Hercules, Maciste, Samson and Ursus, Nos. 17 & 24 & 5 & 8 - Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)

This is it. This is, at long last, the GREAT CROSSOVER.

The mightiest of all pepla, conceptually at least, has a name, as lugubrious as one would expect of this genre: Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (for now on, HSM&U). If that doesn’t say more efficiently than any other possible name “This is a crossover of Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus,” I don’t know what does? (Though it could have added a “vs.” or three.)

This movie’s alternate U.S. title is Samson and the Mighty Challenge, which not only hides any sense of grandiosity, but unfairly marks the thing out as belonging to the frail, emaciated Samson franchise alone.


The idea of combining three of the greatest peplum heroes, and also Ursus, into a single definitive rumble has a certain lizard-like appeal (it’s also attractive to fans of the overtly homoerotic). It would be even more exciting if these four cinematic musclemen were anything more than interchangeable stand-ins for each other, but what’re ya gonna do? Of course, there have already been a few Hercules crossovers, such as with Maciste in Maciste vs. Hercules in the Vale of Woe, and with Samson in Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (spuriously, and not actually a crossover, is the similar Ulysses vs. Hercules). None of these is remotely good, so maybe I shouldn’t be too excited about the prospect of another one with four times the sweaty, glistening muscle. But thank Zeus, Jupiter, Jehovah, or whomever Ursus worships (himself), HSM&U is a fantastically atypical sword-and-sandals!

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still dreadful, near the bottom of the cinematic agora. But at least it comes by these mistakes honestly, forging its own trail of insufficiency rather than just being an uninspired 20th generation copy of Hercules and the Captive Women. I’ve watched in essence the exact same movie every day for the better part of a month, making the rather rancid HSM&U a true godsend. Imagine trying to critique Friday the 13th Part III twenty days in a row; that’s what it’s been like.

Anyway, it can be effectively argued that a crossover doesn’t usually appear until desperation truly sets in. A rule of thumb is the more franchises are in a crossover, the more desperate they are. Look to the crossbreeding of Universal’s monsters, leading eventually to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and beyond. (I’d also point out Godzilla free-for-alls like Destroy All Monsters, except such maniacal multi-monster mash-ups became the SOP for Toho.) And surely by late 1964, the accursed Italian peplum craze was truly perishing, already dealt a fatal blow by A Fistful of Dollars and the ascendant Spaghetti Western. Pulling out all the stops, every single major peplum franchise combines here into a hybridized chimera, joining the powers of every series…

Which means HSM&U sucks with the combined magnitude of four mortal pepla.


With a budget paltry even by the standards of Maciste vs. the Headhunters, HSM&U is lucky they could afford a single marquee-name bodybuilding superstar. They did in fact get one, as Alan Steel draws the long gladius and plays Hercules (having only fist essayed that particular role earlier that year, in Hercules Against Rome). This leaves the other three lugs relegated to no-name he-men, obscure even by the standards of this forgotten trend. But we’ll get to those.

For now, Hercules is shown wandering with characteristic aimlessness, until Zeus’ voice booms down from the clouds with moral guidance. You’d be totally surprised to learn this is actually the first peplum I’ve seen which directly invokes Zeus, or any of that puffy cloud and lightning imagery. And lest we think this is one of those compromised American dubs, where Maciste is rechristened “Hercules” since non-Italians don’t know aught about Maciste, remember everyone is in this one, so when they say “Hercules,” they damn well mean “Hercules.” And Alan Steel is Hercules!

Hercules highs his way to the kingdom of Lydia – and don’t even bother trying to redress that Spanish coastal town as something that isn’t 20th century, guys! Around now I start to notice something funny (and not “ha ha” funny) about HSM&U…It is a comedy! OH…NO! Vale of Woe, the earliest such crossover (and the dead worst peplum I’ve seen, possibly excepting Ursus, the Terror of the Kirghiz) also tried to be a comic peplum, and was about as humorous as wildly bleeding hemorrhoids. But somehow HSM&U manages to work in spite of itself (though my standards are ridiculously lowered at this stage), never achieving “humor” but at least totally eschewing hateful, hair-pulling worthlessness. It seems built upon actual genre observation, noting especially its heroes’ personality flaws.

Consider Hercules, a boastful ass who lets everyone within earshot know at every possible moment about his demigodhood, how he achieves the Nietzschean ideal (though a B.C. he-man wouldn’t call it quite that, exactly) and is better than you. Yes, YOU! This is par for the course, which is one reason I’ve silently detested this peplum exercise. But among the characters Herc meets, they all treat him as I would – with anachronistically modern condescension, but with great tact lest he hear them and rip their throats out.

Okay, not every character acts that way – though those that do tip this film’s hand as a would-be comedy. Some people, especially Queen Nemea (Lia Zoppelli) are stupefied in Hercules’ exalted presence, as he prefers. It’s just as well, as this mania drives the plot. For Nemea wishes the Herc to wed her daughter Omphale (Elisa Montés); Omphale is of a sane mindset, and thoroughly opposes this. And would you lookie here! The Italians have discovered that subtle storytelling technique, conflict. Suddenly their stories can movie along naturally!

Omphale, in her struggle to cancel marrying the lunkhead, rigs the local oracle, much as Dreyfus rigged that supercomputer in Curse of the Pink Panther, to demand that first Hercules battle the strongest man on earth. You’ve a one in three chance of guessing this one correctly. It’s Samson (aka שמשון). Despite Hercules’ protestations, he (Hercules) is deemed “not a man” – a common ailment amongst steroid abusers – due to his demigod status. Can you believe they seem to have an actual, functional understanding of Hercules’ mythological history, even if they rather make an intentional hash of the Omphale story? I’d wager (for the first time in any peplum) the writers have done some honest-to-Atlas research, for the previously-unacknowledged mythological factoids which spring up. Amongst that “useless trivia” is the idea that Samson worships a non-Zeus god, namely Yahweh. Yes, they actually pose the Zeus vs. Our Lord debate, even if it goes nowhere. It goes to show they knew the subtext of these movies (or one subtext, at least, as the “gay” thing is never addressed).

I’m heaping oodles more praise onto HSM&U now than I rather expected to. Time to counterbalance that. There are many problems with HSM&U, and an early purposeless set piece with Hercules reflects that. While emissaries are off to Israel (or wherever) to find Samson, Nemea has Hercules perform odd jobs around the kingdom – an actually funny conceit. In one scene, he’s asked to dredge a ship from the ocean’s floor. Do you like uncut, murky underwater footage? Was Thunderball’s climax too short for you? You’ll love this bit, then, which somehow eschews the light and breezy tone most of HSM&U boasts for one of the worst Feats of Strength™ in the genre.

Add to that the out-of-place soundtrack, which for some reason samples Beethoven’s Fifth every time somebody namedrops Zeus. That’s when it’s not doing a lugubrious, anachronistic sci-fi pastiche, an utterly bizarre bit of tunage I’ve tried to transcribe here: “Bam bam BAM bam bam whoohohohohohoho!”


Meanwhile, emissaries are out scouring whatever wilderness this film crew had available for Samson. Finding a particularly sadistic muscleman in a tavern, they enter to find…Ursus (Yann L’Arvor). What, Ursus?! Already?!

Yann L’Arvor…This is just the start of uninspiring casting for the non-Hercules semi-Herculeses.

Ursus is blessed with the sort of personality flaws I’ve always associated with Charles Atlas and his sheep-like followers, namely Ursus is a bully. Though HSM&U uses Ursus in the same basic way as they do Hercules, it’s impressive how distinctly defined Ursus is. Ursus, as a mortal who’s become strong, is simply mean – an entitled, priggish asshole. If there were sand in this inn, he’d kick it in people’s faces. In a turn of events having nothing to do with the Hercules/Samson debate, the innkeeper sends his own emissary out to succor aid from Maciste. This is all a little random, but anything getting all four together in a halfway sensible way would be.


Let us forget about Ursus for now, as Nemea’s men have just found Samson (Nadir “Baltimore” – nadir indeed!)! With the possible exception of the unseen Hercules, Samson and Ulysses, this is the first Samson movie to get right a few facts about the Biblical Samson – which you’d think would’ve happened sooner. Namely, this Samson is the Biblical Samson, strength coming from his long, rabbi-like hair (yes, the “joke” with Samson is that he’s Jewish), and his love for “the jawbone of an ass” (which is a rather tittersome phrase the more it’s repeated).

And Samson is married…to Delilah (Moira Orfei). And let me take a momentary break to admire Miss Orfei…


Hello, Moira! She is truly the “Queen of the Peplum,” having also starred in (and these are just the ones I’ve considered) Hercules vs. the Hydra, Ursus, Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops, Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World, Ursus in the Valley of the Lions, Zorro vs. Maciste, The Triumph of Hercules. A little more broadly, Moira is known as Italy’s “Queen of the Circus,” and for a nation with a La Strada-like obsession with that institution, you know that means something!

Anyway, back to business. That Samson and Delilah are husband and wife, and bicker constantly like in a bad 1960s sitcom (comedy!), seems a sudden betrayal of the historical respect this goofy mash-up has dabbled in. Though great liberties are taken with the story, I needn’t have worried. Soon enough Delilah shears Samson’s hair as he sleeps, rendering him weak, and perfectly recalling the “Book of Judges.” (This was done to prevent Samson from fighting Hercules, and also schtupping the various known whores of Lydia.) With Samson now weak and cowardly and also beardless, his joke becomes just how worthless these bodybuilder types are when not God Mode Sues.

Back to Ursus! He terrorizes the bar more (actually, he never stopped), ordering people to “Dance!” like a villain in a western. To quote him:

“I SAID DANCE. I WAAAAANT MOOORE WIIIIINE. WWWWWIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNEEEEEEE!!!!!”

The great shitheel even takes to hurling people, inexplicably accompanied every danged time by a comedy slide whistle. But the time has come to pay for his Ursine crimes, as along comes the last of our required he-men, Maciste (Howard Ross). Maciste thrashes Ursus, and there was much rejoicing.


As contrast to the irredeemable buffoons that are the other three, Maciste’s persona is his innate decency, which becomes funny wholly by contrast. I’m glad they could work out unique traits for all these musclemen, seeing usually they’re all just off-brand Herculeses.

The emissaries behold Maciste’s Macistean strength – in fact, they note everyone’s comic book muscularity – and opt to take pretty much everyone back to Lydia as insurance seeing as Samson is a sissy girly man now. Everyone has different motives in the inevitable, upcoming Clash of the Four Interchangeable Guys, in an attempt to be a French farce. It doesn’t quite succeed – frankly, nothing in HSM&U is good – but there’s still the effort, and the intention behind it – and that goes a long way in my peplum-addled state. What does it say that this, the best movie I’ve seen in over a week, has a 2.2 on IMDb?

…

Okay, my fat neighbor is having an argument that’d make Hitler weep. She’s fat, loud and vulgar in the best of times, meaning today she’s fatter, louder and more vulgar than ever. I can’t deal with this, not when I wish to simply enjoy horrible movies in peace. I’m going for a nice stroll in the rain.

[Sound of me walking out of the apartment, locking up.]

[Sound of me going down the stairs.]

[Intensely long sound of nothing more than my fat neighbor’s furtive screeching echoing throughout a vacant unit.]

[Many hours later, sound of me ascending the stairs.]

[Sound of me entering my apartment, drying off, resuming Herculean pleasantries.]

Sorry about all that, folks.


Ursus, Maciste, Samson and the emissaries start the trek back to Lydia. Occasional slapstick fights break out, courtesy of Ursus. These somehow result in Blair Witch Project close-ups (also really pixilated) of various bearded men racing through the woods. Really, imagery like this belongs nowhere in an alleged comedy. This signals, for all HSM&U’s noble intentions, a notable dearth of competence, as the badness starts to creep into this effort as it must all late-period pepla.

Lydia is reached, and preparations are underway for the Rumble in the Agora, with assorted soap opera dramatics from Omphale ensuring all four shall tussle for our amusement. It won’t be that straightforward, since for reasons owing solely to the film’s running length, we suddenly meet neighboring tyrant King Inor (Luciano Marin). In a movie that’s shunned the usual tired peplum formulae, this left-field Third Act villain is most unwelcome. Despite the sudden appearance of Deianeira, another of Hercules’ assorted mythological harlots (who does not serve that purpose here), I’ll leave this section alone, as it might cause me unfathomable dismay.

Rather, I’ll skip right on over to the title fight, which duly occurs as though that last paragraph hadn’t happened at all. It’s a pretty sloppy affair (making it still one of the more cogent clashes in the genre), and it’s not a good sign that the pic below is the absolute best image from the whole ordeal.


Then things end with a literal deus ex machina, as Zeus just up and appears (via a ridiculous face-in-a-wall) to tell everyone to just stop and move along. This story wasn’t going to resolve itself anyway, and if I’m being generous I’d say “The Odyssey” ends in the exact same way. The four strongmen ride on, conflict over and nothing gained.

Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus may as well stand as the final monument to an entire dying genre, for as atypical as it is. For the Samson franchise, this was the end. For Ursus, only 3 Avengers remained, and I’ve already saved time by dismissing that one out of hand. Only one more Maciste was to come, which I’ll halfway address in two days. Hercules alone was able to manage two more movies after this, which is appropriate since Hercules was e’er the torch-holder for the pepla, the originator and the best. It is with those two final entries that we shall bid farewell to this era.


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• Hercules No. 1 Hercules (1958)
• Hercules No. 2 Hercules Unchained (1959)
• Hercules No. 3 The Revenge of Hercules (1960)
• Hercules No. 4 Hercules vs. the Hydra (1960)
• Maciste No. 1 Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)
• Maciste No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• Hercules No. 5 Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (1961)
• Hercules No. 6 Hercules id the Haunted World (1961)
• Maciste No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• Maciste No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• Hercules & Maciste Nos. 7 & 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• Ursus No. 1 Ursus (1961)
• Ursus No. 2 Vengeance of Ursus (1961)
• Hercules No. 8 Ulysses vs. Hercules (1962)
• Hercules No. 9 The Fury of Hercules (1962)
• Maciste Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)
• Hercules No. 10 Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963)
• Maciste No. 21 Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)
• Hercules No. 12 Hercules in the Land of Darkness (1964)
• Hercules No. 16 Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964)
• Maciste No. 22 Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)
• Maciste No. 23 Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)
• Ursus No. 7 Ursus, the Terror of the Kirghiz (1964)
• Hercules No. 18 Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965)
• Hercules No. 19 Hercules the Avenger (1965)

Maciste, No. 23 - Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)

As it stands, Maciste and the Queen of Samar is an unappetizing prospect, a Maciste movie from the absolute peplum doldrums. But one’s enthusiasm lifts immeasurably when considering the ingenious title it got saddled with in the U.S.

HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN!

Even as promising as that title is, I’m not takin’ any chances, not after watching in essence the same Mongol movie twice. Despite possessing a nigh-unwatchable SciFi Classics 50 Movie Pack copy, I went the safe route. I went the “MST3K” route…for the third time. Not that it benefits you.

And I’m glad I did. Not only is this a classic episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” it is classic for reasons having almost entirely to do with how horrible Hercules Against the Moon Men (Maciste or no, I prefer that title) is. This is a movie that nearly broke Joel and the bots, with its patented DEEP HURTING, a system of inanities which is extreme even for a peplum of 1964.

But still, that title holds some promise. It rather recalls the “Simpsons” joke on this movie (yeah, they’ve mocked everything): “Academy Award Theater now returns to Hercules Conquers the Martians!” That would be the implication, at any rate, that Moon Men shall be a mighty mash-up of shirtless sword-and-sandals shenanigans, and rubbery ‘50s-style sci-fi ridiculousness. It’d still be stupid, oh Lord yes, but with the je ne sais quoi of an effortlessly watchable horrible B-movie, like The Mysterians specifically…or at least it’d possess the anti-anti-badness of a Robot Monster or Teenagers From Outer Space. Such a line of thinking leads to dismay.

For Moon Men invokes damn well NO science fiction, at least none more than prior pepla. The “Moon Men” themselves are rather mythological elementals, given power by the full moon the way the Atlaneans of Hercules and the Captive Women sapped power from Uranus – and yes, there’s a little more gigglesome talk about “angering Uranus” in this one. These volcano-dwelling Moon Men have an agreement with the otherwise titular Queen of Samar, Samara (Jany Clair, of 79 A.D. and FX 18), for de rigueur blood sacrifices, virgin or no, they’re not picky.


Actually, in appearance these Moon Men resemble certain creatures from Mario Bava’s Hercules in the Haunted World – the best example of this whole accursed genre...delivered with an iota of the flair, and looking rather luchadore-like too. If only the Moon Men had over a minute of cumulative screen time. No matter, the mere notion of overt fantasy in a Maciste flick is novel, even when it’s crummy. But one expects nothing less in the desultory final film of Giancomo Gentilomo, the mastermind of Brennus, Enemy of Rome and Goliath and the Vampires.


This doesn’t really affect most of the movie, which is a crying shame. The rest concerns either Maciste or Hercules – and I’m goin’ with Hercules with this one – either way, Alan Steel, dodging Queen Samara’s murder attempts. She wants Hercules dead because only he can stop her Moon union…but he only intends to stop it because she tries killing him. Do these villains never learn how to not court their inevitable defeat?! Hercules defeats her many non-Moon minions with insulting ease, letting out a hearty chortle with his hands on his hips most of the time – God, Alan Steel so desperately wants to be Steve Reeves, doesn’t he?

AD BREAK

Let’s talk formula: Queen Samara is already undoubtedly our essential seductress type. (By the way, this so-called Kingdom of Samar? That can only be in the Philippines, which is as stupid as Mongols in Spain.) A subplot must handle the good girl romance, which Herc shan’t be taking part in. It’s an affair between two asinine lovers, the girl whose name I didn’t even catch, and Darix (Jean-Pierre Honoré – it’s a French co-production, and it shows).

Oh, no, wait, I was wrong! There is an insipid “good girl” for Hercules too, so what was the damn use of that secondary love story? At least “MST3K” has the good grace to shorten these movies to fit their format, and that section likely got a hefty snip. Hercules trots on over already to the Samarian palace, and meets Agar the Bland (Anna Maria Polani, whose beauty is marred by a very strange eyeball growth). And Agar?! Do they even know what these names mean?

So Agar exposits to Hercules the mightily complicated (not!) Moon Man mission, which we’ve already learnt ourselves via a disembodied narrator – efficiency! The Herc, for no reason but for the set piece, exits the palace the hard way, through a trap-filled cavern which is at least more Raiders of the Lost Ark than Temple of Doom, as most pepla rather resemble the sequel.

SKIT BREAK

DEEP HURTING…

AD BREAK

Hercules fights an ape monster, which resembles the same rotten ape suit from 6 years ago, having not gone through the wash a single time since. With fangs now affixed to it. And okay, sure, there is some dedication in this Maciste to monsterism, but it pales compared to the whole-scale beasties of yore.

Then Hercules breaks some bars. This happens in entries where he (or Maciste) doesn’t fight a lion. Boring!


Meanwhile, let’s try for another needless female character. Why, it’s Samara’s sister, Billis (Delia d’Alberti). Okay, where are they getting these names?! A few more: Mogol, Timor, Remar, Gladius, Taris, Redolphis, Tavernkeeper’s [sic] Wife. Oh, and now I realize that Billis was that unidentified woman Darix was a-romancin’ so noncommittally – I write it this way to reflect the confused state of the brain while watching Hercules Against the Moon Men.

Anyway, Billis questions the why and wherefore of Samara’s evil – it’s ‘cause she’s been promised infinite power and immortality by the Moonies, dearie – and tells Samara straight to her beautiful face that she intends to raise a rebel army to stop her. Does anyone have the scantest bit of genre savvy in these things?!

AD BREAK

What did funky Billis expect to happen? Samara takes her hostage, and meanwhile sends out a few of her moderately disposable guards to go do in Darix lest he muster seditious forces. Darix is only saved by the sudden, unjustified intrusion of Hercules, who dispatches the guards in what might as well be outtakes of his former sand pit fight from earlier in this same film. Which does not inspire viewer confidence – and we’re nowhere near the DEEP HURTING!

And with Darix in tow, Hercules can get exposited to again all about Samara and the Moonsters and – look, we know all this! GET ON WITH IT!

AD BREAK (already?!)

SKIT BREAK


As Samara drags Billis over to the Mountain of Death, a place so creatively-named it can only be home to the Moon Men…Oh, and also the Rock Monsters (above), so this is unmistakably a cheapjack stylistic burglary of Haunted World. They kill Billis, or transform her into a Listerine duplicate named Selene, or drain her blood for their godless existence, or – well, it’s mighty unclear, as damn well most fantasy stories are without a clear voice. And Samara waxes astrological, about an upcoming cataclysm – namely, the DEEP HURTING.


Suddenly, Hercules is trapped in a Saw trap, doubling as today’s lone genuine Feat of Strength™ (yeah, they’re losing the inspiration for even those now). And, okay, how did he suddenly wind up in Samara’s vile clutches anyway?! Last we saw of him, he was chortingly hurling more guards (most likely the same 5 extras as always) into barrels full of ancient Greek liquid. There is no – Oh wait, he was captured in a net. Maciste’s/Hercules’ one weakness! Alright, that explanation was a long time in coming, but carry on…

So Hercules is in this here trap, bending upwards to spike him good – if the spikes were actually aligned with his body (they aren’t). We know how these things go. Hercules breaks his bonds, survives, et cetera. And seeing as it’s the standard 5/8ths through moment, this act causes Samara to become horny (despite her Moon Masters’ insistence that she fucking kill Hercules already), and we’re off to the necessary seduction interlude.


Let it not be said these awful movies aren’t without some merit.

Again, the trained peplum viewer must ask why these two mortal enemies are so pleased to schtup, when the plot demands they kill each other. Only one sword-and-sandal movie has ever adequately answered that. Rather, we must just bide our time, taking solace in the physical allure of whichever actor you’re more attracted to (curvy redheaded Italian babe or a dimwitted muscleman covered in bacon grease).

Looking back as far as the innocent days of Hercules Unchained, peplum peddlers have tried justifying their more idiotic plot detours with magical potions. So it is with Moon Men, as Samara possesses a peplum powder to make any man instantly fall in love with her. And Hercules knows about it already, which makes him seem doubly stupider than usual when he obligingly imbibes Samara’s tasty love potion (#9), and becomes an even lazier and more docile hunk than usual.

AD BREAK


That is, until Samara (forgetting everything about being an effective villainess) monologues her entire plan to Hercules whilst he is in his “trance.” He was just fooling (making him look doubly more intelligenter than usual). And he rushes off, fighting uninspired guards, to stop Samara’s grand scheme – something to do with Moon Men and the full moon and blah blah blah why’d he need to come here to figure that out?

SKIT BREAK – This one’s a classic, as you may see.

DEEP HURTING…It is imminent!

AD BREAK

Hercules’ trek to the Mountain of Death through the Desert of Notable Injury occurs during a sandstorm, the prime mover itself for DEEP HURTING. Joel and the bots declare this “one of the worst sequences of one of the worst movies ever,” which means a lot coming from the people who successfully made it through Manos: The Hands of Fate. As the climax, we get no fight, we get no gigantic extra battle, we just get an unexpurgated shot of Hercules traipsing across the wasteland, depicted with as little visual clarity as possible (in films which already suffer from a rancid brownish sheen).


If it were just Hercules himself doing this, it’d be but another quick(ish) example of how artlessly constructed these pepla are. Rather, we see every character in the film individually cross the same sandstorm, even though there’s no point at all in seeing Agar, Darix, Mogol, Gladius, Remar, Timor, Taris, Rubio or Bit Part do it.

And as an example of the sheer length of this bit…

AD BREAK

It persists, for nearly 20 minutes worth of “MST3K” time, which translates to probably 40 minutes in a proper movie. I could always check that damned Mill Creek 50 DVD set, but it seems an unwise thing to do. DEEP HURTING! Even the riffing breaks down long before this scene is out. And who’s to say what Gentilomo was thinking? There’s the need to fill out screen time, sure, but most movies find something more substantive to do that with than, well, this:


And as “variation” from the brown monotony, Gentilomo serves up overlong, lingering, needless, context-free close-ups of Hercules’ glistening pectorals. So you can see why I went with the pic of the void.

Hercules fights, defeats the Moon Men. In, comparatively, that stretch of time relative to the DEEP HURTING. With the spring foliage suddenly blooming, Herc rides into the sunset with Agar, whom he loves incontestably until the next sequel forgets all about her.

As bad as Hercules Against the Moon Men – or Maciste and the Queen of Samar – is, for how much it drags and underwhelms and waters down its superior predecessors, it’s still in the 40th percentile of pepla overall. Trust me, about 4/10ths of what I’ve seen has been worse than this. Much of it, I doubt even “MST3K” could handle. I’ve been crowing about the end of the sword-and-sandals craze for a while now (anxious, any?) and at last it seems nigh. The Maciste to follow Moon Men is the GREAT CROSSOVER. Not that we can jump there immediately, as another entire franchise (Ursus) stands in our way. Fuck!

For the lesser franchises, the GREAT CROSSOVER marks the end of the series. It does not for Hercules or Maciste. Hercules’ follow-up efforts, we’ll see later. For Maciste, there was but one film to follow, unavailable to watch (thank Zeus!). That’d be Maciste, Avenger of the Mayans (1965), which employs the shameless trick of…You know, I’m gonna hold onto this one. It’s best coupled with the ultimate Hercules movie, as the two combined make the perfect tombstone for this genre.

Until then…Ursus!


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• No. 1 Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)
• No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)
• No. 21 Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)
• No. 22 Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)
• No. 24 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)

Maciste, No. 22 - Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)

Maciste in Genghis Khan’s Hell comes f– What, another one?!

One year after Domenico Paolella directed Mark Forest, Ken Clark, José Greci and Howard Ross in Maciste vs. the Mongols, he does basically the exact same damn thing, one historical generation earlier. These aren’t even the only Maciste/Mongol mash-ups, for witness 1961’s Maciste at the Court of the Great Khan. What, was there really that much demand for Khan-inspired pepla? Certainly not! Rather, Italian filmmaking being what it is, let us simply note that once one Mongolia-related muscleman Maciste movie managed to be made, more would follow. Why, the costumes already exist; it would be wasteful to make but one movie, even if multiples negate whatever value such an exercise has in isolation.

Plus, it lets ‘em recycle old footage I last saw yesterday.

This doesn’t excuse that, even by sword-and-sandals standards, these Mongolian mistakes feature the exact same story. The last three pepla I’ve actually watch are all, coincidentally, by Paolella, and all alike in the specifics: Divided tyrant rulership seeks a hidden female character to attain new empires. And there’s only so much repetition one can take. Sequels are fun when they vary. But this is merely the same thing, only with a few rubbery animals and some genuine Asians on hand to highlight the problems. So I shall mostly sit this one out, content to let my notes (made mid-viewing) stand for the rest of this entry.


MY NOTES:

 Narrator on Genghis Khan’s Mongol hordes in 12th century (eh, sorta), invading Poland to the strings of generic Chinese music. Chinese?! Intent – capture Krakow. Extras ride on horses – same footage as Mongols.

 Mongol wilderness camp. Warrior Kubilai (Ken Clark) has wound cauterized with a molten brand. About the Mongols’ defeat by mighty Maciste (Mark Forest).

 Kubilai enters throne room of the Khan. He’s badmouthed about the losses, charged with better conquering Krakow.

 Kubilai in his chamber with an actual Asian handmaiden (unnamed, Elisabetta Wu by process of elimination). Kubilai plans to kill a shackled blind prisoner, with secrets to conquering Poland. Prisoner grows fearful, rambles about a village with a “something” hidden in it. A woman (again?!), the key to victory.

 Sheep farm, Armina (José Greci again) tends to them in hiding. She works as a peasant in a hut, talks of Maciste. They to wed. “It is a sin to be poor.” Whuh?! Outside, a witch Arias (Gloria Milland) is heckled by the superstitious asses of Europe. Armina shelters her. Peasants lobby accusations, a Monty Python routine minus intentional humor. The asses are driven back…somehow. The girls discuss character nonsense, dreams. Both retire elsewhere to sleep and where is this headed?! Outside, a Mongol spies on Armina. ARR!

 Maciste nears forest, sees himself now somehow (editing) in a pit with a big fake snake. Mongols above loom. Maciste vs. unlikely snake, which does entertain! Kills it with arrow Mongol stupidly shot down. Maciste climbs out, joins a priest [we’ll never see again].

 Maciste to Armina’s home, where Arias collapses weeping. Tells that Armina is kidnapped, her father killed – Mongols. Peasants resume their idiot witch thing. A duck!

 Ari now bound for a witch pyre, she pleads hopelessly. Pyre lit. Maciste saves her, runs off.

 The hut, where Maciste tends to Arias. Also a dirge-like funeral for the father man. Maciste: “It was the Mongols!” A-doi! Arias hides an Armina-related secret, shan’t reveal it. To send Maciste to King Vladimir (Mirko Ellis). Note the weird Christian thing going here, all these Polish wood primitivist curios.

 Mongols, Kubilai all have Armina, given to the elder Khan, probably is Howard Ross why not [no, I was incorrect there].

 Mongol castle here in Poland. Kubilai, Armina. Bland blah blah about prophecies, Armina a princess – well DUH! Talk about Maciste, etc. I care not. Blind old man explains Armina is the last royal of Poland, ala Anastasia. He her father, he dies, she now queen of Poland.

 Same shot of crusaders as in Mongols. Way to reuse the battles, so uninvolving already last time! About defending Krakow.

 Christian encampment. Gason (Howard Ross) hears of Armina from Maciste, Arias. Strategy talk. Talk about saving Armina from Mongols, Maciste renounces his claim (?!) on her.

 Maciste bids Arias farewell in night forest.

 Day, Maciste travels forest on foot, Arias still there somehow. Oh, they to go together.

 Through a burning, salted wasteland. Okay, that’s slightly interesting. As always, Maciste’s solution involves uprooting a large tree. After some time, they cross a flaming ditch. Threat = unclear.

 A hut with a baby. Oh boy! Characters we do not know tend to it. Maciste arrives now with Arias. Arias rests here, a character scene happens to me. Maciste leaves, sheep walk past.

 Mongol throne room, ching-chang music greets Armina bedecked in costume department’s finest.

 Maciste in swamp beholds somehow a crocodile about to eat some children. In Poland?! So he fights the thing. Rubbery! Knifes the animal as a midget dressed in pajamas watches (?!) shouting “Kill him!” Turns out Maciste saved carny types, off to amuse/sicken the Mongols.

 Throne room, more sub-Manchu Mongoloid moronicness. Here’s the midget! All laugh, as are Italians’ wont. Then a spear-fighting demonstration, martial arts ala Italy. Spinning plates on sticks – Mongolia is not Hong Kong! Maciste “performs” as “Hercules reborn” (U.S. redub). A Feat of Strength™, bends an unbendable girder. Then he bends a different unbendable girder. Variety! “I shot him while the serpent was choking the life out of him” – reverse masturbation! Maciste to rassle the giant Gralgnrerararrrr. A cage match. Purposeless, uninvolving spectacle. I put on the “Star Trek” fight music. Maciste wins. Now acrobats perform, movie really running out the clock in this manner.

 Maciste (clothed) now in a cell. Arias is somehow here clad all Asiany. She to show Armina. So they easily escape the dungeon Maciste is somehow suddenly in. Fight acrob- Never mind, over before typing completed. Maciste trapped in another cell, as though that changes things. Arias traitor is. Kubulai wants to kill Maciste, Arias now for some reason against it, he kills her, she the evil seductress – for 15 seconds. And…Kubilia fights a Mongol instead of helpless Maciste – huh?! The logic, she does not follow. Maciste bends bars – of course.

 Throne room, Maciste fights several. Finds Armina. Then Kubilai here, proposes marriage. They fight! Ye gods.

 Khan rides out to repeated battle footage – more Orientalish music.

 Tent. Khan meets the giant Grsbnvfjdkhfsd – they fight. So that’s how Genghis Khan died!

 Christians arrive to commit mass murder. Maciste leads this group, still sans clothes, armor. The SAME as Mongols, not even hiding it! Fuuuuck! Armina lashed to the gates of Polandville, Maciste holds it up as battle wages. Unties her, she a woman flees the action sequence…or is re-caught. Maciste chases Kubilai inside, where extras are not. Here comes the cavalry footage.

 Dungeons, Maciste moves a house-sized rock for some reason.

 Giant Guscdjk&^$#$# admits he killed Khan, wants to avenge himself (?!). So he kills Kubilai just when Maciste was about to anyway. Way to anticlimax!

 Battle. Evil leader dead, apparently good side can now win.

 Palace. Now Ggggggggg dies, why not. Armina escapes as the Babylonian set (Polish?!) collapses for no reason. Armina crowned Polish queen, commissions a submarine with a screen door.

 Narrator explains a different conclusion over ending footage of Mongols. Mongols make the quick trek from Poland to Mongolia. Continuity with Mongols = nil.

There you have it, a movie sometimes literally no different than its predecessor. At least I now have under a week of pepla remaining, so maybe – just maybe – I can get through this.


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• No. 1 Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)
• No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)
• No. 21 Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)
• No. 23 Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)
• No. 24 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)

Maciste, No. 21 - Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)

Maciste vs. the Mongols. Another Maciste movie. Starring Mark Forest. Following the exact same strictures of the peplum as always. On a low budget. With disinterested direction. There’s only one thing which makes Mongols even halfway unique: Mongols!

Temporal instability is the only thing separating Maciste from Hercules, ‘cause it sure ain’t the main characters. Late into the sword-and-sandals cycle, Maciste becomes the muscle-bound poster child for the theory that setting variation would be enough to upend formula and extend the genre’s lifeblood. It also becomes an example, then, of how misguided this notion is, how a peplum will revert to trite cliché at the soonest possible chance. (I mean, we’ve seen Samson vs. the Black Pirate do so in a swashbuckling setting.) Frankly, I’d like there to be a completely contemporary peplum, just to highlight this particular disability. Hell, they could at least very easily make one to accommodate the Nazis, though the Italians had yet to discover that particular exploitation subgenre.


From a production standpoint, Maciste vs. the Mongols showcases how unprepared peplum peddlers were for presenting unusual cultures in the first place. First of all, their casts are always culled mostly from Italy, and the lesser actors of surrounding regions. (Also, toss in a few naïve bodybuilders from the States.) Surely there’s no one in here who could adequately portray a Chino-Russo Asian. Instead they just put the Euro actors in atrocious makeup, artificially slanted eyes (tasteful!) and cruddy Faux Manchu facial hair. This is the low budget equivalent of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in The Conqueror. In fact, Italian racial sensitivity (at least in their genre fare) has already proven to be a fair lick worse than it was in archaic, lamented Hollywood fare such as early Charlie Chans or Song of the South or this.

That’s just one issue, which wholly dogs the film. The other, equally as damning from a cinematic viewpoint, is the recycling of sets. It makes sense in all the Greco-Roman-Judeo-Mesopotamian-Egypto-Atlantean pepla that certain palace and fortress and throne room and dungeon and catacomb and lion pit settings would get reused, with only slight redressing from film to film. This has become distractingly noticeable as my peplum familiarity grows further than I’d ever hoped or dreamed. Besides, these sets were all hand-me-downs from when Ben-Hur filming randomly visited Italian soil – the real reason for an entire subgenre’s existence.

Needless to say, Mongolia circa 1227 does not particularly resemble Ancient Rome. They mostly get this right. However, neither does it resemble the sort of Bavarian hamlet you’d expect to see Frankenstein’s monster lumbering through. This is their mistake. For the Germanic village set was another Italians had on hand, origin unknown, though seen in the more swishy swashbuckler pepla (see Zorro vs. Maciste, Maciste vs. the Sheik or Samson vs. the Pirate…if you dare!). Throw in white dudes affecting horribly offensive buck-toothed sing-song “Me rikee lice” Asian stereotypes, assorted random Babylonian details they had lying around the lot, and those culturally vague tents used in the notably rank Maciste vs. the Headhunters. It’s all so anachronistic! And I am overly aware now of the production limits which necessitated this design approach, but it does great disservices for my ability to “buy into the fantasy.”


I say all this because it’s something to talk about re: pepla, as the narrative content of Maciste vs. the Mongols offers nothing. Most of the variation lies in neglecting certain tropes, though without the good sense to counter their absence with anything new. Rather, there is simply no seductress, no city destruction, no plot juice of power. That leaves the (shoddy) lion fight, the (needlessly complex) political intrigue, the (boring, boring, boring) good girl, the (homoerotic) serial shirtlessness, plus a whole lot of other standards I’ve started to actively repress, lest I notice them again and grow insane.

For “story,” the great Genghis Khan has died, leaving the empire to his three sons (neglecting the no doubt hundreds of illegitimate Khan spawn). Lest you think this the setup for a long-running TV sitcom, these three are the shittiest Khanlets you could hope for. Let’s meet em!

Not that they’re at all distinct from each other as characters, except different actors play each one. As Susdal, Renato Rossini, aka Howard Ross. Why they credited his more Italianate name is a mystery for the ages. As Sayan is American crapketteer Ken Clark, embarrassing himself again. The third one is apparently called Gigan (ガイガン Gaigan), at least in the English dub, a name the IMDb does not corroborate. By process of elimination, I determine this guy is played by…Maria Grazia Spina. No…that can’t be right…

The great Khan’s will stipulates, hypocritically, his sons should make peace. Like any good reverse psychologist, this prompts them into expanding the Mongs even further…all the way to the kingdom of Tuleda. Never heard of it! Actually, the only Tuleda I am aware of is a small town in Spain, which seems pretty far afield for the Mongols. Not when the whole of freaking Europe stood in their way, and the Spanish were all too busy with the Moors anyway. But what’s an Italian movie without a confusing notion in the place of a sane one? Let’s just call this “Tuleda” a generically “Euro” place, as Mongols’ anachronism stew befits.

So the Mongol Trio (with backup singers) enslaves many genuinely white people – Boo! Hiss! we’re no doubt meant to say. And the boring (but redheaded!) princess Bianca de Tuleda (José Greci, which is apparently a woman’s name, or a very convincing drag act) becomes the Mongs’ slave. Not that they know it yet, in their directionless zeal for bland, gormless violence.

Only a mighty cracker can save these people now!


What of goddamn Maciste (goddamn Mark Forest) during all of this? He’s been needlessly moving trees in the forest, which is rather proactive for such a he-hunk early on. The big lug lugs logs and lags in rags as the story drags.

Also, Maciste has met Alexander (Loris Loddi), the exiled 4-year-old (what’d he do?!) Prince of Tuleda, who later becomes a symbol and bargaining chip, same honor as is normally reserved for buxom yet inane damsels. Though Maciste vs. the Mongols seems to revere young Alexander with the same icky leering as Captain Ouvre in Airplane! “Do you like movies about gladiators?” indeed! I wish to say no more of Alexander, as all children in Italian movies irritate horribly, always dubbed by adults attempting the most grating, cloying voices imaginable. This even sullies the otherwise marvelous A Fistful of Dollars.

Anyway…Maciste eventually meets the Mongols – actually, all three sons at once – and Maciste clongs Mongs’ bungs as best he Khan. It’s the “vs.” part, and it’s rather shocking how early and easily Maciste bests the three villains of the piece.

That’s right, pepla are populated with the most ridiculous God Mode Sues in filmdom, which forces lazy plot lengtheners most of the time. Yup, these steroid-enhanced bodybuilders need artificial enhancement, as they cannot go a full round, as it were, on their own! So Maciste learns of Bianca’s imprisonment, and opts for the stupid path to rescue her. Rather than just go into Tuleda and mash massive masses of Mongoloid minions in a merciless melee of man-mangling, Maciste goes and…becomes Susdal’s slave!


There’s a little more to it than that. Fighting in some arbitrarily setup tournament (read: an excuse for a wrestling scene), Maciste earns Bianca’s freedom at the cost of his own. This would seem a setback for Susdal and siblings, since they (but which one?!) meant to marry Bianca in order to legally control Tuleda – That seems very un-Mongol. No matter, Susdal seems quite pleased to have a greased, oiled he-man in chains, which – Not going there!

And up until this point, their efforts to suss Bianca out from the slaves yielded but a very familiar chorus of all the women shrieking “I’m Bianca!” We’ve seen the same precise thing in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon, but Mongols gets the jump on that by one year. It’s still beaten by Spartacus, no doubt what it is homaging – pardon, shamelessly ripping off. And let’s see…hidden woman among (Mong) the slaves, Spartacus bowdlerization, three corrupt and back-stabbing rulers… Yeah, this is precisely the same movie as Tyrants of Babylon. Surprise, surprise, director Domenico Paolella did both! Yeah, peplum directors each have their own specialized narratives, which is a phenomenal example of laziness.

Back to business…Maciste is in the villains’ palace, at the proper 5/8ths through moment. But without a seductress to be seducee to, and no dancing girls to leer at, Maciste can do naught but perform pointless Feats of Strength™ for a while (there’s also the gay Susdal thing, but we’re not going there). There’s not much point to this, but it eats up screen time, and is very peplum-esque.


Usually these sword-and-sandals movies tread water before the “big” climax with seduction. Further substituting for that, Bianca returns to town, for remarkably convoluted reasons, and grows angry at Maciste over freeing her. There’s a cause and effect here. Effect (it’s more interesting): Maciste and the token female get to argue a little, them make up at the end. Cause: Bianca thinks Maciste has sided with the Mongols, in order to unearth her hidden treasure right over there in that grist mill. Oh God, why is even a fucking grist mill a requirement in these movies?! These have the stupidest formulae ever! (You’d think a Feat of Strength™ could come about from this mill; you’d be wrong.)

This nonsense is all well and good, but it doesn’t wholly kill time. So, for no reason, let’s have Maciste fight a lion in his bedroom. Yeah, there’s not really any justification. But you knew there’d have to be a lion at some point, so go with it.


With imminent climax comes imminent battle scene, which is never well done. It’s not even explained why suddenly there are all these Crusaders (mighty Caucasians) ready to whoop some marauder butt.


When text dries up and screen caps dominate, that means there’s nothing worth commenting upon, that the crap on screen is just idly occurring to no end. I detest this subgenre. this series, for being so repetitive. We know how it’ll end – Maciste shall fight for the good (i.e. European) people, brutally murder every last Mongol, and a proto Star Wars medal ceremony shall close it all out.

Details make the difference, and Mongols has already declared its only substantive differences have to do with that new setting – which isn’t even done well. So this particular listless war involves the following: Spears, swords, horses, siege towers, trebuchets, and whatnot. Actually, I think I’m making it sound more interesting than it is, so I’m stopping now.

As for that heroic act of mass-Mongol-murder, Maciste hoards the horde into the forest, then sets it on fire. These guys, without proper wildfire survival training or even a single fire shelter, all roast. Mongolian barbeque! (Okay, this whole paragraph exists to justify that pun.)


And Machiste kills off dreaded Sustal personally, in a moment of physical interaction Sustal certainly appreciates.

Star Wars medal ceremony.

In summation…ah, I don’t have anything else to say! These Mark Forest Macistes are surely the breadwinners for this particular franchise, as they always get the best budgets of any Maciste (compare ‘em to the thoroughly virtue-free Kirk Morris and Alan Steel efforts). But all those lira and all the extra attention does nothing to resolve a fundamental problem inherent in the overall genre. That flaw is mostly one of stagnation. Yes…we’re…stagnated…


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• No. 1 Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)
• No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)
• No. 22 Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)
• No. 23 Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)
• No. 24 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)

Maciste, Nos. 8 - 20 (1962 - 1964)

It’s time once again to switch back over to Maciste, and cover a little ground here in anticipation for the GREAT CROSSOVER. Seven movies down, we have sixteen to go (and we’ll have to stop and look at the Ursus franchise at some point too). (There’s a final Maciste which follows the GREAT CROSSOVER, but forget it for now.) Fortunately, from a certain perspective, most of the remaining Macistes are unavailable for convenient viewing, allowing for a day of laziness and speculation.

Because it is consistently unclear how these films were produced, the easiest thing to do is to ignore release order (mostly), and instead focus upon the great Macistean actors, and their chunks of work.


MARK FOREST (The greatest – i.e. most prolific – Maciste of all, of Maciste in the Valley of the Kings and Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World.)

Maciste, the World's Strongest Gladiator (1962): This is among the most obscure of all pepla, so information is pretty scant. In it, Maciste tries to rescue a tyrannized kingdom from the rule of an evil seductress queen (Scilla Gabel this time), while – Okay, that’s the story of every movie covered today. Spelling that out is like explaining that people die in a horror movie.

As part of Maciste’s time- and space-jumping shenanigans, this one takes place in Asia (in someplace called Mersabad), though the images I can find look as Roman as anything else. In it, Maciste goes undercover as a gladiator in order to get close to the seditious elements in the government, as other gladiators fight to stop him.
It’s the Gladiator plot, more or less, though more pertinently is reflects director Michele Lupo’s other gladiatorial efforts, like Seven Slaves Against the World and Seven Rebel Gladiators. Yes, the Maciste movie invokes seven gladiators as well. (And NO Seven Samurai connection!)

Maciste, the World's Greatest Hero (1963): Michele Lupo continues imprinting his unique vision upon the Mark Forest Maciste movies, this time taking the exact same story to Babylon, meaning they’ll have to drape a slightly different-looking leopard hide over the scenery. The specific form of oligarchic mismanagement Maciste is battling this time? The yearly sacrifice of 30 nubile, comely virgins. What a waste! Maciste goes to prevent this, not by devirginificating all the sacrificees, but through the standard method of throwing big things at anonymous royal soldiers, and possibly seducing/getting seduced by the queen.

Of note – Babylon’s vile ruler Xandros is played by Italy’s cherished Guiliano Gemma, who later headlined in a few of the Ringo Spaghetti Westerns.


Maciste, Gladiator of Sparta (1964): Forest at last ditches Lupo for another director of similar talents, Mario Caiano. And with all the temporal indecisiveness, Maciste still cannot resist the siren call of Ancient Rome. So it’s a genuine, historical (at least, as much as cheap Italian genre fare is willing) take on the conflict between the Romans and early Christians. This means there is at least some justification for the essential once-per-film lion wrestling scene.
Qualitatively, this seems to be no better or worse than anything else in its movement. It’s all becoming one big blur.

ALSO BY FOREST, TO ACTUALLY BE WATCHED:

Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)

Maciste in Genghis Khan’s Hell (1964)


KIRK MORRIS (Of the tremendously crappy Maciste vs. the Headhunters.)

Maciste in Hell (1962): In Maciste’s 1960s craze to be a perfect shadow of the Hercules series, its version of Hercules in the Haunted World had to come about at some point. That means an overt embrace of the more fantastical peplum elements, as Hercules – excuse me, Maciste – travels into the underworld to confront a witch who has cursed the Earth, or some such. This witch Fania (Hélène Chanel) no doubt conforms to the usual evil queen dynamic, for as idiosyncratic as this entry seems to be. Then cue duels against lion, eagles, giants, snakes, oh my.

Even with that, Maciste in Hell is an odd duck indeed. Time Lord Maciste is now in 17th century Scotland, presumably still sporting the skimpy-toga-and-nothing-else fashion combo so favored by the Greeks of yore. No explanation asked for or given. Hercules-aping aside, there is precedent for doing this with Maciste, as a 1925 film under the same name did likewise with the silent series.

Directorially, Maciste in Hell comes to us from Riccardo Freda, which is not for nothing. A prolific director of Italian sword-and-sandal epics even before it was cool (1953’s Sins of Rome), Freda is best known for his horror work, especially The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and The Ghost, much like…like Mario Bava, director of Hercules in the Haunted World. In fact, Bava was cinematographer on some of Freda’s earlier adventure films, Freda’s true love (he never had much use for horror, despite his reputation in the field). The learner became the master, as Bava wonderfully wed surrealistic horror with peplum nonsense. So as Bava did for the Herc, Freda did for Mac. What an interesting little horrific showdown within the greater beefcake world of Hercules & Co.


The Triumph of Maciste (1962): Next location – Memphis. That’s Egypt, I presume, and not Tennessee. Maciste battles an evil queen, ho hum, virgins are now getting sacrificed to the God of Fire, was there always so little sense of experimentation in most of these? The Feats of Strength™ all sound culled from former, greater Herculeseseses. And since there’s a volcano (what for the sacrificin’), cue the same cruddy eruption footage which shamed Maciste vs. the Headhunters. Justification for this film’s utter tediousness, even in secondary materials, is its director, Tanio Boccia, presumably a lifelong apathetic who shot films with the mechanical disinterest of a porn star nearing retirement. He’s occasionally called Italy’s Ed Wood, only without the joy de vivre which makes Ed’s travesties so marvelous.


Maciste at the Court of the Czar (1964): Okay, so it’s Russia now.

By 1964 (and we’re jumping around a bit in order to address the actor clumps), the sword-and-sandals movement was dying out, stagnating, and without creativity in regards to the fundamental issues of structure or tone. The only solution was a desperate gambit to plug the formula into increasingly-inappropriate settings. So we take Maciste, unaltered from the Greco-Roman-Egypto-Judeo-Pan-Asian original model, and splat him down into pre-revolutionary Czarist Russia. It’s cold there, by the fur hats the less buff dudes wear, but Maciste is still perfectly comfortable in his PG-rated nudity, and anxious to stab Cossacks.

The token plot: Maciste is sent by the Czar (or Csar, or Tzar, or Tsar) on a treasure hunt. Then the Czar tries to kill him when he returns. Evil queen: Ombretta Colli, as Sonia.

Valley of the Thundering Echo (1964), aka Maciste and the Women of the Valley, double-aka Hercules of the Desert, originally La valle dell’eco tonante: Innocent land protected by the natural barrier that is the Valley of The Thundering Echo. Queen Farida (evil, Hélène Chanel again, meh) wants to conquer this land. The innocent people summon Maciste as their protector, brought forth directly from the rock itself.

Huh?! This is the first time they’ve gone that far in literalizing the meaning of Maciste’s name (in Italian, it roughly means “of the rock”). There have been hints at it before, but never this. Otherwise, this movie (whatever its name is) sounds like among the most boring, thankless, desultory of all pepla. Which means it’s another of Tanio Boccia’s efforts.


ALAN STEEL (Nee Gianfranco Parolini.)

Zorro vs. Maciste (1963): It’s 1963 now, and soon enough to start the great, suicidal search for a new peplum setting. Like the Samson series, Zorro vs. Maciste settles upon swashbuckler-era Spain. This is really in order to fashion a title which suggests, spuriously, that we’ve a mighty muscleman crossover, much like the dreadful Maciste vs. Hercules in the Vale of Woe, or Hercules, Samson and Ulysses, or the upcoming and unnamed GREAT CROSSOVER. This is not the case.

Yes, Maciste is running up against the famous swordsman Zorro (transplanted into 16th century Spain from 18th century California, because the Italians don’t care), but this has nothing to do with any other Zorro movies. How’s that? Well, Zorro originated in literature, not film, and thus his use in film constitutes different rules of continuity and franchise – much like the disparate number of Sherlock Holmes movies, or even Hercules himself (whose non-pepla have nothing to do with the Reeves series). Still, a known name like “Zorro” holds more sway than, say, Maciste in the Land of Conquistadors or whatever the hell.

We know Maciste and Zorro (or Zorraux, really) must fight, then team up and fight a greater foe. It’s the pattern of most such matchups, in true “Batman vs. Superman” senses. This means an outside force will initially put the two heroes at each others’ necks. Fortunately, every peplum comes with a factory-installed dichotomy, the good girl and the evil girl. So in this case, each one yearns to inherit the throne of the deceased rey; the goodie hires trusty Maciste, while Zorro becomes the bitch’s tool.

The only question is who’ll play opposite Alan Steel’s unemotive frame as Zorro? Frenchman Pierre Brice, who most famously plated a Native American in Germany’s homegrown Karl May westerns. Here playing a Californian-turned-Spaniard. There is some weird nationalistic stuff going on here.

ALSO BY STEEL, TO ACTUALLY BE WATCHED:

Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964) (More amusingly titled Hercules Against the Moon Men!)


REG PARK (The best Hercules not named Steve Reeves.)

Maciste in King Solomon's Mines (1964): Maciste hears about cruel enslavement, people worked silly in some tyrant’s mines. He goes to rescue them, and due to his own unintelligence, instead becomes yet another slave – because of the fetishistic “pleasures” people get in seeing burly fellows enchained. Basically, it sounds like Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World or that Hercules movie I watched 2 days ago whose name I forget. The only new detail is the latest magical plot device of destiny, an ankle bracelet which causes Maciste to lose his free will. In Italy, that’s called an “acting contract.”


REG LEWIS (Not to be confused with the same-named English footballer with an actual Wikipedia page.)

Maciste vs. the Monsters (1962): Or “Monster,” really. Singular. One. A sea monster, which Maciste (or Maxxus, in the U.S.) defeats for the Sun People. Then he frees them from the cruel yoke of the Moon People, because if we’ve learned anything from Maciste, it’s that sun = good, moon = bad. I can understand these childish sexual dichotomies and even the racist stuff on occasion, but I don’t get this whole anti-moon agenda.

Not much else to say about this one. It seems to take place in the Ice Age, which is nothing new. It has a 3.9 on the IMDb, which is actually pretty high for this type of movie. Still, having not seen the papier maché beastie on display, this is just a big question mark. And I’m happy to leave it that way.


ED FURY (Isn’t he one of the Avengers?)

Maciste vs. the Sheik (1962): It’s another sword-and-sandals-by-way-of-swashbuckler, which by now is starting to feel as tired as the classic Roman thing. It’s the Maciste take on the Moors, which I cannot imagine turning out tastefully. An alternate title is Maciste in Africa, meaning a franchise which treats Africans like sambo-dancing watermelon enthusiasts is now focusing upon that lamentable caricature. I’m glad I didn’t see this, and good riddance to you, Ed Fury. Go back to doing your Ursus movies, which we’ll get to soon enough.


RICHARD LLOYD (Also known as Iloosh Khoshabe, an Iranian briefly granted peplum obscurity prior to overall obscurity.)

The Invincible Brothers Maciste (1964): When one Maciste isn’t enough (basically because Italy was never satisfied with Khoshabe’s solo genre contributions), we have two, the Elder and the Younger (Mario Novelli). Also an evil queen, Thaliade, an evil prince, Akim, and a boring nonentity, Jana. And a nice girl, Nice. Yes, Nice.

Much standard loincloth gobbledygook, enlivened only by the magical Waterfall of Mind Control. Also, and underground race of leopard men. This one is so danged obscure, most of this information comes courtesy of the New York Times’ 71-word “review” from 1964.


Only one more (for today)!

SAMSON BURKE (A Canadian. His most famous film: The Three Stooges Meet Hercules.)

Totò vs Maciste (1962): Well this one, at least, is a change of pace! At last a peplum with some tonal differences! Not just the usual body ogling and sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-sub-Spartacus-ing. This one’s a parody!

Well, wait, they tried this general approach in a previous Maciste/Hercules mash-up, Vale of Woe – which is the absolute worst sword-and-sandals I’ve seen, which is saying something. This one seems to stand a chance, at least, at it’s done by one Italy’s greatest comic minds in his twilight years. That’d be Antonio Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno De Curtis di Bisanzio Gagliardi, otherwise called Totò. Behold, a partial filmography: Fifa e Arena, Totò al Giro d’Italia, Totò Sceicco, Totò e la donne, Totò Tarzan, Totò terzo uomo, Totò a colori, Totò, Peppino e la malefemmina. Whoa.

One’s confidence in a Totò entry wanes when one realizes Mario Mattoli, the director who perpetrated Vale of Woe, was a frequent Totò collaborator. So this is likely at a similar level of wit and cinematic competence, and thus we’ll look no further into it. Still, once parodies start comin’ out, that surely means a genre is on its last legs, or in dire need of innovation. That latter approach would bever fly with the regimented Italian filmmakers who’d embraced the peplum, so rather let’s take Totò vs Maciste as a sign of impending doom. A rather early sigh, surprisingly, as the peplum would sputter on for another two listless years more. That just shows how stubborn genre practitioners are, even when they’re so quick to copy success when it happens. Would that I could call this parodic entry the end of the movement, but it’s but a blip in the overall swamp. We must press onwards, and watch the available Mark Forest Macistes which popped up in Totò’s wake.


RELATED POSTS
• The Silent Maciste Franchise (1914 - 1927)
• No. 1 Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (1960)
• No. 2 Maciste vs. the Headhunters (1960)
• No. 3 Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (1961)
• No. 6 Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• No. 21 Maciste vs. the Mongols (1963)
• No. 22 Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (1964)
• No. 23 Maciste and the Queen of Samar (1964)
• No. 24 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)