Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

Actress Thea Fleming can be seen as one of the dancing girls in the big production number in the temple. She is hard to spot in the actual movie but she is very prominent in one of the stills in my collection. Larry Anderson

With a score that alternates between big band swing, boogie-woogie piano, Las Vegas-styled burlesque, and whimsical numbers a la "The Little Rascals," this is a film that does not take itself seriously. In fact, it is rife with humor—unfunny humor, alas. The screenplay is credited to seven writers, which never portends good things.COLOSSUS & THE AMAZON QUEEN follows Glaucus (Ed Fury), the strongest man in Greece (Suck it, Hercules!), and his sidekick Pirro (Rod Taylor), a fast-talking con man, as they take jobs aboard a cargo ship. When they arrive at their island destination, the men are drugged and abducted by Amazon warriors, who take them first as lovers, then as slaves. When Glaucus falls for Antiope (Dorian Gray, sans portrait), the Amazon Queen-in-Waiting, this angers her rival Melitta (Daniela Rocca), who plots her revenge.The movie's failed attempts at humor revolve mainly around slapstick that makes the Three Stooges look like Woody Allen. Pirro's manipulations are supposed to make us laugh at the gullibility of his dupes, but instead made me want to punch Pirro in the face. There's an Egyptian inventor named Sopho (Ignazio Leone) who is determined to free Glaucus and Pirro from their captivity. Using one of his inventions, the boomerang, Sopho accidentally whacks Glaucus in the head, knocking him unconscious while the muscleman single- handedly fights a platoon of Amazons. (Funny, huh?) Finally, we get light-in-the-sandals male slaves who are so accustomed to their captivity, they exchange recipes and complain about not getting their laundry "sparkly" enough. It's the kind of gay stereotype that went out of style in the '70s and today is just cringeworthy.OK, so the comedy falls on its face. Surely the action scenes make up for it? Uh, no. The action sequences are as contrived and unexciting as the humor is unfunny. Meanwhile, the Amazon warriors wear black spandex-type uniforms that look seriously out of place in the ancient world. Not to mention that the reigning queen, Regina, has lipstick on. In one scene, a skirt-wearing Amazon inadvertently provides a glimpse of her 20th-century panties.Do I even have to tell you the dubbing job sucks? They didn't even get Rod Taylor to dub his own damned character into English!The Italian "sword and sandals" films that thrived in the early '60s always veered perilously close to farce. It was redundant to make a movie poking fun at the genre. COLOSSUS & THE AMAZON QUEEN tries too hard to be funny and exciting; it ends up being neither.

Comedic sword and sandal attempt has Aussie Rod Taylor playing a cheeky swindler, conned into travelling to an island on the promise of treasure, discovering that he and his companions are actually man-cargo being delivered to a race of lusty Amazon women for domestic and sexual servitude. Doesn't sound all that bad really. Trouble emerges when the warrior-who-would-be-Queen (Gray) falls for the burly Glauco (Fury), deepening a rift between her and nemesis Melitta (Rocca) that spirals into an internecine contest, further compounded when pirates discover the secluded hamlet.It's frolicking fun with a high camp quality that you'll either find amusing or dull. Taylor and Fury rarely have a moment without some form of slapstick or situation comedy, while beauties Gray and Rocca have an hilarious rivalry of which Rocca always seems to be on the wrong end. I thought her frequent stumbles were pretty funny in a corny sort of way, and Gianna Canale's horny Queen Regina constantly bemoaning her chastity vow ("does a kiss have a flavour?") also hit the right note. The three female leads also happen to be exceptionally attractive women to boot, which both Taylor and Fury seem to fully appreciate.Overall, it's a comedy without pretense, featuring a glamorous cast, some witty dialogue, epic sets and the usual colourful costumes. A funny take on domestic role reversal that's politically incorrect but unlikely to offend (e.g. the smug looks on the faces of Taylor and Fury after cheap attempts at groping their masters are rebuffed). Incidentally, there's also a great scene in which a portly, balding and bearded slave plays a kissing Casanova to an endless queue of frisky Amazons that shouldn't be missed for pure ham value.

It would be hard to imagine this film as anything more than a parody of the Hercules/gladiator genre, but it fails miserably even at that. I can't believe that the film makers had anything remotely sensible in mind when they patched this thing together, or if they even had an overall working outline of what they were trying to do. The result is a poorly executed picture that meanders between action and comedy, but the outcome is simply embarrassing.At least if you have to watch this to complete the fifty movie DVD set from Mill Creek/Tree Line Films, the lead characters are pleasing on the eyes. Ed Fury is the main muscle man named Glauco, who has an eye for Antiope, the would be queen who wants to replace La Regina (Gianna Maria Canale). Glauco's sidekick Pirro (Rod Taylor) is busy chasing down Melitta (Daniella Rocca), as the two women engage in a contest for the 'sacred girdle'. A band of pirates and a wrestling bear also make appearances for reasons that seem entirely irrelevant.The other point has to do with the musical score, it really had no connection to the events happening on screen; most of the time it had a 'Gilligan's Island' feel to it. The thought just occurred to me that watching the picture in reverse probably would make just as much sense as watching it normally. However I use the term figuratively, there's no way to watch this film normally.