TOTO CONTRO MACISTE (1962)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

This is the second subtitled Toto comedy I watched recently, and though the mythicity of this one is no better than IL MONACO DI MONZA, the latter film is more entertaining despite being filmed in black-and-white. 

CONTRO, in addition to spoofing the peplum genre when it was still fairly popular, has a good setup. Two schemers, the wife of the Pharaoh Ramses (Nadine Sanders) and her male ally, want to overthrow Ramses. The Pharoah is served by the hulking Maciste (Samson Burke), in part because the hero is in love with Ramses' daughter Nefertiti (Gabriella Andreini), to whom the aforementioned queen is stepmother. The queen, also a witch, has poisoned the Pharoah's mind against faithful Maciste, and then offered Maciste shelter from being imprisoned. When he shows up at the queen's sanctum, she asks the hero to lead Egypt's enemies the Assyrians in an invasion to overthrow the Ramses regime. After Maciste refuses, the queen gives him a drink that immediately bends him to her will, so that he agrees to lead the Assyrians. He also swears his love to the queen and adjures Nefertiti, though in contrast to most evil queens, the Pharoah's wife isn't interested in Maciste except as a military pawn.

While Maciste runs off to join the Assyrians, two small-time entertainers show up in the Pharoah's capital city: Totokamen (Toto), who does a phony strength-act, and his manager. Through a series of misapprehensions, the Pharoah comes to believe that Totokamen is the son of the god Amon, and that he alone possesses the strength to quell the enemy Maciste.

So Totokamen and his manager get treated like visiting lords. The situation is perfectly set up so that the two plotters can make attempts on their lives to kill time before the titular confrontation. However, after one lousy test of Totokamen's strength-- which he passes only by accident-- the script instead yields loads and loads of silly banter, a lot of which is based on Italian puns. Probably the native audience liked this sort of thing. I did not. The final confrontation redeems the film a little, with Maciste tossing around boulders while goofy Totokamen uses a few acrobatic tricks to avoid being squashed. A stray boulder knocks Maciste on the head, so that he regains his regular personality, denounces the plotters and is reunited with Nefertiti. The two entertainers then take their leave, returning to their usual trade.

Since Totokamen doesn't have any real strength or skill, I judge CONTRO a subcombative work. All of Maciste's feats are uncanny, but I deem the brainwashing potion magical because the queen is showing making it out of various ridiculous ingredients, so the film is marvelous.