Before this movie started I didn’t even know what continent Damascus was on! If that’s the sort of detail that really matters to you when you’re watching a movie, Goliath at the Conquest of Damascus begins with a map with labels and narrator to walk you through it. For me though, by the time the guy was babbling on about the fourth different set of tribes fighting over some sandy armpit the civilized world quit caring about thousands of years ago, I just gave up trying to sort out what some guy named Thor was doing in the middle of it all. Unleash the glistening guns of whatever gargantuan grapple god this movie stars already! Read More

A welcome breath of not-so-fresh sweaty centurion air, Mario Costa’s Conqueror of Corinth is pure peplum propaganda intent for some reason on making modern audiences believe that when Rome went and obliterated the Greek city state of Corinth 2100 years before that they were actually the good guys we should be rooting for! Read More

I don’t know about you, but I like my Hercules to look really beefy and have a well-groomed beard. I’m not real sold on a budget Hercules who is quite hairless, only has moderately sized pecs and gazes wistfully at llamas. Read More

Okay, it turns out that this isn’t a movie about a guy named Hercules. It isn’t even a movie about a guy named Goliath, Maciste, Samson, Atlas, or even Ursus. It’s all about this guy named Glauco, who perhaps realizing a movie called Glauco Vs. The Moloch wouldn’t have quite the same impact, decided that he should spend a good portion of this film undercover as a guy named Hercules. Read More

Mickey Hargitay (Bloody Pit Of Horror) was a bodybuilder that really had that Hercules style of acting done pat. By that, I mean he was able to stand at odd positions with his arms jutting out from his body so that we would be able to see that he was super-jacked and ready to flex some no-good enemy monster to death. Read More

Kirk Morris would play Maciste no less than six times in a brawny film career that included The Witch’s Curse and Atlas Against the Czar. If his clean-shaven pouty look makes you think you’re going to get a brooding muscle god more intent on lamenting his own awesome strength instead of using it, Colossus and the Headhunters leaves no doubt that this Maciste is all about pushing, pulling, heaving, straining, and most importantly of all, killing Headhunters! Read More

Truly then, the gods have smiled upon us this day when they sent forth this second adventure of Hercules. Fresh from whatever it was that Herc accomplished in his first epic film, this movie opens with him saying his goodbyes to his buddies from the Argos and preparing to journey to his hometown of Thebes with his new wife Iole and his buddy Ulysses. Read More

Reg Park is one of our beefiest Hercules, with pecs the size of a regular guy’s head and his acting consists of standing around talking in a dubbed monotone, while periodically swinging giant paper-mâché stones over his head to accomplish whatever fantastic task this fun and colorful film demands of him. British horror legend Christopher Lee, who obviously lost some kind of bar bet, also shows up as the evil King Lico. Read More

If you’re watching Alan Steele (Zorro Contro Maciste) in this movie and wondering just where it was that he learned how to pose and wear his leather gauntlets with so much authenticity, it’s because he apprenticed under the very best in the beefcake business. Read More

Child of the most unholy union of them all, its father being Chuck Norris 1980s action studio the Cannon Group, its mother being Italian director Luigi Cozzi, and its costume designer being previously employed on 2019: After The Fall Of New York, Hercules stands as a monument to Italian-American cinema cooperation and proves the old adage that what the Cannon Group and Italian trash directors can do horribly on their own, they can do even worse together! Read More