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Two of these were very high quality (for an older film) and this was definitely the best print of all the Peplum movies I’ve watched; none appear to have been edited to be shorter. I took many screen shots. Archive.org (1:25:06) was the best of the bunch. Dailymotion (1:25:34) had a watermark in the lower right (they usually do). Old Time Movies and Radio (1:26:05) (that site may have come up in previous searches?) had a copy where the film was much smaller than the screen. YouTube I (1:26:06) and YouTube II (1:25:44) had the least quality images.
This is not to be confused with The Triumph of Hercules (1964) (aka Hercules vs. the Giant Warriors (1964)) with Dan Vadis.
- Tanio Boccia – director, also directed Hercules of the Desert (1964).
- Kirk Morris – Maciste, also in Devil of the Desert Against the Son of Hercules (1964), this was his first film.
- Cathia Caro – Antea, French (in the last film I watched, Kirk Morris played against another French actress), contrasting Morris’s career, this is the last film she made. also in The Giants of Thessaly (1960) [Warriors 50 Movie Pack].
- Ljubica Otasevic – Queen Tenefi, only in 5 films, a couple of them very minor roles. Here’s her entry in The Female Villains Wiki (which has been invaluable for all of the evil queens in these Hercules movies).
- Cesare Fantoni – Agadon, advisor to the queen. Also in The Loves of Hercules (1960) with Jayne Mansfield and her husband Mickey Hargitay (Mariska’s parents).
- Carla Calo – Yalis, the prophetess. This was a small role, but she was also in Hercules the Invincible (1964) [Warriors 50 Movie Pack] as the evil Queen Etel.
Notes:
- This is the first movie I’ve seen where every single character praises Hercules whenever his name comes up. It was jarring, but humorous.
- Also the first where the camera really fetishizes his muscles. I read somewhere that he was a gay, though not gay himself, icon. Probably. Also many, many feats of strength.
- This soundtrack was the first bad one. Repetitive themes. They’re never high art for these film but this was noticeably flawed.
Story:
Opening titles: we learn of an evil queen who captures a young girl every day and gives them to the Yuri men to be sacrificed in the temple of the mountain of thunder (odd point of research: “Yuri” is a Japanese term used to categories lesbian literature and other media, unrelated).
Two men visit the prophetess Yalis in a cave who predicts that Maciste will help them defeat the evil queen. Elsewhere, peasants go to Maciste and ask for help who first bends an iron bar and then goes with them. As pushes giant boulder on soldiers escorting a dozen stolen women. fights them and sends the survivors back to warn the evil queen Tenefi of Memphis. Antea, from the village but originally from another where she was the only survivor, goes with him as the other girls return.
Agadon tells her of the attack and the queen offers 100 gold pieces to capture Maciste. Omnes the merchant selling silks to girls frolicking in a stream hears that Maciste is returning. He gives verrrry suspicious looks.
Maciste brings Antea to his village of Milas and gives her a home (the village has odd mud huts that look like breasts, take that how you will). Prince Iram, son of Maciste’s best friend, arrives with Arsinoe looking for help. Young Rais, brother to Tabor, needs to perform act of valor to marry Tama (?), angry that he must clean Maciste’s weapons. The prince tells them that the mountain tribes ready to return to Memphis and win back their lands, and that the citizens in the city will help. Omnes, looking even more suspicious, leads Maciste to the city, leaving Tabar in charge of the village while Iram returns to the mountain to wait for the rebellion to start. Rais sneaks off to help (somehow swimming down a river to follow them?!).
Omnes and Arsinoe enter the city with Maciste hiding in a hay bail. Omnes goes to Agadon and offers Maciste, tells him that Iram is alive. Agadon has tubes that can listen in on anywhere in the city and hears Maciste’s plans. Soldiers approach. Rebel;s son is shot warning of the approaching soldiers. Maciste captured after he fights them off with a tree-sized column. Queen puts him in the dungeon, trial of strength next day.
Trial of strength! Maciste is chained between two chariots that will cut off the heads of the other rebels, buried to their necks, if he lets go or, presumably, gets torn in half (compare with Argoles who is chained between two elephants in Hercules the Invincible (1964)). He holds and the queen declares him the victor, angering Agadon who is worried she is falling for Maciste and jeopardizing the kingdom. When Maciste goes to the queen to accept her praise, she commands him to kneel and he does. What’s this?!
Later, during a feast and a celebratory fire dancer (meh, compared to other Hercules movies’ dance sequences, and it’s a pretty low bar, maybe I’m just expecting female dancers), we are provided a backstory for the scepter from the queen and Agadon. She inherited magic scepter from her ancestor, who received it from the gods, and it gives her the power to rule. Foreshadowing?! Maybe. Meanwhile, out on a balcony, Maciste ponders his love for Queen Tenefi as Reis sneaks over the wall to aid his escape. Sadly, Maciste has no memory of either Reis or of his past. Reis blankly exists.
Another feat of strength/daring: Maciste falls through trap door set by Agadon’s henchmen, but escapes and avoids being kebab-ed on the upturned blades below. Agadon mocks surprise (“how could this have happened?!”).
In the guise of helping the rebels, Omnes gets Arsinoe to tell him where Prince Iram is then gets another 100 gold pieces from Agadon for the information. Omnes is on his way to set up the prince.
Antea visits the prophetess in the cave who tells backstories her that the scepter is the cause of Maciste’s memory loss and loyalty. Somehow, the scepter will lose its power if others know of it (I watched that scene twice and it just never made sense). The prophetess give Antea a potion to cure him but (I really don’t understand this quality of magic) is will also lose its power if it is revealed to others. Weird. Antea returns to city, sneaks in to where Maciste is sleeping, blow darts him with the potion, and leaves. Confused when he wakes from the magic, he fights his way out, only learning later that Antea was captured by the queen who will send her to the Yuri men to be sacrificed to the god of fire.
On Omnes’s advice, Iram leads his forces through the Gorge of Garo (Giran?) to help Maciste. In the city, Maciste and Arsinoe figure out that Omnes is the traitor and so split up, with Maciste going to save Antea and Arsinoe going to warn Iram’s forces. Maciste encounters Yalis (in a field, outside of her prophetess cave) who confesses that it was she who raised and protected him. I honestly did not see that coming, but now it seems obvious from the start. She gives him complex directions to fire mountain and tells him that if a sacrifice is saved from the Yuri men the fire god will lose his power. Another instance where revealing knowledge nullifies it’s power. Rumpelstiltskin.
The queens forces attack Irams’ forces but are defeated with the help of Arsinoe. Omnes killed, the bastard.
Maciste, in the final action sequences, swims underwater into cave of fire, fights a (fake) lion (head), forces open an immense Door of Fire, tumbles down an avalanche of boulders, leap 30 ft across a gorge (that special effect was particularly humorous), and fights a giant caveman before making it to the Yuri men and Antea tied to a giant bird altar (shown at the beginning of the movie).
The Yuri men are defeated and Antea is save with lots of stock footage of volcano eruptions and the fire gods lair caves in. Iram returns to the throne as the rightful king and Maciste graciously declines an offer to rule by his side. He and Antea ride off to their future!
