When I started the blog over 10 years ago, I didn't expect to be working on it after a decade and I certainly didn't expect it to be more popular than ever. I took a break last week but I felt sorta guilty about it since the views got up to 1700 views a day! I thought I should continue on, to capitalize on the current interest out there but aside from a few days during the Holidays, I hadn't taken a time off in well over two months. I was getting overwhelmed by the constant work and posting. The break was needed. Oddly enough, I thought the break went by too fast and yet with the many things going on, it also felt like it lasted a month.
Just prior to the break I re-activated a couple of my old PEPLUM social media accounts. The response has been incredible. The Pinterest account got over 120K views recently, which is 3 times the number of views I get for the blog in a month! I'm glad I didn't close that account years ago. I'll post stuff there almost every day, just to keep it going.
As I posted here recently, I also re-activated my old PEPLUM Channel Facebook profile and the response there has simply been amazing. This blog is the main source of all things PEPLUM so my focus is constantly here, and even though the blog's views have been excellent these days they don't compare to what's going on at Facebook. I have over 150 followers here at the blog but at the PEPLUM Channel account I have ever 2400 Friends. People have fun commenting there. Not much going on here at the blog in regards to comments. More on this next week.
I watched (not in this order):
THE GOLDEN BLADE (1953) starring Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie
SIGN OF ZORRO (1963) starring Sean Flynn
1001 NIGHTS (1968) starring Luciana Paluzzi and Jeff Cooper.
ISABELLA - DUCHESS OF THE DEVILS (1969) starring Brigitte Skay and Mimmo Palmara
Every movie was about a child of nobility of sorts who's parents were murdered and replaced by fake nobles only to discover this deception when they're adults, and it's their quest to overthrow these villains and avenge those responsible for the deaths of their parents. I'll have reviews or overviews of these movies in coming days. It's quite fun to see the progress from the 1940s to the quasi-porn ISABELLA 24 years later. My surprise find was A SWORD IN THE SHADOWS with Germano Longo having fun in a meaty role. Very entertaining.
During the past month, I acquired a bunch of movies, most of which I already have, with just a few that were new to me. I like collecting different versions of the same movie for several reasons: to see the opening title/credits in whatever language the copy is in. I also realized a long time ago that different versions of the same movie, from a variety of sources, ie VHS, TV broadcast, obscure bootlegs, etc, are often a great source to find scenes that were cut in the US version. It's always fun to discover new scenes in a movie I've watched many times before.
One of those titles, GERMANICUS IN DER UNTERWELT (above), the German version of COLOSSUS OF THE STONE AGE (1962) starring Reg Lewis and Luciano Marin (him again). A really cool print in that the quality of the image really looks like film. A couple of prints of CATHERINE OF RUSSIA (1963). I got BUREBISTA (1980) which I already had but this new one has English subs. Without the help of subtitles, I always thought this movie was a sequel of sorts to DACII (1966).
Discovering new titles that were unknown or remained under the radar is always fun. I recently discovered KNIGHTS OF THE TEUTONIC ORDER (1960) which was a real surprise. And now, thanks to my excellent source, I just got BARABBAS (1953), a Swedish Biblical film directed by Alf Sjöberg. Not your typical Biblical movie.
Cinematic Confusion
I've come across so many new examples recently. Here's one.
French VHS artwork for ULYSSES AGAINST HERCULES (1962) starring Georges Marchal and Mike Lane but they used the artwork for the US poster of SAMSON AND THE 7 MIRACLES OF THE WORLD (1961) starring Gordon Scott. There are no tigers in ULYSSES AGAINST HERCULES. Why not use the plethora of artwork for ULYSSES AGAINST HERCULES (1962)? Very confusing.
Can you identify this movie?
I posted the above image at PEPLUM Channel and no one has identified the movie yet. So I'm trying it here.
Orsh figured out the mystery movie: THE GIANTS OF ROME (1964) starring Richard Harrison. Good job, Orsh.
- I'm currently working on a couple of 'Articles of the week!' Will post them soon. I'm also working on a new profile for an actor seen in many PEPLUM movies but people might not know his name. I haven't done one of these in a long time.
More musings in upcoming weeks:
- New official PEPLUM TV merchandise
5 comments:
Is it The Saracens with Richard Harrison?
Well, you got half of it right. It's Richard Harrison but it's not THE SARACENS
This has to be GIANTS OF ROME one of my favorite movies.
Orsh, you got it.
Don't know about the movie but the first thing I thought of when seeing this shot was Mr. Harrison looks like he could be Karl Urban's father or grandfather. Or at least as Urban appeared in Hercules: TLJ or Xena: WP.
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