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4.0 out of 5 stars
A great peplum that's anything but "draggin'", December 31, 2010
This review is from: Goliath & The Dragon (1960) (DVD)
This one starts out with Mark Forest climbing down a cliff using the power of his steely, bulgey, mighty thews. Due to the camera angle and the tiny fir micro-skirt he's wearing, you almost kind of get a glimpse of the pillar of Hercules, if you get my drift. Only Forest isn't playing Hercules here. He's playing Emilius the Mighty, nicknamed Goliath and gifted by the gods with strength and immortality in return for his devotion. He's sort of their errand boy. His job here is to take out a giant, 3 headed, fire breathing dog. I suppose you can't just smack a dog like that on the snout with a rolled up newspaper or squirt him with a water bottle so Herc, I mean Goliath, I mean Emilius the Mighty decides to lay a beat down on it.
The problem is that the dog is so wretchedly made that you end up feeling sorry for it because instead of looking like a terrifying horror it just looks really woozy. When "Goliath" finally stabs it in the throat with what looks like a butter knife the dog stops bobbing it's heads and then tips over. It's unclear whether the thing died or just fell asleep. Either way it's out of the picture and Goliath moves on to his next task, to capture a jewel, which is held by a hideous bat-monster, which looks like a very big raisinette with wings. This monster makes the gods quake in their sandals but Goliath just stabs it with his butter knife and it dies like a beeyotch. He brings the jewel to the temple of the gods and a priestess informs him that his service to the gods is now over and he can do his own thing.
All he wants to do after years of service is go back to his home and live with his family. which makes him like Maximus from Gladiator, except that instead of defeating his nation's greatest enemies, bringing and end to decades of war and securing his country's northern border, Goliath killed a woozy dog and a raisinette.
I'm not sure what the exact plot is after this scene because I was doing laundry in my small apartment while watching this and the noise from the washing machine made it difficult to hear everything that was said. But some kinds of shenanigans were afoot because the really hot, busty non-blond (red-head in this case) and the ugly dudes were giving each other shifty looks. Then a really sneaky looking ugly dude who also wore eye-shadow, making him effeminate and therefore extra decadent & untrustworthy, handed a vial of something to the red-head, which at first I thought, because of her constantly heaving chest, might have been medicine for palpitations of some kind, but as it turned out, it was poison for Goliath.
Goliath spends alot of time throwing pig roasts and talking about how great it is to live a simple life with his friends and family. His brother, Illus, wants to marry a girl from a rival and evil clan. This upsets Goliath so much that when Illus tries to leave the pig roast to see the girl, Goliath ties him to a tree, figuring he'll come to his senses eventually. So he's a little more Great Santini than he is Cliff Huxtable.
Then there are more sly looks between the bad guys and then a girl rides up to Ilus on a horse and slips him the poison. She thinks it is a potion that will clear Goliath's mind so he will allow Ilus to marry his girl.
Goliath releases Ilus after Ilus cries "Uncle" and Ilus slips him the mickey. Now I did miss some of what happened next because I was throwing in some fabric softener, but I think Goliath goes a bit wonky and almost dies, but then he doesn't. Then he kills a vicious cardboard dragon, and then you're done.
This movie is a solid example of what makes a good peplum. It has plenty of cheesy FX, over-the-top battle scenes and lots of inadvertent humor.
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