There's no question that the queen is evil and has caused terrible things to others but her fate is also sorta tragic: she was brought up by the mole men to live her life in darkness even though she's actually not a mole person. She only learns about this secret at the very end which makes for a great and touching ending. Do you think she deserved a chance to live in the sun with Maciste? One of my favourite PEPs of all time!
It's a convention (maybe a cliche) in peplum movies that the villainess falls for the hero. She conveniently gets killed off and he ends up with a "good" young woman. If the story takes place A.D./CE, the "bad girl" may be a pagan priestess or queen/empress, and the good girl is a Christian. (Quo Vadis; Terror of Rome Against Son of Hercules/Maciste-Gladiator of Sparta.)
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, in Westerns, the dance hall girl gets killed off and the hero ends up with the school teacher or the rancher's daughter.
ReplyDeleteVery good observations by Anonymous.
In some Peplums the Christian "good girl" is a slave abused by her nasty pagan mistress. THE SLAVE OF CARTHAGE is an example.
Hi thanks to your blog I found both Maciste versus the Mole Men (not great in my opinion but I did like the evil queen), and the 7 Rebel Gladiators. I noticed that the latter reused camera shots entirely from the former as well as all the mole soldier costumes. Perhaps you should have a blog game of "find the mole bits"
ReplyDeleteThanks for the blog!