This isn't the worst movie I've ever seen, or even the worse 'Maciste' movie I've ever seen...believe it or not, this movie is an order of magnitude better than "Maciste Against Hercules In the Valley Of Woe". It is a clunker of a sword-and-sandals movie, but it still has a kind of innocence about it, as if the actors and the film crew knew they were just churning out product, but still had some pride in their work.
For some reason, the folks who brought it over to the English speaking world didn't want to admit this was another in the series of terrible 'Maciste' movies and so it went by the title of 'Colossus and the Headhunters'.
The plot is a drunken walk which makes even the later Hercules movies look coherent and well thought out. The whole thing is really just an excuse to show off the physique of the actor playing Maciste/Colossus as he strains to open doors, pick stuff up, throw stuff, topple a tower onto some fighting villagers, etc. (There's also some decent sword fighting and a nice thing where he beats up bad guys with chains and other props.) But there isn't really all that much of him in the movie, which see below. It's mostly just minor character actors and extras running around in loincloths and armor and hitting each other with swords and clubs.
This guy named 'Kirk Morris' who plays Maciste is built pretty well. He resembles a latter day Strongfort or Maxim. But aside from a really tiny waist and some decent pecs, he isn't really all that impressive as a centerpiece for a film about a Body. It also seems to me that most of the time he's sucking in his gut so hard that he has very little energy left to 'act' with, and this also results in his tending to move as if someone stuck a poker up his backside. This could be why Maciste hardly DOES anything in this film, at least compared to a typical Hercules film where half the film is Herc front and center in the action, beating the stuffing out of the bad guys...Steve Reeves and Reg Park (and even "Alan Steele") could move quite convincingly on short notice,but poor Kirk Morris might have been somewhat out of his league in meeting action hero demands.
Yet another terrible dubbing job makes it hard to tell how good the writing and the acting actually is, but you can bet that this film started out as throwaway hackwork and was dragged down several more notches by the dub. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt and say that the writing and acting in its original language would be slightly better than a Republic chapter serial.
There is a hilarious moment in the MST3K version of the movie where three of the good guys set out from the ravaged village where a major fight has taken place in pursuit of the kidnapped princess, and they just skip right over some of the fallen corpses of their fellow villagers on their way out of the square. Mike and the Bots moan in disbelief, "Ohhhh, DON'T hop over the bodies...! That's just wrong!"
You'd be better off counting cross-stitch than wasting time with this movie, but it's harmless enough.
