Here's a high-spirited Italian adventure film which doesn't let a low budget stop it having a wealth of action and adversaries for Maciste to fight again. In a typical marketing ploy, the main thrust of this film concerns the story of two warring tribes with the actual monsters themselves only being incidental to the plot of the film. Anybody who has seen any other peplum movies from the period will know what to expect, and there's not much in the way of surprise here. However, all of the attributes that we have come to love and expect (Maciste proving himself through strongman tasks, violent battle scenes, cheesy dialogue) are present and correct and as a whole the movie is a lot of fun. It's also pretty bizarrely plotted; for the first half of the film, the lead character is one of the tribesmen in the film, but later on it's Maciste who we follow through the countryside as he performs various feats of strength! Amongst the film's many ingredients, we have cave-dwelling women wearing plentiful eye-liner, lots of unnecessary padded dancing scenes which grate on the senses, some small-scale battles which are well-shot and pretty exciting to watch, Maciste getting buried up to his neck in sand, a cheap and cheerful volcano explosion (which was apparently ripped off for the opening of COLOSSUS VS THE HEAD HUNTERS), some romance, and a fearsome cannibal tribe who still end up getting beaten up by Maciste. Our muscular strongman is played by the red-haired Reg Lewis this time around, and he proves to be a solid enough leading hero, with an ounce more charisma than others of his ilk. Supporting Italian faces like those of Margaret Lee and Luicano Marin will be familiar to those who have seen other Italian movies of the period, but they fail to leave much of an impression. Watch out for Bruno Mattei's name appearing in the credits! Now, I was expecting a serious lack of monster action after reading a negative review of this movie, but I was pleasantly surprised. There are exactly four monsters in total. The first is an exceptionally cheesy and lovable sea serpent which rises from a lake on strings to terrorise some passers-by; it's not long before this unfortunate creature gets speared (through the eye!) by Maciste, so it didn't cause much of a threat. A sadistic shot shows blood frothing in the water as the monster dies, and I couldn't help but feel a pang of regret. This is definitely one of the weirdest-looking monsters I've seen in an Italian movie.The second creature is pretty disappointing, a very-fake looking underwater serpent whom Maciste has an underwater knife battle with. It's pretty hard to see what's going on here and the sterile effects are less than convincing. A scene later in the movie has Maciste and his girlfriend coming upon a woodland clearing where they are menaced by a blown-up lizard! Hmm, I thought they only used these kind of back-projected effects in American movies, but I must have been mistaken. The shot is brief but it was a nice try anyway. The final monster is the biggest, and perhaps the least convincing! It's a giant papier-mache dragon which Maciste fights in a cave and brutalises before escaping. Great fun.Maciste and the Monsters is not a film for all tastes. Many have come away disappointed. However, I think it's a brilliant film which offers up almost continuous action and perilous situations in a really old-fashioned way which is able to rival the best big-budget adventure movies there are. Sure, it's done on a smaller scale because of the budget, but it's just as impressive, if not more so, because of the limitations. A well-meaning and highly entertaining slice of sword-and-sandal adventure.

This movie is chronologically challenged. First off, it takes place in the Ice Age and stars the Son of Hercules,Maxus. Hercules himself, however, wasn't born until several thousand years later in Ancient Greece. How could his son appear in a movie that takes place thousands of years before he was born? The movie never answers that question and frankly, has bigger chronological fish to fry, namely, Reg Lewis' haircut. It's an old b-movie axiom, that while technology changes in these movies from that which we experience in the present, hairstyles will always remain constant to the time period in which the movie was made. In other words, the Son of Hercules sports and Elvis haircut, or what my mom would call a "Duck's @ss". And it works, for this type of film. It's just the type of anomaly that makes these movies amusing. And Reg himself makes an interesting hero.He is a rather easy going avenger, and with that hair I kept expecting him to break out into a rambling, rockin' rockabilly tune all the time. He plays Maxus a little like you think Elvis would have, and if he would have pushed the Elvis bit a little harder, we'd have a bona fide classic on our hands. Mr. Lewis is sufficiently beefy to make a convincing if low-key Hercules.Basically there are two tribes in this part of the world, the good Sun tribe and the rotten Moon tribe.Maxus befriends the good tribe by saving their crown prince from a water dragon. He hurtles a spear about 200 yards and nails it right in the eye. He then waves and quickly departs, because he never knows where he'll be needed next. This leaves our prince Idar, to romance his harpy of a girl friend, a babe that looks a bit like Ann Margaret. I couldn't really make out her name, but I think it was Brian(?) Brian pesters Idar, who just wants to spear fish, until he marries her in a ceremony where she promises to raise his children and skin his catch. Furthermore, if she fails to obey him, Idar can have her put to death. Both seem content with this arrangement. Ah the good old days. As soon as (And I mean this literally) they finish the vows, the evil moon tribe attacks! There is some pretty good fighting and the bad guys make off with the good guys women. After this it's pretty by the numbers. The good guys find Maxus wandering around the woods and recruit him to their cause. There are some good fights, Maxus gets buried up to his neck in the earth and is then freed by an earthquake, and a few more papier mache monstrosities are ferociously dispatched by the hero. Somewhere along the way another hottie named Moa or Mona joins Maxus' team and of course the two eventually ride off together. And yes, Maxus has the shiniest pecs I've ever seen. They are shiny on mountaintops,in caves, even underwater. Not a bad Herc movie at all, and the theme song is kinda catchy and fun. I wonder if there's a way I can make a ring tone out of it.

Forget the papier mache monsters and the terrible costumes of the cast. Feast your eyes on Mae West's favorite muscle hunk--Reg Lewis--in his only foray into the explosion of muscle men movies made in Italy during the early 60s. Lewis had a glorious, muscled body that was full and sensuous. Beautifully portioned, there was nothing lean or overly chiseled on this Adonis. With his hair bleached blonde, this enhanced his sexy personae and his mouth was both cynical and humorous. I loved the brief, hip-baring loincloth he wore since nearly all the musclemen from that area kept their loin clothes securely wrapped around their waists. Lewis exuded a raw masculinity, especially when he's with his heroine, who wastes no time climbing into those brawney arms for a deep kiss. No wonder Mae West was nuts about him. My only complaint is there's not enough of Lewis since so much of the film is devoted between the battles of two warring tribes, neither of whom boasts any hot looking hunks. In fact, I think they were chosen for their flat chested looks so that Lewis would appear heroic in comparison and that he does in spades. Perhaps Lewis was dismayed by the very low budget of this movie and the rubber hydra they devised for his mighty battle underwater. We can only wish Italian producers had found something worthy to showcase his sexy torso like they did with Steve Reeves in "Giant of Marathon" in which he appears nearly naked in most of this vastly entertaining swords and sandals epic.

Can't get the theme song out of my mind! The monster in the lake was pretty good, probably took up most of the budget, and if it had been featured more, say wreaking havoc among the two ice age tribes and having an apocalyptic fight with the toothy hero amid exploding volcanoes, hurtling moons and collapsing ice cliffs, it would have been a decent club-and-sandal flick. But it got killed after just a few minutes, spear thrown through the eye from almost the next county...ouch! The other monsters would have seemed more lame had it not been for the human actors...made even paper mache look good.But it's set in the Ice Age, which makes it pretty unique for these types of movies, so a little more interesting than it would have been otherwise. It would make a nice Friday night double feature with "Goliath and the Dragon" if you had some pizza and beer.