Sword n’ Sandal Movies that are actually worth seeing

If you love muscle men, and you love adventure, then Italian Sword n’ Sandal movies are a natural. The trouble is, like Westerns, they tend to be repetitive, literally – the thrifty Italians recycled the same story, the same actors, even the same costumes and sets! I suppose they worked under the philosophy that if a story is worth telling once, it’s worth telling ten times.

The big Sword n’ Sandal boom was between the time Steve Reeves’s HERCULES became an international hit in 1959 (and made Sylvia Koscina, his Yugoslav immigrant co-star, Italy’s own actress turned revolutionary) and 1965, when the boom petered out and Italian studios like the Mussolini-founded Cinecitta and directors like Mario Bava and Sergio Leone switched from muscleman movies starring North Americans, to spaghetti Westerns starring Clint Eastwood and others.

In general, most Sword n’ Sandal pictures are repetitive, simplistic, and uncomplicated – sort of like Westerns were back when they were terrible. I will admit, I bought the collection of 50 gladiator movies for $23 on Amazon, and in the interest of full disclosure, I have watched only the opening 15 minutes of most of them before yawning, turning it off, and popping in my DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES or LOST DVDs.

Here's a link to a collection of 50 movies - going now for $16.

I guess now would be a good time to point out that I love adventure movies, not action movies. Adventure movies are fast-plotted and feature exotic locales, films like Michael Curtiz’s CASABLANCA and THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD with Errol Flynn. My favorite adventure movie of all time is a toss-up between CASABLANCA and the silent, 1925 version of Douglas Fairbanks’ THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD.

Without further ado, here's a few good movies with big, tanned, oiled up musclemen pretending to wrestle rubber snakes:

HERCULES AND THE HAUNTED WORLD

Anyone that's even slightly interested in this kind of movies has probably already seen this one, but I'm slipping this recommendation in for the newbies, because this is definitely one to see first. This one is famously directed by Mario Bava, King of the Spaghetti slasher movies, and features Christopher Lee as his usual ghoulish self, back when he still had the power to be frightening. I saw Lee in the most recent STAR WARS, and I swear, he looked like an evil literature professor. What was he going to do, assign the Jedi multiple chapters of ETHAN FROME?

This one was inspired by MACISTE IN HELL, which I have blogged about before, and features Big Herc himself descending to Hell. It is truly creepy, shocking and unpredictable, the best movie of this genre.

SON OF HERCULES AGAINST THE MOLE MEN

Boy, does the movie ever live up to the supercheesy promise of the title!

The Son of Hercules, who is totally NOT Maciste or anything (wink, wink) battles Mole people destroyed by sunlight in what I can only guess is Africa – the geography is a little confused. It is easily the most bizarre and original film of this kind, with all the intense close-ups on Mark Forest’s glistening, oiled up, Mediterranean muscles as he flexes and strains.

Handsome Caribbean bodybuilder Paul Wynter was billed in this movie as the “Black Hercules,” and he’s the highlight of the movie. It’s disappointing he never got his own spin-off…especially since Maciste, in his first movie was a black Carthaginian slave, something makers of the subsequent Maciste movies conveniently forgot.




The Son of Hercules can lick the Mole Men, but it appears he can’t bench press, grip or grapple his way from his greatest enemy: male pattern baldness. All that said, I think Mark Forest is a very sexy, interesting figure. He was the only one of these guys that didn’t take their role so absolutely seriously, and he was something of an oddball in real life: he left movies to become an opera coach.



HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN



Reg Park’s turn as Big Herc is like a cool superhero comic brought to life. This one is incredible because of the battle with the shapechanging monster Proteus: the damn thing turns in the middle of battle from a lion, to a constricting boa, to a vulture, to a wall of flame, to a big rubber latex iguana-man that looks like the kind Captain Kirk would wrestle. It features atomic supermen, and a civilization that worships the god Uranus. I will admit, every time I try to convince myself I have a sophisticated and intelligent New York sense of humor, I find myself cutting up whenever they say lines like “this day is dedicated to Uranus.” It isn’t that they say Uranus; it’s that they KEEP ON SAYING Uranus, which batters down my defenses.

If you can, see the version with MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000. As always, Mike and the ‘Bots are a hoot!

THE GIANTS OF THESSALY

To be honest, I don’t’ even remember what this movie was about – something like Jason and the Quest for the Golden Fleece, maybe? But the one thing I thought was fascinating was that it was set in Bronze Age Greece, and it showed that society through set decoration as clearly alien, without the usual anachronisms like togas, cheekpiece and bristled helmets or Grecian columns, all of which are products of the Classical Age of Greece.

The Age of Greece that the myths are set was the Bronze Age, or Mycenaean period, an Indo-European mainland Greek society roughly contemporaneous to the Minoans on Crete. We have few ruins from that period (Schliemann discovered Mycenae itself, and found a gorgeous gold mask that has a picture in every art book), and no idea what language they spoke: Linear B, which can’t be translated. In other words, very little of what we know as Greek culture existed at this time. To see that reflected, perhaps unintentionally, in this production was bizarre and intriguing.

SON OF SAMSON

Another redubbed Maciste movie, this one takes Maciste (aka the Son of Samson) and is the closest these movies have ever come to giving the Big Guy something like a psychology. He’s a very lonely person without a woman or love of his life, that is forced to wander. Perhaps in the future, a movie can explore WHY Maciste bounces from time to time always alone, destined to fight wrongs. In the past, did he perform some horrible crime, for which his wanderings are a punishment?

Other than that, the movie is great at showing the beauty and opulence of Ancient Egypt, and it features the big guy’s big muscles in service to building Egyptian monuments by himself (woof!).