If you say my name, I'll know why the caged bird sings

Well, we had hoped to finish the 250-movie Horror Classics box -- and the 50-movie subset Sci-Fi Classics -- in time for the 10th anniversary of our first post.

Alas, real life interfered, as it often does, and we've still got a fair handful of films left to watch before we can call the 250-pack done.

Be that as it may, here are two peplum films that share a couple things in common. One is silly trumpets; another is a situation where saying someone's name can lead to interesting outcomes. And if you've ever heard this bizarre field recording from Sudan -- yes, it's real! -- then you know why we might associate those two things in our mind.

But if you don't like that theme, here's another: birds in cages. Satisfied?

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Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964)
[aka Ercole contro i tiranni di Babilonia]

Grade: C+

Plot isn't typically a strong point in this genre, but Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon is built around a tricky, multi-directional power struggle, replete with betrayals and counterbetrayals. At the center of it all are the three siblings who rule Babylon as a triumvirate, including the combative general Salmanassar (Livio Lorenzon):

The crafty statesman Assur (Tullio Altamura):

And the treacherous Taneal (Helga Liné):

Taneal first enters the picture to stop the execution of a soldier she's been banging (Diego Pozzetto). IMDb says his name is "Bomar" but it sure sounds like "Bomir", so we'll just call him Boromir, even though he looks nothing like Sean Bean.

Boromir's forces went out to capture Hellene slaves, but were unexpectedly routed. Salmanassar thinks him a coward, and Assur mocks his explanation about "that old myth about the giant who's able to hold off an entire army single-handed? I've heard that before!"

No points for guessing exactly who they mean -- or for anticipating that Taneal takes a personal interest in the prospect of a big, strong man entering the picture.

Hercules (Peter Lupus) also represents a welcome alternative to getting hit on by Malik (Mario Petri), King of Assyria, an unprepossessing fellow who vaguely resembles Dick Van Patten from Eight Is Enough.

Malik shows up to ply the three tyrants with gifts and gold -- and Salmanassar really likes his pressie.

All Malik asks in return is that they give him all the slaves in the city of Babylon. Since Malik might as well be wearing a baseball cap that says "I HAVE A HIDDEN AGENDA", it falls to Taneal to suss out his real plans. Hey, someone has to drink the drugged wine in these things, you want it should go to waste?

It turns out that when the Babylonians sacked Hellas, they unknowingly captured their queen, Esperia (Anna Maria Polani, looking a heck of a lot better here than in Hercules Against the Moon Men). Malik wants to marry her to gain control over her lands, but neither he nor anyone else knows which slave is the Queen -- and the Hellenes ain't talking.

So, they tie them all up and deny them food and water until someone talks. Seems like checkmate, but the Hellene women come up with a clever countermeasure that'd be one heck of a dramatic coup if Spartacus hadn't already done it four years earlier.

Also, Esperia is Hercules's wife. He was away for two years, you see, doing Hercules things. Otherwise he totally would have saved her, and his country, and also he definitely didn't bang other women in the meantime.

I said women, right? Yes, women, that's what I specifically meant.

(He did go clubbing, though -- but don't worry, he only watched.)

Pretty much everyone in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon is either Greek, or a villain, to the point where it subverts some typical filmic conventions. For instance, in most movies, if you save someone's life they become a permanent ally, steadfast and true, because they feel a gratitude that transcends all cultural or political boundaries. Not here, though!

One really weird thing about the print used by Mill Creek: a stream of what sounds like Morse code runs quietly but steadily through the entire film. In this thread on Archive.org, one (unnecessarily combative) poster says it's unintentional bleed from time code used in TV broadcasting, which seems plausible.

There's never that much tension in a genre where you always know who wins, and Peter Lupus isn't the most charismatic Hercules we've seen so far. But the layers of intrigue and duplicity in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon help keep things interesting -- even though, in a perverse way, they also make it a bit less fun.

Still, it's a well-made film that lacks the tackiness of other pepla we've seen, has some nice set-pieces, and puts a fresh spin on old fan favorites like "drugs in the wine" and "giant wheel for some reason".

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Hercules Unchained (1959)
[aka Ercole e la regina di Lidia]

Grade: C-

Now this is something else -- not quite the source of the whole genre, but only one step removed from it, with Steve Reeves reprising his role as the big man. It's probably silly to watch Hercules Unchained without having seen the original Hercules from the previous year, but we do silly things around here, like "watch poor-quality transfers of 250 mostly-bad movies".

Filmmaking changed a lot between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, and Hercules Unchained hits us with one of those period conventions early on, when Herc's wife Iole (Sylva Koscina) suddenly bursts into song. It's jarring, overdubbed, and doesn't quite cross the line to "delightfully silly".

For some reason -- no, not that reason --

-- Iole and Hercules bring the man-boy Ulysses (Gabriele Antonini) along on their honeymoon. He seems like the quintessential third wheel, leaving one to wonder why exactly...

...no, not that other reason either. Sheesh.

Hercules soon gets himself mixed up in a Theban power struggle. Yet again it's all thanks to Oedipus (Cesar Fantoni), that perennial ruiner of good clean family fun.

His son Eteocles (Sergio Fantoni) is due to hand off power to his other son Polynices (Mimmo Palmara). It's the same old thing they did last year -- and every year -- but Eteocles don't wanna. But he's gotta. But he don't wanna.

Hercules brokers a deal between the two, leaving Iole behind as a de facto hostage while he runs back and forth between camps. If things go perfectly it seems Thebes will be at peace -- but since Eteocles has borrowed Malik's baseball cap, you can probably guess what he really has in mind.

And, of course, things don't go perfectly, because Hercules drinks from the wrong spring, loses his memory completely, and gets shanghaied by Queen Onfale of Lidia (Sylvia Lopez).

If someone could market this, they'd make money hand over fist, since it's essentially a "get out of jail free" card for adultery: how can you remember you're married if you can't even remember your own name, right?

The artist formerly known as Hercules seems perfectly content with the situation, but Ulysses -- who has a kind of Topher-Grace-meets-David-Faustino thing going on, if you're into that -- insists on being the stone in his shoe.

First, that lovable trickster pretends to be Herc's deaf-mute servant boy, in an attempt at comic relief that's neither amusing nor (in a minor miracle) offensive.

This saves him from execution by the Lidian soldiers, who are no doubt grumpy about their chronic helmet hair: if only they'd invented styling gel in the B.C. era.

To backtrack a bit, Hercules Unchained begins with a stylized, ceremonial scene in which one man is brought in unconscious while another is murdered by soldiers, and leaves it unexplained for a while.

When that scene repeats with different actors later on, it's clear that this is SOP for Queen Onfale, who thus avoids the problem of blocking your ex on social media. So it's Ulysses's job to remind Hercules of his real identity, before he gets thrown over for the next pretty boy...

...and succumbs to an even worse fate than we'd realized.

And Ulysses has to do all this before those dweebs in Thebes kill each other -- or Iole, who's also earned the unwanted attention of a lascivious captain (Ugo Sasso). Aw, jeez.

Once he comes back to himself, Hercules bends some things and throws some statues, and you know how the rest of this goes.

Did you want a silly dance? Hercules Unchained has one of those, though we intend no slight to the dancer, who's popped up on YouTube to describe her experience: here's to you, Mrs. McGrath.

Despite the abundance of pretty boys, the film seems to have a penchant for offbeat-looking women with slightly awkward screen presence. It prominently features them in ensemble shots, like here:

Or here:

Or here, when an earnest-looking girl in a non-speaking role suddenly pops forward for no apparent reason. The composition of the shot makes her look like an equal third in the scene, but she's not!

Speaking of catty comments about women's appearances, if Sylvia Lopez hadn't died of leukemia so soon after the production, we'd probably have some things to say about her over-the-top look in Hercules Unchained.

Instead, let's just say she's not our scene, and leave it at that. As for those who appreciate her and would describe her as "statuesque"? More power to you.

Anyway, Hercules Unchained is fine, it's swell, it's mediocre, watch it or don't. It could rollick more, or maybe less. It has a high body count, but it also has that 1950s feel where everything plays out a bit like a guided tour, or a scripted amusement park ride, and there's never any sense of danger. It's a highly digestible Herculean food product. It brings along old people for no discernible reason, and then expects us to care when they can't keep up.

Oh, here's Ulysses's girl, Penelope. Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns, who settled because he couldn't get Donna or Jackie, or even Kelly.

But she'll be a faithful wife, and a good mom to his son -- which works out well because heck, he's not going to be around to change any diapers!

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.)