Triumph of Maciste (1961)

Kirk Morris is Maciste, one of the Sons of Hercules! Again we have an evil character sacrificing young virgins to a fire god this time and the villain is the the wicked Queen Tenefi! Of course Maciste will come to save the day for the women and restore the throne of Memphis its rightful ruler, Prince Iram.We have the same thing, almost the same story as most of the others of this nature - just different faces and names for the characters. And this version of the same basic story plot is not all that grand.My Mill Creek copy is severely faded, not that that it really matters because it's a terrible film. Easy to see why this one (along with most of the others) fell into the public domain. No need for a restore here.1/10

After Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" resurfaced that dubious genius, some peninsular scandalmongers decided to find the local equivalent to Ed and declared Tanio Boccia (who directs here as Amerigo Anton), Italy's worst filmmaker ever. That's not to be taken without a grain of salt. More than anything else, Boccia/Anton was one of those directors who accepted everything, did not argue with producers, took his projects as just another job and never thought of identifying with them. The results are under everybody's eyes, but it has to be admitted that he would have never thought of a future, let alone international, survival of his modest output thanks to TV, videotapes or DVDs. In the case of "Il trionfo di Maciste", the boyish Kirk Morris (alias Adriano Bellini, a Venetian who also starred in Riccardo Freda's "Maciste all'inferno") is to be admired in the muscular chariots scene at the middle of the film, where he offers such a picture of sweat, fatigue and effort as to become a minor cult classic for voyeurs. Although I'm not a gay person, I can easily picture the enjoyment of this share of the audience before such a sequence. For the rest, a minor and quite slow output without the visual glamor of the best productions.

Using the traditional sword-and-sandal plot about the muscular hero freeing a populace from the tyranny of a beautiful but predatory queen, "Triumph" proceeds in a predictable manner which may please those who are undemanding and who expect no surprises. As usual the hero must pass a "Test of Strength" involving being pulled between two teams of horses, (a la Steve Reeves in "Goliath and the Barbarians"), and as usual the hero becomes the slave of the queen, (who lusts for his body), after she enchants him with a bit of magic. As usual, there's a "good girl" who also desires the hero and whose virtues stand in stark contrast to the queen's faults."Triumph" benefits from the presence of 23-year-old Kirk Morris who has all the required musculature but who possesses a youthful, almost boyish quality which sets him apart from the likes of Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott, Dan Vadis, etc. Unfortunately, "Triumph" doesn't find a way to effectively exploit this quality in Morris -- who's admittedly no great actor -- and it badly miscasts the part of the "good girl." She's played by Cathia Caro who's simply too old, too dark, and too heavy to serve as a proper counterpoint to the wicked queen. As the queen, Liuba Bodina is no more than adequate.In terms of the plot, "Triumph" stumbles when it sets up a revolt which will dethrone the queen in favor of the rightful ruler, Prince Iram, but then this revolt is skimmed over in favor of a climax which has the hero, (called "Maciste"), entering a volcano in order to rescue his about-to-be-sacrificed love interest. This climax mixes in footage from Morris's "The Witch's Curse," including a scene in which he wrestles a lion and a scene in which he pushes through a wall of flame, which explains why he mysteriously changes back and forth from a light-colored peplum and a dark-colored loincloth.Alas, available prints of "Triumph" suffer from severely washed-out color, but Kirk Morris's bare chest still shines through and by the end of the movie, its sweat-gleaming skin and well-formed nipples -- constantly on display -- will almost seem like old friends.

I just saw this one yesterday (on one of those big, cheap DVD sets from "Mill Creek" - thank heaven for that company), and I have nearly the opposite opinion of Bryce David (though maybe for pretty flimsy reasons). One thing about this one is that it broke a few "Peplum" clichés. First (unless I missed something), the "sidekick" character (think Ulysses in "Hercules Unchained") had a much smaller role in this one, which is fine with me, since I don't always care much for that stock character. Also, it was just a little surprising to see the Hercules character riding off with the heroine at the end (having the opposite thing happen seems like almost as much of a Peplum tradition as a tradition of earlier westerns). And, I think the actress Liuba Bodina (an actress I know from nothing else, at least by name) knew how to play the "evil queen" role just right. One unusual thing about Kirk Morris is that he always seems to have a "sensitive" look about him, which almost clashes with the general idea of these films. What's more odd about that is that, judging by this one and "Conqueror of Atlantis," his Peplum characters are some of the more ruthless ones, even breaking a (sort of) rule in these films, by having the hero get rid of the femme fatale character pretty directly (usually that happens some other way).