Photo of the Day

The Queen (Gianna Maria Canale) presides over some ceremony in COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN

The cool thing about Gianna's role in this comedy is that she was able to play a light-hearted role, as opposed to the ones she was often cast as, the bad girl/Femme fatale types. This gave her the chance to camp it up as the Queen and she was great in it.

Same boat, different films

Same boat, different films: the boat first appeared in CARTHAGE IN FLAMES (above) and re-appeared in REVAK THE REBEL (The Barbarians; below). Just to make sure, the boat scenes in REVAK were not reused or stock footage from CARTHAGE IN FLAMES but filmed specifically for it.

The boat scenes in CARTHAGE IN FLAMES were reused and re-edited in GOLIATH & THE SINS OF BABYLON (not shown here).

Primitive art might have been created by aliens

Have aliens already visited Earth?

Nasa book suggests that ancient rock art could have been created by extraterrestrials. A new book details the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti). In it the authors discuss the methods through which we might find aliens. These include searching for signs of life on planets or finding messages. The book details some of the challenges ahead for making first contact. But ultimately the authors say it is something that might happen one day.

Could it be possible? Hmm...how much of the past history was influenced by extraterrestrials?

Link

Photo of the Day

Svetania (Geneviève Grad) and Olivier D'Anglon (Ettore Manni) are lovers in CONQUEST OF THE NORMANS

A solid film with a full PEPLUM cast, including these two veterans. The film uses some footage from Bava's ERIK THE CONQUEROR but overall it's actually well directed and believable. It's one of those obscure PEPLUM films no one remembers even though it's more respectable than many well regarded ones.

Moloch, evil PEPLUM god!

Artists representations of Moloch, the sacrificial evil God people sacrificed children to, often related to Carthage and Carthaginians.

From Wikipedia:

"Moloch worship was practiced by the Canaanites, Phoenicians, and related cultures in North Africa and the Levant."

At the movies:

There were several films with Moloch as the main evil God mere mortals feared. THE PRODIGAL had a Moloch-like sacrificial statue but I didn't include it as it's not identified as such; the name of the Pagan God was Baal, male God of the flesh, which was often confused with Moloch or that Baal and Moloch are basically on different sides of the same coin.

 The grand daddy of PEPLUM films, CABIRIA (1914), featured Moloch in its main storyline

From CARTHAGE IN FLAMES

From HERCULES AGAINST MOLOCH, with Moloch played by Pietro Marascalchi

Then & Now : Christine Kaufmann

A young Christine in THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII; a recent photo of Christine

Photo of the Day

Mark Damon and Giuliano Gemma, as Robin Hood, in THE SCALAWAG BUNCH

Directed by Giorgio Ferroni. The entire film, made in 1971, feels like a vintage PEPLUM from the late 1950s, early 1960s. The entire cast is made of PEPLUM stock actor. It's great to watch, with great production values, even if the story is not that hot. Who knew Mark Damon was so short.

Behind-the-Scenes

Chelo dancing during the making of SIGN OF THE GLADIATOR

Location : Pantheon (Rome)

This would be such a great location for any PEPLUM film which oddly enough few have ever been filmed there.

Photo of the Day

Lisa Gastoni is Messalina in THE LAST GLADIATOR (aka Messalina vs the Son of hercules...not really)

Her best PEPLUM performance. Few people know her or this film but she makes it.

Movie Poster Mondays

Yugoslavian poster of HERCULES UNCHAINED

Beautiful poster even if Sylva Koscina looks more like Sophia Loren

Photo of the Day

Attila (Jack Palance) wants to ravish Princess Pulcheria (Ludmilla Tchérina) in SIGN OF THE PAGAN

The savage and the beauty. Ludmilla was cast in this film after her appearance in Riccardo Freda's SPARTACO - SINS OF ROME. She spoke English even if her native tongue was French, which means heavy accent which always makes a film like this odd to watch with so many conflicting accents, usually British and American accents.

Back on Monday!

Lobby Cards Set : THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII

US lobby cards set for THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII : very good set if a bit repetitive (3 scenes from the arena?) but it does give a good overview of the film. Colorful and good shots of Steve and Christine Kaufmann and one with Mimmo Palmara. Above average.

PEPLUM GIF Animation : Goliath and the Sins of Babylon

Chariot race scene from GOLIATH & THE SINS OF BABYLON; that's José Greci ahead of Mark Forest.

Photo of the Day

Scilla Gabel, as Thalima, is locked up in the dungeon in COLOSSUS OF THE ARENA

Do female prisoners in PEPLUM films always look this good? The answer is yes. Dungeon or not, PEPLUM ladies always look good no matter what the circumstances. Is it realistic? No but who cares!

Blog notes : Blog vs Google+

The GOOGLE+ page is heading towards the 4 million views!

I started this blog back in October 2010 and since then it got almost 1.5 million views, which is pretty good in itself but compared to Google+ it's nothing. I created the Google+ page for this blog last November and it's heading towards the 4 million total views. So in little more than 6 months the Google+ page got more than double that of the blog, which I've been doing for many years. It's a head scratcher alright. I'm not complaining but boy those Google+ views are staggering. It gets almost 14,000 views a day while the blog, the source of all things PEPLUM, gets between 1,000 to 1,500 views a day. I checked Google+ pages for other big brand names and most of them haven't even reached the million mark. I'm blown away by it. Now if only I could make money out of it. Ah!

All Things PEPLUM @ GOOGLE+

PEPLUM Blog's stats

Updated : Identifying the TEN GLADIATORS + more

Identifying the actors who played the TEN GLADIATORS from the series of 3 films is a difficult thing to do. The cast changed slightly between the first and second films; the cast is credited mostly with aliases; IMDb info is incomplete (Romano Giomini is not listed for the 3 films) and most of the gladiators remain nameless in the stories/scripts so not much to go by. Here's the closest I've tried to figure out who's who.

The three films are: THE TEN GLADIATORS; SPARTACUS & THE TEN GLADIATORS and TRIUMPH OF THE TEN GLADIATORS.

Uploaded to the SPECIAL FEATURES page

Dan Vadis as Rocca

Pietro Torrisi

Salvatore Borgese

 Jeff Cameron (aka Giovanni Scarciofolo)

Aldo Canti

Enzo Fiermonte

Romano Giomini

Frank Oliveras

Emilio Messina

Armando Bottin

From THE TEN GLADIATORS only

These three actors who were gladiators in THE TEN GLADIATORS but didn't return for the two sequels/prequels.

Pino Mattei

Giancarlo Bastianoni

The elusive Gino Turini, who's barely in the film. Thanks to Scott for the info on Gino.

The entire TEN GLADIATORS cast from the 2 sequels (or prequels)

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And as an extra note, while scanning THE TEN GLADIATORS for a good shot of Gino Turini, I finally found the equally elusive Roberto Messina, brother of Emilio Messina, one of the ten gladiators. He's erroneously credited at IMDb as Methodius. Roberto's role, like most of his other PEPLUM films, only lasts a few seconds. Here's a previous article on Roberto: link

Original post

Photo of the Day

The ending to THE TEN GLADIATORS

Good photo. There are some gladiators missing. Anyway, here's the cast: Roger Browne and José Greci (far left). The first row of gladiators: Emilio Messina, Pietro Torrisi, Giancarlo Bastianoni, Pino Mattei. Second row: Romano Giomini, Aldo Canti, Salvatore Borgese and Gino Turini (thanks to Scott for the info on Turini). Dan Vadis is not in this (for good reasons). On the steps are Mimmo Palmara and Gianni Rizzo.

Where it all started...?

As I was born and still live in Montreal, my upbringing was a fully bilingual one and part of this upbringing was reading books in either English or French my parents bought for me to read. Way back then they purchased a set of colourful illustrated encyclopedia called TOUT CONNAÎTRE (or Know Everything) and these books contained numerous sections about stuff from the Bible or simply information from Antiquity. I remember reading these books over and over again when I was a kid. I recently went to my parents' home and found these books in the basement and was amazed by the amount of PEPLUM stuff in them and I guess my interest really started with this encyclopedia set.

After work activities

Sylva Koscina tests her might by trying to carry Steve Reeves during some HERCULES publicity campaign. Cute photo.

Photo of the Day

Samson (Gordon Scott) is interrupted by some Chinese guards in a tavern in SAMSON AND THE 7 MIRACLES OF THE WORLD

Guess what happens after this? Brawl!

Best PEPLUM Villains

Here's a new feature at the blog: I'll be counting down the best villains in the PEPLUM genre.

To begin with this new feature I decided to start with THE MIGHTY URSUS which has more villains in it than any other PEPLUM film ever made. Practically every character is a villain or nemesis. There are so many of them that it would take a long post to go through all of them. So instead I'll just list the top three villains. And it doesn't get any more villainous than the super slimy Setas perfectly played by the wonderful Luis Prendes who's solid performance grounds this episodic story. He's definitely one of my favourite villains of the genre.

María Luisa Merlo as Doreide, Luis Prendes as Setas and Ed Fury as Ursus

But because there are so many villains in this film, siding with Setas is not so bad and in the end his behaviour sorta makes sense in light of everything but he still is one bad, nasty fellow.

Second villain is Attea, played by the over-the-top Moira Orfei. Her character starts off on the good side but by the end of the film, her character changes radically. She and Mok (pictured below) make for a gruesome twosome: he wants to rule over the kingdom and also have Attea as his wife but Attea has different plans. Both of them are cruel.

Moira Orfei as the crazed Queen

Moira Orfei and Rafael Luis Calvo as Mok