PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
This Maciste film, marketed under the "Sons of Hercules" rubric in the U.S, has nothing directly to do with the mythology of Hercules, though the hero's purpose, to bring an end to a sacrificial cult, bears some resemblance to a particular archaic "Hercules" tale. More notably, TRIUMPH (which was titled "Triumph of Maciste" in Italy) provides a new take on the highly variable mythos of Maciste. This time, the hero is said to have been born from the sun and raised by a female oracle, Yalis (Carla Carlo), though in the dubbed edition the oracle's identity isn't revealed until over halfway through the movie. In addition, this was the first film credit for Kirk Morris, who would play Maciste in three or four other sixties films.
In Memphis, Egypt (which in this universe has a volcano for a neighbor), evil Queen Tenefi (Lluba Bodica) has usurped the throne of the city. She demands that the citizens yield up daily sacrifices, all hale young women, to the Fire God in the mountain. Naturally, a resistance movement forms.
Maciste, who doesn't seem native to this quasi-Egyptian domain, defends the people of a village from Tenefi's raiders. One young woman, Antea (Cathia Caro), tells the hero that she wants to go with him to his people because she Antea no longer has any living relatives. Clearly she's smitten with the big hunk, but Maciste just says, OK, come on.
Over in Memphis Tenefi and her counselors are worried that Maciste may lead a revolt, so they plot his capture. With the hero in captivity, Tenefi sentences Maciste to be pulled apart when two chariots, each bound by ropes to one of his wrists, drive in opposite directions-- one of the more mundane tests of strength devised for a peplum-protagonist. Maciste manages to stand his ground, un-dismembered, and Tenefi takes a shine to him, having him released from the ropes. When he stands before her throne, she touches him with her "magic" scepter, and Maciste immediately becomes her brainwashed slave, and probably her lover off-camera as well.
The oppressed people of Memphis are horrified at the defection of their savior. Yalis then makes her first major appearance when Antea seeks out the oracle for advice. Yalis discloses that the staff has a "thorn" in it with which the queen injected a brainwashing-potion into Maciste, and Yalis just happens to have a dart filled with an antidote. This contrivance sounds a "scientific" explanation for the magical scepter. but Yalis makes the curious pronouncement that Antea can't tell anyone else about her mission or the potion won't work. Maybe this was just a way of ensuring that the battle for Maciste's soul would be carried about purely by the two primary females, with no intermediaries involved.
Showing more spunk than many "good girls" in such films, Antea infiltrates the palace of Tenefi as a servant, and at her first opportunity, she hits Maciste with the dart. Instantly he remembers everything and starts fighting the guards. Tenefi and her counselors witness what Antea did, so they hustle her to the sanctuary inside the mountain, intending to make her the day's new sacrifice to the Fire God. Maciste gets directions to the volcano from his adoptive mother, which is the rather late point in which she reveals her relationship to the hero. (For what it's worth, the Yalis character is one of the few mothers in sixties peplum who has anything like agency.)
The climactic sequence is one of the better ones in strongman-films, even though one television print inserts some scenes from a later Kirk Morris Maciste-film, THE WITCH'S CURSE. That said, the padding-- mostly scenes in which Maciste fights savages called "yuri men"-- doesn't affect the visuals of the sacrificial set-piece. Antea is bound to a platform in front of a big crimson statue, and hidden machinery raises the platform toward the "mouth" of the Fire God. We never learn if the statue might somehow "come alive" to gobble up the heroine, for Maciste intervenes, pulling the platform down and freeing Antea. The whole volcano blows up, whether from the Fire God's wrath or from the frustrated machinery, dooming Tenefi and her counselors while Maciste escapes with Antea. The conclusion implies that the crusader ties the knot of matrimony with the heroine, but of course he's footloose and fancy free by the next installment.
While TRIUMPH is not quite good enough to make my top ten of peplum-flicks, it would probably make the top twenty. Though the actress playing Tenefi was about ten years older than the one playing Antea, the characters are played as if they're on the same level age-wise. There's no "older woman-younger woman" dynamic between the female opponents, unless Tenefi's need for a magic scepter might be read as a marker of her fading charms-- though Bodica is certainly poised as more flamboyantly attractive than her good-girl antagonist.
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