Photo of the Day

Lex Barker in a, eh, tight situation in TERROR OF THE RED MASK

Last Saturday I posted the opening credits info from this film. As of today, films with heroes in tights are non-existant. As a fan of films which are set in Antiquity or in this case the Renaissance, these days films are rarely if ever historically accurate when it comes to men's costumes which irks me a lot. Audiences (mostly male) cannot root for a hero in tights anymore and Hollywood knows this. The number of films, action or not, set in the past are at an all time low, certainly compared to the number of films made decades ago. It's a strange situation. Even though it's historically correct for men to wear tights in stories set during Renaissance period Hollywood will make some anachronistic changes to the costumes because tights are perceived as being too gay or feminine. There's even a comedy called ROBIN HOOD : MEN IN TIGHTS by Mel Brooks. It's a source of derision which means that the entire period of history when men wore tights is, technically speaking, unfilmable (no matter how bloody and violent those days were) or they'll simply make drastic alterations to men's costumes.

So today's hang-up trumps centuries of history.

Remember Ridley Scott's dreary take on ROBIN HOOD? Here's an interesting article on the subject and tights. 

No tights in ROBIN HOOD

Well, at least Italian/Europeans films made in the 1950s and 1960s like TERROR OF THE RED MASK were mostly accurate and can still be enjoyed today.