Another prime-source Mario Bava debut on Blu-ray is here, which is always cause to celebrate. Bava’s near-magical color cinematography launched the Italo sword & sandal Peplum craze with his work on 1957’s Hercules, and he contributed direction to its sequel Hercules Unchained as well as at least two other epics signed by others. 1961’s Hercules in the Haunted World is the first such movie to bear his directorial credit. It’s his second credited directing gig, despite having directed most of Caltiki, the Immortal Monster and an undetermined fraction of The Day the Sky Exploded (1958).
Rather than lead with ‘personal experiences’ — readers have had enough of that with last Tuesday’s The Fearless Vampire Killers — I’ll just describe the disc’s impressive contents and assess the film compared to a few other Bava epics. Bava’s incredible visual sense is here stretched to the limit, as if he were intent on proving how much he could create with the fewest production resources. We see what might be an hour’s rental of one of Cinecittá’s standing exterior sets, a large pillared building seemingly hewn from rock. Creatively-shuffled interior walls, curtains and special objects of décor conjure a dozen distinctive interiors. For his ‘journey to the underworld’ sequence Bava goes one step further, seemingly sculpting an entire haunted realm from smoke, colored light, some hand-me-down set pieces and the judicious application of double exposures and mirror shots. Unless the IMDB is way off (are they ever?) this is Bava’s first picture in ‘Super/100’ Totalscope… a format that seems to have given him some grief, here and there.
The multi-authored original story sidesteps the standard Peplum format, which more often than not sees a generic muscular hero defeating various foes and a monster or two before ridding a city-state of a swinish tyrant. Bava’s Hercules is duped by an usurper, who in this case moonlights as a satanic necromancer. But his journey to the underworld is no fool’s mission. After bringing back the cure for his beloved, Herc must sort out several mythological/personal complications.
Popularity wise, English bodybuilder and Mr. Universe winner Reg Park holds a high roost among Steve Reeves substitutes. Although Park cuts a righteous musclebound body profile, I find him a sincere lightweight compared to the God-like Reeves, whose stunning presence as Hercules is unmatched. From this period, second runner-up would be the great Gordon Mitchell, who projects the vibe of a weatherbeaten Greek hero who has endured mythological adventures. By comparison, the subdued Reg Park seems a personality-challenged nice guy. His amiable smile reminds me of Chris Elliott in Groundhog Day. I haven’t seen Park in his first Hercules movie for the same producer, Cottafavi’s Hercules Conquers Atlantis. Critic Raymond Durgnat liked that one and maybe Park is more inspiring in it.
But the real star here is Mario Bava. When surrounded and supported by il Maestro’s sensational visuals, it almost doesn’t matter who plays Hercules. And this eccentric muscle movie is marvelous fun.
This time out, Hercules (Reg Park) is bracketed by a pair of lesser wingmen. George Ardisson is Theseus (Teseo), who I believe in mythology did join forces with Hercules to kill a many-headed monster. Ardisson’s strong suit is a chiseled profile ideal for a Roman coin. The favorite pastime of this Teseo is smooching with Giocasta (Ely Drago), an Anytime-Annie playgirl actually engaged to Hercules’ other sidekick, the sad-sack comic relief clown Telemaco (Franco Giacobini). Having finished an important task, Hercules is heading home to marry Princess Deianira (Leonora Ruffo), heir to an entire kingdom. Alas, royal caretaker (or perhaps interim King) Lico (Christopher Lee, magnificent) has bad news — Deianira’s father has died and she has fallen sick with a malady that has robbed her of her will. She can no longer relate to others, not even her prospective husband. The cure, Lico says, can only be found in the Underworld. Although no man has gone to that mysterious kingdom and returned, Hercules and his buddies take up the challenge, securing a magic ship and seeking the help of a female tribe. This means defeating a giant, securing a magic apple from a tree and neutralizing a ‘rock monster’ called Procrustes. Hercules is advised not to believe what he sees, which helps when penetrating a sea of flames, but not when confronted by a chamber of molten goo. Although they emerge with the magic rock that will cure Deianira, the complications don’t let up. Teseo has fallen in love with a lonely Underworld goddess, and defies the Gods by taking her with him when they come home. And almost too late does he discover what we’ve known all along — the two-faced Lico has tricked him as part of a satanic pact. His plan is to slay Deianira, become immortal and seize the throne — aided by a grotto of undead ghouls.
Critics of Mario Bava’s action-adventure movies often tell us to prepare for production shortcuts that don’t really appear — his Erik the Conqueror may not have giant ships, Norwegian fjords and real castles, but we never feel short-changed for spectacle or action. Likewise, if we take Bava’s horror and sci-fi pictures on their own terms, we realize that his notion of ‘production values’ often bests those of million-dollar epics. Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy is a huge super-epic, but Bava’s inspired, expressive images are often more cinematic.
This Hercules picture does cut corners, as the story relies more on horror movie atmosphere than standard action. There are no big battles, no giant sets and hardly any swordplay. Some thieves are roughed up and a few guards get bashed about. Reg Park’s laid-back Hercules is also something of a one-trick pony, repeatedly falling back on a single gimmick: he picks up heavy objects and throws them. Twice he puts a rock in a sling, to do things like knock down a branch of a magic tree that refuses to be climbed. Hercules defeats the majority of his foes with this ‘Toss-Rock-Kido’ martial art, which is just as effective against those creepy ghoul-things. The U.S. poster art depicts Herc Baby grappling with the film’s graphic title logo block. Maybe he’s going to toss it at the producer.
With the exception of Chris Lee’s nicely modulated villain, the acting is not the kind that inspires. But the visual pageantry is unconcerned with rounded performances. Another attraction are a half-dozen gorgeous Italo actresses, well costumed, coiffed and lit with those warm Technicolor hues that make every Bava siren from Michele Mercier to Marisa Mell look too good to be true. It takes an expert like Tim Lucas to keep their names straight (more on his commentary a bit later). He reports that one mysterious denizen of the underworld, a nude beauty chained to a tree (!), isn’t actually the actress billed, but her sister!
It’s Bava’s show all the way. His stock in trade is eye-catching, expressive visuals in which we only think we’re seeing expensive scenery. Foreground miniatures and bric-a brac either transform settings we’d otherwise recognize from other movies (that underground stone quarry-grotto), or create the illusion of large, elaborate sets (the oracle’s temple with its reflecting pool). The only not-so-hot set pieces are the kinds of things that show up in standard Peplum adventures, like the uninspiring coverage of the torture tables where the rubbery rock monster Procrustes threatens to kill Telemaco and Teseo. Does Hercules find some clever way of defeating the stone stalagmite-man? No, he just falls back on his black belt skill in Toss-Rock-Kido.
Bava conjures satisfying scenes even when we have no idea how our heroes get from one place to the next. His illusions — and the dramatic lighting especially — take the place of standard thriller filler material. We always have something arresting to soak up, such as the impressive sight of Reg Park holding back two teams of wild horses, one in each hand, using muscleman flex pose number 13. Several visuals stand out as particularly expressive. We don’t really see the slaying of a handmaiden, but Bava’s camera trucks from her slashed neck, across a pool of blood, to reveal Lico’s baleful reflection — it’s a classic portrait of murder. Elsewhere Bava and Christopher Lee affect a memorable ‘attack’ simply by having Lee uncoil from a semi-silhouette pose, and lean into Bava’s lens until he blots out the frame. The stylized shot makes unnecessary a lot of scenery-chewing — it’s so simple, it’s genius.
After this movie and Erik the Conqueror Mario Bava settled into non-anamorphic filmmaking — shooting with his personal toolbox of ‘hero’ flat lenses — zooms and wide angles — that he knew by heart. Many of his illusion-tricks rely on an exaggerated depth of field to keep everything in focus, even when some of the scenery is scaled-down miniatures, or flat artwork on glass mattes. But I think the Totalscope lenses gave him some trouble here, problems that he rectified for Erik the Conqueror. Master angles like the wide shot of the oracle’s temple pool are just amazingly sharp, but then a medium angle on some characters (the oracle, Teseo and the underworld princess) will be out of focus, as if he were betrayed by lenses that didn’t seat properly, or a bad assistant, or (?) who knows. In some shots only part of the frame will be soft. These moments are fleeting — maybe twenty seconds of material that may slip by unnoticed — but they’re not what we expect from Bava. I think some faulty Totalscope gear must have thrown him a curve.
One last stab at the effects: in this picture Bava does everything In The Camera — slow motion miniature water effects, landscapes faked with double exposures and difficult-to-detect foreground miniatures. In this ultra-sharp scan we can make better guesses than usual. Somebody told Tim Lucas that Bava had only four large rounded pillars at his disposal, but I see several shots where more are visible, and integrated with character action. A complex composite shot would be more trouble than physically faking an extra pillar one way or another. Maybe Bava found a way of substituting cut-out pillars here and there. It’s not at all unusual for witness reportage to contradict what we can see for ourselves. On his interview on this disc, George Ardisson tells us that Reg Park was a superman, and that the rocks he tosses around in the movie are real.
The bottom line is that Hercules in the Haunted World delivers a spectacle far more striking and imaginative than most sword & sandal epics. This show kept little kids (me, for one) pretty much on the edge of our seats. As an adult I still admire Bava’s fairytale atmosphere and his skill at lighting those gorgeous women. No wonder people wanted to work with him. Directors like Fellini were inspired to emulate his work.
