Tales of Bacchus and Uranus

It's no revelation that peplum films recycle a lot of the same props, actors, plots, and so forth. Still, it was kind of astonishing how much these two had in common -- and we're not just talking about the usual stuff, e.g.:

• the evil queen who falls in love with Hercules after he survives a test of strength;
• the soldier who reports a failed mission and is summarily executed;
• the natural disaster that overtakes the kingdom once Hercules inevitably wins.

Yes, those things are present, but so are more idiosyncratic things like:

• hidden sanctums harboring glowing objects that serve as centers of occult power and empower the evil queen -- at a severe price;
• drugged wine that Hercules is, for once (or twice!), too smart to imbibe;
• close female relatives of the evil queen whom she sacrifices to preserve her power;
• giant gongs whose beater Hercules briefly uses as a weapon;
• scenes where almost everything onscreen is blotted out by dust, wind, and storms;
• soundtracks heavy on electronic sound effects;
• ...and long strings of dialogue involving "Uranus" that, after some initial resistance, eventually had us in stitches.

(Yes, we're twelve.)

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Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964)
[aka Maciste e la regina di Samar]

Grade: C-

This is one of those titles that immediately makes you think "camp". Hercules Against the Moon Men? How can this be anything other than a ridiculous mash-up of cheap fantasy and cheap sci-fi, a contrivance that makes Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla seem like the most natural thing in the world?

(Note: we haven't actually seen Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, at least not yet. We're sure it's lovely.)

Well, the narration sets it up for us:

"That fatal night, a fiery mass dropped from the sky onto Earth, causing the mountain of Samar to erupt and burn everything around it, leaving nothing but a wasteland. Within the bowels of the mountain, a new and monstrous life was formed. From that day on the people of Samar, in order to survive, were forced to offer their children as a sacrifice to the hungry Mountain of Death."

Heavy duty.

From that prologue -- and ours at the start of this post -- you already know the deal, and can safely assume that evil Queen Samara (Jany Clair) is just fine with the status quo. Actually, that's not quite so: she wants to go further, and establish complete dominion over the world (the same thing we do every night, Pinky).

We find out early on that Samara is in touch with a weird alien apparition that, above all, wants her to kill Hercules (Sergio Ciani). Could this have anything to do with the mysterious mountain of death? Will Samara somehow capture Hercules and put him through a test of...?

OK, that's a yes. And will she become smitten with...?

Huh, OK, that's kinda kinky, but whatever. (Whatever she says, Jany's not done with Sergio -- and given how she guides his hands to her neck, apparently the ragdoll thing is her kink.)

And will she spike his wine with...?

...OK, then.

So it's not the basic plot of Moon Men where the interest lies, but one thing we really liked is that every time we had a suggestion for Hercules, he went and did it. For example, we asked: why bend two bars at once when you could focus on pulling one bar to the side with both hands?

"Done," says Sergio Ciani. Or, when confronted by a linebackers' wall of slow-moving golems, we said aloud "Why not just wait for an opening and dive between them?" And what do you know, the clever li'l cuss went and did that too!

One liability in Hercules Against the Moon Men is love interest Agar (Anna Maria Polani), daughter of the nobleman Gladius who was pictured a few screenshots back (and who gets Britney'd in the early going).

If you're playing the love interest of a man who can have any woman he wants, you'd better bring some serious charisma to the table. But Ms. Polani just doesn't have enough to pull it off --

-- which is a genteel way of saying that one of us was really bothered by her chin cleft, and the other wasn't exactly smitten either. Alas, we just couldn't get AMPed for this young woman.

Still, the movie hums along nicely until the final act, where the inevitable assault is mounted against the Mountain of Death -- and we suddenly get bogged down in shot after shot of windswept wastelands. The color gel lighting and dry ice fog look cool in still shots, but -- we're not exaggerating here -- ten minutes of people shouting unheard dialogue and stumbling around aimlessly? That doesn't make for an exciting climax.

Also, this is one of those movies where Hercules never seems to kill anyone. Whenever he's attacked by multiple enemies, they obligingly clasp hands with him and get thrown into the air, like some sort of pre-game ritual gone wrong.

Maybe they should just shoot him with an arrow for a change?

By the way, we liked the cool zodiac graphic that comes in about two-thirds of the way through the movie -- and we weren't above a chuckle at the line about coming under "the evil influence of Uranus". (Paging James Seay!)

One wonders why Queen Samara would take part in a plan designed to make the Earth unfit for human life. OK, "the fairest of them all" is just as applicable with a sample size of one, but then why is she devoting her energies to reviving Selene, Queen of the Moon Men? None of this really computes.

In conclusion, here's a screenshot of Sergio Ciani having a lie-down.

Speaking of which...

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Hercules and the Captive Women (1964)
[aka Hercules Conquers Atlantis, Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide]

Grade: B-

"Please don't be a comedy, please don't be a comedy, please don't be a comedy," we said to ourselves as the opening minutes of Hercules and the Captive Women unspooled. After our traumatic experience with the utter garbage that was Colossus and the Amazon Queen, we simply couldn't stomach a repeat of that experience.

And disturbingly enough, the beginning of Hercules and the Captive Women bears no small resemblance to Colossus and the Amazon Queen. We've got a bar fight, followed by a betrayal from someone close to the big guy (Reg Park), who ends up unconscious aboard a ship bound for distant lands.

For all his might, Hercules spends one hell of a lot of time in this movie lying down, reclining, or otherwise in a state of repose. Whether he's listening to speeches about a mysterious threat to his homeland...

...or getting lectured by his comrade, King Androcles of Thebes (Ettore Manni)...

...or chilling out after a shipwreck...

...or hanging out with the treacherous Queen Antinea (Fay Spain)...

...or cleverly spitting out drugged wine...

...he often takes it lying down, literally.

Of course, like a male lion, he can easily rise to the occasion when necessary -- as when he drags an entire shipload of convicts back to shore after they try to strand him and Androcles on an island (once again, with echoes of Colossus and the Amazon Queen).

In fact, Androcles's expedition is astonishingly half-assed. Inflamed by a prophetic vision from the heavens -- depicted with the aid of a red filter that almost completely obliterates the onscreen visuals --

-- he goes on a voyage to confront the threat to Greece. Not only does he force Hercules to come with him, he secretly brings Hercules's son Illus (Luciano Marin), specifically against the big guy's wishes. 

But Androcles seems to have no idea who or what they're looking for, or even where they're going: as far as we can tell, he just sets sail and hopes for the best.

How serendipitous that when they inevitably shipwreck, Hercules just happens to wash up on the lost continent of Atlantis -- after receiving a vision of Androcles, begging for rescue.

On arrival, Hercules discovers a young girl (Laura Efrikian) half-embedded in rock. She's midway through the process of being sacrificed to Proteus, the shape-changing protector of Atlantis.

Naturally, Hercules can't stand for this, and defeats Proteus in lizard form by ripping off his horn (which really does look rather painful).

The young girl turns out to be Ismene, daughter of Queen Antinea, and her sacrifice is meant to forestall a prophecy of the "Birnam Wood to Dunsinane" variety. In fact, Ismene seems to spend half the film getting sacrificed in one way or another.

This also explains the inclusion of Illus, as Hercules is just too old -- and too married -- to consort with this puellam nubilem. (One of us thinks she's kinda hot, the other doesn't; we can't imagine Ms. Efrikian is too heartbroken about it either way.)

You can guess much of the rest of what happens, especially if you know about the secret glowing temple of Uranus where men are transformed into mighty warriors -- or leper-like untouchables.

And speaking of Zeus's dad, this is where we really lost our shit, because once Hercules reaches his temple, the inadvertently double-entendre one-liners just kept coming nonstop:

• "Uranus! Betrayed by his own son, Uranus was struck down." (twitch)
• "Only a few drops fell on Atlantis, making us the heirs to all the powers of Uranus." (smile)
• "Now, after much searching, Antinea has found the missing secrets of Uranus." (snicker)
• "I was the last high priest dedicated to Uranus, and I still worship here at his sacred shrine." (this is about where one of us lost it)
• "Uranus was a just god, not a god of revenge!" (struggling to hold on...)
• "The blood of Uranus can never be destroyed!" (...aaaaand, now we both lost it completely)
• "Only the rays of the sun can destroy the rock of Uranus." (trying to catch our breath, you're not helping!)

Like we said before, we're twelve.

None of this makes Hercules and the Captive Women (that title is bullshit, BTW) sound like anything more than a run-of-the-mill peplum. Yet, despite the familiar themes (and poor print), this was probably the most engaging Hercules film we've seen so far. Why? Well, it's not for nothing that Arnold Schwarzenegger holds Reg Park in such high esteem: this Hercules is perfectly suited for the role.

Add to that a plot with genuine momentum (and several subplots), a solid supporting cast, and stronger-than-average production values, and we're doing well. Maybe above all, Hercules and the Captive Women maintains a balanced tone that keeps things light and brisk, with moments of seriousness and of comic relief, but never taking itself too seriously or drifting into an unfunny schtick.

And that's not easy to do in a movie that drops a pile of Uranus jokes -- or in which the ultimate adversary is an army of albino Amish clones. (Seriously.)

The butterfly and the diving bell

For the first of these two films, we briefly leave the safe waters of Mill Creek to try our luck elsewhere. But -- since both of these movies involve a character who's saved from death by drowning -- perhaps we'll just dip our toes in and leave it at that. (After all, we've just eaten.)

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Summer Camp Nightmare (1987)

Grade: B+

It's sobering to realize how randomly we stumble across -- and how easily we could have missed -- books that turn out to be pivotal (or at least deeply influential) in our lives. Sure, everyone inevitably encounters the likes of Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings sooner or later, while high school English classes have ensured that generations of students have at least a passing acquaintance with To Kill a Mockingbird or The Catcher in the Rye (not that those books meant terribly much to either of us).

But then we have The Butterfly Revolution. I (P.) have no memory of acquiring my copy, a coverless, dog-eared paperback that had already seen better days by the time my tween-age self got it (and which now seems to have vanished somewhere along the way). I'd never heard of the book, and for that matter I don't recall ever seeing a reference to it anywhere: it just stumbled into my life, more or less.

Maybe having no context for its tale of adolescent rebellion (nor any backcover blurbs to spoil the story) heightened the impact The Butterfly Revolution had on me. I've always had a weakness for stories about children and teenagers living autonomously, whether in the wilderness (My Side of the Mountain, The Runaway's Diary), as urban nomads (From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler) -- or, as here, simply by seizing the reins of power themselves.

Summer Camp Nightmare is, as you've no doubt figured out, an adaptation of The Butterfly Revolution for film: one assumes the original title struck the producers as a bit too "soft". That's one of several ways in which William Butler's 1961 book gets the requisite 1987 paint job, with another being the film's ample supply of big hair and gated reverb.

We also get new identities for several characters, including the novel's bookworm protagonist Winston "Winnie the Pooh" Weyn, who's now named Donald Poultry (Adam Carl). Uh, yeah.

The aforementioned 1980s aesthetics have earned Summer Camp Nightmare its share of mockery, especially online: if it has these things, it must be absurd, right? -- or, at least, so thinks the lazy reviewer looking for reasons to sneer.

But from where we sit, though Summer Camp Nightmare isn't a slavishly faithful adaptation of the book, it retains the most important parts of the plot, and the story has lost none of its punch.

Still, age changes everything, as well it should. Back then it was easy to identify with the kids, and their yearning for autonomy and freedom -- the freedom to choose, to make one's own disasters even if they were disasters; to owe nothing to no one, and live a life free of guilt and schedules. Maybe at heart, our basic sympathies still lie with them, but it's balanced out by other factors now.

One is a new appreciation for the tragic nature of the camp director, Mr. Warren, hardly the tyrant he might have once appeared to be. A fundamentally gentle man who genuinely wants to help and nurture the kids, he simply isn't equipped to understand the adolescents under his charge.

Chuck Connors -- his tall frame diminished by the years, but still imposing; his countenance mournful as ever -- is perfectly cast as Mr. Warren. Though stern at times and downright angry at others, mostly he seems just plain sad as he watches the long-held values of his youth swallowed up by punk rock, sass, and MTV-style sex. The hurt and betrayal etched on his face are hard to watch.

And speaking of sexuality, another unexpected revelation was how uncomfortable it felt to see the camp's young children exposed to the leering, transactional, monkey-see-monkey-do smuttiness of the adolescents. Easy to forget that when Dionysus is unleashed, someone still has to take care of the kids.

The biggest revelation of all, though, is Charlie Stratton as ringleader Frank Reilly. After we watched Summer Camp Nightmare we hit his page on IMDb, fully expecting to find a well-known actor with an extensive resume. It's downright shocking to see only 18 credits for someone so obviously charismatic, whose gaze is so unsettlingly intense...

...and weirdly familiar: we kept thinking we must know him from somewhere, but where? Someone in real life? Maybe there's a dash of Chinatown-era Roman Polanski in his dark-eyed intensity, but Stratton is better-looking and more charming.

Anyway, a movie like Summer Camp Nightmare stands or falls on the magnetism of its lead, and Stratton delivers. It's completely plausible that a group of kids would fall under the sway of a master manipulator like Reilly (it's never entirely clear whether he's a sociopath or a true believer), and while the film is hardly subtle in its cues, there's still a frisson of recognition in the way he smirks to himself when an opportunity arises to further his plans.

For us, at least, Summer Camp Nightmare wasn't camp. Of course the proceedings are gloriously 1980s, but so were the 1980s. For someone who was transfixed by The Butterfly Revolution as a kid, there's no issue of plausibility here -- no more than there is when Frodo goes to Mount Doom: it's as if these things really happened, and the only question is how well they're depicted.

While Summer Camp Nightmare isn't perfect in that regard, it's more than good enough to be a worthy adaptation of The Butterfly Revolution. It does change one subplot, but rightly so: its racial overtones, quite timely in 1961, would have been distracting and anachronistic 25 years later. Otherwise it loses none of the book's edge, adds elements of sexuality that serve to heighten the intensity of the narrative, and doesn't shy away from showing the human costs and tragic aspects of the revolution.

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The Incredible Petrified World (1957/1959)

Grade: D

Now this, on the other hand, is a terrible and silly movie -- and yet there's something endearing about The Incredible Petrified World and its hapless attempts to craft a compelling yarn of undersea discovery. We've seen bad films that left us feeling insulted, embarrassed, or contemptuously amused, but none of those adjectives quite seem to apply here.

Perhaps it's because, despite its absurdities, there's something perversely rationalist about The Incredible Petrified World -- which, for a movie whose protagonists are all scientists, seems logical enough. From the beginning to the end, the film implicitly maintains that every problem can be overcome by the application of reason and hard work, with the occasional instructional film to spice things up.

Maybe that's it: though The Incredible Petrified World has a plot, characters, and lots of other things you'd wouldn't normally find in the Prelinger Archives, it somehow feels like an instructional film. That thread culminates in a 90-second, dialogue-free montage toward the end, showing several characters hard at work on an engineering problem, surrounded by machinery and accompanied by peppy period music (and fancy crossfades).

The only thing missing is a narrator -- and that was supplied when one of us looked at the other in the midst of all this and said "Science!", which pretty much sums it up.

The bulk of the film, though, is dedicated to the misadventures of a four-person, gender-balanced team that goes down a diving bell and ends up in a labyrinth of undersea (but air-filled) caves. That's another concept P. has always liked -- a massive cave system that exists autonomously, with its own flora, fauna, and environment wholly independent of the surface -- though the kind of depths conjured in Tolkien and D&D would rapidly prove impossible in real life, since deep caves are also blisteringly hot.

Anyway, the cave group gets the lion's share of screen time, but in terms of acting chops they're definitely the B-team -- though there's no shame in that when your co-star is John Carradine, whose screen presence is as classy as ever. Still, the two male leads are so bland as to be nearly indistinguishable, except that one guy looks a tiny bit like David Mitchell and the other one doesn't. 

The worst part of The Incredible Petrified World is the contrived tension between the two women on the expedition, one of whom (Dale) has a horrific grudge against the other (Lauri) for no particularly discernible reason. This leads to dialogue like the following:

Dale: Friendly? Well, you just listen to me, Miss Innocent. There's nothing friendly between two females. There never was and there never will be.

Lauri: Sorry you feel that way. I was hoping we could...help one another.

Dale: Hmph. You don't need any help, and neither do I. Not as long as we have two men around us.

Yep, that's one for the ages.

Of course, we might better understand Dale's anger if we could read the break-up letter she received -- something the film makes a point of showing us, even ostentatiously so, yet leaves completely illegible in a way that seems more likely to be a cinematography issue than a typical bad Mill Creek print.

So, what else? Well, there's some diving:

There's a shark and an octopus, put in a tank together by some jerk so they'd fight à la Devil Monster:

There's a gnarly old man (with a wonderfully terrible fake beard) who lives in the caves --

-- and certainly doesn't intend to "Keep away from the ladies!"

There's a lizard, for no reason:

And there's one of the most pointless driving sequences we've seen this side of Manos --

-- which is itself bookended by an equally pointless air travel montage, whose inclusion suggests someone believed shots of landing gear would make people go "Gee whiz!" even at that late date. But hey, maybe it did?