Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules

Italy | 1961 Directed by Antonio Leonviola Starring Mark Forest Moira Orfei Paul Wynter Color | 96 Minutes | Not Rated Format: DVD Double Feature Disc | R1 - NTSC Retromedia

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		Review by Brian Lindsey

5     5   10 = Highest Rating

What's notable about Retromedia's latest "Sword & Sandal" double feature DVD is the inclusion of the classic Steve Reeves peplum Hercules (1958), presented in all its widescreen glory for the first time on American home video. So what do I, your humble cult movie correspondent, do upon getting my nicotine-stained mitts on the disc? Naturally, I dive headlong into the cheesy Side B feature, Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules. (Fear not! We plan — well, hope — to review the widescreen Hercules sometime in the future.)     Mole Men is actually the fifth film of the 1960s "Maciste" series — in its native Italian form it has nothing at all to do with Hercules. (Original title: Maciste, l'Uomo Più Forte del Mondo, "Maciste, The Strongest Man in The World".) In the late '60s/early '70s a number of Maciste flicks were sold to American TV and repackaged as The Sons of Hercules, given a jaunty, memorable theme song. (Geezers like me may recall it: "The mighty Sons of Hercules once thundered through the years; these men of steel could never feel the curse of a coward's fears!"...) Since U.S. audiences didn't know who the hell Maciste was, the main character was called "Atlas", "Samson", "Colossus", etc., in the dubbing, while narration at the beginning of each installment established the hero as one of the Greek demigod's offspring. Mole Men may well come closer than any of them in using the character's true name. Here the mini-skirted slab of beefcake is christened "Macistus".     We meet Macistus (Mark Forest) fishing on a beach — which in his case means single-handedly hauling in a harpooned whale. Suddenly a posse of weirdly-garbed soldiers bursts onto the scene, pursuing some men on horseback. Macistus intervenes, using his harpoon as a fighting staff to kill or chase off the soldiers. He isn't able to save any of the guys they were after, however. Macistus finds the nearby village destroyed and learns from a survivor that the Mole Men attacked and either slew or carried off everyone else in it. Apparently Macistus had been chillin' out in this village during a pause in his travels, so of course he immediately sets out to rescue the captives and kick plenty of Mole Man ass. Problem is, he doesn't really know where to find them. The only thing he does know is that, vampire-like, they disintegrate if touched by the sun's rays.     While riding around the countryside one night, Macistus happens upon a raiding party of Mole Men. (Well, it's supposed to be night, anyway... though it's a bit hard to tell due to the super-bright day-for-night photography.) The ghostly warriors are gleefully cavorting around a frightened prisoner they've tied to a tree, a huge, muscular black man (Paul Wynter) as solidly built as Macistus. (Given the white robes worn by the Mole Men, this scene would be uncomfortably suggestive of a drunken Klan rally were it not for the lack of pointy hoods. Instead, the Mole Men sport shaggy albino wigs.) Macistus wades into his enemies; during the fight he cuts the black giant loose but instead of helping out, the freed captive immediately scampers up a tree out of harm's way! Not that Macistus needs any assistance (hey, that rhymes)... The Mole Men he doesn't kill take to their heels. His newfound friend introduces himself as Bango and pledges to be Macistus' slave for saving his life. Enlightened Macistus won't hear of it, preferring to treat Bango as his equal — though he doesn't bother to fill him in on his plans. Discovering camouflaged listening tubes sticking out of the ground, Macistus discerns that the Mole Men are operating close by. He allows Bango and himself to be captured so that he can learn the location of their hidden base. They're taken via secret entrance to the subterranean city of the Mole Men — with its cadre of albino warriors, one might think it's the world's largest Elric of Melniboné "cosplay" convention. Not all the inhabitants resemble Edgar Winter, however.     A population of kidnapped surface-dwellers serve as slaves in the underground empire, used to turn a gigantic wooden wheel that somehow squeezes precious gems out of rocks on a conveyer belt. Macistus and Bango are thrown in with this lot (among them the villagers our brawny hero has come to rescue) and put to work on the great wheel. For the ruler of the Mole Men, Queen Halis Moyab (Moira Orfei), it's lust at first sight when she sees Macistus flex. A haughty monarch with normal pigmentation and abundant curves, the queen has no idea she is not of the same race as her albino subjects. Only the evil high priest, Kahab (Enrico Glori), knows she was taken from a family of surface-dwellers at birth. Kahab hopes to marry his son to the queen, so that together they'll sire a sun-resistant race of warriors destined to conquer the world above. But next to strappin' Macistus the Mole Men all look pretty scrawny, so Halis Moyab announces a trial of strength to determine who is truly fit to share her throne. Think maybe she's counting on Macistus to have an edge?     You'll have to forgive me if this review consists mostly of a partial plot synopsis. For anyone not familiar with these cheesy old pepla it'll serve as a warning for what to expect, which is outright silliness played totally straight... Ludicrous story, goofy costumes, bad dialog, poor dubbing, yada yada yada. There's a fair amount of action, at least — Macistus is forced by the queen to wrestle his buddy Bango, has a cage match with a vicious ape-like creature (a stunt man in a crappy monster suit), battles a pride of lions and, of course, pummels/tosses around a lot of Mole Men. Beefy, well-buttered Mark Forest is a more appealing lead here than in 1960's Goliath and the Dragon (in which his character is something of a dull, terminally grouchy jerk); in any case, there's a lot more flexing than thesping required for these he-man roles.     For those of you who do know what to expect with a film like Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules, you either find such stuff amusing and entertaining (like me) or avoid it like the plague. There really isn't much middle ground with these flicks.

Although the film itself isn't reviewed here, Hercules is the disc's main attraction and thus merits a discussion vis a vis specs. It's truly great to see Hercules again in the proper 2.35:1 aspect ratio, something I haven't done since attending a re-release double bill of it and the sequel, Hercules Unchained, at a drive-in back in the early 1970s. (Now one can fully appreciate the opulent touches of lighting and color cinematographer Mario Bava bought to the production.) A nearly damage-free print with generally strong colors was used for this anamorphic transfer; that a few scenes are somewhat dark-looking would be my only complaint. Unfortunately the mono audio track is something of a letdown. There's a faint but noticeable hum in the background for a good deal of the movie, and the English dubbing track used here is not the one Americans will be familiar with. (The actor reading for Steve Reeves has a higher, thinner voice than I'm used to and Sylvia Koscina is not dubbed particularly well. Perhaps this dub was originally made for the U.K. and Canada.)     Mole Men is really just a bonus feature and doesn't fare nearly as well. A 16mm television print, the AR is cropped to 1.33:1 Pan & Scan, so there are times when the action and actors get lost on the sides of the screen. Print damage is at tolerable levels but color balance is off — you can tell from the screenshots that the film looks pretty faded. It's watchable, though, akin to experiencing it via UHF TV broadcast in days of yore. The audio is a tad muffled but gets the job done adequately. (NOTE: My DVD Rating of '5' factors in the total value of this double feature package. If Hercules had better sound, or were the disc a few bucks cheaper, I'd have given it a '6'.) 6/20/06

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