Maciste all'inferno

It's impossible not to compare the highly entertaining THE WITCH'S CURSE aka MACISTE IN HELL to the superior HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD. First, they're both Hercules (Maciste) movies in which our hero descends into the Underworld ... and second, it's a face off between arguably the two greatest Italian pulp directors of the 1960's, Riccardo Freda (HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK, THE GHOST) and the undisputed champion, Mario Bava (BLACK Sunday, KILL BABY KILL, LISA & THE DEVIL.) By any definition, THE WITCH'S CURSE is a very entertaining fantasy film: it opens with a prologue about witches in 18th century Scotland ... and then a bare- chested Hercules rides in. No explanation of how or why he's in Scotland -- WITH NO CLOTHES ON, and about twenty centuries late. That's what we really dig about mythological fantasy films -- they Never Have to Say They're Sorry. Or explain Anything. The Something Weird DVD is sadly not letter-boxed, and pretty fuzzy -- but still this comes across as one of the top 5 Hercules movies. Once Kirk Morris (juvenile, not a great Herc -- but who really cares?) gets into the Underworld, it's non-stop flaming brimstone nonsense. Even with a great transfer, this still wouldn't hold a candle to Bava's HAUNTED WORLD -- and in the end, that's the real difference between Freda and his pupil Bava, who far surpassed his master.

There's no way I could NOT like a combination Italian horror film (of the traditional kind) AND Italian "spear and sandal" film, including this one, which I never saw till two years ago. The "hell" scenes were worthy of "Hercules in the Haunted World," which I also never saw till recently. It seems to be a direct sequel to another "peplum" film (I don't know which), because of flashbacks and little references. As much as I like these movies AS movies, instead of as "camp," even I found it funny when the "Maciste" character arrived in this 17th (?) century Scottish town (and yes, in his loincloth), without anyone wondering anything about him.

In the 16th century, a witch is burned at Scotland, not forgetting to leave a curse behind. A hundred years later, the curse drives people mad - some kill themselves, some see ghosts in the shadows, some suffer from ridiculous overacting (don't miss the fat woman yelling „The witch is back again! It's the end for all of us!"). Suddenly Maciste rides into town, he looks like he came to the set of the wrong movie. It wasn't the only case of Maciste in the wrong millennium (see „Zorro Contro Maciste" by Umberto Lenzi), but if he is in Scotland, he should get a proper costume instead of the stone-age loincloth that was outdated in ancient Greece already. He tries to put an end to hysteria and terror by going down to hell and find the witch! „He can strangle the lion, but there's no man alive who can conquer the devil", they say, but where there's muscles, there's always a way. Director Freda knew what the public wanted, he made enough other movies including Maciste flicks - there even is a flashback to previous adventures -, so you get the fires, the beasts, the drama and all. My only regret is I had to watch this as a full screen copy with poor colors, because in the original wide screen format, it must be quite a show.

(Edit 2017) Nine years after my review above, I got the opportunity to watch a restored version in original scope format, running 88 minutes instead of 75 minutes (among the scenes cut from the old American DVD were a fight against a snake, Maciste crossing the rain of fire, and a flashback showing him in Ancient Egypt). I was right, it's quite a show in proper quality.

I've not seen a lot of peplum, but this has surely got to be one of the weirdest. The film starts in Scotland in the year 1550 where witch Martha Gaunt is sentenced to be burned at the stake by Justice Edgar Parrish (Andrea Bosic), who was spurned by the woman when she was young and beautiful. Before she dies, Martha places a curse on the land.

100 years later and the curse is in full effect, local women succumbing to madness and suicide, a gnarled tree sprouting a flower with each death. After newlyweds Martha (Vira Silenti ) and Charley (Angelo Zanolli) move into the local castle, the village folk get wind of the fact that Martha's maiden name was Gaunt, and decide that she is the reincarnation of the witch and must also be burnt at the stake.

So far, so fairly normal, but then things get totally bonkers…

Out of nowhere, Maciste (Kirk Morris)—a muscleman wearing nothing but a loincloth—rides his horse into town to try and prevent the execution. Pushing the tree over, he leaps into the hole underneath and enters Hell, where he faces many challenges before confronting the witch, the only one who can break the curse.

First Maciste wrestles a lion (a drugged-up real lion for long shots and a really manky stuffed lion head for close ups); then he wanders past the tortured and the damned where he helps Sisyphus to push his giant boulder. A massive flaming door is opened using a pair of rocks, although Maciste burns his hands in the process. Next, he narrowly escapes a booby trapped tunnel with a spiked roof that slowly lowers. A beautiful woman, Fania, heals his hands. Maciste is attacked by snakes, and a troglodyte, Goliath, who wrestles with our hero when he rushes to Fania's rescue. Having defeated Goliath, Maciste uses a boulder to shield himself from hot sparks, and has a chat with Prometheus, who is condemned to have eagles peck at his innards for all eternity, learning that he has been put under a spell by Fania, who is really Martha the witch.

After clearing his mind by watching some clips from his other movies in a pool of water (the one with the cyclops looks like good schlocky fun), and steering a herd of stampeding cattle off the edge of a cliff, Maciste finally breaks Martha's curse by kissing her. On the surface, a rainstorm puts out the fire about to burn Martha and Charley, the locals seeing this as a sign of their prisoners' innocence. Meanwhile, Maciste ascends from hell, mounts his steed, and rides off to help some other poor people in need.

Even with its constant barrage of bizarreness, I found Maciste in Hell a bit of a bore, the action consisting of Morris unconvincingly straining as he lifts supposedly heavy prop boulders or wrestles with stuffed or doped-up animals. Stunning location work (the scenes of hell were shot in the picturesque caves of Castellana) and great lighting ensures that the film is aesthetically pleasing, but director Riccardo Freda fails to bring much life to proceedings, making the film strictly for the most avid of sword and sandal fans, or those just wanting to see something completely random.

As far as the genre goes, that pretty must got invented by the Italians in the first place, this movie is actually not being the worst or silliest. But this doesn't mean that this movie is pretty bad and silly on its own though unfortunately.

This is one of the many Maciste movies, that got made over the decades. The character was an heroic strong-man, like for instance the Hercules and Samson characters were in Italian movies. However the character never really got known internationally, so must of the movies featuring him got released under different titles and his character also got named differently.

This time the main character is being played by the muscle man Kirk Morris, who actually played the character a whole bunch of times, as well as some other strong-man in many different Italian sword-and-sandal productions. Can't really say I was much impressed with him. Of course nothing wrong with his physics but he was really lacking the right charisma and definitely the right acting skills. To be honest, he looked quite silly with his boyish haircut and pearly white teeth.

It's not really a remake of the 1925 movie with the same title, since the movie pretty much follows a totally different story. The only thing the two have in common is that it features the Maciste character who has to descent to hell itself.

And in hell Maciste has to endure a whole bunch of silly ordeals. Watch Maciste dramatically opening a large door with his bare hands, lifts large phony looking rocks, or dance with a whole bunch of animals, such as a snake, a lion and a vulture. He's just holding and moving some puppets around, pretending that it are some real life animals attacking him. Really this is all that this movie is. But yes, there are actually far worse and far more silly genre examples to watch out there. This movie is actually pretty much alright for must part, which makes it all the more a shame that the story did not got worked out just a tiny bit better and also had some more exciting and original moments in it.

It's a predictable, campy, sword-and-sandal, adventure movie, that you at times still can have some fun with but unfortunately is far from a great movie.

4/10

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