THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN (1963)

  This has nothing to do with the Norse god/Marvel superhero, they just named our very Hercules-like hero Thor this time out. He's also not really the star of the film. Most of it deals with his friends( a chick and a little boy)who are kidnapped by a tribe of women gladiators who like to battle each other to the death for kicks. Not the most exciting example of the peplum genre but the ladies are nice to gawk at I guess. Thor does have a black servant which I'm sure will have any pc-jackoffs vehemently clutching at their pearls. AKA WOMEN GLADIATORS and THE AMAZON WOMEN

DEATHSTALKER (1983)

  This 80s sword & sorcery epic is seemingly influenced by CONAN THE BARBARIAN which came out only a year earlier but I saw it before CONAN and it was in fact the first movie my family rented back when we first bought a VCR in the 80s. Full of boobs, butts, rape and quite a bit of gore this is clearly not a family movie but as a young teen I sure dug it. Not having seen it since those days I must say it really holds up as a great example of 80s exploitation brought to us by Roger Corman's New World Pictures. You get a pig-headed warrior, evil wizardry, arms ripped off, multiple decapitations, mud wrestling, a fight-to-the-death tournament and lots of hot ladies showing off the goods including Barbi Benton. 

 There were 3 sequels with the last one being in 1991 and I don't remember anything outstanding about any of them. There are also various movies which used scenes from this in them because that's how Corman rolls. The 2 BARBARIAN QUEEN films with Lana Clarkson are also kind of sequels to this except the character she plays has a different name. A remake of this was recently announced which is supposed to simply be titled BARBARIAN.

This Norwegian VHS gives us the title STALKER: THE WARRIOR KING and features a totally different character on the box cover!:

THE BLADE MASTER (1982)

 I believe I first caught this on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000 under the name CAVE DWELLERS(which is the name of the re-edited-for-TV version). This is actually the 2nd in the Ator series, which is basically a crappy Italian version of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. The first film was ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE. Both films were shot by sleazemeister Joe D'Amato back to back in 1982 and they're pretty dumb. Perfect movies to goof on though. 

The ATOR Series:

1. ATOR, THE FIGHTING EAGLE - 1982

2. THE BLADE MASTER - 1982  

3. IRON WARRIOR - 1987 (the only one not directed by D'Amato)

4. QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD - 1990 (the only one where Ator is not played by Miles O'Keefe) AKA ATOR III: THE HOBGOBLIN(D'Amato was not a fan of the actual part 3!) 

CORIOLANUS: HERO WITHOUT A COUNTRY (1964)

 I'm generally not the biggest fan of most swords n' sandals movies. I do dig some of the Hercules movies with the supernatural elements or giant monsters and that kinda stuff. Well you get nothing of that sort here. This one is a historical drama based on a play by Shakespeare. You do get the guy who played Hercules and Tarzan and Samson and Goliath etc., Gordon Scott, as our titular hero. You also get a bunch of pretty silly looking battle scenes that look like they could have been filmed at a renaissance fair or something.  It took a couple of tries to get through this one and it probably wasn't worth the effort. AKA THUNDER OF BATTLE

THOR THE CONQUEROR (1983)

 Pretty cool dumb Italian rip-off of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Thor here(Conrad Nichols) isn't a superhero or god or anything like that instead he's just a beefy barbarian who pals around with a magical owl-man that gives him special powers once in a while(oh and a horse that just appears out of thin air). He also likes to peep in on Thor whenever he's getting busy with the ladies(which I believe we call rape nowadays but I guess this takes place in the days before they invented that term). When I say this is cool I mean in the stupid bad-movie way of course. It's clearly an utterly inept film but I still found myself fascinated to see where it was going next. If you're not as forgiving of dumb cinema I guess you could skip it or just watch one of the other dozens of crappy Italian CONAN clones but as of this moment this might be my new fav but that might be due to the competition not being very fierce.
 Known in the Philippines as BEASTMASTER II years before there actually was a BEASTMASTER 2!

Stupid trailer made by stupid Full Moon Features!:




                                                               Extra sexy Spanish poster!:

Don't recall Thor fighting any giant snakes in the film but it makes for a cool poster!:

This one looks more like a paperback book cover but still very cool!:

URSUS IN THE LAND OF FIRE (1963)

 Ed Fury plays our Hercules-like hero, called Ursus here, and that might be the best name for an actor in this role. Mr. Fury was in a couple of these strongman films but I guess never became a really big name.
 If you watch enough of these 60's swords n' sandals flicks you notice a couple of recurring scenes. One is where they try and rip our hero(usually Hercules but in this case Ursus) apart by tying him to some horses going in different directions and the other is where he has to lift something really heavy or get squished under it. This movie gives you both of those and of course the evil leader and a beautiful princess to fight over so it's pretty standard. There's a tiny bit of a supernatural element in the God of fire who makes volcanos shower flaming boulders onto naughty soldiers and stuff like that but it's not all that significant to the plot. An OK time-waster at 3am if you're an insomniac but ultimately forgettable in the sea of Hercules cinema.
 AKA THE SON OF HERCULES IN THE LAND OF FIRE(TV-showing title)

THE SONS OF HERCULES: LAND OF DARKNESS (1964)

 OK, so the son of Hercules here is a guy named Argolese and he wrestles a lion, a bear(guy in a bear suit) and slays a dragon who looks more like a regular old dinosaur before ending up in the titular land of darkness which is a place ruled by an evil Queen and a bunch of servants who practice cannibalism. He also gets a stupid sidekick. This is the 2nd one of these swords n' sandals movies I've viewed where elephants are responsible for executing people. Here it's a couple of them that are supposed to rip our hero apart. Now the version I watched of this was an edited-for-television cut, that was cut into 2 parts for some reason, so it's obviously missing some bloodletting scenes which sucks. The original version is known as HERCULES THE INVINCIBLE and it also goes under the title of HERCULES AGAINST THE ELEPHANTS' EMPIRE but whatever you call it this one is strictly by-the-numbers without much of interest going on but it works as a good antidote for insomnia at 3a.m. or so.



 Pretty snazzy themesong!:
 

COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN (1960)

 As far as swords n sandals flicks go this one is pretty decent. Of course these films are famous for their half-naked beefcake-men but this one is nice enough to also give us a whole bunch of scantily-clad Italian ladies to ogle. Many of which wear an outfit that has one of their boobs hanging out the whole movie! Of course this is 1960 so there's no actual nudity on view but it gets close, especially when our ladies are bathing in streams. The main hero here, played by appropriately named actor Ed Fury, is called Glaucus and not Colossus but if you kind of mumble his name enough it sounds pretty similar. He gets to wrestle a bear in one scene, so that's something. The other thing about this one that's different is it's clearly a comedy and not to be taken seriously. There's gay-parodies and of course women realizing they're better off with some muscley men around. Very 1960's! Also the soundtrack is a weird one for this genre and consists of jazzy swinging bachelor-pad kinda tunes. Definitely one of the campier HERCULES-knock-offs. AKA COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZONS

This poster seems way too good for this cheese-fest!:

This trailer is in black and white yet the movie itself isn't:

HERCULES IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (1961)

 More commonly known as HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD, this version has a tacked-on title and some horrible music with some warbling woman to start things out. Mario Bava is the director and it's pretty fitting since Hercules, played by Reg Park, travels to the underworld of Hades to get some magical fruit or something and while there encounters a few monsters including a stone-monster that looks like Tobonga from FROM HELL IT CAME and some, what I think are, zombies or maybe skeleton ghosts of some sort. Bava uses some interesting colors here, which is something he would become pretty famous for later on in his horror flicks. Christopher Lee plays the man bad-guy and gets to wrestle(get tossed around by) Herc in the big climactic battle which is pretty wacky to see. Pretty standard swords n' sandals flick mostly of interest to Bava fans who want to see his earlier work. AKA HERCULES VS. THE VAMPIRES(I don't recall any vampires?), THE VAMPIRES VS. HERCULES(maybe those zombies were vampires?), WITH HERCULES TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH and HERCULES AT THE CENTER OF THE EARTH.



A Hercules double-feature! Bring the kids:

GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON (1960)

 Mark Forest plays the title role of Goliath here(in the original Italian version he's just Hercules and why they felt the need to change that I'm not sure) and he gets to battle a variety of creatures including a big fire-breathing, three-headed dog, a fucked-up-looking Man-Bat monster, a bear(or at least a guy in a shit-ass bear costume), and naturally the titular dragon(who's sometimes a stop-motion character and sometimes looks like a big rubber puppet-head). The scene that kinda blows my mind here though is the one where we get an elephant whose job is to execute people by stomping on their heads like he's making wine or something. This might be the most bad-ass role an elephant has ever played. He also gets to wrestle our muscular hero of course. Just to round things out a heroic midget and an evil half-man/half-horse centaur guy show up. So while this is pretty typical of the swords and sandals genre in many ways they at least pack enough off-beat stuff in it to make for a good bizarre 3a.m. viewing. AKA VENGEANCE OF HERCULES and HERCULES' REVENGE

ATLAS IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS (1961)

 I kinda feel like in order to properly review these swords and sandals films it might help if you're a homosexual fellow. I am not currently but will do my best. This one is about an evil queen who keeps a giant hairy cyclops in a pit. There's a raid on a village then this muscular Maciste guy(Gordon Mitchell, why they call him Atlas in the title I have no idea) has a slow sexy scene where he wakes up from what I'll assume was a long night of disco dancing and perhaps some leather bondage. After showing off his supple body he meets up with the queen and later on our one-eyed monster. Lots of feats of strength by Maciste also ensue including wrestling a lion to death with his bare hands and grappling with a very buff black man. Pretty standard stuff from this genre but at least there's a monster at the end also unexpectedly a guy gets ripped in half like a wishbone by the giant which isn't really shown very graphically since this was 1961 but still pretty nasty stuff for one of these films that I'm assuming were made for kids since they're basically super-hero movies. AKA MACISTE IN THE LAND OF THE CYCLOPS, ATLAS AGAINST THE CYCLOPS, MONSTER FROM THE UNKNOWN WORLD and MACISTE VS. THE CYCLOPS.
 The version I viewed of this was sorta in color but super washed-out and was mostly just tan and white. This was Gordon Mitchell's first strongman epic. He would go on to make a whole bunch more. 


Tug O War, Maciste style:

FIRE MONSTERS AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES (1962)

 This mixes the sword 'n sandal flick(though technically these people are more like cavemen so I guess it would be a clubs n' furry booties flick) with the giant monster movie by throwing in a few large rubbery creatures in the middle of a story of two warring tribes. You get a Loch-Ness monster with a lion-face, a big lizard and a three-headed underwater thing-a-ma-jig. The one tribe, the Sun People, get some help from this muscular fellow named Maxxus, who's really Maciste in the original Italian version but re-dubbed here to be an offspring of Hercules. It's pretty funny since every time he says his name it's in a completely different voice.
 There were a whole series of these "Sons of Hercules" movies released to American TV stations in the 60's featuring mostly Maciste movies that I guess they didn't want to bother releasing theatrically.

HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN (1964)

 

 I used to watch a lot of these swords n' sandals movies when I was a kid and set my VCR to record stuff that played at 2am. They were never really my favorite when they would show up. I preferred a nice biker or horror or even a cheap-shit kung fu flick but I'd watch them anyway. The Hercules ones were basically superhero movies set in ancient times. In this one Hercules (who's really Maciste but in the dubbed version they call him Hercules) takes on an evil queen who's in cahoots with some golden-headed, skull-faced character and his henchmen (who are made of rock and come from a meteor that fell from the moon). A gorilla-monster also shows up briefly to get it's ass kicked. It's all pretty ridiculous but might give you a laugh here and there. I also have to imagine these movies were probably pretty popular in the gay community of the 60's with our oiled-up, ripply-muscled hero flexing and posing. So if you dig muscular guys in togas or just absurd B-movies check it out.