Trailer to
Hercules against the Moon Men:
The version we watched for our write-up here
is found on the "Digitally Remastered" DVD (photo above) released by the
now long gone, public domain-trawling cheapsters Digiview Productions,
and the quality of the rip is pretty ghastly. Pan-and-scanned, faded and
scratchy, and missing at least one scene — we noticed the lack of the monster
fight after Hercules escapes from being drowned, a fight subsequently referred
to by the baddies — the "remastering" is so cheap that sometimes,
particularly during close-ups, the people shimmer and undulate, ever so
slightly, like a mirage in the desert. (You get what you pay for.)
But while a better source copy would
surely have added the visual joy of color and clarity, one is hard placed to
say that the film itself would be any better, as everything about it — the
narrative, the padding of certain scenes (there is an interminable sandstorm-on-the-mountain
scene that does nothing for the plot or story but goes on forever), the acting,
the direction, you name it — but for the muscles of beefy DILF Alan Steel, and
the covered, well-proportioned bosom of important tertiary character Princess
Billis (Delia D'Alberti of Mutande pazze [1992 / trailer]
and Bad Inclination [2003 / trailer])
— is second or third class at best.
Hercules against the Moon Men is the final
directorial effort of director Giacomo Gentilomo (5 Apr 1909 – 12 Apr 2001) who,
"along with few other filmmakers of his generation (most notably Primo
Zeglio, Giorgio Ferroni, and Vittorio Cottafavi), [...] still hasn't received
proper film historical credit for pioneering and perfecting several trends in
post-war Italian cinema [Viennale]."
His days of pioneering long past, Gentilomo, dissatisfied with lowly genre
product he now usually helmed, left the film industry after making Hercules
against the Moon Men to pursue a career as an artist. (Directly below is an
example of a work on paper of his, a 1972 collage titled Dance. One can but
wonder whether or not he was a better artist than director. [Not.])
Actually, Gentilomo didn't even make Hercules
against the Moon Men: he made a movie titled Maciste e la regina di Samar, or Maciste
and the Queen of Samar, Maciste being the popular cult character of Italian
cinema that has refused to die since first introduced in the 1914 silent Italian
classic, Cabiria (full
film). But since the name Maciste, which is arguably a nickname cum surname
of Hercules, was and is pretty much unknown outside of Pastaland, Gentilomo's movie,
like most Maciste movies, became a Hercules flick when it traveled to
English-language countries.
Within the realm of Hercules and peplum
in general, Hercules against the Moon Men is one of the genre-crossover kind,
ala the peplum cum horror that is Mario Bava's
Hercules in the Haunted World (1961 / trailer,
with Reg "Delicious"
Park [7 Jun 1928 – 22 Nov 2007], pictured below), and Sergio
Corbucci and Gentilomo's Goliath and the Vampires (1961 / trailer,
with Gordon
"Not Our Thing" Scott* [3 Aug 1926 – 30 Apr 2007]), or the a wasted life favorite peplum cum
science fiction flick, the far better Giant
of Metropolis (1961), starring manly Gordon
Mitchell (29 Jul 1923 – 20 Sept 2003).
* Was Gordon Scott a closet case? Well, for a factually
challenged narrative (complete with hardcore gay porn images, but none of
"Gordon's gigantic Mortadella"), check out the eternally sleazy and
wiener-fixated blogspot Tales
of Hollywood, which specializes in factually questionable second- and
third-hand sex stories of gay Hollyweird. Not for readers who freak at the
sight of man-meat or man-sex. The softcore NYSocBoy's Beefcake and
Bonding, from the same blogster, took a
quick look at Alan Steel once, but had no factually challenged sleaze to
share.
Of course, our prime reason for popping Hercules
against the Moon Men was the movie's muscular man Alan Steel, otherwise known
as Sergio Ciani
(7 Sept 1935 – 5 Sept 2015), one of the rare truly Italian slabs of prime
beefcake that managed to jumpstart their film careers by hopping on the peplum
wagon.* Originally a stuntman, Steel was the body double for the trimmed beard
and smoothly chiseled muscles of that walking wetdream that was Steve
"Droolable" Reeves (21 Jan 1926 – 1 May 2000 / see: Ed Woods's Jailbait [1954 / trailer]
and/or R.I.P. Umberto Lenzi Part I and Part II) and soon worked his way to leading-muscle status,
becoming one of the most familiar actors of the genre. Slightly more beefy than
Reeves, and also looking slightly older (and thus more DILFy) despite being
nine years younger, his thespian talents were nevertheless on-par with those
of Reeves (in other words, not great), although unlike Reeves he tended to smile
(unintentionally?) when things get really stupid in the given film he's in. A
probably unintentional smile crosses his face a lot in Hercules against the
Moon Men.
* After peplum, Steel did everything from
proto-gialo (A… For Assassin [1966]) to drama (Addio mamma [1967 / music])
to spaghetti western (Fasthand [1973 / original
trailer]) or the oddball amalgamation that is Lost Treasure of the Incas
(1964 / scene)
to agent film (the apparently lost Un colpo da re [1967 / song
from the movie]), but retired after his final appearance in the sleazy and
bonkers "erotic comedy" that is Baby Love (1979 / full movie at a
porn site).
The plot: Despite being a Maciste cum
Hercules movies, Hercules against the Moon Men probably owes as much to Edgar Rice
Burroughs's Moon
Trilogy as any given ancient mythological tale. A quick prologue explains how
the city of Samar came to be under the thrall of a race of evil moon men,*
residing in a volcano, who demand a continual string of the kingdom's children
as sacrifice. They use the blood of the children in a ceremony to revive their
dead queen Selene, but to date vainly. Evil Queen Samara (Jany Clair, below not
from the movie, of Planets Around Us [1962 / full
film] and Secret Agent FX 18 [1964 / full
film]) is in cahoots, greedy to become the most powerful person in the
human-depopulated planet the moon men plan once Queen Selene is revived. (Yep,
another nutcase hot to rule a world in which there is nothing left to rule.
Definitely a Republican.)
But there are some RINOs around. Chancellor Gladious (Nando Tamberlani [15 Jan 1896 –
11 May 1967] of Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules [1961 / full
film]) sends for Hercules, who arrives on a white horse hot to trot to save
the city and its inhabitants. When Gladious gets killed, his daughter Agar (Anna
Maria Polani of In A Colt's Shadow [1965 / original
trailer] and the a wasted life
fave The Murder Clinic [1966 / trailer])
steps in to assist Hercules, obviously wet every time she looks at him. Evidently
the attraction is mutual, for once all ends well that is well, the two ride off
into the sunset to increase their ecological footprint together...
* Arguably, "moon man", as we only
ever see one man in the same groovy gold mask, the rest of the aliens being the
walking stone monsters that do his bid and call.
Okay, much of the disjointedness of the
narrative is surely due to lousy translating and all the cut scenes. The imdb lists the movie as 128 minutes long,
while the Digiview release lists it as 88 — a difference of a full 40 minutes!
This, of course, explains why some characters get introduced — a blonde prince,
the commander of Queen Samara's army — only to completely disappear. (And, likewise, why we never see the mentioned Hercules vs monster fight.) The
narrative, in other words, is neither smooth nor clear, but since all one only
really needs to know is the good guys are against the bad guys, the narrative
bumps can be ignored. Still, the extreme editing make the ending is a real
head-scratcher: though it initially comes across as if nature goes wild and
destroys everyone, including Samara, and that the four main good-guy characters
(Hercules, Princess Billis, Prince Darix and Agar) all die when the volcano
cave collapses, after a brief scene of nature in order it is revealed that all
the good guys have survived. How they all got out of the cave (within which
they were all stumbling about in different areas) is never revealed — one can only assume they were beamed out.*
* Actually, one must assume that that
part of the movie fell to the cutting room floor when the flick went English.
The movie still below, for example, is not from any scene found in the version
of Hercules against the Moon Men we watched, but by the setting of the scene
must have happened during or directly after the never-ending sand storm
interlude.
Were the movie not so
faded and scratchy, it would probably offer greater visual enjoyment, as
sometimes the obviously cheap sets look at if they should look good. The
subplot with Princess Billis as the key to Queen Selene's resurrection oddly
negates the need of all the other human sacrifices, and one cannot help but
note that her main squeeze, Prince Darix (Jean-Pierre Honoré of Vice and Virtue [1963 / trailer],
Joy House [1964 / trailer],
the possibly lost Sexyrella [1968, poster below]
and The Blood Rose [1970 / trailer])
spends more time being rescued or recovering from his injuries than being of
any help to his desired and endangered future wife. (That said, Princess Billis
should have had a nude or topless scene; it would have improved the film
greatly.) The high point of his involvement is that Darix leads an interminably
long and sometimes funny but ultimately boring march through a sandstorm, a
scene that overstays its welcome long enough to permit a pee break without
touched the "Pause" button.
As cheap and low budget as Hercules
against the Moon Men obviously is, the main moon baddie looks bargain basement
but really cool, and the way his mask moves whenever he speaks is oddly
disconcerting. The moving stone figures that are his beck-and-call henchmen
look sort of dorky in a fun way to watch, and only truly manage to reveal their
implacable dangerousness during the scene in which the conniving but
not-too-bright Queen Samara meets her just rewards. Speaking of Queen Samara, one
thing that the movie doesn't skimp on is fabulous costumes: alone among all the
women of the movie, Samara parades one great out-of-this-world outfit and hairpiece
after the other. Nothing like the impeccable sense of overwrought couture
innate to fashion-conscious wicked queens to make one wish that women would
dress like that in real life!
Let's make no bones about it: the main
appeal of Hercules against the Moon Men is its camp factor. Even within the
genre of peplum, it is not really a highpoint. But despite the occasional
stretches of inertia, even a crappy transfer of the movie can be enjoyed if you
are in the right frame of mind. We can only imagine that the restored,
full-length version that apparently got released a few years ago would make the
movie even more enjoyable, especially with the prudent use of the fast-forward
button. Choose your poison — we definitely find this movie way better than
arsenic.
While it lasts —
Hercules against the Moon Men:
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