When Embassy Pictures decided to import 14 assorted peplum films from Italy, add dubbing and narration in English, and sell the whole package to American TV as "The Sons of Hercules", they came up with one hell of an earworm to bookend the whole thing. Check it out:
The mighty sons of Hercules
Once thundered through the years
These men of steel could never feel
The curse of a coward's fears
The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They burned with dreams,
Then turned their dreams into history
A hundred giants brave and bold
They ruled the world in days of old
The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They took the world
And shook the world
The sons of Hercules!
Seriously, we walked around randomly singing this tune for days afterward. Well done, Ted Lehrman and Leonard Whitcup, even if you sorta rhymed "dreams" with "dreams".
It turns out that we've already encountered two of the films Embassy repackaged, namely Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules -- back in 2009 (!!!) -- and, far more recently, Goliath and the Dragon. However Mill Creek used theatrical prints for those, so we didn't get Lehrman and Whitcup's delightful tune until now.
In any event the three films below bring our Sons of Hercules total to five, though unlike our recent Gamera reviews, we have no plans to track down the remaining nine: we go the extra mile for giant turtles, but not giant sandals. Or swords. (Oh, be quiet, Rajah.)
The mighty sons of Hercules
Once thundered through the years
These men of steel could never feel
The curse of a coward's fears
The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They burned with dreams,
Then turned their dreams into history
A hundred giants brave and bold
They ruled the world in days of old
The mighty sons of Hercules
Were men as men should be
They took the world
And shook the world
The sons of Hercules!
Seriously, we walked around randomly singing this tune for days afterward. Well done, Ted Lehrman and Leonard Whitcup, even if you sorta rhymed "dreams" with "dreams".
It turns out that we've already encountered two of the films Embassy repackaged, namely Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules -- back in 2009 (!!!) -- and, far more recently, Goliath and the Dragon. However Mill Creek used theatrical prints for those, so we didn't get Lehrman and Whitcup's delightful tune until now.
In any event the three films below bring our Sons of Hercules total to five, though unlike our recent Gamera reviews, we have no plans to track down the remaining nine: we go the extra mile for giant turtles, but not giant sandals. Or swords. (Oh, be quiet, Rajah.)
[aka Maciste, l'uomo più forte del mondo]
Grade: C+
Is this the best peplum movie we've seen so far? It certainly has some of the strongest production values, with huge, expansive sets and wonderfully goofy costume design.
It's also got Val from HR, who always tells you about her kids and questionable politics before signing off on your paperwork. (Get a couple drinks in her and maybe she'll have a thing or two to say about black people, too -- but who are you going to complain to? HR?)
Speaking of folks of African descent, Hercules Jr. aka Maciste (Mark Forest) gets a companion early on when he saves Bangor (Paul Wynter) from being sacrificed by the Mole Men. Sadly, Herc was unable to rescue his brothers Portland, Caribou, and Bar Harbor.
And speaking of the titular Mole Men, the title isn't an example of sex discrimination, as it's only males that we see with the distinctive white skin, white hair, and amazing headgear. No surprise that they're deathly vulnerable to the rays of the sun, though if it weren't for a very prominent death scene in the film's opening, the bad day-for-night cinematography might leave you confused about the details.
In fact all the women we meet seem to be captives from the surface, like Princess Saliura/Salirah (Raffaella Carrà), or the interesting-looking Tulac (Gloria Hendy) who knows Bangor from the way-back.
Gloria's sister Janine is also in the cast as a harp-playing handmaiden; in real life, the two of them spent some time in Italian cinema before apparently becoming successful antiques dealers.
The one non-captive woman we meet is Queen Halis Mojab (Moira Orfei), a cruel and remote monarch who likes to wear outfits that look like leftovers from a high-end musical. How is it (one wonders) that the queen of the Mole Men doesn't have the complexion of the men? Is it just that women in these movies need to be "hot", and fright wigs and white pancake makeup don't do the trick for most of us?
We won't claim Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules isn't predictable; we were able to call certain lines outright from the script before that happened -- not that it's a feat of intuition to know the Queen will say "Who are those two [men]?" as soon as Maciste and Bangor pop into her view. After all, like George Eads, queens have needs.
But despite being on the longer side by box standards, Mole Men trots along nicely for the most part, and those sweet, sweet production values certainly help...
...even if they make some off-the-wall choices -- no, scratch that, because they make some off-the-wall choices.
OK, maybe there was one scene too many with Mark Forest straining mightily against some obstacle or other, but that's the Superman problem: how do you generate suspense when you know the strong man always wins?
Actually, the strong man seriously screws up at one point, though he shrugs off the dozens of deaths that result. Wasn't his fault, after all. And now, have a comically oversized novelty gong:
[aka Hercules the Invincible; Ercole l'invincibile]
Grade: C-
Hey, déjà vu, because this is damn near the same plot as Mole Men. We've got the civilization that lives underground (but keeps horses), enslaves its neighbors, and wears funny costumes. We've got the evil, power-hungry queen with a penchant for disguise, the youthful princess she intends to sacrifice -- and a lot more bad day-for-night cinematography.
And of course we've got the usual clichés that come with the territory, like the ceremonial execution that doubles as a test of strength -- and when our Herculean offspring Argolese (Dan Vadis) unexpectedly rises to the challenge, well, that really gets Queen Etel (Carla Calò) all hot and bothered:
But despite being a bit shorter, Land of Darkness isn't as much fun as Mole Men. Many parts that didn't have a parallel in Mole Men still felt like a rehash, as in the "sack the village" scene that differed little from a similar scene in Fire Monsters (though without the red underwear). And giant wheels are in fashion, it seems.
Instead of a muscular hunk as his second, this son of Hercules has a middle-aged poltroon, Babar (Mario De Simone, mysteriously uncredited on IMDb). At first we feared endless scenes of "comic" relief, but after some cowering and chicken-eating, Babar soon rises to the occasion and pulls his weight, to our pleasant surprise.
The biggest annoyance, though, was the chumbly wumbly bear that pops up in the first act and shambles behind the characters for a while. Then he attacks Argolese for no reason, has his life spared, wanders off...and never shows up again. The filmmakers squandered a perfect opportunity to bring him back at the end and have him off a bad guy or two, but instead, we get Chekhov's bear, hanging on the wall and never fired: a rookie mistake.
Yet another issue: this print of Land of Darkness was edited to make two one-hour episodes -- which would inevitably involve a lot of repetition -- and then "un-edited" (whether by Mill Creek or someone else) with awkward results, including a couple of hard cuts. We were warned, since the opener bills itself as "Part I", but it's still bizarre when, at around the 50 minute mark, the narration suddenly kicks in again...and we get a spoiler-heavy montage of the last third of the plot, before continuing with the movie! I guess Part II must have rehashed one hell of a lot of Part I, since we were well over half done with the film by then.
Anyway, complaints aside, there were enough fun characters, neat surprises (like opening a silly dance number with buff male dancers), silly outfits, and attractive sets to make Land of Darkness an OK watch. It's not great, but compared to some of the painful specimens on this box, "not great" is pretty decent.
Oddly, some of the spoilers for Part II looked better than the actual scenes in context, as Mill Creek's print gets blown out in the closing minutes for whatever reason. Also, is there some sort of anamorphic widescreen going on? The default 4:3 looked squeezed and narrow, but when we told VLC to use 16:9, things clicked. It's important to view Dan Vadis's nipples in the right aspect ratio, after all.
[aka Anthar the Invincible; The Slave Merchants; Soraya, Queen of the Desert; etc.]
Grade: n/a
Logical, then, that we'd review the fourth film sooner or later, right? But Devil in the Desert has had to wait nearly a decade to get its due...and sadly, we're not actually going to do a proper review, as it didn't really get our full attention. Maybe it was peplum fatigue; maybe it was knowing the film didn't "really" count as part of the 250-pack; or maybe it was the disappointment of finding out that the titular devil wasn't a whirling tornado, or even a red-painted muscleman à la Henry Rollins in "Liar", but just this guy:
Now Zontar, Robot Monster, and that movie with Claude Rains and space intestines in a cave? They all legitimately belong on a 50 Sci-Fi Classics box set. And at least Mole Men and Land of Darkness are films where the hero fights a dragon, explores a subterranean civilization, or otherwise investigates the fantastic and supernormal.
But Devil in the Desert is...just your average Arabian adventure. Precisely where isn't specified, though it was filmed in Algeria. OK, at one point Anthar does fight a rhinoceros for some reason (presumably credit card-related):
Otherwise it's all camels, tents, harems, and sand, with no business being on a science fiction box set or a horror box set. True, one could say the same of Hercules and the Masked Rider, but that one replaced a film duplicated elsewhere on the 250-pack (which is why there's so much peplum in this last leg: six dupes in 50 Sci-Fi Classics got swapped out for five sword-and-sandal movies).
So Mill Creek probably made a wise move in cutting this one, even if they only did it for copyright reasons -- and apparently, they reinstated Devil in the Desert when they reissued 50 Sci-Fi Classics back in 2009, so those reasons can't have been too pressing.
We haven't seen Mill Creek's version, but we're guessing it looks like the ass-quality prints commonly found online. We started out with a YouTube download whose image was so unstable that, mid-viewing, we changed over to a much better widescreen copy from Archive.org that was much better (though the colors were still washed-out, and the sound rather strident).
Though Devil in the Desert left us yawning, it has some ambitious set pieces and seems to be well-regarded among peplum fans, and apparently a high-quality DVD was released in PAL territories under the Anthar l'invincibile title. It's nice to know a clean copy exists -- who knows, maybe we'll see it someday and change our minds.
But then again, without a male chorus singing of "men as men should be", how could it compare?
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