Kirk Morris is one of the most spectacular profiled, muscular actors to ever play Hercules. For one thing, he looks exactly like friggin' Jake Ryan from SIXTEEN CANDLES. Seriously!
Interestingly enough, Kirk Morris was, along with Alan Steel, one of the few homegrown (and we mean grown!) Italian actors to star in the sixties peplum boom. His real name is Adriano Bellini, and he was a gondolier in Venice when he was discovered by Cinecitta. Presumably, some producer's wife saw him with his shirt off in the Venice canals or something.
His movie, THE WITCH'S CURSE, was a remake of MACISTE AL'INFERNO (which I've written about before, remember?), which was supposedly Federico Fellini's favorite childhood movie.
The first place I ever heard of Kirk Morris was in his film COLOSSUS AND THE HEADHUNTERS, which is only made watchable because it was on Mystery Science Theater 3000, lampooned by Mike and the 'bots with their usual panache. The most interesting scenes are the ones where it's obvious they used extremely short, skinny actors to make Adriano look downright gigantic.
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