A real Clash of the Titans

This incredible photograph came from Clint Walker's own personal website at www.clintwalker.com, featuring Steve Reeves meeting up with Clint Walker. I would kill to know the circumstances and story. There definitely has to be one!

Now for the big question: which would I prefer, Clint Walker or Steve Reeves?

Well, Steve Reeves was the world's most perfectly developed man, but Clint Walker had a deep baritone voice and a masculine chest. Both have startling blue eyes.

I would have to give the prize to Clint Walker at least for right now, because apparently he isn't half-bad a singer. Yes, that sounds silly, but anything to break the tie.

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

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.

Steve Reeves Forever!

There is one thing I will absolutely never get tired of, and that's looking at vintage physique photography of Steve Reeves. As an undergrad, when I still lived in housing, I had a giant Steve Reeves poster on the wall above my bed, which I used to give a light "good morning" peck to when I got up in the morning. Classically handsome, chiseled, with a physique like an Olympian god. He was perfectly cast as demigods like Hercules; only when playing mere mortals did he ever seem unbelievable. For actors, usually the reverse is true: it's hard to swallow that they're larger than life beings. I suspect this is why Reeves was so seldom seen outside Sword n' Sandal, a genre that was particularly perfect for him. It's hard to believe Reeves as a Rock Hudson-esque "suitor next door" in a romantic comedy, for instance. He was too blue-eyed, classically perfect and mythically physiqued.

It's hard to believe Steve Reeves turned down the part of James Bond in the original DR. NO, and the Clint Eastwood part in A FISTFULL OF DOLLARS. Sergio Leone's FISTFULL, incidentally, marked the end of the assembly-line S&S movie in Italy, as overnight they switched to producing the "Spaghetti Westerns." I have a feeling Reeves regretted that move, because he was from Montana and he always saw the highlight of his career was his one and only Western. It's funny how lead actors in Westerns and Sword n' Sandal pics are so very interchangeable.

I have no idea if Steve Reeves was approached to play Captain Kirk before Shatner was, but that would have been too perfect. There would be another role they had Reeves in mind that went on to become an institution with another actor. Reeves is the only person that would have been a worse. Actor. Than. William Shatner.

It may sound like I'm a little harsh on Reeves there, but I suspect one of the best-kept secrets in Hollywood is that Charleton Heston was actually a pretty crappy actor. But Heston had a presence that filled a movie. Much the same way Reeves's presence did the same for his films: you didn't pay to see acting, you paid to see a personality.

Healthy, massive, flawless, without roid-bloat, Reeves gets you nostalgic for a different kind of male physique ideal than the current, crazy "size over everything" crowd. I'd have a hard time calling him the handsomest man ever as long as Ulisses Williams Jr. exists, but that is certainly a label that, if it is an exaggeration, it isn't much of one.

Some might complain about the black and white photography, but I think this is missing the point. First, the reason most older physique pics are in black and white is because the world was black and white back then. Second, physique photography is meant to be in black and white. It turned limitation into a necessity by the use of contrast between light and dark on sun-glistening flesh.

Steve Reeves will be missed. I'm especially sad he died before he could make his cameo appearance in Ridley Scott's GLADIATOR. Now that would have been interesting.

I wonder...will the angels ask to feel his arms in heaven?