Very well executed

The Worst Film Ever

Instant Favorite.

How sad is this?

I've seen some bad Italian films in my time but this one sure was painful. Y'see, this is a parody of Hercules films, but as those film are so campy and cheesy in the first place, it's pretty hard to make fun of them, so what we get here is a mixture of the usual Italian slapstick mixed with a war of the sexes type film. It's enough to make your eyes bleed.Muscle bound, Glacchus and his friend Paris are tricked into travelling to an island, are then drugged and find themselves prisoners of a bunch of Amazonian Warrior Women - and it's pretty hard for them to comprehend that the woman are in charge to! Plenty of 'but you're a girl!' dialogue follows.These girls may be tough, but they have needs to and the two main candidates to be next Queen are getting a bit itchy in the presence of our males, which is going to complicate things. The Queen herself (dubbed to sound like Elizabeth II for some reason!) is wondering why she's remained a virgin all her life and wants someone to describe what the 'flavour of a kiss' is. Also the Amazons have men working woman jobs (doing the washing, sewing, cooking) which somehow makes them act extremely camp.I hope that gives you an idea of what to expect from this one. I know we're talking about a different culture and a different time but the Italians were still making films like this about fifteen years later. I asked my wife if the old slapstick humour was still around today in Italian film and she shrugged her shoulders and said 'probably' in a disinterested fashion. So that's that.Only notable for a very early appearance from Mariangela Giordano (from Zombie Dead and Satan's Baby Doll) and the only time I laughed was when a tiny Greek guy grabbed two women and said in a very deep black man's voice "Y'all is my woman now".

I rate this movie as pretty good. The action part of the plot was not bad for such fare - after all sword and sandal epics were not known for top notch plots or dialog, but the attempt at humor were simply stupid. It would have been a much better movie without them. The budget obviously left no room for retakes; I noticed three goofs: A trumpeter at the very beginning dropped his trumpet then picked it up; the queen once had to lower her head to stifle a giggle and the high priestess tripped over something.The attack of the horse mounted freed male slaves on the Amazon city reminded me a lot of the Indian attacks on wagon trains in old television and movie westerns I found the use of the beatnik style jazz sound track in this ancient Greece set movie kind of interesting. So was the extended avant garde dance sequence in the middle. Very "Bohemian". So bad it is good you might say.

It would be hard to imagine this film as anything more than a parody of the Hercules/gladiator genre, but it fails miserably even at that. I can't believe that the film makers had anything remotely sensible in mind when they patched this thing together, or if they even had an overall working outline of what they were trying to do. The result is a poorly executed picture that meanders between action and comedy, but the outcome is simply embarrassing.At least if you have to watch this to complete the fifty movie DVD set from Mill Creek/Tree Line Films, the lead characters are pleasing on the eyes. Ed Fury is the main muscle man named Glauco, who has an eye for Antiope, the would be queen who wants to replace La Regina (Gianna Maria Canale). Glauco's sidekick Pirro (Rod Taylor) is busy chasing down Melitta (Daniella Rocca), as the two women engage in a contest for the 'sacred girdle'. A band of pirates and a wrestling bear also make appearances for reasons that seem entirely irrelevant.The other point has to do with the musical score, it really had no connection to the events happening on screen; most of the time it had a 'Gilligan's Island' feel to it. The thought just occurred to me that watching the picture in reverse probably would make just as much sense as watching it normally. However I use the term figuratively, there's no way to watch this film normally.

This film is strikingly similar to (and, incredibly, even worse than) Terence Young's THE AMAZONS (1974), which I watched only last month. Rod Taylor, who had just become a star thanks to George Pal's screen version of H.G. Wells' THE TIME MACHINE (1960), unwisely chose to follow it up with this turkey; his performance is embarrassing – especially the lamentable attempts at comedy – and, in fact, comes off like a cut-rate Tony Curtis! Likewise, Ed Fury makes very little impression as the proverbial muscleman (and, presumably, the Colossus of the title – though his character is actually named Glauco, even in the English-dubbed version!).As for the women, here we have: a rather unattractively made-up Dorian Gray (a regular fixture of Toto' comedies, though she also appeared in one film apiece by Fellini and Antonioni!); Daniela Rocca (best known as the mousy wife Marcello Mastroianni wants to get rid of in Pietro Germi's DIVORCE – Italian STYLE [1961]), whose character is constantly falling flat on her face for no apparent reason!; and Gianna Maria Canale (who appeared in countless sword-and-sandal titles but also starred in the first Italian horror film, I VAMPIRI [1956], co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), who's been saddled with the rather thankless role of the Amazon Queen who must fulfill her destiny by remaining a spinster! Truly, this has to be one of the worst films ever - which prompted director Bertrand Tavernier, then a film critic, to call it "one of the funniest of Italian comedies"! - which, from the very first shot (in which a trumpeter loses his grip on his instrument!), gives you an idea of the clumsiness you are about to witness – with the inappropriate 'modern' score (including the dance routines that are a cross between Busby Berkeley and WEST SIDE STORY [1961]!) and the hilarious dubbing (particularly during the one scene where Tiberio Murgia, so memorable as Claudia Cardinale's jealous elder brother in BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET [1958], appears) featuring prominently among its highlights…er…lowpoints!