Paul Wynter, "L'Ercule Noir"

Handsome, symmetrical Antiguan-born Paul Wynter was, along with Serge Nubret (from Hercules and the Rebel Slave), one of the few black bodybuilders in Sword n' Sandal pictures. Paul Wynter's trademark outfit was his leopard-print bathing suit that called attention to his ethnicity...a gimmick that Scary Spice would later borrow during her pop years in the gay nineties.

Like his fellow Italian Sword & Sandal muscle star Alan Steel, Paul Wynter was also pretty short and it got downright unintentionally funny how the directors and others went out of their way to avoid demonstrating his average height. What Paul Wynter lacked in height he made up for with what is easily one of the most devastatingly chiseled and symmetrical physiques ever.

Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, Paul Wynter played Maciste's brawny sidekick and ally in what was quite possibly the weirdest and campiest of the Maciste films, "Son of Hercules Against the Mole Men."

He was also the very dramatic heavy against Gordon Scott in "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops," which incidentally, also featured scenes with a baby that would later grow up to be Fabio. Yes, that Fabio.

As an aside, I always wondered why more Peplum films didn't have muscular enemies for the heroes to fight on equal terms, like Godzilla vs. Mothra. As with Westerns made in the same era, one of the problems with Peplum as a genre is that the villains were never as compelling or interesting, and they are very seldom threatening or powerful, especially compared to the handsome muscle hero downright assured of victory against scheming, craven and downright bad foes. At least Paul Wynter's physique gave Maciste a credible, villainous threat.

Typically, it's good storytelling advice that if you want to be a slacker, ignore your hero and concentrate all your industriousness on your villain.

There are some counterexamples to this. For instance, Paul Wynter's leopardskin baddie was more interesting than the hero, and there was the vampiric, shapechanging Kobrak from Goliath Against the Vampires, and the race of identical Atlantean clones made from the blood of Uranus (don't ask) in classic MST3K fodder in Hercules and the Captive Women, who were at least powerful and credible enemies that could mop the floor with Herc. Perhaps it was the power and shock of their introduction, a surprise in an otherwise predictable movie.

Incidentally, Paul Wynter recently received a major award in his native Antigua from the Governor-General. Being of Cuban descent, I know exactly what that's like: little countries do everything in their power to honor anyone that makes it in the bigger world. Us Cubans for instance, never shut our traps about Dr. Carlos Finlay, who cured Malaria during the Spanish-American War.

"There's only room for one Toby MacGwire in Hollywood...and that's me...Jake Gyllenhaal!"

My question is this: who does Jake Gyllenhaal think he's fooling with that goofy "macho" stubble, anyway? It reminds me a little of my grandfather wearing sunglasses, a clear-cut case of trying too hard.

Jake Gyllenhaal gets me juiced like a cranapple (as opposed to his dopier and considerably less sexy doppleganger, Toby MacGwire), so imagine my great delight to hear that a huge chunk of the promotional materials for the movie "Prince of Persia" centers around him bulking up, doing his own stunts and being shirtless a lot. At first I was all prepared to be sarcastic and catty...after all, Hollywood tends to do this a lot with varying degrees of sincerity. Remember how part of Terminator 2's publicity was centered around Linda Hamilton getting "buff?" (That level of muscle wouldn't even get her in a bikini contest, much less Fitness-class.)

But the truth is, all sarcasm aside, the guy does look good! I've never seen anyone get this built for a role, with the possible exception of Harrison Ford preparing for "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom."

Apparently, "Prince of Persia" is a real thing. I actually didn't know that. The first place I ever heard of "Prince of Persia" was in Russian author Victor Pelevin's short story "Prince of Central Planning," which showed the life of a Soviet-era drone in a slothful bureaucracy where all everybody does is play computer games all the time, with bureaucrats that live vicariously through their game characters. I thought "Prince of Persia" was as made up as the TV show "Galaxy Quest" until I saw the trailers for the movie and wondered for a minute if I had slipped into an alternate universe.

By the look of things, the film seems like Pirates of the Caribbean 4: an action romantic comedy with rapid-fire dialogue, and even has the Pirates trademark of awkward, totally inappropriate and out of place fantasy elements. For the record, I never liked the Pirates of the Caribbean films after the first: the "ghost story" horror elements were handled so broadly after the first film that they just became awkward and inappropriate, like an episode of Melrose Place that involves time travel. The Jim Henson Creature Shop ship of the dead was especially inappropriate; it felt like something that Guillermo del Toro would have Hellboy encounter instead of Captain Jack.

Michiko Nishiwaki, the Avenging Angel

A few people have wanted to hear about some great, sexy bodybuilders of the female sex, and I'm more than happy to oblige as I'm a real muscle omnivore. Especially with someone like Michiko Nishiwaki, who was sort of like Grace Jones, if Grace Jones was a great martial artist and athlete, and wasn't quite so terrifying. Michiko Nishiwaki was not the stereotype of the Asian woman, demure and petite. She was a champion lifter and bodybuilder.

You know, it's a funny thing about Steve Reeves: if anyone knows him at all, it's for his role as Hercules.

Yet, the amazing thing is, Reeves had a career of fifty films and he only played Hercules twice. It's the same thing with bodybuilder, powerlifting champion and martial artist Michiko Nishiwaki. In Hong Kong, she did over 40 movies all through the 1980s and 1990s, but the one movie everybody remembers her from is the Kung Fu cop film My Lucky Stars.

Everybody remembers that one scene where she takes her robe off and it's revealed she's built like a tank. They built to that reveal incredibly well, of course. All throughout the film she was in a kimono as a subservient, stereotypical, petite Asian woman, so when she throws her duds off it's a real shock. She must have the same tailor as Groundskeeper Willie and Ned Flanders.

I just know her from that one movie, so imagine my great surprise to discover that she has a filmography nearly a mile long. She always played the same kind of character: the bodybuilder assassin femme fatale. There were entire scripts were she was menacing and quiet and didn't deliver a single line of dialogue.

One crucial but interesting difference between male bodybuilders and female bodybuilders at the movies is that male bodybuilders are usually leading men and action heroes, whereas female bodybuilders usually are stuntwomen. The list of female bodybuilders in movies is almost entirely a list of stuntwomen: Spice Williams, Faith Minton, and yes, Michiko Nishiwaki: when she came to America, she did stunt work. She was Lucy Liu's stunt double for four movies, and Kelly Hu's for one. Come to think of it, the only female bodybuilder I can think of that didn't work as a stuntwoman was Rachel McLish.

(Rachel McLish is one of those people - like Dave Draper - that I sometimes wonder why they didn't make it as a movie star.)

Flex, Pecs and Sex: Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel

"Muscles have really made a comeback in the movies." - Gene Siskel

Ah, if only it lasted!

Absolutely fascinating 1986 documentary that examined muscles at the movies.

The Twilight Phenomenon

Every time some guy (and here the term isn’t gender-neutral, it always does, in fact mean men) slams the Twilight phenomenon, I always felt like wincing just a little bit.

Not because I like the books, or it expresses an inmost fantasy of mine or something…in all honesty I read the first book on a plane to Toronto and I was amazed at how fast I forgot it afterward, like most mystery paperbacks. It was harmless, and expressed a common fantasy: the desire to be won over by someone with a possessive and slightly sinister affection. If you get your self-worth from other people adoring you, that’s very powerful.

As readers of this blog will probably know, Edward is too femmie for my tastes anyway, humorless, cynical and vain, he reminds me of a particularly (in retrospect) assholish boyfriend from Williamsburg. While some may see my dating a psedointellectual hipster from Brooklyn as the height of crappy judgment, all I have to say in my defense is that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Rather, the reason I wince when men slam Twilight is because of the “unfortunate implications” in slamming a mostly female fantasy. I save any and all accusations of sexism for very rare occasions, for when I’m absolutely sure. Here, I’m absolutely sure: there’s a double-standard at work. A goofy female fantasy is seen as fluffy and embarrassing, but goofy male fantasies of virility and macho fighting do not receive criticism for precisely this reason.

Twilight is intimately associated with the female gender. I remember reading a few articles on computer science that bemoaned how few women were going into the field. The article sarcastically asked, “hey, why not put up a few Twilight posters in comp labs?”

(Incidentally, I always thought the problem with comp sci departments is their inability to creatively rebrand. Most biochemistry and genetics departments have been reborn with sexier-sounding names like “systems biology” and “molecular genetics and microbiology.” I can understand trying to get away from reminding people of the nightmarish Organic Chemistry, but still. And don’t ever call an MLS a degree in Library Science – they prefer Information Science, which considering the emphasis on database management over a physical building, that’s not a bad idea.)

You hate Twilight? Okay, fine, I hate James Bond. (Well, except maybe Pierce Brosnan. What a good looking piece of man.) The James Bond movies are the male version of Twilight: an embarrassingly immature fantasy.

Incidentally, it’s worth noting I was actually quite surprised to see a picture of Stephanie Meyer, who was considerably less fat than I was expecting. I guess her soul is fat.


There was one incredible element of the Twilight phenom: the gift of Taylor Lautner, who is one of the most beautiful men at the movies in a very, very long time, and who the directors have the good sense to keep shirtless all the time. Bella says, on first seeing him, “wow, you got buff!”

I can’t seriously believe she’d choose anybody over him. Just sayin’ is all.

Jayne Mansfield on her love of muscle guys

Taken from "The Wide World of Jayne Mansfield." Jayne, with her usual husky, breathy whisper of a voice, talks about how much she loves muscle guys and sexually fantasizes about gladiators.

This campy, frivolous documentary about Jayne's world tour is actually unintentionally bittersweet because it was made a few months before her death.

Hercules Returns!

For heaping helpings of muscle guys, not to mention that Australian sense of humor that we've all come to know and tolerate, try "Hercules Returns," an Aussie dub of a Sword n' Sandal picture done for comic effect, a la "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist."









I will admit to a love of goofy dubbing effects and their comic value. True story: I saw "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist" the same day I saw the unbearable "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," easily the worst movie ever nominated for Best Picture (at least until The Aviator and Benjamin Button came along!). Perhaps it was high expectations, but I was led to believe by a friend that it was the Martial Arts equivalent of Errol Flynn in Adventures of Robin Hood or Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Boy, was it a disappointment. I had to see another film to wash the taste from my mouth. So I snuck into "Kung Pow: Enter the Fist." And boy, did that film do the trick. It was weird, screwy and funny. What I find most amazing is how almost every scene in the trailer was quite literally the least funny scenes in the film. Predictably enough, the critics didn't "get it." Apparently, none of them played with dubbing equipment when they were growing up.

Arnold vs. Bear: Hercules Goes to New York

After my look at Pumping Iron, a friend recommended I give Hercules Goes to New York another glance, a cheapie starring the current leader of the world's 5th largest economy.

The general effect of the movie is actually kind of depressing. Let me explain that. The movie was made is 1970, a full half-decade after the peplum boom ended and the only way that Hercules and other muscle heroes would be relevant is by poking fun at them. It's sort of like how Shatner and Adam West and other irrelevant actors past their expiration date reinvent themselves as self-parodies living up to their campy image.

I don't find this funny...I find it tragic. For that reason, as heretical as it sounds, I never much liked Blazing Saddles. Just look when it came out: 1974, a year after the last truly relevant Western, the sentimental Sam Pekinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, which was the Hollywood Western's funeral, eulogy and last cry of defiance in one. In that context, Blazing Saddles is like a prop comedian seltzer-squirting a widow at her husband's wake.

When parodies are bigger than the actual thing it parodies, it's a sure sign something is no longer relevant. What I find amazing is that Blazing Saddles is often the only Western that people of my generation have ever seen!

I always thought the moment America stopped taking newspaper science fiction strips with any seriousness was with the Mad Magazine parody of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. Flash Gordon went from a strip with characters people love, to being an irreverent way for magazine writers to talk about an architectural style.

If you need another example, look at the hilarious Rent parody in Team America: World Police, "Everybody Has AIDS." There's such a thing as a parody that is so spot-on, it torpedoes the effectiveness of its target forever, and I'd definitely put "Everybody has AIDS" in that category. No wonder the ten years too late movie version with Rosario Dawson tanked.

Maybe I'm just not getting the joke of movies like Hercules in New York that reinvent their genre as parody, and instead I'm spending my time mourning the end of the peplum. A Norwegian friend of mine told me that there's much more of the Nordic character in me than the Latin, as Latins are a culture that enjoy life whereas I cry much more easily than I can laugh.

Then again, this movie is so weirdly done that with almost all the jokes you're not sure whether to laugh or not, if something is intentionally funny or just an elaborate translation mistake.

There is one bit of humor in the movie, though it's entirely unintentional. This has to go down in history as the most dated-looking film I've ever seen in my life. The best part has to be Arnold's tan cordoroy jacket/turtleneck sweater combo. Most people can guess when a movie is made (give or take three years) just based on how a movie looks, and this is one of the few films I've seen you can guess it to within the actual year.

Believe it or not, the most effective scenes in the film are actually ones where Arnold and his girlfriend are just walking around New York, enjoying each other. They're simple, quiet little scenes where the character of the city of New York is the star, and they're much to be preferred over Arnold stopping a forklift and going "a fine chariot, but where are the horses?" (THAT'S NOT FUNNY!)

The all-time winner has to be this scene:




I can't even identify the best part: the meat-smacking sounds when Arnold pounds that bear (only Harrison Ford has a more distinctive sounding punch) or the fact that, come the midway point, it's obvious the bear is down for the count and Arnold is just whacking it out of sadism. The merry bazouki music is a very weird, whimsical touch.

There was one scene where some New Yorker friends of Hercules got together and suggested that Hercules was just a demented guy that thought he was Hercules. For some reason, this struck me as a much more entertaining premise than the actual movie itself.

Unbelievable Epic Fabio Movie: I suffered for my art, and now it's your turn!

Fabio, he of the Afghan hound tresses and solid square profile known for his endorsement of love and romance the world over, actually produced a supercheesy direct to video film back in 1993 called "A Time For Romance." My favorite is the place on the box art where it calls the Fabster "every woman's perfect man." (Hahahahahaha.)

I know that it's always unwise to link to copywritten material on YouTube because it doesn't last very long up there, but my gut tells me that nobody's going to be challenging this particular infringement anytime soon...except for maybe an embarassed Fabio himself.

Remember a while back when I said Zeb Atlas is the kind of guy you admire but can't help but laugh at? Fabio would be "Exhibit A" when it comes to that definition. I wrote my thoughts on his bizarre fame and my one meeting with him here.

But I have to say, at least he's got a pretty striking profile and at least in this particular movie was built at least as big as most of the Herculeses.

"A Time For Romance" is pretty hilariously bad and unintentionally funny at every point. It's great to see when drunk and with your friends. I swear, at no point does this movie ever ratchet back a notch from "11."

As a side note to amuse my fellow Millennials (or Generation Y, whatever we're called now), the heroine in the first Viking scenario is played by Raja Baroudi, the leader of the Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers. What I find even more amazing is this movie isn't even listed on her IMDB page.



A few things to notice:

Fabio, dressed as a Viking, looks like a young version of Vigo the Carpathian.

6:30 - There's no way to ever possibly do a realistic romance story of this type, because actually being a captive of a Viking or pirate reaver...would actually be pretty horrifying.

6:45 - This shot of our heroine's plunging cleavage is pretty bizarre, especially considering the target audience for this film.



1:08 - Why? Why is Fabio shirtless at this point? The only person that compulsively took his shirt off with this much gusto was Shatner.

3:55 - Is that the same dress Karen Allen wore in Raiders of the Lost Ark?

4:20 - You know, I feel kinda bad even saying this because of my own regional accent and I know firsthand how terrible it is to have your intelligence judged on the basis of how you speak, but still...it's almost laughably funny to hear Fabio speak English. Arnold had an accent, but at least it was obvious he knew the words he was saying meant.

8:12 - The matter-of-fact way rape is discussed in this film is one of the most amusing things about it.



My favorite part about all this is the obvious way they're using public domain music like Pachibel to cut down costs.

0:20 - Is he wearing some sort of wizard's robe? Anyway, it's a vast improvement over his previous outfits, which look like he got them by raiding Liberace's closet.

1:53 - Fabio gets beaten at Chess by some random person. How unintentionally realistic!

2:55- Jesus Christ, that is some horny, angry kissing. It's like watching two Klingons mate.

4:25 - You can just see what Fabio is thinking here. "Hey, where's the Power Ranger chick? You know, the one that's considerably less dumpy looking?"

4:40 - Yeah, I can't believe it either, lady.



0:15 - That is one comically huge rose. It's like something Krusty the Klown would give you during courtship.


Final Fun Fact: according to IMDB, Fabio, as a baby, was the infant in "Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops." Apparently, Fabio was selected by DESTINY to be a supercheesy beefcake star!

Pumping Iron: A Review

Periodically, a list comes up of the greatest film villains of all time, which contain the usual suspects like Hannibal Lecter, Cruella de Ville and Darth Vader. I'm astonished that Arnold Schwarzenegger never made these lists.

Like any good movie, the reason to see it is for the villain, and Pumping Iron makes you truly hate Arnold. His personality dominates the film, Arnold is goal-focused and very intelligent, a guy that you're not sure whether to be frightened of or admire. When asked what he thought he'd do if he thought the other competitors might be better than him, he says "I'd just talk them into losing."

There was also the detail, the one that almost everyone remembers from this film, that Arnold missed his own father's funeral so as to not lose focus on a contest. There have been debates about whether this was actually staged for the film, but considering Arnold's near-fanatic dedication and general coldbloodedness, it's perfectly in character. Additionally, Arnold talking about how a good pump at the gym is better than sex is the kind of grandiose thing a James Bond villain would say in an over-the-top soliloquy, if a James Bond villain was into bodybuilding.



It doesn't surprise me that of all the personalities in the film that Arnold was the one to go on to fame and fortune. He was clearly the smartest person there, and the most driven to the point of scary ruthlessness. It doesn't surprise me at all, after seeing this film, that Arnold went into politics, either. Arnold running for political office is only surprising to people that don't know him. He is a "great" man, the kind that makes other men seem little in comparison besides him, along with Julius Caesar, Teddy Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin.

What's more, it doesn't surprise me that Arnold got his big break as a ruthless and implacable villain, either. The Terminator was the scariest new movie monster since Boris Karloff played the Mummy. What does surprise me, though, is that Arnold got work afterward as a heroic figure.

If you're someone that's never been a bodybuilder, the movie is recommended as a great insight into what this niche sport is all about...which I think was the original purpose of the old Max Rep Astrotitan comics in M&F. The one thing you're left with is the incredible level of fanatacism needed to compete, the minimal rewards, and overpowering sense these guys are doing something very strange.

At times, us fans of muscular guys are so immersed in our interest that at times we lose perspective, and fail to see that, to a lot of people that "don't get it," the devotion to muscularity comes off as very weird. In that sense, while many people point to Pumping Iron as one of the big exposures of bodybuilding to a wider audience, it probably discouraged and turned away more people to the gym than brought in.

I'd be curious to see a followup. I'm sure the modern sport of bodybuilding is as different as an alien planet to the world of 1975.

Anyway, it was worth it to see a few shots of Serge Nubret near his peak!

"Beowulf" is definitely worth a second look

I was absolutely startled to see the Robert Zemeckis film Beowulf. For one thing, the animation was so spot-on after a little while you forgot you were actually looking at a cartoon, something I never forgot in the supercreepy Polar Express, where after coming out from the theater with the kid I was math tutoring I got a delayed attack of the heebie-jeebies.

What's even more extraordinary is that the actor that played Beowulf was Ray Winstone, a great Shakespearean stage actor in his forties with a great Lorne Greene-esque "Voice of Doom" perfect for a mythical hero. Thanks to computer technology, they could take an older actor with an ordinary physique and make him look exactly like Beowulf ought, with powerful muscles, the appropriate age, and a suitably heroic height (when the real Ray Winstone is average, around 5'10" according to IMDB).

Does anyone else realize the potential of this animation technique?


Now you can have a well-trained and skilled actor with a great voice play a heroic, muscular character regardless of piddling little details like age, height or the actual shape of their physique. I for one would love to hear Patrick Stewart's sexy voice come out of Hercules, Tarzan or other mythic heroes; nobody else could be quite as vivid. This is a problem that goes back to the beginning of Peplum: Steve Reeves had to have his voice dubbed because he had a rather un-Greek Montana accent. And let's face it, none of those Hercules, Goliaths or Macistes from the peplum boom were great actors (with the possible exception of Mark Forrest, who I have always thought was extremely underrated as an actual actor).


Ask any casting director and they'll tell you that it is all but impossible to find a Meryl Streep or Anne Hathaway type that is beautiful, intelligent and can act! Those three Venn diagram circles very rarely meet together, after all. Nowhere is this problem more obvious than in the camp-classic Flash Gordon, which featured Topol and Brian Blessed, two of my favorite actors of all time, not to mention Timothy Dalton and Max von Sydow, all of whom were perfectly cast and brilliantly acted. The one standout terrible performance is the actor who played the title character, a Playgirl model meathead that was clearly given the part on the basis of his physique, and who couldn't hold his own against the international all-star cast. It's somehow a tribute to what a nonentity he was that right now I just can't remember his name.


In fact, name me one good actor, the kind you can imagine playing Hercules, Beowulf or Flash Gordon, with large muscles. Even the very handsome Dwayne Johnson (the only good-looking professional wrestler in the entire history of that sport) is not that great an actor, though he makes up for it with a ton of personality and charisma that makes him very, very watchable. Still, I can't see him saying "I come for the woman...and your head!" without cracking a smile a little bit.

A good actor is as rare as a good physique, and both are as rare as a good sports star. In fact, come to think of it, that's part of why the WNBA has marketing problems: they want a talented athlete that is also extremely camera-friendly, telegenic and attractive to be the symbol of their league, sort of like how the very beautiful and personable Venus and Serena Williams are to women's tennis or the rugged Joe Namath was to the struggling NFL. But the trouble is, their WNBA players look like...well...WNBA players. Amazing how, in something like ten years, that just hasn't worked out for them. It just goes to show how very rarely talent, personality and looks come together.

As a big fan of Tarzan, I've never found an actual actor that was ever as entirely buyable as the big, bad Mr. T, as almost any given illustration of the character. This isn't a problem anymore with the Beowulf motion-capture technology.


People that talk about CGI near-constantly always say it's the "next big thing" and the next step for film, but I've never been convinced. CGI has a big limitation: no matter how good it gets, you can always tell that it isn't a physical object. It doesn't have a sense of solidity. In fact, the best CGI using blockbuster was the first to use the technique, Jurassic Park, because computer imagery was their last choice and not their first and it was supplanted with traditional techniques like puppets and claymation. Beowulf on the other hand, because everything was animated, no one thing stood out as "fake." It actually did live up to the promise the special effects people offered when they started to use computers for special effects.

Beowulf came out two years ago, and in that time I'm a little astonished that the real significance of this film hasn't entirely been acknowledged, not just technologically (since then no other movie has been made with this technique) but also in the history of animation as well, and how Beowulf represented a shift in the way animation is discussed, something I don't think anyone else noticed. Here's what I mean by that: you can't ever read a book about Fritz the Cat's Ralph Bakshi without them going on about how darn shocking Bakshi's adult and counterculture themed animation was, especially in cartooning "best identified with Disney-style wholesomeness and kids movies." Heck, if you need another example, look at how badly Nelvana's animated Rock n' Rule crashed at the box office.


Whenever anybody does an animated movie that handles very adult themes, almost all discussion of the movie focuses in on that to the exclusion of everything else, the shock that an animated film isn't a "kid's cartoon." But here was Beowulf, a movie that is animated every bit as much as the Pixar stuff, which nonetheless features drinking, debauchery, violence and a naked Angelina Jolie, and yet you don't get the usual shocked expression from the critics or nonsensical statements like "animation has finally grown up!" (I'd like to strangle any journalist that ever typed that phrase.) Yet nobody noticed this. It was absolutely extraordinary, a real turning point for those of us that like sophisticated animation.

My friend and regular blog reader ManofSteel spends his time using a computer to create his disturbingly specific idea of the perfect man, who despite his best protestations is a dead ringer for Christopher Reeve. Personally, I don't have a single perfect man (though Ulisses Jr. comes close), but a range of twenty or thirty guy types, a series of male fantasies that would be absolutely perfect for me: some sweet, bookish and shy, some hunky, dangerous and masculine, some that are black and others tanned or Asian, some curly haired and others straight, some blue eyed and others brown, and so on. But regardless, if you want to have a "perfect guy" in a movie, the Beowulf technique would be the way to do it. Even Matt Damon gets zits sometime, but a computer model doesn't have to.


For all these reasons, I think Beowulf is worth a second look, not just for its vast potential, but for no other reason than it might have started another boom in muscleman movies. Another thing I find extraordinary about Beowulf is that for the first time, people were talking about Steve Reeves again. One really sarcastic New York Times review said that "somewhere, I hope Steve Reeves is watching this and smiling down from beefcake heaven."


(And incidentally, on the subject of traditional animation, I just saw the promo for the Princess and the Frog. Great idea, guys: do the exact same kind of ubertraditional movie that tanked that kind of film in the first place. Apparently it's supposed to be different because the princess here is black, but as my hero Mr. Spock once said, "A difference that makes no difference is no difference." This particularly smarts on a personal level, because I originally started to go to college to study animation and design. I left to study mathematics because incredibly enough, Disney closed its cel-division, an act even then seemed both temporary and shortsighted. With that, I just changed my major...as, by the way, half of my classmates did when they heard the news. I always thought they'd bring their cel-department back by doing something edgy and unexpected the way studios do when they don't have anything left to lose, and I'm extremely disappointed to be wrong here.)

Mike Nelson spoofs Steve Reeves in "The Giant of Marathon"

Since my academic issues are starting to wind down, I've had a lot more free time (not that much, of course). YouTube has a new Movies channel, with free, high-quality ready to watch films. Many of them are laughably bad ones, but there are a few gems, like Robert Townsend's HOLLYWOOD SHUFFLE. Townsend, at first, seemed like a visionary with this movie on the level of Cronenberg or Spike Lee, but alas, 20 years later he seems like the movie equivalent of a one-hit wonder. There's also INVASION OF THE BEE GIRLS, one of Roger Ebert's favorite guilty pleasures, that was the screenwriting debut of Nicholas Meyer, a man known to me through two fandoms: he was the author of the Sherlock Holmes novel THE SEVEN PER-CENT SOLUTION and also wrote the screenplay of its movie adaptation, and he was also the screenwriter and director of the best of the Star Trek movies, WRATH OF KHAN.


There are also a ton of the Brucesploitation movies made after the Little Dragon's death, starring Bruce Lei, Bruce Le, and Bruce Li. The best of the lot has to be BRUCE LEE IN NEW GUINEA, which is more like a cross between a Bruce Lee film and Tintin comics.

One of the highlights is also the Steve Reeves camp-classic, the GIANT OF MARATHON. Even with Steve Reeves's physical perfection, it's hard to watch. But wait, what's that? It features a commentary track by Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy where they crack wise! It's like watching a movie with your funniest friends while drunk.


Like I said before, GIANT OF MARATHON is basically a Western set in Ancient Greece, with a clean-limbed hero that loves independence and the wilderness, with villains that are scheming plotters that try to marry the hero's girl as a part of their schemes, and there's even the Persians standing in for Indians, with Steve Reeves leading a cavalry charge that saves the day.


It's worth watching, not just for Steve Reeves but also Mike Nelson spoofing the entire proceedings. His bits on YouTube are a worthy successor to Mystery Science Theater.

Unfortunately, embedding is forbidden so just take the link.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n43UkxXcVLg

Male Celebs with a taste for beefcake

A while ago I wrote an article about female celebs with a taste for beefcake, a list dominated by the stellar personality of Mae West to the point where I wrote the article and even I can’t remember who else was on it. After writing that piece I feel like kicking myself for not including many, many others that I've learned about since then, the biggest name being fifties blonde bombshell/sex symbol Jayne Mansfield, who married bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay.

In any case, I thought it’d be amusing to do the converse, an article that was the flip-side version of that one, with male celebs into muscular ladies.


Gregory Hines


Greg Hines was one of the greatest tap dancers in history, and was also a friend of bodybuilding: he would often be seen in the audience of exhibitions. The woman he was engaged to marry at the time of his death was a female bodybuilder, Negrita Jayde.

Jean-Claude van Damme

Who knew that the Muscles from Brussels was a fanboy for female bodybuilders? Apparently, as a weedy teen in Belgium with cokebottle-thick glasses, Jean Claude used to read all the fitness magazines and had a gigantic crush on Gladys “The Tigress” Portugues, one of the stars of PUMPING IRON II: THE WOMEN. With his usual go-getter spirit, when JC first moved to LA as a virtual unknown and penniless nobody, he found out where Gladys was having a photo shoot and tried to woo and win her over…a scenario that sounds like the plot of a B-romantic comedy.

Jean-Claude is someone I have a great deal of sympathy for, which is surprising because in all honesty I’ve never seen one of his movies from start to finish. Except for maybe some of Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks’s pictures or the occasional Western, I’ve never liked action movies, and certainly not the “I’m tougher than you” violent and revenge-themed sort that van Damme made in the late 1980s. Van Damme reminds me of a late-period Steve Reeves, forgotten because Hollywood no longer made the kind of movies he was famous for and totally unable to reinvent himself.

R. Crumb

Underground cartoonist R. Crumb seemed to be a professional deviant weirdo, but one of the biggest cartoons of his was “What to do With a Strong Girl.” Incidentally, if you haven’t seen the R. CRUMB biopic movie, do yourself a favor and see it: it’s easily the funniest and weirdest movie ever. The film’s sense of humor can be summarized with the movie’s opening line: “When I was eight years old, I found I was sexually attracted to Minnie Mouse.”

Alex Daoud

The mayor of Miami Beach during the heady “Scarface” and "Miami Vice" cocaine cowboy days in the eighties when everything Miami was cool. Alex Daoud was a former boxer, a big tough and flamboyant guy that was not only corrupt as hell and associated with organized crime, but also laughably obvious about it, yet who somehow oversaw Miami Beach’s explosion and renaissance into a world-class destination and was easily one of the city’s best mayors. I can think of very few people universally beloved by both elderly Jews and European clubbers.

Somehow, Alex Daoud comes off as much more likeable and interesting than any squeaky-clean do-gooder or political white knight, because here was a man that knew how to TCB. And he was totally into female muscle girls, which makes his book tour all the more surreal, as everywhere he went, he was flanked on either side by foxy female bodybuilders.

The Filmography of Steve Reeves

One of the greatest misconceptions about Steve Reeves is his association with Hercules, since Steve Reeves only did a career grand total of two Hercules films. It reminds me a little of the assumption that Mae West and W.C. Fields did a ton of movies together, when in fact they only did one, MY LITTLE CHICKADEE.

The movie where Steve Reeves was at the height of his sexuality was his version of the arabesque the THIEF OF BAGHDAD. This was one occasion where the 1924 Douglas Fairbanks original was far better than the Reeves version.

BATTLE OF MARATHON has Steve Reeves in yet another non-Hercules movie. What struck me about THE BATTLE OF MARATHON (a version of the Greek battle against the Persians of the same name) is that it was a Western with men in skirts. The hero is a straightforward, strong rural man with an uncomplicated view of life and a love of the land, whereas the villains are conniving schemers that use their hold to force a girl to marry them. The Persians are a pretty good stand in for marauding Indians, and Steve Reeves even leads a cavalry charge to save the day with extra Spartan help. At one point, the captive girl was even tied to the front of a ship; I have a feeling they did this because in Ancient Greece there weren't any train tracks. GIANT OF MARATHON had two women, just as in most Westerns: the "bad" woman (usually a prostitute of some kind) and a "good" woman (the schoolmarm).

Here's one of my favorite Steve Reeves stories: Steve Reeves was a part of the original Broadway cast of KISMET in 1955. During rehearsals, Reeves performed an extremely complicated bodybuilding move, and defied anyone in the audience to do the move even a single time.

Bonnie Evans, a dancer that weighed 5' and 100 pounds, said that not only could she do the move, she could do it more times than Reeves could.

"More than 25 reps? Never!"

"I'll do fifty." She said.

And she did! Afterwards Steve Reeves had to scoop Bonnie up and rush her in a taxi to the hospital, but the very next day she went back to doing the peppy Ababu dance numbers. Steve Reeves stood in the background and watched her every move: after that experience, he was a big Bonnie Evans fan.

Movies that would have benefitted from a little bulge

I love movies - love them - and I hope I can be forgiven for blogging about them a little bit

There are some movies that could have stood for a fellow like Victor Mature to be the "and more" for the ladies.

Some movies wouldn't be better off with a few healthy, muscular and virile male leads, however. For instance, the MAGNIFICENT SEVEN had the incredible Steve McQueen to ramp up the flick's testosterone quotient.

(On an unrelated note, I lived for many years in France and Turkey, and I always found it amusing how Europeans (and to a lesser extent, Asians) love and value the Western genre and we Americans tend to take them for granted. With the exception of pseudo-Westerns like No Country for Old Men, Westerns are more or less dead stateside, which is a shame.)

ATLANTIS, THE LOST CONTINENT (1961)

What I find the most interesting about George Pal is how sterling his reputation is, despite the fact that his ratio of hits to misses is of downright Chevy Chasian proportions. Remember how long it took Scorcese and Spielberg to recover, respectively, from the flops of NEW YORK, NEW YORK and 1941, and how totally wrecked Michael Cimino's career was by Heaven's Gate? Pal's Tom Thumb was a poor excuse for family entertainment, his Doc Savage was a lousy campstravaganza in the style of the Adam West Batman TV show (after which, I am certain, Pal died out of shame), and the low watermark had to be Atlantis, generally considered to be George Pal's worst movie.

Atlantis sounds really great on paper: a love story between a Greek fisherman who rescues an Atlantean princess, set around the destruction of a sexy, decadent civilization that looks like a cross between Ancient Greece and the Jabba the Hutt palace scenes in Return of the Jedi.

What I find lacking is the absence of real beefcake and man-candy, especially since this seems to be a requirement for man-sized movies about guys in sandals and little skirts. The male lead was almost as surprisingly uninteresting as Brad Pitt's unfunny and unsexy turn as Achilles in TROY, and it's a tribute to the male actor's dullness in Atlantis that for the life of me I just can't think of his name. It doesn't help the female lead was equally boring and also something less than a knockout: she was like the frumpier, more prudish older sister of a Bond girl.

Atlantis, the Lost Continent is something that almost never happens: the people in front of the camera are unknowns that remained unknown (and lack even the basic cult following of someone like John Phillip Law or Nancy Kovacs), while the person behind is a household name like George Pal. The only other example of this would be the fascinating eighties adventure teen flick Young Sherlock Holmes, which was produced by Spielberg and Henry Winkler and directed by Barry Levinson (prior to his Oscar for Rain Man).

To be fair, Atlantis had more off the wall George Pal innovation, who even in his worst movie had much more imagination than even the better Italian Sword n' Sandal pictures. Take the bizarre Moreau like animal men, and a scene inside an iron-age submarine. What I find surprising is how the Italians did a lot more with less when it came to charismatic and sexy actors that liven up a screen: take the entire career of Steve Reeves, the handsomest and most perfect man who ever lived, or a supersexy exotic showgirl-dancer like Chelo Alonso. I've also seen more than my fair share of Turkish movies, and what Turkish movies lack in anything resembling production value, they make up for with attractive and personable men and women. It's something you don't need a big budget to have, which inexplicably Atlantis lacks. If ever there was a movie that needed a big Greek muscle stud, it would be this one.

On a final note, there was one project of George Pal's that could have saved his reputation, one of movies' great What-Ifs: Time Machine II. The idea of George Pal doing a sequel to his greatest masterpiece should be enough to get any science fiction fan's pulse racing, but also claymation master Ray Harryhausen would have been on board to make all the weird creatures! Why it never happens I'll never understand.

That's my big one: which movies do you think would have benefitted from a little muscle? Fire away in the comments section below.

Man Candy: Jason Scott Lee

Jason Scott Lee, like Charleton Heston, spends the majority of his career without pants on. Good for us, because of his startling legs: they're quick and rhythmic, like a ballet dancer's, that you can just fantize rhythmically making love to you. Thighs like that should be outlawed.

I never entirely bought Jason Scott Lee as Bruce Lee in THE DRAGON STORY, because while Bruce Lee was unquestionably a great athlete and actor, his appeal was that he was a likeable everyman, a working-class sort (which is why he is so very identifiable). Jason Scott Lee, though, is a Greek God, clearly handsome, the hottest guy playing beach volleyball.

The very best movie of JSL's career was RAPA NUI. RAPA NUI (1994) is a fascinating movie about a fascinating time: the last days of the vanished people on Easter Island. The most overused word on IMDB is "underrated," but RAPA NUI really was underrated and unappreciated: it's easily one of my ten favorite dramas of all time. The story was based on class conflict. Two suitors want a woman, one of the high-caste long ears (Jason Scott Lee), the other of the low-caste laborers that build the Moai, the giant stone heads that adorn the island, who compete for the love of a woman in the Bird-Man, a supreme triathlon that challenges JSL's hard, agile muscles.

The story is about the insane drive to build the Moai at all costs, and is easily the strongest performance of Esai Morales's career, his anger and rage palpable at an unjust society. The images from it stick with you: one of my favorites was Jason Scott Lee weeping as he clenched the very last tree left on the entire island to prevent it from being cut down.

Easter Island is a lonely place: no land anywhere for 1,000 miles, the inhabitants see only infinite ocean in every direction, with themselves as the only people on earth. The ecological theme speaks for itself, all the more frightening because it was something that actually happened.

One of the best Jason Scott Lee movies was Steven Summers's JUNGLE BOOK, which is easily the best A-list Tarzan movie ever. Yeah, I know it's about Mowgli, but c'mon. There was no "boy" anywhere here. The story had animal sidekicks, a wild man struggling with whether he was human or an animal, and lots of Tarzan-esque plot threads like wooing a beautiful English woman of society with competition from a handsome but douchey civilized suitor (here, it was Princess Bride's Cary Elywes at his absolute hammy best), and that most Tarzan-esque of all plots, the discovery of a lost city.

Most Asian actors only get "Asian-guy" parts, however, it's interesting to note that Jason Scott Lee played a Mexican (BORN IN EAST L.A.), a Polynesian (RAPA NUI), an Eskimo (MAP OF THE HUMAN HEART), an Indian (JUNGLE BOOK), a Hawaiian (LILO AND STICH, voice only). The only thing he has yet to play is a Swede, but then again he's not dead yet...

Tarzan Lives

There are certain things that Hollywood can and will do over and over, no matter how many times it's been done before. Every five to ten years there's always another THREE MUSKETEERS, Sherlock Holmes, or Tarzan.

Recently, there are rumors going around of another Tarzan movie, to be directed by Steven Sommers (who did a "stealth" remake of Tarzan with his excellent live-action JUNGLE BOOK, starring the always brawny and charismatic Jason Scott Lee). Now there's something exciting to look forward to. The last halfway decent beefcake movie was the intriguing BEOWULF.

Me, my personal favorite Tarzan was always Gordon Scott, who had a great physique, and one of the most startling v-shaped torsos ever: it's like he was an upside-down cone.

For the handsomest Tarzan, it had to be the extremely dashing, debonair Mike Henry. Wow, what a cutie! Nothing better than those cute dumbo ears of his.

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!).

Indiana Jones and the Disk of the Fangirl

The release of INDIANA JONES AND THE CRYSTAL SKULL coincides with my discovery of several 3 1/2" floppies from my years in High School. I found some stories on there, most of which were so bad that I'd laugh at them if it wasn't for the fact they were written by ME, albeit at age sixteen.

(Actually, I have a good sexy, romantic one set in the Stone Age with a cave stud that has potential...I could rewrite it maybe. My peepz over at musclegrowth.org would eat it like candy.)

One of the pieces I had on there was a particularly goofy piece of Indiana Jones fanfiction where I gushed about Harrison Ford's "hard chest" and his "musky aftershave." Hehehehe. I could picture my braces-filled metal smile as I told my stuffed animals how much tongue I'd give Harrison Ford on the first date.

I'm not going to repost any of it here, out of shame (hey, we were all sixteen once). But there was one fascinating ballroom dancing scene where Harrison wore the white tux from TEMPLE OF DOOM. The sex was...well, you can imagine. Lots of histrionics and bursting fireworks. In marked contrast to the almost gynocological way I describe sex now that I'm a bitter, worldly chain-smoker that's slightly pissed at men.

But I do love Harrison Ford. He hasn't aged a day for me. Roger Ebert put it best when he said Ford didn't get older, he just got frownier. Ford was one of the big influences on me becoming a fan of muscle men, because of how pumped and fit and big and rugged he was, especially in TEMPLE OF DOOM, where the credits listed "Body By Jake's" as the guys responsible for Harrison Ford.

I don't know who I liked best: bad boy Harrison Ford as Han Solo, or rugged outdoorsy Harrison Ford as Indy.

Big Dragon definitely shows an influence of both: he's rugged like Indy, but roguish and a scoundrel like Han Solo. There was one line in BG that was especially Harrison Fordish: he slips a gun to Morgan and with a wink says, "It's rough out there, kid."

As for the movie itself: KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is one of the best adventure movies I've seen in years. It's because of Spielberg's direction; he's still the auteur film school director he was in the seventies. He shows action by moving the camera, instead of the frenetic Hong Kong style. The story was very involved and in the classic Indy style. I'm particularly glad about the return of the fear/horror elements that faded to the background during LAST CRUSADE. Although this time, they've changed with the times: Indy's 50s menaces are more paranormal and psychic than occult.

Replacing the Nazi mania for the supernatural is the Russian obsession with psychics, UFOs, and ancient astronauts. The main villainess, a supercool dominatrix, is hinted at being one of the "remote viewers" that the KGB used in an attempt for psychic spying.

The best sequence in the entire movie is one where Indiana Jones wanders onto an atomic bomb test site. It was a great exploration of Indy's mortality. With that scene, we realize in a flash that the Indiana Jones that beat the Nazis was no match for the Cold War and Atomic Age. If the film has any drawbacks, it would be that this fascinating idea wasn't really explored.

Other than that, this movie sticks to its pulp inspirations pretty well. There were a few scenes right out of Leigh Brackett's writing (one sequence, no spoilers but you'll know it when you see it, seemed lifted from Brackett's NEMESIS FROM TERRA). Another scene involving giant ant swarms was seemingly borrowed from Lester Dent's Doc Savage novel, FEAR CAY. Though Lester Dent wrote his scene with his usual panache: the horde of ants "had an odor like vinegar" and sounded like "the sizzle of ten pounds of bacon."

And case anybody is wondering, yes, there is a scene where Harrison Ford does take his shirt off. He's got great muscles for a man his age. I haven't seen a guy's built look good since Reg Park.