little chance of success unless the have the services of a bona fide hero. Luckily, just such a hero happens to be available, in the person of Goliath (given the original Italian title of the film it’s pretty obvious that the hero is actually Maciste, but one muscle-bound hero is as good as another).

Director Michele Lupo provides us with some impressive action sequences, and we also have a worthy action hero star in the person of Mark Forest.

The sea battle scenes and the chariot races are quite spectacular. This is a movie that certainly looks more expensive than it was.

Most importantly, the movie is presented in the correct Techniscope 2.35:1 aspect ratio. It’s not a perfect print, but it’s pretty good, and definitely qualifies as one of the best DVD transfers I’ve seen in this sadly neglected genre.

The English dubbed soundtrack is acceptable if not fantastic.

Retromedia have included a second movie as a bonus feature. Sadly this one is a fullscreen transfer but since it’s a bonus feature one can’t complain too much.

Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is enormous fun and is really a must-buy if you’re a fan of this genre.