Le Géant à la cour de Kublai Khan

Hordes of sadistic Mongol warriors descend upon China, enslaving its people and plotting to assassinate the beautiful young princess (Yôko Tani) -until a musclebound hero (Gordon Scott) rises up and rouses the people to drive the Mongols from their nation's majestic mountainscapes.

Gordon Scott, my favourite Tarzan, once again dons the toga, brandishes the enemy with red pillars, flings them around like they are pillows and also gets to sprouts some sage dialogue like "justice doesn't know race or creed." It's actually a well-made Peplum with great photography and grand action - chariot-charging action where our hero goes under and clings on to it, a fearless tiger-wrestling stunts and an earthshaking climax is quite impressive. No CGI! Real stunts. Definitely one of the better peplums - Sets are big and spectacular to watch. The only gripe is that it's a bit overlong.

Gordon Scott as Maciste at the Chinese Emperor's court

Maciste was actually an invention of the Italian author Gabriele D'Annunzio. The hero from the history of Carthage, blessed with Herculean powers, first appeared on the screen in the Italian monumental silent film "Cabiria" (1914). Bartolomeo Pagano (1878-1947) became a silent film star with this role. When the Peplum craze began in Italy at the end of the 1950s after Steve Reeves' hit Hercules films, Maciste was virtually recycled as a hero. This time he was not only used in ancient Carthage, but wherever and whenever a muscle-bound hero was needed.

So it happens that in this film the American bodybuilder Gordon Scott (1927-2007) has to intervene in a dispute between the Mongolian Great Khan and the Chinese emperor. Since a size smaller is not possible, Maciste has to use his bearish strength to trigger an (all too ridiculous) earthquake. Yoko Tani, Gabriele Antonini and Helene Chanel can be seen in other roles. During those years, the Franco-Japanese actress Yoko Tani (1928-1999) was married to Roland Lesaffre, Marcel Carne's favorite actor.

Definitely not the best Italian-made sandal film, even if director Riccardo Fredda has cult status among fan circles.

It's Gordon Scott who dons the loin cloth here as he tries to save the young Chinese Princess (Yôko Tani) from a fate worse than death. She is the daughter of the murdered Emperor and a much prized asset for the leader of the Mongols (Leonardo Severini) to consolidate his power. Luckily for her, our intrepid hero arrives just in time to save her brother "Tai Sing" (Chu Lai Chit) from a tiger and together with her imperial feistiness they unite with her late father's allies and set off to regain a throne that was brutally usurped. Naturally, "Garak" isn't best pleased that these flies are in his ointment, and with his own scheming "Liu Tai" (Hélène Chanel) and the burly guards captain (Franco Ressel) on his team it's not going to be a cakewalk for our muscle-bound "Maciste". It's all a bit procedural, certainly, but this has had some thought put into the production and the whole thing is stitched together in a way more technically professional fashion than so many other films from this genre. The story allows for a little more depth from the characters and there's plenty of action and plotting to complement the oriental mythology and the horseplay that this provides. Scott is also not a bad actor. No, he will never win a BAFTA, but he knew what was required of him here and his own limitations - especially when it came to his seriously concrete style of dialogue delivery. He realised that he wasn't employed for his voice but because he could start an earthquake just by thumping the ground! (OK, so some of this is also a bit far-fetched, too). If you like your peplum lively and with some attention payed to the edits and the continuity, and don't mind the odd shot that has crept in from other films, then you ought to quite enjoy this.

Gordon Scott, at the peak of his physical form, proudly displays his chiseled body in nothing more than a rather fetching orange loincloth, often glistening with sweat (only Helene Chanel gives him any competition for sexiness). The film itself is far from exciting, but it's slightly more bearable than others of its ilk, with a basic "save-the-princess" story and a mini-earthquake climax. *1/2 out of 4.

Ex-Tarzan Gordon Scott is the beefcake in this low-budget but exotic sword-and-sandal potboiler, set, oddly enough, in China. The set pieces are convincingly done for a mini-epic of this sort, and Scott appears to have done some amazing stuntwork in a chariot sequence. Les Baxter's recognizable GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS score has been superimposed once again by American International to good effect. One of the better retro-stud peplums for those interested.