Maciste nelle miniere del re Salomone

Reg Park had the body for these "Hercules" movies -- providing you like 'em bulky and beefy -- but he had neither the face nor the personality nor the talent. It takes nearly half-an-hour for him to make his first appearance here and when he does, he adds virtually nothing to the proceedings.

This means the movie must survive on its peripheral values and it does have a few of those. The African setting is at least a bit different and there's an impressively-large sculpture of an Egyptian head that can be retracted into a wall to reveal a secret passageway underneath. While Wandisa Guida makes for a rather glum heroine, Eleonora Bianchi adds zest to her role as the evil usurper and the unconvincingly-named "Dan Harrison" serves as an appealing young hero.

As usual in these affairs, there's a strong dose of male bondage-and-torture. Reg Park gets tied between two teams of horses which are supposed to pull him apart like a Thanksgiving wishbone, but a similar scene in Steve Reeves' "Goliath and the Barbarians" did a better job of it. Dan Harrison gets whipped in a dungeon but, strange, the bloody marks on his back don't change one bit no matter how many times the whip strikes him. Then Harrison is chained to the wall of an arena so that he can be both stabbed and crushed by a contraption which is slowly propelled toward him. It's part of the movie's problem with its leading man that in this scene, a sweat-covered Harrison -- stripped to a loincloth to reveal an adequate but unspectacular physique -- is far sexier and more attractive than Reg Park could ever hope to be.

Again, the lead character is renamed this time from Maciste to Samson for the US audiences. Maciste is renamed often for American audiences into Samson, Hercules, Goliath and such because the name Maciste is not popular in the US.

Maciste/Samson is forced with others to be slaves by the evil queen. They are forced to work in King Solomon's Mines to dig for gold.

*King Solomon's Mines are said to contain diamonds, gold and ivory in the book King Solomon's Mines (1885) by Sir H. Rider Haggard.

Not an overly exciting film but it has it's moments of being interesting. It's really your average 1960s peplum. For me it's a little better than some but worse than others.

2.5/10

King Zelea (Carlo Tamberlini) is celebrating 20 years on the throne, and despite sitting on the fabulous wealth of King Solomon, mining is banned by royal command, with Tamberlini determined to shield his people from the corrupting influence of the precious metal.

However, the scheming advisor Riad (Elio Jotta) has other ideas, and he plans to take the throne by aligning himself with the outlaw band of warrior queen Fazira (Wandisa Guida).

The murdered king's young son escapes with a young woman from the court, seeking assistance from legendary strongman, Maciste...

Maciste in King Solomon's Mines starts out really well, then diverts in to a travelogue of Africa with lions and cubs, then a little Tarzan with the African tribes, and then finally Reg Park appears as Maciste, though the focus is on the two villains - Wandisa Guida as bad girl Fazira and Riad the greedy advisor, and to be honest, they add meat to the well-worn picture which isn't taut enough and comes across as tired.

But there are some good points such as superb cinematography, location and the interior sets of the temple - the huge statue that leads to the mines is impressive and adds atmosphere. Also, Reg Park physically works hard in this adventure/sword and sandal hybrid: he proves his strength trapped in a cage of spikes with two teams of horses trying to tear him in two, gets to demolish the giant statue in the temple, and suffers the effects of a hypnotic drug administered via a combination of a poisoned garland of flowers and a magical ankle bracelet.

It's acceptable peplum with some good moments but it lacks focus and comes across tired and not exciting.

Hmmm. Reg Park certainly looked the part as the muscle man dragooned - thanks to a magical anklet - into working in the mines of the nasty "Queen Fazira" (Wandisa Guida) after he had travelled all the way deep into the jungle to rescue his fellow prisoners. They are all digging like mad in the hope that they can find the legendary treasure of the biblical king, but thus far aren't having too much luck. She's getting fed up waiting so he'd better get a move on, or better yet - find some way to remove his malicious enchantment so he can start throwing the polystyrene scenery around and get into the action. Aside from the ropey production standards and the equally over-scripted dialogue, that's really the problem here. What action there is is largely reserved for the last ten minutes and by then the whole thing is entirely procedural. What this does have in it's favour is a bit more quality from the studio sets, and some imagination has certainly gone into these to give the thing a better look than many of this genre, but little use is made of any real African scenarios and the stage-bound nature of the storytelling robs this of most of it's pace or distinctiveness. It's an hybrid of ideas and well trammelled stories that seems a good deal longer than ninety minutes.

"Maciste in King Solomon's Mines", as this film is known (although just barely) in the states, is another in the long line of sword and sandal "epics" churned out in Italy in the wake of the hugely successful Hercules films starring Steve Reeves.

Toplined by Reg Park (whose claim to fame is that he's brawnier than most of the other so-called "musclemen" who played Hercules, Goliath, Maciste, etc. - it certainly isn't his acting, which is atrocious and seemingly dubbed by himself or some equally erudite ex-high school football hero), it's the story of a mythic hero of the people, summoned to the jungle city of Zimba to free the oppressed masses, who have been enslaved by the evil Queen Fazira to dig gold (and more gold) from the legendary mines of King Solomon.

Once Maciste arrives in the city, he is overpowered by Fazira's personal guard and bewitched with a magical ankle bracelet, which causes him to lose his free will, relegating him to servitude in the mines. Soon (but not soon enough), he is freed from his mind-numbing paralysis and exacts his revenge upon Fazira & her minions & co-conspirators, frees the slaves and installs his friend as the new ruler in an energetic finale.

Having accomplished a job, well done, he walks off into the veldt, awaiting his next adventure.

I admit I like this stuff (I grew up watching hundreds of such "gladiator" pictures, or peblums, as they are also known)), but this opus is not one of the best examples of the genre. Filmed in South Africa, the film makes little use of the scenery other than to pad the running time with a variety of nature shots. It's for "early 60's" nostalgia buffs & die-hard fans of the genre.

These types of films are virtually unshown on TV today (except for an occasional airing on the TNT network). The version I saw, obtained from a PD video company, has severely washed-out color and is not nearly worth the investment.