Leofwine_draca
This peplum adventure has much to recommend it. Although occasionally veering into cheesy and trite territory, for the main part it's a tightly-plotted, fast-moving story with interesting characters, great villains, and lots of intrigue. The special effects are not particularly elaborate (red smoke is used to signal the entrance of the vampire) but used strikingly and to good effect. Things kick off with one of those amusing interludes designed to show just how strong and heroic our heroes are - here, Maciste jumps into the sea from a cliff to rescue a drowning child.The plot quickly sets things in motion, with exciting scenes of a village being pillaged and burnt to the ground. From then on it's one exciting situation after the next, as Maciste chases the pirates and finds an unknown opponent pulling strings behind the scenes. For the first half, the action is mainly court intrigue, with Maciste getting thrown into prison and proving his might by literally ripping the place apart with his bare hands. After a number of minor characters have been murdered, Maciste finds himself wandering in the desert with his beloved - that is, until a sudden sandstorm drives them into an underground cavern and they meet a race of blue-skinned men. Then the fun really begins! The blue-skinned soldiers turn out to be good blokes, so Maciste goes with them to the vampire's stronghold in the mountains in search of a vital ingredient for a potion. This potion has the ability to restore the faces of the zombified slaves, which is lucky considering that Maciste's girlfriend soon gets zombified too! In short, there's a massacre in the forest, Maciste is captured and taken to what looks like Hell; he escapes and then is followed by the vampire which takes the form of... Maciste! The scene is set for a final battle where we see the unique sight of Gordon Scott fighting...himself! This is well handled actually and a clever moment, done long before split-screen technology - here, clever editing makes us believe the two actors are one and the same.It's clear from the start that this ISN'T a kiddie film... there are some moments of very strong horror involved (the zombie corpses, the darkly-lit forest massacre). Things get quite gory considering the time this was made as well, with arrows being shot into eyes and people speared to death. My favourite scene has to be the "pole torture" moment where an unfortunate prisoner is made to climb up a greased pole while being whipped - suffice to say he loses his grip and slides onto some nasty-looking spikes below, leaving him a bloody mess! Gordon Scott, who previously essayed the role of Tarzan in a series of films in the late '50s, is very charismatic as Maciste and makes a good, solid hero. He's also very athletic in some scenes and you can believe the heroic acts he pulls off. It makes a change to have a muscular star actually acting, too. There are two female leads - the good one, and the bad. The good one is all sweetness and innocence, therefore rather boring; the villainess is quite hissable. The rest of the actors are all fine and good use is made of some exotic-looking scenery and costumes - I especially liked the kingdom of blue-skinned men! The action comes thick and fast and this film has one of the best prolonged sequences I've ever witnessed : Maciste fights off about a hundred guards and soldiers during a massive bust-up in a town centre, where he leaps off buildings, demolishes shacks, and uses giant poles to smack his enemies in the gob. So, if you're looking for a film which has women in chains; a strongman demolishing rooms and buildings; brief gore, torture by bell ringing; black-skinned pirates; and lots, lots more, then this is it! A marvellous classic, to be enjoyed time and again.
zardoz-13
Italian composer Angelo Francesco Lavagnino furnishes "Hercules Against the Moon Men" director Giacomo Gentilomo with a flavorful, atmospheric score for his above-average, but predictable spear and sandal saga "Goliath and the Vampires," starring muscle-bound Gordon Scott as the legendary champion. Like the Reg Park outing "Hercules in the Haunted World," Goliath confronts a supernatural adversary called Kobrak. Pirates from another kingdom attack a defenseless village without mercy. They raze the village, slaughter the men, abduct the nubile young women and transport them across the sea into slavery. So wicked are these heartless sea raiders that they feed the older women to the sharks. The eponymous strongman travels to the faraway island to rescue the women. Outnumbered as always, Goliath tangles with dozens of soldiers, but he exploits his strength to compensate in his battles against superior numbers. No, Kobrak doesn't qualify as the standard vampire with fangs, a regal wardrobe, and beguiling eyes. He materializes like an apparition from nowhere, kills with his clawed fists, and reduces his victims to lifeless mummies. Moreover, the evil Kobrak shows no qualms about dispatching his own subordinates. Gentilomo and scenarists Sergio Corbucci of "The Mercenary" and Duccio Tessari of "Duck You Sucker" have contrived one of the better peplums, with several elaborately staged combat scenes. Indeed, a couple of counterfeit looking little monsters cheese up a scene or two, but they are quickly forgotten. Meantime, our brawny hero has his hands full most of his time struggling with his opponents. Bare-chested Gordon Scott is appropriately stalwart and purpose-driven as the male lead. The beautiful, hour-glass shaped women wear big hair. Gianna Maria Canale looks as gorgeous as she is treacherous, and producer Dino De Laurentiis seems to have spared no expense.The opening scene solidly establishes the protagonist's character. Goliath (Gordon Scott of "Tarzan's Greatest Adventure") trudges behind two oxen and a plow, gouging grooves in an inhospitable field. Typically, the peplum hero is an outsider, sometimes a wandering adventurer, who enters a society and delivers it from tyranny, but Goliath is not an outsider here. Later, when he enters Salminak, he is an outsider. Gentilomo depicts Goliath as a peaceful farmer, using his incredible strength to uproot and remove a stump from the field. Clearly, though the most convincing but mundane scene, this modest display of brute force illustrates Goliath's determination to let nothing stand in his way. He uses his brawn to solve his problems. No sooner has Goliath gotten rid of stump than he hears cries of alarm. The young boy, Ciro (Rocco Vitolazzi), that Goliath brought with him, is drowning. Plunging from a high mountain cliff, Goliath saves the lad from a watery grave. Some kind of sea monster may have figured in Ciro's near drowning, but the fight has been mysteriously edited. As he takes Ciro back to their village on his white horse, Goliath reminds the youth that his sister would never have forgiven him if Goliath had let him die. Ciro chastises Goliath because he has kept putting his impending marriage to sister, Guja (Leonora Ruffo of ""Goliath and the Dragon") on hold. Gentilomo and his scenarists sketch more depth into Goliath's character than the typical peplum. As they approach the village, they see clouds of dark smoke gathering. They arrive too late to thwart the pirates. Ciro's mother and father lay dead, while Goliath's mother (Emma Baron of "Aphrodite, Goddess of Love") dies in his brawny arms."I shall avenge them," Goliath vows. "I shall free Guja and the others and those responsible will pay for their crimes." Moreover, Goliath is puzzled by the raiders. "Their ferocity and cruelty make no sense. Why do they murder like this without plundering. Why take nothing from the houses? Only the women are kidnapped and the men are thrown in the fire." An elderly man who survived the carnage informs Goliath that the raiders hail from the faraway island Salminak. Meanwhile, aboard their ship, the pirates slash the women, drawing plasma from all them but Guja, to fill a goblet for Kobrak to quench his thirst for blood. Kobrak's initial appearance aboard the ship is rather sinister. The leader of the raiders enters a chamber and a hideous looking hand wreathed in smoke emerges from behind a curtain and grasps the goblet. Gentilomo heightens the tension as the interior turns blood red and the curtain billow after Kobrak has drunk the blood. The captain scrambles out of the room, happy to be alive. Later, we learn Kobrak is assembling an army of faceless zombies to conquer the world. Peplum lenser Alvaro Mancori of "Ulysses against the Son of Hercules" captures the larger-than-life splendor and savagery of "Goliath and the Vampires" with his widescreen cinematography. The violence is somewhat abrasive, but it remains primarily bloodless during the commission of the act with blood visible afterward. One scene shows a marauder firing an arrow into a man's face, while other shows a spear hurled into the villainess' stomach. The Corbucci & Tessari screenplay boasts a surprise or two, especially during the finale when Goliath confronts a foe that matches his strength. The filmmakers put our hero in several tight spots. One fantastic scene has Goliath with his wrists shackled to a huge wooden yoke behind his neck and across his shoulders. Goliath's captor challenges him to escape. Exerting his superhuman strength, Goliath snaps the yoke in half, removes the shackles, and then dislodges a pillar that brings part of the dungeon crashing down on his captors. An earlier scene in the town square has our hero dismantles a torture device with giant spikes in it and wields it as a weapon against armed horsemen. According to the Wild East blurbs, Corbucci helped out Gentilomo helming a scene or two, but Gentilomo directed the lion's share of the action. He keeps the action moving briskly along in this trim 91-minute opus."Goliath and the Vampires" ranks as a better-than-average peplum.
