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Looking over the last decade, the evidence is mixed.
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And professional wrestling is still around, loudly. It’s almost reminiscent of professional wrestling, another muscle-obsessed cultural form that often chooses to ignore the erotic potential of its grease and its tight brightly-colored briefs. The legacy of these old films is therefore one of giddy, innocent obsession with the male form. His muscles upstage the actual special effects, not least of which is an enormous makeshift dragon that falls over after a very short fight with the young Jason. This is even true of the Steve Reeves films, including the 1958 original. In “The Fury of Hercules” (1962), Brad Harris as Hercules actually shows up to every fight scene with an extra layer of body oil. The camera is obsessed with the size and shape of the muscleman, and the way that he moves, but it’s done without even a hint of self-awareness. There are plenty of movies in which Hercules is more central to the plot, but the aesthetics are the same.
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Alan Steel, as Hercules, plays the role of the special effects in an action movie about someone else. Actually, Hercules has very little to do except act as Don Juan’s support, showing up to throw things around and flex for the camera. Look no further than my personal favorite anachronistic mess, 1963’s “Hercules and the Masked Rider.” The film is set in Spain in the 16 th century, because why not? Hercules is a blonde, hulking gypsy played by Alan Steel, but the plot is mostly about Don Juan (the almost-as-beefy Mimmo Palmara). The body of Hercules (or Samson, or Maciste, or Goliath or whoever) was the primary visual draw of the Italian peplum flick, the source of the action. So, here’s the question: while the old peplum films accidentally stumbled into gay desire, is it possible that the new batch of bigger-budget Hollywood sword and sandal movies are inviting it?īelieve it or not, it’s has a lot to do with special effects. Not that the dominance of the straight male gaze is gone, but the existence of both gay male and female desire is recognized by movies. Not that major releases are ever made with gay people specifically in mind as a target audience, but the wider culture has accepted the fact that gay people exist. They weren’t made for women, certainly, and they very evidently were not shot with the male homosexual gaze in mind either. None of the old peplum films embrace the potential of their protagonists to be sexual objects. The peplum boom was set off by the success of the 1958 “Hercules,” just over a decade before the Stonewall Rebellion.
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None of the original “Hercules” series presented an eroticized protagonist as such, but they were eroticized anyway by the gay community that took them in, a community that at that time was still very much a closeted and abused minority in the United States. These absurdly successful action movies, made primarily by Italian studios, became cult hits among a very particular and then-ignored segment of the audience. The old wave of peplum movies, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s, was an entirely unintentional gay phenomenon.
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Zack Snyder’s entirely ridiculous “300” was a sensation in 2007, and since then we’ve gotten such diverse entertainments as Tarsem Singh’s “Immortals” and TV’s “Spartacus.” And now, in 2014, we’re anticipating “The Legend of Hercules,” the Rock’s “Hercules,” “Pompeii” and “300: Rise of an Empire.”Īs far as the eye can see, giant shouting men in elaborate loincloths. We’re in the midst of a Renaissance of sorts, actually. From 1958’s “Hercules” with Steve Reeves to the new “The Legend of Hercules” starring Kellan Lutz, and everything in between, the genre lives and breathes through the muscled bodies of often scantily-clad actors. It was true back when they were called “peplum” movies (a word for tunic), and it’s absolutely true today. There’s something undeniably homoerotic about the very concept of the sword and sandal flick. Sword and sandal movies have always been a bit gay. The Out Take is a bi-weekly column on queer representations in film.