Friday, June 5, 2020

By the Gods!

Iloosh Khoshabe and Salvatore Furnari in VULCAN - SON OF JUPITER (1962)

PEPLUM movies featured little people more than any other genre. Why is that? Was it something in Italian culture? Was it the juxtaposition of big, beefy hero next to a kid-like little man? It's hard to say why they were so prominent in PEPLUM movies. I'm not complaining, it's just an observation. It's one of the many aspects of the genre that makes it unique.

Vulcan, the mythological being, was the blacksmith of the Olympian gods. He was born deformed and was considered extremely ugly, so much so that his mother, Hera, tossed baby Vulcan off of Mount Olympus but the baby survived. Iloosh is neither ugly or deformed. Vulcan is the Roman name while Hephaestus is the Greek counterpart.

1 comment:

Scott Ochiltree said...


These short sidekicks are almost always an unwelcome distraction in my view.

About the only time they advance the story is when they crawl through a space too small for the hero to get through.