Questions About Pepla

GENERAL DISCUSSION FORUM GENTE DI RISPETTO FORUM INTERNATIONAL
1

Hi all, I’ve just gotten interested in sword and sandal movies and have so far seen Le Fatiche di Ercole, Ercole e la Regina di Lidia, Terrore dei Barbari and Le Vendetta di Ercole (I used the Italian titles just so there isn’t any doubt which ones I’m speaking of). I have a few questions about these four titles specifically as well as some more general questions about the genre:

  1. I’ve seen stills and YouTube rips of a great-looking copy of Le Fatiche di Ercole made from an Italian print (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJBWwsGzrWE). What makes this print unique is that - unlike the French DVD, usually considered the best source of this movie - it doesn’t have one entire minute’s worth of frame cuts. Yes, I checked the French DVD, syncing it up with a print of the US version and found so many frame cuts at the beginning and end of shots that a whole minute is missing. So I was wondering, where can I find this exact copy of the Italian print? Is it a DVD that is available anywhere, does anybody on this board have it?

  2. While it is almost a rule that English versions of old foreign genre movies are harder to find in good quality than the originals, I’ve noticed a few instances where an English/French/German version is the best copy available of a Peplum movie while the Italian cut remains elusive. Case in point, Le Vendetta di Ercole. While the French version seems to be available in a beautiful print on DVD, as indicated by some YouTube rips (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPeTJLr8FC4), and while the completely different US version Goliath and the Dragon is also on DVD in pretty good quality and widescreen, the Italian print with credits in Italian is really hard to find. I’ve looked and looked but haven’t been able to find it. Is there a copy of the Italian print available somewhere?

  3. Where can I find the sources for these two copies of Ercole e la Regina di Lidia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUmTP4GtJvk and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIUgij6KlnU)?

  4. My copy of Terrore dei Barbari is in English, but it is synced up to an Italian print and sometimes appears to lose sync. Is there a copy anywhere of the raw US version?

  5. Were there ever European English dubs of Terrore dei Barbari and La Vendetta di Ercole, with the original character names, music and editing intact?

  6. Is there a database of some sort that lists all sword and sandal films made during the pique years from 1958-1965? I’ve read that about 170 were made during that time, but is there a list that identifies all of them?

  7. How does one determine which films were co-productions between different countries? I’ve read that the second, third, fourth and fifth Hercules movies were French-Italian co-productions. However, the French and Italian Wikipedia pages for the first film says that it was a Spanish-Italian co-production, while other sources call it a French-Italian co-production, and yet others say it’s just an Italian production without foreign involvement.

2

I don’t have those DVDs but both Le Fatiche di Ercole and Ercole e la Regina di Lidia on youtube might be rips of the DVDs edited by the italian label Passworld. I think that both DVDs could be found on italian online stores such as thrauma.it and also in amazon.it

The italian DVD of Terrore dei Barbari (edited by 01) doesn’t have the english track, but the one edited by the spanish label Video Mercury Film SA has it, but I don’t know if this copy has problems with the sync.

From the book "I mitici eroi. Il cinema «peplum» nel cinema italiano dall’avvento del sonoro a oggi’’ written by Gianfranco Casadio edited by Angelo longo Editore (sorry, it’s in italian):
‘Casadio prende in esame un blocco complessivo di 250 film suddivisi in due parti di quattro gruppi ciascuna - corrispondenti ad otto capitoli - da dove emerge che i film che trattano dei miti e delle leggende del mondo greco (i miti, le leggende, la guerra di Troia e le avventure di Ulisse ed Enea) sono 26, seguiti dagli eroi dai fantastici muscoli (i classici Ercole, Maciste, Ursus, Golia e Sansone) che la fanno da leoni con ben 62 film, dai forzuti del mondo greco romano (gli schiavi più forti del mondo e i gladiatori invincibili) che compaiono in 24, dai film degli eroi fantastici del fantasy moderno che sono 20, dai film del Vecchio e Nuovo Testamento che sono 31, da quelli riferiti all’antica Grecia che sono 13, cui seguono quelli sulla romanità che sono inferiori solo ai film dei “giganti”, e cioè 40 ed infine i film erotici, le parodie e i film comici che sono 34.’
A total of 250 peplum movies were made in Italy, 26 of them connected to the Trojan war, Iliad, Odyssey etc.etc, 62 to classic heroes like Ercole, Maciste, Ursus, Golia e Sansone, 24 to slaves and gladiators of the greek and roman era, 20 to the fantasy of the modern era, 31 to the holy bible, 13 to the ancient Greece, 40 to the roman era and 34 are parodies or erotics.

Italian wikipedia has also a list of peplum but it’s largely incomplete
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filmografia_del_Peplum_all’italiana
Hope it helps.