Once we’ve seen a few battles between the Romans and the Jews though, we go to Bethlehem where there’s no room at the Inn. I may be ignorant of most of this New Testament jibber jabber, but this part of the story I had heard about through a variety of Christmas cartoons.

But what of the Roman power structure that controlled the Jews? Mainly you get to see Herodias, the man that would rule that part of the Roman empire for Caesar. Herodias embodies all the decadence that Jesus opposed.

Herodias ascends to the throne after killing his old man and has a wife which he apparently stole from his brother off-screen. There is also a daughter of some type named Salome that Herodias looks like he’s having a relationship with. Salome is of course corrupted beyond all belief by this environment and controls Herodias the only way broads control any of us men – with her dirty dancing!

It’s through this dancing that she makes Herodias give her anything she wants. In this case, she demands the head of John the Baptist! John the who? What happened to Jesus?

Okay, a funny thing about this movie is that Jesus seems to disappear from the script for vast amounts of time, leaving things in the hands of such secondary characters as this John guy and another dude named Barabbas.

Barabbas? Yeah, he actually got his own biblical epic starring Anthony Quinn, but in this film he’s played by a guy I never heard of. The movie tries to have this sweeping scope, but it sacrifices any kind of focus by doing that.

The movie goes on to detail John the Baptist’s efforts to preach the coming of the Messiah. Once Jesus shows up, John recognizes him as the Messiah and these two have some nice scenes together.

John baptizing Christ and Christ coming to see John who has been imprisoned by the Romans for pretty much calling them out for the sick, twisted freaks they are, give this movie a much needed sense of humanity.

As Jesus’ notoriety grows, it is all played out against the backdrop of unrest, where Barabbas is fomenting some type of revolt. His buddy Judas has decided that Jesus is the way to go and has left Barabbas to be among Jesus’ disciples.

Judas eventually betrays Jesus and rats him out to the Romans, but it seemed to me that he didn’t do it because he wanted them to destroy Jesus, so much as because he thought that once Jesus was jailed, he would use his powers to wipe out the Romans.

For a movie that wanted to make all these events a spectacle, Christ’s crucifixion and his resurrection are portrayed with restraint and these scenes seem to be a bit abbreviated considering all the time that was spent on stuff like Barabbas getting his army together and John haranguing Salome.

The time on the cross, his appearance to Magdalene, and his final appearance to his disciples fills the last five minutes of the movie. Even Jesus dragging the cross through the streets seems underdeveloped, his journey taking about 20 steps before they cut to the crucifixion.

As far as he was allowed to, Jeffrey Hunter did a good job of bringing the role of Jesus to the big screen. His Jesus is a bit too close to a male model for my tastes, but there is an authority in his portrayal that you see in scenes like the impressive Sermon on the Mount and when he is on trial for his life.

Whenever Hunter’s on screen, he’s magnetic in his calmness and wisdom, but he simply isn’t on screen enough. Characters like John the Baptist and Barabbas came off like refugees from a Hercules movie and did little but slow things down.

The movie wants to be about the King of Kings, but the flabby script makes it more about the King of Kings and all his friends, enemies, associates and every other historical character (real or made up) that they could stick in there. The story of Jesus could make a powerful and moving motion picture and this one does have its moments, but too often it veers off course and pushes lame characters to the forefront leaving Jesus missing in action.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

Well, the greatest role after his role as Trash in Bronx Warriors, his role as Johnny Hondo in War Bus Commando, and his role as Thunder in all three Thunder films! Still, playing Adam looks damn good on his resume, too.

It certainly plays to his strength of standing around with a stupefied look on his face. After all, everything is new to Adam, so when he acts like a confused five year old when Eve announces she’s making a baby, it’s completely believable!

Enzo Doria and Luigi Russo do Italian film fans a great service with Blue Paradise. So much of our lives are devoted to watching every spaghetti western with Django in the title, every film starring Christopher Connelly, and every TV movie that Lamberto Bava somehow got financed that very little time is left for religion.

Blue Paradise is the way that us trash film aficionados can get a little dose of the Good Book. As a straight edge strong Christian that doesn’t mind knocking back a few brews and smoking a few blunts with my neighbor’s wife, it’s quite reassuring that I’m getting some credit from the big man upstairs while watching Blue Paradise.

It’s also really good since movies like King of Kings and The Robe don’t really cover this Adam and Eve business. I mean, I was pretty sure that I wasn’t some chimp’s grandson or whatever like those secular humanists, liberals, and women’s rights groups are always trying to say. It’s just nice to finally have some confirmation from a credible source. I daresay that if Blue Paradise had been screened at the Scopes Monkey Trial, this country wouldn’t be smack dab in the middle of the turd sandwich it finds itself in today!

As soon as Adam gets created, he spends a lot of time wandering around checking out his environment. He hangs out with some animals, discovers water, and maintains extraordinary conditioning of his God-like heavy metal perm. This was paradise you know.

But Adam gets bored and lonely, so he creates the world’s first sex doll! Technology not being terribly advanced six or seven days after Earth started up, his sex doll is actually just a sand sculpture. Incredibly, despite only having himself as a model, Adam sculpts a super hottie!

This was still a time of miracles, so a magical rain came and washed all the sand off of the sculpture, revealing a very blonde Eve! Like all relationships, things were pretty sweet first. But also like all relationships, Eve starts whining about how bored she is and the next thing you know she’s eating this apple that this snake kept telling her to eat, even though Adam repeatedly told her not to. This is obviously the part of the Bible not even Democrats and other satanists could deny. At this point, I thought I was watching a documentary on every relationship I ever had!

It goes without saying that God is super pissed over this whole apple business. And his wrath is fearsome indeed! Adam and Eve get evicted via the worst special effects in the history of all existence!

God pulls out all the stops, letting loose from heaven the Three Plagues of Cheap Optical Effects: grainy stock footage, grade-school level stop motion animation, and blue screen work composited by a Lucifer himself! We’re talking Old Testament level vengeance! Times a hundred!

Adam and Eve survive their brush with low budget filmmaking and travel across the newly inhospitable landscape. Along the way, they run into a variety of obstacles to happiness.

There’s the pterodactyl they fight. Then you’ve got the mega-ugly ape men who take them prisoner while Adam and Eve squabble about their relationship. It was a pretty intense argument and Adam only stops arguing when the cavemen accidentally bump his head on a rock while hauling them back to their village.

Eventually they escape and decide they “need some space” and break up! Eve climbs a tree and refuses to keep journeying with Adam, while Adam says screw it and just moseys on without her!

Eve falls in with a tribe of guys painted green and hooks up with one of their hunky warriors. Adam continues his trek, seeking the sea since that’s where life began and he’s convinced for absolutely no reason that that is where they need to return to.

Eve’s new boyfriend and his tribe end up fighting some way ugly hairy humanoids and Adam magically appears during the battle to pitch in. Lots of guys getting bashed with rocks and stuck with big sticks illustrate the Bible passages on not messing with guys who are kick ass.

I don’t think I’m spoiling anything when I tell you that Eve and Adam start dating again and continue to search for the sea. One really short Ice Age later, and these two are having a baby in the sea and living happily ever after.

Blue Paradise is certainly a weird concoction, even for an industry that served up stuff like American Rickshaw, Yor, and Shocking Dark. Much of the time it feels like it wants to be one of those Italian Conan rip-offs like Conquest or Conqueror Of The World, except that the level of violence and gore isn’t really there.

But it is also rooted in its Adam and Eve Bible story, except that Adam and Eve are portrayed as being the stereotypical bickering couple. Adam stands around a lot staring and saying things that lead you to believe that he is an odd mix of arrogant a-hole and retard, while Eve is a whiny shrew.

And of course, as if guided by a divinely inspired hand, it all works! For all of us! Christians will love its simple-minded view of creation! Non-Christians will love it for its car wreck like execution! And fans of Mark Gregory will experience the Rapture right in their pants!

© 2011 MonsterHunter

Everyone’s favorite character in this movie (well, aside from the robe – it’s kind of hard to be a real Christian and not pick the robe) is Strabo, the tough but lovable guy that runs the gladiator school and played by Ernest Borgnine.

I was hoping that at the gladiator school Demetrius would overcome his Christian wimpiness against killing and violence that he exhibited (except against the entire Roman army whenever they came to shakedown his village for the robe), make some friends, and encounter an evil gladiator who was undefeated, but probably was without the honor a real gladiator’s gladiator would have.

The movie kind of gave us this masculine dynamic, but not as pronounced as I was hoping. Demetrius does somehow end up befriending William “Blacula” Marshall though which was probably a first for one of these all-male grapple academies.

Once at the gladiator school, we first see Demetrius’ faith put to the test. There’s this gladiator bully who slaps him upside the head just to see if Christians really do turn the other cheek. It turns out that they do, but unfortunately for the bully, Blacula isn’t Christian and doesn’t mind helping out Demetrius in a pinch.

The day before a big match, as is the tradition at most gladiator schools, a bunch of hookers are bussed in for the warriors to practice their groping with and among those is Demetrius’ girlfriend Lucia who is being snuck in so that she and Demetrius can have a little quality time together.

Messalina finds out (she had a thing for Demetrius) and has Demetrius taken away and Lucia is left with the other gladiators and the bully decides he is going to have his way with her. Demetrius sees this and implores his God to help her and he does by apparently killing her.

As soon as this happens, Demetrius shows us what he is made off by immediately renouncing his religion and demanding that he be given a match with every guy in the school the next day. He ends up killing pretty much everyone but Borgnine and Blacula and becomes a star!

Just to make sure that Demetrius has turned to the dark side, he promptly moves in with Messalina and throws coins at her harem and is really crabby when the Big Fisherman (Peter) shows up to try and guilt him into going back to church.

Messalina treats Peter to a drink by throwing it on him and then Demetrius tells him that he don’t need no crappy god that’s going to kill his girlfriend. If I was the Big Fisherman I would’ve said that God don’t need no sweaty, ungrateful gladiator, especially since he already had Jean Simmons and Richard Burton, but beggars can’t be choosers, right?

As surprising as this will be to you, the movie then sends us off to find the robe again. Demetrius gets the assignment and this is where he meets up with Big Fisherman again and B.F. shows him that the robe is with Lucia.

Lucia isn’t dead, but is just in a really deep sleep, but she is clutching the robe and won’t let go. After figuring out that he isn’t going to get the robe from her unless he pries it from her cold dead hands, he gets his faith back! It’s a miracle! Hallelujah! I believe in you again now that it turns out you didn’t kill my girlfriend!

A final fight in the arena ensues somehow and Caligula gets killed thus putting Claudius into power. The final scenes are even more laughable here than the ones we saw at the end of The Robe. Claudius tells us that he was just pretending to be a cuckolded boob and that he’ll be a really tolerant emperor. Messalina promises that she’ll be a good wife to Claudius (yeah – now that he has a really sweet job). Demetrius has his faith and woman back and Blacula is left holding the robe.

Clearly, the story is the loss and regaining of faith during trying circumstances, but it’s about as subtle as you would expect from a film that has the word “gladiators” in the title. Demetrius turns out to be a shallow dolt who buckles as soon as something bad happens in his life and only returns to his faith once he sees that something bad really didn’t happen.

What doesn’t really make sense is that while Demetrius got to live the high life for awhile, killing folks, eating well, and pumping Roman broads, he doesn’t ever suffer any real consequences for his renunciation of his god or from the life of excess and sin that he engaged in.

Since this was the crux of the movie, the failure of this part of the story to actually be believable is a critical one.

Its predecessor suffered from abrupt switches in faith and unbelievably broad antics from its characters, but you had Richard Burton doing his damnedst to make it work. Asking Victor Mature to do the same with even weaker material is something even Job wouldn’t be able to handle.

This one did have better action than the first one, but once we leave the gladiator school and chase after that robe things begin to unravel. No further sequels followed and the robe was finally put back into mothballs for good.

© 2011 MonsterHunter

Marcellus also ends up purchasing the very lippy slave Demetrius on this little excursion, but only after getting hosed out of some twins by Caligula. Caligula being the superfreak that he is, also wanted Demetrius and was a bit torqued that Marcellus bought him and the next thing we know Caligula is sending Marcellus out to Palestine on “special assignment.” I don’t pretend to know a heck of a lot about the ancient world or its hot-spots, but from the reaction of Marcellus’ dad, I can only assume that it’s a bit like being told you’re being transferred to Arkansas or going to a Cuba Gooding, Jr. movie.

Marcellus maintains that British stiff upper lip that ancient Romans were famous for, takes a swig of his favorite brew and tells Demetrius to gas up his Chevy chariot and heads off to the docks so that he can sail away to his new post.

Once he arrives, he gets his first job there and it turns out to be supervising an execution of three guys who are about to crucified. You get your classic dialogue at here where one of the guys asks Marcellus if it’s first crucifixion and then gives him some pointers on pounding the nails into the flesh.

While Marcellus is busy trying to do his job, his ungrateful slave is out and about getting turned into a Christian and is quite peeved that his boss is going to execute his messiah. If you’re at all familiar with Good Friday then you probably won’t be in a whole lot of suspense as to the fate of Jesus, but after the dirty deed is done, Marcellus and the boys are gambling and this is when he “wins” the haunted robe.

Marcellus demands that Demetrius give it to him so that he can cover up when it’s raining and this is when the robe starts laying the holy smackdown on him. He ends up going to back to Rome without it, leaving it with Demetrius who apparently has decided to just stay on in the Holy Land and hang out with his new Christian buddies.

Back in Rome, Marcellus exhibits the classic symptoms of post traumatic stress disorder (he constantly screams out “were you there?” whenever someone mentions the robe) and he and the emperor decide that he should go back and get the robe so that the curse can be lifted from him.

Back in the Holy Land, Marcellus’ big plan is to buy up all the robes in hopes of getting back Jesus’ robe. This is when he runs into people like Justus and some crippled up types who babble on about how great Jesus was and Marcellus is like “Great? Hell, I know that! I crucified him and now I’m being haunted by his towel!”

Marcellus hangs out with these people and sees that they are generous and at peace and don’t mind being all crippled up and thinks that this is a lot better than drawing crappy assignments for buying up some tan hunk that Caligula wanted and starts to see the light.

Caligula becomes emperor and sends some troops out to punk Marcellus and retrieve the robe for himself since it supposedly grants eternal life. Marcellus fights off the Romans and becomes one of the flock.

Bible epics are really just the uppity cousins of gladiator movies so it shouldn’t come as any surprise that the climax of the movie involves Marcellus breaking into a palace and rescuing Demetrius from being tortured to death.

Somewhere along the way Marcellus finds time to fall in love with Jean Simmons and she isn’t really sold on his new found faith, especially once he gets sentenced to death by Caligula. Suddenly though she has a change of heart and calls out Caligula for being a crappy guy and decides that she wants to be with Marcellus forever and that the way to do that is to turn Christian right before their executions. This leads us to the remarkably silly ending when they walk out of the palace together and into the clouds, these crazy-brave expressions on their face while really God-like music is playing.

The Robe has pretty decent sets and the costumes don’t look too chintzy (though one hopes that Burton at least had his dry cleaned before he wore the exact same one years later in Cleopatra). Burton and Simmons (who doesn’t get nearly enough screen time) add some class to the proceedings, but Victor Mature and Jay Robinson, who played Caligula, seem like they’d be more at home in a movie where the hero was named Maciste or Goliath. As to the story, it was clearly half-assed what with everyone’s quick and unexplained conversions to the new faith and dialogue that had you flinching on a fairly regular basis.

To fully appreciate this movie in spite of its many shortcomings, I recommend watching the sequel, Demetrius And The Gladiators immediately following it. Imagine the worst aspects of The Robe taking center stage and then throw in Ernest Borgnine.

© 2010 MonsterHunter

He was sentenced death and was to be crucified the same day as Jesus. It turns out that there is some kind of tradition around that time of year in the Roman empire where the crowd gets to vote on one dude to be set free. I suppose that keeps people coming back to watch these things, otherwise the weekly crucifixions probably get a little old and lose their impact.

For some reason, the choice this year is between Jesus and Barabbas. Barabbas apparently had the more loud-mouthed friends because once survey time was over, the Romans freed him and went ahead and killed Jesus.

The premise of the movie is that Barabbas has to go around in life with the weight of the fact that the Son of God died in his place. I suppose this then is a really long movie about survivor’s guilt and we all know how entertaining that is.

After he is set free, Barabbas tries to enjoy his new found lease on life the only way any of was would: drunken carousing with loose women! There is much drinking, dancing on tables and moves that only a player-hater could hate as Barabbas seeks to show everyone that getting Jesus killed isn’t about to slow him down.

Of course, he manages to do all this partying at some honky tonk just down the street from the site of the crucifixion, so he periodically feels pangs of guilt and gets kind of down whenever Jesus walks by with his cross and whenever a solar eclipse rolls in to mark the crucifixion of Christ.

He goes to a hastily-arranged meeting with the apostles. Barabbas reads them the riot act and basically tries to steal the gimmick of the doubting Thomas though by this time I think that Thomas had be cured of his doubts.

This is where they introduce Barabbas to a very special guest – Lazarus! He and Barabbas have a talk, but for the life of me, I can’t remember what they said or even what the point of it all was. Presumably, Lazarus was putting Jesus over to Barabbas, but Barabbas got bored and left.

Following the stoning of his ex-girlfriend, Barabbas ends up in trouble with the law again. Since he has been spared death before, there is some kind of primitive double-jeopardy rule that he can’t be sentenced to death again so he shipped off to the sulfur pits.

Here he endures a living hell of digging stuff that blinds lesser men and it is also here that he runs into a guy that is a big time Christian and becomes the closest thing Barabbas has to a friend.

For no real good reason, once the pits blow up, Barabbas ends up at gladiator school. It’s a bit ridiculous since by this point Barabbas is almost 80 years old and you wonder why the Romans would be paying good money to see gladiator fights with washed-up, elderly criminals in them.

That said, in spite of the patent silliness of it, the gladiator school part of the movie is by far the most entertaining. It is here that we finally get our promised appearances by Ernest Borgnine and Jack Palance.

Borgnine doesn’t have much of a role and his big scenes involved stuff like refilling Barabbas’ water glass and making snarky comments when Barabbas shows up for a secret meeting of Christians.

Palance plays the part of the bad guy and does so chiefly through the use of a very bad “evil guy laugh” and accompanying grin. He’s this stud gladiator that has won his freedom several times over, but has rejected it so that he can continue fighting. Of course, he gets to use a chariot and a net while his opponents stand helplessly around chucking a single spear in his direction.

The inevitable battle between this guy and Barabbas lacks any kind of emotional punch and plays like a junior varsity version of the chariot racing scene in Ben-Hur.

Once free from gladiator camp, Barabbas thinks that God wants him to destroy the pagan city so he sets a few fires, meets his fate and finally finds his faith.

The story of a guy getting all reformed, complete with tough times and good people dying all around him is an appealing one, but Two-time Academy Award winner Anthony Quinn doesn’t give Barabbas anything that is appealing as a character.

Quinn barely registers in this movie, has very little dialogue, very few scenes of dramatic impact and spends most of his time on the road to accepting the Christian faith, grunting and mumbling like he just woke up or something.

Barabbas is not one of Christianity’s more compelling infomercials and should be avoided just as you would own crotchety grandpa.

© 2010 MonsterHunter