Black Gate

When you have an Italian sword-and-sandal (peplum) film, and the hero of the title has an oblique name like “Goliath” or “Colossus,” the immediate question that comes to mind is, “Is this hero actually Maciste?”

The answer with Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is “Yes.” The Italian title of this 1963 muscleman epic is Maciste l’eroe più grande del mondo, “Maciste, The Greatest Hero in the World.” This isn’t strictly true, because in the rest of the world, Maciste habitually lost his name and was turned into Hercules or Atlas or Colossus … or Goliath.

And Maciste isn’t even in Babylon! This is another deception of the English-language title and dub. The setting is the usual vague Greco-Roman Mediterranean world that served as the backdrop for the majority of peplum flicks, where fictional kingdoms constantly warred with each other until a bulky hero appeared to help the underdogs to victory.

The story of Goliath and the Sins of Babylon isn’t much more complex than that description, although the events of the plot as it lunges from scene to scene create a needless tangle. The short version: The Kingdom of Cafaus (“Babylon”) has forced a cruel treaty on its neighbor, Nephyr, that demands an annual tribute of twenty-four virgins (upped to thirty in the English version). The current king of Nephyr, Pergasos (Piero Lulli), arranged for this awful treaty so he could keep the throne after his brother’s death. The wandering strongman Maciste (Mark Forest) arrives in Nephyr and befriends a group of rebel gladiators who plot to free the city from the grip of the king of Cafaus and his wicked agent, Morakeb (Erno Crisa), and place Regia (José Greci), daughter of the previous king, onto the throne of Nephyr.

Between the lines of this story is a naval battle, a chariot race, copious sword fights and wrestling moves, a populist uprising, a pitched battle between armies on horseback, a rush of lions and leopards mauling everybody in sight, comic antics with a dwarf, and jarring shifts in the story that can make it tricky to follow the specifics. There’s a lot packed into this movie, including chunks of other movies, which makes for a choppy narrative and moments of, “Wait, who is this guy again?”

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Among the canon of Italian peplum (sword-and-sandal) films made from 1958 to 1965, there are three special horror-fantasia entries. I’ve already written about Mario Bava’s classic Hercules in the Haunted World (1961). In the future I’ll look at the same year’s Goliath and the Vampires, which was co-directed by famed Italian Western director Sergio Corbucci, the man who helmed the original Django (1966).

Today I’m spending my peplum-time with the third dark fantasy, Maciste in Hell (1962), yet another movie featuring Italian homegrown hero Maciste. (Oh, wait. Goliath and the Vampires is also a Maciste film. Damn these U.S. title changes!) Although Maciste in Hell isn’t as fantastic as Hercules in the Haunted World — it’s hard to best Mario Bava when it comes to doing weird horror on the cheap — it’s on the top of the pile as far a sword-and-sandal movies go. And its Amazon VOD presentation is relatively high quality. The picture has the vertical squeeze problem of Perseus the Invincible, but at least you have the entire image and a decent print.

The idea of Maciste journeying to the underworld like Dante or Aeneas wasn’t new: Maciste in Hell (Maciste all’inferno) is also the title of one of the silent Maciste films that were hits in Italy in the 1910s and ‘20s. The two movies don’t have any story connection aside from the hero in an infernal setting, and the silent Maciste is a different character and phenomenon from the 1960s version. But Maciste in Hell ‘62 is also different from other peplum films of its time, and not just in its overt supernatural horror elements. Where Maciste’s standard stomping grounds are the ancient/mythic Mediterranean, here he pops up in seventeenth-century Scotland. Maciste has a reputation for shifting about in time and place: I dealt with him in prehistory in Colossus of the Stone Age, and recently watched him battle Mongols in China in Maciste at the Court of the Great Khan (retitled Samson and the 7 Miracles of the World in the U.S.). Even so, Scotland in the Early Modern Era is pushing against the sword-and-sandal barriers.

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Here’s a pleasing discovery: Amazon Video has a widescreen print of the 1962 sword-and-sandal (peplum) film Colossus of the Stone Age available under its U.S. television syndication title, Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules. And the print is a good one. It’s not the level of a professional 4K restoration like the Phantasm Blu-ray that came out in December, but considering sword-and-sandal movies often look like someone dragged the film along the sidewalk on the way to the telecine department, Colossus of the Stone Age is damned near pristine. It isn’t part of the Amazon Prime library, however, so subscribers have to shell out $1.99 to rent it, or an extra 51¢ to own it. There’s a version streaming on Amazon Prime under the same title, but it’s the standard cropped and dragged-across-the-pavement type.

So as far as pepla available in English, Colossus of the Stone Age looks fantastic. But is it any good?

Perhaps the better question is, “Is it worth watching?” For this type of low-budget fantasy production, the question of quality is often separate from the question of whether to spend time with it.

But my answer to both questions is “no.”

The appeal of a peplum movie set in the Stone Age and the promise that it will have fire monsters is tempting, and the quality widescreen presentation is a legitimate bonus, but Colossus of the Stone Age (the U.K. theatrical release title) is one of the more tatty and flavorless examples of this genre. Pepla at their best have bizarre imagination, creative production designs and visuals, and robust action scenes. At their most mediocre they have heroes who don’t do anything and long scenes of extras running around in fields or through cheap cavern sets while clumsily swinging sticks at each other. Which is a sentence that works as a summary of this movie.

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