Goliath & the Barbarians, Goliath & the Vampires

Buy This Item Goliath & the Barbarians, Goliath & the Vampires  Available from Amazon  $19.95  on 12-6-2008     Features Actors: Steve Reeves, Gordon Scott Directors: Sergio Cobrucci Format: NTSC, Widescreen Region: All Regions Number of discs: 1000 Studio: Wild East Productions DVD Release Date: October 12, 2007 Run Time: 174 minutes Average Customer Review:   6 Reviews 5 star:  (2) 4 star:  (3) 3 star:  (1) 2 star:    (0) 1 star:    (0) See all 6 customer reviews...   (6 customer reviews) Reader Reviews Most people reading this are likely to have a pretty good knowledge of peplum films, so there's no need for any rehash of the sword-and-sandal movie genre history. The two films featured on this disc (two-sided single disc) are among the best (and rarest) of the genre. As a kid, I enjoyed these types of movies almost as much as horror and sci-fi, and like many, was captivated by Steve Reeves `Hercules' and `Hercules Unchained', which really kicked the peplum craze in gear. Reeves was hugely popular, and released five films in 1959 alone. These films include HERCULES UNCHAINED, THE GIANT OF MARATHON, THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII, THE WHITE WARRIOR and one of the films on this set, GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS. To me, this and fantasy/adventure THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD were his best. `GOLIATH' is darker and more violent than Reeves' other films, and is helped by having an uncharacteristically strong female lead in the exotic Cuban beauty Chelo Alonso. Supporting cast include Bruce (KING KONG) Cabot and the weird looking servant of Barbara Steele from Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY. As fans will know, this is a revenge tale, where Reeves vows to exact justice from the barbarians who raped his village and killed his father. Wearing a weird fright mask and a long leather glove with bear claws (he rips the neck out of his first two victims), and swinging a 50lb. rock in a rope sling, he wrecks havoc on bands of barbarians. He gets captured, which leads to one of the great scenes of the sword-and-sandal genre: Reeves tied to several horses that are to tear him apart. He is able to rein them all in, muscles bulging. It's truly an iconic scene. The rest of the film is exciting and highly entertaining. The English dubbing is better than normally seen in these films (as is the cases with the second feature). The credits are in Italian. This film, and virtually all of the sword-and-sandal movies, was filmed in widescreen, yet most of the relatively few such films that are available on DVD are panned-and-scanned, and typically are of poor image quality. Not in this case. It (as is the case with GOLIATH AND THE VAMPIRES) is presented in the very widescreen `TotalScope'. The aspect ratio is not given, but it seems even wider than CinemaScope's 2.35:1. The top and bottom lines take up about half the viewing area (on my 40" widescreen HD set). It seems more like 2.75:1. The color and overall image quality is the best I've seen among all of these films I have in my library, possibly excepting HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD. It looks great, and the mono audio is clear and strong. The second movie is the very rare second peplum-type film made by Gordon Scott (the first being DUEL OF THE TITANS aka ROMULUS AND REMUS with pal Reeves). This movie is more of an action/fantasy movie than BARBARIANS. In this, Goliath's village is pillaged (the sacking of the village in this film was a bit more gory than in BARBARIANS), his beloved kidnapped along with all the village's fair damsels by a group of marauders doing the bidding of the evil, blood-drinking Kobrak. They throw the old or `useless' women overboard to the sharks, and drain the blood of the fair damsels for Kobrak. Goliath naturally goes to rescue his woman and kill Kobrak. Along the way, he throws lots of heavy things at soldiers, encounters the Blue Men (good guys), robots that `run on blood' (bad guys) and ends up having to fight himself when Kobrak takes on the appearance of Goliath. While I did find the film entertaining, it wasn't as much so as BARBARIANS. I also think there may be some scenes (or at least one) edited out; one early scene has Goliath jumping into the ocean to save a boy from a monster (looking like a giant sea horse); Goliath faces the beast, then the next scene is the boy recovering on the beach and Goliath coming ashore, triumphant. No fight scene. While the film is in widescreen TotalScope, it appears slightly less wide than BARBARIANS, the black lines taking perhaps 45% of the total viewing area. The dubbing is pretty good, matching the lip movements fairly well (I wonder why the American actors' own voices were never used in the dubbing?). The image quality is not as good as BARBARIANS, but is pretty good overall. There are some scenes showing splices and scratches, and some are a bit washed out, but in general the colors were good, with correct flesh tones. The movies are in region 0, NTSC (North American) output, and should play fine in any DVD player. This double feature is on the Wild West label, which apparently specializes in spaghetti westerns. They are to be commended for offering these great peplums in the kind of condition that they deserve. Any fan of sword-and-sandal films had best grab this while they can.  Comments (2) | Permalink |  function showYesNoCommunityResponse(uId,result,value) { var msgLayer = getElement("thanks" + uId); if ( result == "SUCCESS" ) { msgLayer.innerHTML = "Thanks for the valuable feedback you provided to other Amazon.com readers and reviewers. Your vote will be counted and will appear on the product page within 24 hours."; } else { showVoteErrorResponse(msgLayer,result,value); } } (Report this)

Goliath & the Barbarians, Goliath & the Vampires Available from Amazon Price: $19.95 Updated on 12-6-2008.

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