Peplum. Italy. Starring Kirk Morris, Barbara Loy & Andrea Aureli. Directed by Guido Malatesta.
AVO Film (Italy). Italian language. Fullscreen.
Incredible, intoxicating Grade Z peplum, which consists mostly of scenes from Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules and Colossus and the Headhunters (and probably some other peplum I can't place) and some badly shot new footage with B-list peplum star Kirk Morris. As you may have guessed it all makes no sense whatsoever. 3/5 (entertainment value)
This is an incredible site. As you know, Malatesta's COLOSSUS & THE HEADHUNTERS also features some footage from FIRE MONSTERS. He, like "star", Kirk Morris, are my least favorite components in the genre. Morris is pretty decent in HERCULES, SAMSON & ULYSSES, though. He seems to always get shot in the shoulder with an arrow in his films, too.
SvaraRaderaThanks for the compliment!
SvaraRaderaI have to confess, i'm a bit of a Kirk Morris fan. Okay, the guy couldn't act himself out of a shoebox, but somehow i've grown to like his expressionless presence. It could also be the fact that many of his films are so whacky and "out there" compared to the "safer" films of Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott.
If anyone could ever have played the "son of Hercules", it would have been Kirk Morris. He looked awfully young to me and wasn't as bulky as the other actors. Hopefully, DEVIL OF THE DESERT AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES from Margheriti will be decent enough. Morris is pretty good in CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS (1965), but then, that movie had so much else to sustain interest outside of Morris himself.
SvaraRaderaAnother actor I'm not too fond of, Richard Harrison, his gladiator movies are far better than anything he ever did after. He always looks like he's on the verge of falling asleep.
There is a very nice letterboxed print of this film on German video (Silwan). BTW very impressive collection - I envy you some of this stuff. But I wonder, why no German tapes? Many of their peplum releases look great (especially compared to the Greek).
SvaraRaderaVenoms5: Right you are, Morris would be the perfect son of Hercules. And sure, Richard Harrison sleepedwalked through most of his gladiator films and his not really a big favorite of mine either... his younger pepla incarnation that is, I always enjoy his moustached presence in 1970s eurotrash and 1980s filipino action dreck.
SvaraRaderaHenrik: The reason I have hardly any german tapes is of course the german dubbing. Watching films in languages I don't understand is only the last resort in my case - to be honest i'd rather watch a shitty, cropped greek print than a nice widescreen one in german, but that's me. And than there's all these zillions of german, spanish and italian non-english friendly DVD:s that I haven't even started to pick up yet, so when I get to the point where I run out of english dubbed tapes and DVD:s I know where to start! An idea I have for the future is to pick up the best of those DVD:s and try to puzzle together the best possible version using the sound from VHS (or make subs from the english soundtrack)... all I lack now are the DVD:s, the equiment, the techincal know-how and the time ;)
By the way, do you still collect, Henrik? I admit spending hours drooling over your collection over the years. I'm really impressed with your knowledge and the fact that you've bothered to time and measure the exact aspect ratio of all your tapes. Makes me feel like a fanboy...
Thanks for the compliment. Your collection is very nice, I must say - I truly envy you some of the titles! Yes, I do still collect, but at a rather low intensity level these days. At the moment I'm about to move together with my girlfriend in a house, and in the process of slimming down on the tape collection (and all the other stuff I collect, such as comic books). And I must confess that, yes, among the tapes I'm trying to get rid of are a lot of German language peplum and pirate movies.
SvaraRaderaI don't have a problem with the German language as such, I can understand it fairly well (unlike Latin languages which is why I completely gave up on collecting the otherwise stunning dvd releases from France, Spain, Italy etc.), but still, it *does* strain the concentration to follow the dialogue. Plus German prints seem to have little trade value!
I still maintain that some titles released in Germany are worth collecting, because there seems to be no English language version. Or that those are very, very, very hard to find. For example I've settled for a very nice German vhs release of "Crash Boys" ("The Three Fantastic Supermen in Santa Domingo"), because an English language print, unless it's a bootleg, just seems impossible to get hold of. Go ahead, call me lazy. ;-)
My german is awful considering I read it for two years in high school. I should be ashamed, really wish I had payed more attention in class now... But of course I understand it way better than italian and all the other latin languages, where i'm totally, 100% lost.
SvaraRaderaHehe, I always thought you move to a house to make room for stuff like a geeky video collection, but there you go! Maybe I can free you of some of those german pirate and peplum tapes (and any other adventure stuff you won't need)? What have you got and what were you thinking for it? If you got a list you can send it too: oraklonATyahoo.se.
Not to bust your balls or anything but I have a english language The "Three Fantastic Supermen in Santa Domingo". Released in Uruguay (!) with one of the ugliest covers i've seen in all my days of collecting. I remember the print was pretty bad though. As were the film IMHO...
One tape I really like to steal from you is the german Onan und Tamara! A biblical film about the original self-sinner directed by Freda can only be oh so good!
SvaraRadera