Flexing a Weird Muscle
Oh, where to begin...?

Not much time for play today, so we're going to jump right in.

Now as a kid, I wouldn't have thought that there was anything weird about this movie at all. I simply would have thought, 'Cool!', and gotten my He-Man figures while it played in the background. As an adult, I look at it the same way I see anything Ed Wood-like. In other words, I watch it with a hearty "What were they thinking?!?" ringing between my ears. As in, who came up with this premise?

With that I bring you:

Hercules Against the Moon Men (1964, d. Giancomo Gentilomo)

The Story: Hercules is asked to help the citizens of Samar where the young are ritually sacrificed to mysterious monsters in the mountain; however, Herc discovers that Samar's queen is in league with the monsters who are in fact from OUTER SPACE!!! (or something like that...in any event, they're not from our moon from what I gathered...but they're from A moon.)

The Review: By '64 peplum (Italian-made sword and sandal movies post Ben Hur [ie. Hercules movies]) were giving out, and the door was opening for spaghetti westerns (you knew they would be in here somewhere right?). Just like the spaghetti's and virtually every other genre began to fade out, they started to get more and more outlandish and often bizarre. After all, you always started out with the single hero movies, then single hero vs. super villain, then two heroes together in the same movie vs. one or more super-villain/s, and then you were running out of places to go. Herc, Samson, and Maciste had already fought every mythological beast, army, god, and sorcerer. So who was left? That's right: The Mysterious Moon Men.

Steve Reeves is probably the man who will forever be remembered as Hercules, but the movies continued long after he left. Alan Steel (née Sergio Ciani), who had been Reeves' stunt double, took up the short skirted toga and the beard for this outing. Truth is, he's not bad. He's not Reeves, but he's not bad. First and foremost, unlike later modern body-building action movie types, Steel manages to throw himself into the role without the self-consciousness that tends to go one of two ways: 1) "I look so stupid, what am I doing embarassing myself like this?", or 2) "I'm so badass, and I'm on my way to superstardom." Steel is onscreen to get a job done and he throws around armored soldiers, killer apes, and styrofoam moon men like he was born to do it.

The rest of this cast puts in a genuinely satisfactory effort, and our queen is both beautiful enough and evil enough. The monsters only work in their way because the movie's old. First up is the wild ape-thing with the tusks that Herc fights in the underground caves: weak, but fun. The Moon Men...well, they look like styrofoam carved blocks that move like a stone version of a Romero-movie zombie. It's tough to believe they could ever really catch up to someone much less kill them. On the other hand, they're just old enough, and they act just funny enough to be totally entertaining. The leader of the Moon Men almost seems like a pretty good bad guy. He sports this weird skull-like alien mask which covers his whole head and is cool until you can see his lips moving underneath it.

The most hilarious part is that I actually tried to get the nicest looking copy I could find which turned out to be the Something Weird Video release. It's the only widescreen copy, and it turned out to be quite a nice transfer. In a way, that almost ruined the experience though (don't get me wrong, I still say it's the one to buy). Also on the disk is The Witch's Curse, another strongman flick, and that transfer looks like a video copy from a UHF channel in the 80's. Just like badly dubbed martial arts/Godzilla flicks and Italian space operas, I expect them to look washed out, high contrast, grainy, and just generally bad. When you see something as it was probably originally presented it somehow loses some of it's initial charm, but on the other hand, if it's good enough, it picks up a new life.

This one actually managed to do this.

Again, this is more of my thirst for fun cinema that doesn't have to mean anything, and sure as hell doesn't even try for realism. In fact, a lot of time, the best parts of these movies occur when they actually pull off a really cool shot or special effect. It doesn't always happen, but when it does it's great. Many times, these movies also have more genuine and earnest performances despite the silliness than any number of modern day big budget blockbusters. So grab Hercules Against the Moon Men, grab a snack, grab your significant other, curl up, and don't be or expect everything to be so damned serious all the time.

Cheers.