Category: 1960s

Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)

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RevoltofthePraetoriansPosterThe historical record of the assassination of the Emperor Domitian being a combination of mundane palace intrigue and anti-Domitian bias clearly wasn’t the stuff of a sword and sandal fetish film starring tanned hunk Richard Harrison so it was left to first time director Alfonso Brescia to make the story much more well hung with action, all in the patented Italian style of the era. So it is then that Domitian finds himself being beset by a commando raid of jugglers lead by a midget!

It is a testament to the greatness of both the film and Brescia (Cross Mission, Beast in Space) that such an event not only didn’t seem silly, but entirely necessary! After all, those jugglers carried clubs which could be used to clout unfriendly Roman guards to unconsciousness while storming the secret passage that ran underneath the palace! Continue reading “Revolt of the Praetorians (1964)” →

Taur the Mighty (1963)

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Taur the Mighty Italian PosterThe Italian sword and sandal flicks of the early 1960s got in a lot of reps and built up an impressive quantity of work. It doesn’t take a student of the genre to determine that this quantity didn’t exactly translate into quality of any degree. For the most part, the majority of them were interchangeable variations of some bodybuilder posing and rumbling around rickety sets, busting up extras, poorly costumed monsters, and engaging in laughable feats of strength. In short, these films were terrible. But even so, there was one thing you could say in their favor. At least they weren’t Taurible!

For starters, Taur can’t even get his own name right! The VHS cover refers to him as Tor, the onscreen title of the film calls him Taur, but everyone in the movie including himself, says he is Thor!

Even with that identity crisis though, at least he didn’t have to suffer the indignity of Harry Baird’s character, Ubaratutu! As silly as Ubaratutu is as a name, it was the least offensive part of the character! Continue reading “Taur the Mighty (1963)” →

Gentlemen of the Night (1964)

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Pino Mercanti’s Gentlemen of the Night takes all that you love about the Renaissance-era talkathons (guys in hose, chicks in low cut dresses) and livens it up with dudes in masks and hoods who have secret society meetings to discuss setting up another secret society.

In their defense, the bad guys are doing all this discussing and planning to counter the threat posed by bored nobles who are discussing and planning a revolution to free the Republic of Venice from the goofy-looking, sour-faced simp in charge! Continue reading “Gentlemen of the Night (1964)” →

Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)

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When I first heard about the concept of spending five whole frigging weeks in one balloon, I thought it had a high potential for turning quite tedious after the initial rush of being able to drop coins and spit on people on the ground inevitably wore off early the first afternoon you were airborne.

Of course all that potential was fulfilled (and then some) once those five weeks in a balloon proved to include future Branson, Missouri headliner Fabian performing the film’s odious theme song on a concertina during a pitstop at a desert oasis in a sequence that Jules Verne only wished he was imaginative enough to concoct! Continue reading “Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)” →

The Masked Man Against the Pirates (1964)

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Who was that masked man? Supposedly, he was the scourge of the pirates who were attacking Spanish galleons, stealing their gold, killing their men, and selling their sexy broads into slavery back in the 17th Century.

We know he’s totally feared because the slaver trying to buy some women comments about all the stories of Masked Man and his good guy antics. This, despite all the evidence to this point in The Masked Man Against the Pirates having been completely to the contrary. That is unless you consider a dude whacking a guy in the back of the head with a log and stealing a kiss from a captured princess a one man Spanish Armada. Continue reading “The Masked Man Against the Pirates (1964)” →

Where Love Has Gone (1964)

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Where Love Has Gone PosterWar hero Luke Miller’s fifteen year old daughter kills her mother’s boy toy and finds herself and her high society family drawn into a web of blackmail, dark secrets and most embarrassingly of all, the juvenile court system.

Truly, there can be no greater anguish for a father than what his poor precious daughter (whom he hasn’t seen in 10 years due to his boozing ways) is going through. Oh, not the anguish of everything just mentioned. Blackmailers can be bought off, secrets can be self-righteously uncovered at dramatic moments, and the juvenile court of the old days wouldn’t let some murderous teen be tried as an adult. No, the real, soul crushing anguish Luke experiences is when he is told that his daughter’s medical exam revealed she wasn’t a virgin anymore! Continue reading “Where Love Has Gone (1964)” →

The Magnificent Gladiator (1964)

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The magnificence of the titular gladiator of this film can be boiled down to his most muscular feature. No, not his pleasingly polished pecs, which of course stand out amongst all the wimpy Romans. And not even his Pompeii Pompadour which surely defeated several Roman legions with its impressive height. That which made this particular Hercules worthy of the name was his shredded smile!

It is understandable that in many of these sword and sandal epics from the 1960s that our bronzed babe of beef would probably be lacking in the smiles department. Invariably, the home village was burned, family and/or wife killed or kidnapped, lots of straining to lift, tear up and throw assorted ancient world items, and even some good old fashioned torture really don’t provide much of a “turn that frown upside down” opportunity. Continue reading “The Magnificent Gladiator (1964)” →