Happy Birthday Luigi Cozzi! HERCULES (1983), its Sequel (and the Cozzi Canon)

When your only takable umbrage with a Cannon neo-peplum is a tacky corset worn by Sybil Danning (above) as the evil princess Adriana, then you know you are blessed by the refreshingly primitivist and un-tacky Coates once again.  File it, as I did, in my emergency reserves, right next to Plan Nine orMesa of the Lost Women, something to bring on your laptop over Xmas when you need a break from your brother's loud shouting at Alexa to play various "An Eric Clapton Christmas" over and over. Most Hercules films have all sorts of unforgivable things that make them unpleasant to see once, let alone often (unless the gym muscle rainbow is enuff - even then 95% of the stuff on Prime is in the wrong aspect ratio). To get to the perfect 'all flaw' gem facets of lovely classics like  The Car,The Devil's Rain, and Ghosts of Mars a sword and sandal film  needs to have a wild imagination and a love of movies that overrides limitations. Better to try for a time lapse change from an old witch face to a lovely enchantress than to just cheat it out with a reaction shot. No matter if it doesn't quite work, and better to have a hydra --even if it only has three heads, none of which move, except to slightly raise or lower the necks to breathe fire--than to have no hydra at all. Better to have Hercules stand semi-transparently in the middle of outer space, flexing his mighty self, then to just see him rolling around in the dust behind De Paolis. In each instance of his 'effects' Cozzi all but salutes some older movie he's clearly in awe of. Like Tarantino, he's a true fan of the genre/s. And if you have find memories of making movies as a kid (or now) and love seeing the seams, ala Ed Wood (like a magic show where the wires are visible), then you love Cozzi.

By now you guessed it. I love Ed Wood, and Cozzi  too. I got the double-sided disc of Cozzi's Herc films last summer and I've already seen them bith four times. I still haven't been able to stay awake through the B-side (Adventures of...., the Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe of Herc sequels) but that's OK-- I liked what I saw, almost as more than what I didn't.
Alexa, play "Erich loves a Cozzi-clastic Christmas!"

The lightbulb claiming credit for electricity-
don't trust it's wattage down the mossy stair
to the couch-warm coffin,
where the slightest misstep is certain life!

Cozzi, the Coates-holding footman never snickers.
The electricity from his cracked glass shell,
the brilliance from his busted filament's flicker,
carries Tesla madness, not Edison's argon sanity!
Heed his gonging clarion bell,
the way to the woe-free Lite-Brite city!

If you are afraid to eat the peach,
Cozzi cushions your woeful rise,
like dough left in a proving bin but briefly,
yet as as as leaden as the zeppelin's air,
by which I mean hydrogen! Hurray!

Mirella D'Angelo (Tenebrae) as Circe, the witch disciple of Athena who helps Hercules

See, Hercules isn't just about a muscle-head smashing foes, there's also lessons in astronomy: we learn the planets were formed from broken shards of Pandora's water jar; we learn how the constellations got their names and shapes (they're all things Hercules threw into deep space during fits of rage), and that the four elements are: night, day, matter, and air. These planets and jars are all shot through with color spectrum prisms, flashing lights overlay people so they all fade like Bert I. Gordon giants. (If you get that reference, this is the movie for you).

We learn that the gods were the first beings fashioned on the earth, and they settled on the moon to better observe and judge the tests of mankind. Thus we find Zeus (Claudio Cassinelli!) refereeing a bout betwixt the astringent Hera (Rossana Podesta) and the compassionate Athena (Delia Boccardo) over Hercules' journey, sending in their respective servants on earth to aid or abet Hercules on his epic quest. Perfectly cast as the mighty Hercules, with his huge jaw, dead set against the world, Lou "The Hulk" Ferrigno (well-dubbed by familiar voice artist Marc Smith) has a gift, a way with seeming deep inside himself, unfazed by threats or challenges, but then reacting to stimulus with the sudden reckless energy of a five year-old. His eyes squint to indicate focus on some magical spectacle and widen when roused to sudden violence. When he hears his mother has been slain he drops his harness and shouts "WHAT?" like he just saw his car getting stolen, and goes racing across the fields with these little but super fast steps like a six year-old might run from a barking dog. He reacts quick, like a prize fighter as opposed to a dancer. In short, he is the perfect choice for Hercules because we like him, and he's not a good enough actor to hide his real self from us, so we know he's trying hard, giving it his all, but not trying so hard he casts a dour pall over things.

As Herc's romantic lead/ princess-in-distress, Anderson spends most of her scenes in sexy hanging white linens, wearing a trippy golden crown, natural breasts tastefully cupped by scallop shells (no leering, but beautiful side boobs seen only in passing) "sweet and submissive" thanks to the 'black lotus' (mmmm) waiting to be burned alive as "a bride" of Minos' captured firebird/phoenix. But both evil (agent of Hera) Danning and good (agent of Athena) D'Angelo are very much active in Hercules' life, as is, indirectly, Eva Robins as a glam chaos agent named Daedalus (above, left), with the ability to raise up giant monsters from an erector set series of toys atop her giant waxy head in the land between time and space. With her bat-winged gold lamé skullcap and a gold codpiece (carrying weird echoes of her 'heel'-work as the possibly trans girl in the flashback sequences of Tenebrae) its suitable that Daedalus, representing "chaos in the name of science! Science in the name of chaos!" collapses sexual boundaries while staying all the time beguilingly pretty, alighting the eyes of evil king Minos (William Berger) with the macabre delights of her monsters. As Daedalus tells him, time and space are relative, so that miniature mechanical toy monsters made by figures atop a normal skull size head can still grow as large as houses once 'subject' to the atmosphere of earth.

Though Cozzi stacks his decks with strong female characters there are also some cool characters on the male side, though their faces are often obscured by unconvincing beards: Gianni (Sartana!) Garko shows up in a crazy red and gold-winged refurbished centurion costume; William Berger (5 Dolls of an August Moon) is the evil Minos; Cassinelli should be familiar to Italian crime genre fans (though with his droopy white beard as Zeus he carries a kind of Linus Roche-ness); and Bobby Rhodes (the pimp in Demons) is the King of Northern Africa, who shows up on a rocky beach for one scene, after being called forth by Circe, to make a deal: Hercules will build his people a waterway in exchange for the magic chariot stashed in yonder cave ("and that's how, with the help of the Gods, Hercules created the great continents," intones the chorus-like narrator, "by separating Europe from Africa"). Rhodes has a pretty cool elephant skeleton litter, but Cozzi's budget couldn't swing a Pegasus, so mighty Hercules has to throw a big temple boulder out of orbit and have Circe fashion a magic rope to tie it to the chariot (there's a great stop motion bit where the rope ties itself into a very cool sailor's knot, seriously, that is some wild-ass knot). Soon Circe and Hercules are soaring across the solar system, completely out of our planetary orbit, being pulled along in an open air chariot by a giant.... rock. Does it get any better?  Lesser directors would never even dare try to get away with that, or using erector sets to make stop motion monsters (i.e. the budget didn't allow the clay most animators would put over the erector set frame).


As he did with Starcrash, Cozzi somehow even manages to get an A-list composer to deliver a dynamite full-bodied score to something that would normally be subject to "library" tracks. He got John Barry to outdo John Williams in intergalactic bombast with Starcrash. Here he gets the legendary Pino Donaggio to deliver a prime mythic, hugely entertaining, even more bombastic score, full of Rocky-style coliseum brass and moody deep string ominousness. Did Cozzi prevent him Donaggio from seeing the movie during his composing, like he famously did with John Barry? I'd almost wager... Otherwise they would have, at the very least, lightened the heroic mood. But it's just that heroic mood that makes it all work. A single wink and the whole thing would deflate like a soufflé.

The dubbing too is all first-rate too, even the minor characters get professional well-recorded treatment, with Donaggio giving every absurd action the benefit of the doubt. This is a film never tries to be realistic, it gets that it is myth in its purest form, and evoking the gods is seldom far from any characters' lips, as it would be in any Greek tragedy. The Gods sometimes even seem to address the camera directly, as if this pre-ordained saga, reflected in macro and micro dimensions as surely as any archetypal myth. This approach explodes the barriers between accidental Brechtianism, intentional Greek myth chorus-style theater and a child showing off his toy collection. Cozzi throws everything he has in the box at us, including Zeus-knows-what kind of filters and pieces of rainbow-reflective mylar held over the lens, mismatched matte paintings overlaid with multi-colored stars (white, red, blue, yellow, green, even purple). It's never too much or not enough; it is, in its sublime perfection, the very nature of magic and exactly what (Greek writer) Ado Kyru meant in his famous quote (1). It belongs in a Criterion Channel triple feature between Godard's Les Mepris and Seijun Suzuki's Pistol Opera. 

Then the sequel in 1985. Lots of light effects, overlays, fan art inspiration, clips from the last film, and everything a-nice.

Six viewings in and I'm still trying to stay awake through it all, and I don't mean that as uncomplimentary. For me, it's like falling into a peaceful dream, one punctuated by occasionally druggy reveries and name-that-influence excitement. My only caveat is the tired look of surprise in the 'Colin Ferrell as an old queen trying one last time to get into Studio 54 but his heart isn't in it'-glam of the evil priest (Ventatino Ventinini) but he's only around in a few scenes. Stay awake, and you'll get through him! There's also fire monster animation that seems traced over or color-styled from Forbidden Planet's Monster from the Id and when Hercules sends in his mojo to battle Minos they becomes a similar rotoscoped outline King Kong fighting the T-rex and the snake in the 1933 version); there's also a claymation Medusa ala a DIY fan art version of the one from Clash of the Titans and plenty of Tron-like light video game effects. The music is still great but the dubbing is way too-over-the-top and badly mixed and its jarring to hear different voiceover artists dubbing the same actors from the first film (Lou Ferrigno keeps Marc Smith and he stays refreshingly deadpan). Once again there are no stuntmen or fight coordinators, so the battles have a home movie primitivism. Alas, the costumes have grown massive shoulders for some weird reason, as if the cast is trying to wear all their costumes so they can sneak out of a studio without paying their soundstage bill, rather than posing in their sexy neo-togas. Ferrigno  is never allowed to wear a shirt but dad Zeus is encumbered by a big 'Santa Clause does Catholic christening' robe, a way-too-bushy white beard and a weird yarmulke crown. He looked much better last time, with a simple tiara.


Daedalus, Minos and Zeus are all back and played by the same actors, though they all look like the intervening three years have widened them (probably the fault of the bad costumes and hair). The lady playing Hera is different and suddenly we get Laura Lenzi (the cute mom in Manhattan Baby) as the goddess "Flora" (?) who thinks it's a good idea to revive the evil Minos (via that old upside down blood donor trick no doubt gleaned from Hammer's Dracula, Prince of Darkness) as he has a grudge since Hercules killed him in the last film (but she doesn't count on him hating the gods, too). Lots of rebel gods zapping in and out of the dimensions of time and space (outlined in a glowing green). Outside of time and space, they all stand on giant surrealist mesas above bubbling matte paintings and below rainbow starred outer space, evoking the weird trans-dimensional zones of 60s Jack Kirby comics. When mortal characters step outside space and time they wave their arms around to give off trippy trails, supporting my theory on where the many arms of Hindu deities come from (see my post on Dvinorum Psychonauticus). In short, it's a gem with tons of hand-painted lasers and crazy light of effects, and a cast that's at least 3/4 women and none are ever being sexy or maternal (Bechdel A+!). Sure it's a step down for the mighty Cozzi after the 'heights' of the previous film, but priceless lines like "Quick! Step inside the stone mouth!" and "Grow, Hercules! Growww!" help smear over the wounds, as does the feeling of drifting dreamlike abstraction, the way it seems to veer at times off its own axis into the land of hazily remembered Saturday morning cartoons, albeit tinged with an indescribable mournfulness for the loss of big screen outdoor options for its like. If Cozzi's the Italian Ed Wood, this is clearly his Night of the Ghouls! Look fast for a shot of the rock-pulled chariot from the first film pulling into view from behind the moon during one of the many astral zip-arounds. Is it a sign Cozzi is using the same footage, or is Hercules truly outside of time and space, so the past and future exist simultaneously? Hurrah for Cozzi!
Here they are, would there were more. All have the distinct brand of the Italian Wood. There's a few TV shows he did, unavailable here, and a few projects where he stepped in to help (or was stepped in himself), such as SINBAD, which I'm still slogging through. But these four! A me bella! Perfecto,


This Italian ALIEN-inspired sci-fi adventure gets a bad rap in some circles but I adore it. Rather than just have some amok alien eating crew members, this keeps itself on Earth in the present, and decides to focus in on the pod-to-stomach-stage, with rows of ugly watermelon slime pods that explode when ripe and cause instant explosions in the stomach of everyone in horseshoe vicinity. I dig the obvious phone book size padding under the victim's shirts before the explosions; I dig the traumatic Freudian-cave-on-Mars flashbacks; the unearthly humming whale-ish noise the pods make when they're fixing to blow. I dig the vibe between the NYC cop who discovers the initial shipment (Marino Mase), the female colonel (!) of the Army's special disease control unit (Louise Marleau) and the traumatized astronaut (Ian McCulloch). The three team up in a sexy 'gentleman's agreement' synergy and head down to Colombia where they're soon ensnared up in a big slimy alien's world domination plan, ala It Conquered the World. 

Louise Marleau's heroine finds a worth opposite number in lovely blonde Gisela Hahn as the evil mastermind's right hand, and I love the alien itself, especially that bicycle reflector eye and the glistening artichoke coloring. Lastly, what really earns my goofball admiration is the Goblin soundtrack. That late-70s-80s European prog rock style has aged well. I don't know what else you need to make you love this dumbass film the way that I do. Whatever's missing, you don't need it.
A parallel program to the Argento-Bava-Soavi school, this unofficial metatextual sequel to Argento's Suspiria (and sixth in the catch-all Demons series) factors in post-modern self-reflexivity to keep you guessing, including the Mater Suspiriorum  source of sources (Thomas de Quincey's Confession of an Opium Eater). Argento is name-checked and there's even some familiar Goblin cues from Suspiria.Screenwriter Marc (Urbano Barberini) writes a treatment for the story of a witch named Lavania. He thought he made the name up. But there was a witch by that name, and she's rising from her grave a little farther every time the word 'Lavania' is spoken. Her face and hands are grotesque pustules (ala Lamberto's first two films), but she begins to take over the mind of Marc's wife, Anne (Florence Guérin) and causes her to hallucinate guts flying out of the TV. A hot local psychic encourages Marc to change the character's name to something else, but he won't.  Meanwhile, without even knowing the story he's writing, new mom Ann starts to demand to play the role, saying she "is" Lavania. How would she know? But what about sexy Caroline Munro, who starts luring Marc into the sack for the Lavania part? Michele Soavi plays the director. I didn't even have time to mention the undead financial backer! Confused? Join the club. Still I'd rather go on a Cozzi ride-- even if its bumpy, and dangerously near collapsing--than play it safe on some competent piece of junk like Lost Souls or Stigmata -hai capito? (full review here). 

For me this is the great unknown. I stopped watching after 10 minutes and there it sits in Prime Video Library (I actually bought the download in a fit of Cozzi mania). Tis no Hercules! The guy doing Lou Ferrigno's dubbing is different (no more Marc Smith), and the sound is in general all shoddily mixed which makes a huge difference (Is there an Italian language option on the Blu-ray?). Considering the whole thing is given cloying storybook narration a mom (Daria Nicolodi, but we don't get her cool sexy-scary rasp of a voice! Instead it's the kind of generic TV mom voice) reading to her kid.

I don't think any of this is Cozzi's fault, he did write the story and work on the script but buddy Enzo G. Castellari (the genius behind the1990: The Bronx Warriors and Warriors of the Wasteland) was set to direct but got sick or fired or something, and Cozzi took over. I suspect too the English dubbing and the storybook framing were added without his participation or input, probably by crass producers hoping to market it as a kids' movie. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea that the story is based on an Edgar Allen Poe Sinbad story came from Cozzi too. That macabre prankster!

Despite my not being a fan of the Jersey mullets (the 'do of choice on all the unturbanned male heads here in this dopey land), there are treats galore, notably John Steiner as Jaffar, going for record highs OTT  and, well... WATCH THIS SPACE because I have a feeling, with a little digging, there's treasure buried under all this flossy mange.



NOTES:

1. "“I urge you to look at bad films, they are so often sublime.”– Ado Kyrou