PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical*
Although this daffy Italian peplum-comedy only has one joke-- two 20th-century guys travel back to ancient Greece and make dumb jokes about ancient culture-- I had to give VALE mythicity-points for mining a wide variety of Greek legends, in addition to crossing over Hercules with rising Italian original Maciste.
The two time-travelers are Milanese fight-promoters, loud-mouthed Rusteghin and submissive Comendatore, and even though Maciste and Hercules get their names in the title, this dotty duo are VALE's central characters, as well as the reason that the film doesn't fit the combative mode. Hercules and Maciste do perform various feats of strength, and they even grapple with one another for a few seconds, but they, like all of the other myth-figures-- Eurystheus, Deianeria, and such non-Hercules figures as Circe and the Minotaur-- are secondary icons.
So Loudmouth and Submissive chance upon a time-machine. They intend to go forward in time in order to find out what fights to bet on, but they goof and end up in fifth-century Mycenae, ruled by Eurystheus. quasi-brother to Hercules (Frank Gordon in his only movie performance). Eurystheus covets the hero's beloved Deianeira (Liana Orfei) and hopes to wed her. He summons an oracle with a crystal, hoping to learn that the son of Zeus has died fighting a local Cyclops. Instead, the crystal not only shows Hercules defeating the Cyclops, he also liberates two comical fishermen, played by Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia of THE TWO CRAZY SECRET AGENTS. The fishermen follow Hercules back to Mycenae and get involved in a few silly escapades to counterpoint those of the fight-promoters.
The promoters, by the way, are taken in by Eurysthesus, who doesn't really know what to do with them, though he takes custody of their time machine. Loudmouth shoots off a firecracker-- I have no idea where he gets it from-- and so impresses the Greeks a little. Later I think Eurystheus unleashes a minotaur on the hapless duo, which they escape. The English version glosses this incident with a line so weird it must have been just as strange in Italian, for Submissive says, "Is this what Greek men look like when their women are finished with them?" Possibly this was a cuckold joke, possibly not.
Once Hercules is back, the king has to cool his jets around Deianeira, though Submissive flirts with her a little anyway. At some point the time-travelers flee Mycenae, which is the point that the Maciste portion of the film begins. The twosome encounter the mymph Echo, trapped under stone, and she implores them to summon Maciste by, well, shouting his name. Maciste (Kirk Morris) shows up and frees Echo, who comically repeats the last syllable of each sentence's last word. The promoters observe Maciste's great strength and get the idea of ginning up a fight between Hercules and Maciste, which will somehow help them get their time machine.
A wrench in the gears appears: the sorceress Circe (Bice Valori) has taken a shine to Maciste. While Echo's off doing whatever, Circe lures Maciste and the promoters to her lair and tries futilely to seduce the big hunk. When he proves oblivious, she robs him of his strength. This doesn't work in the promoter's interest, so they summon Echo, who has a little catfight with Circe and then tricks the witch into transforming herself into a pig. I forget how Submissive ends up going to Mycenae ahead of the others, but somehow he also gets Maciste's strength transferred to him, so that he can survive in the wrestling-ring with Hercules for a little while. Then comes the short-lived hero-battle, and the 20th century goofs access their time machine and go home.
Of all the throwaway jokes in this episodic farce, only the ones involving Maciste, Echo and Circe prove fitfully amusing. I assign the film the function of "the metaphysical" simply because it makes use of so many familiar characters of myth, though they're only being used on the level of a "Fractured Fairy Tales" outing.
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