Musings! (01-28)

Searching far and wide for all things PEPLUM! Luciano Marin and Steve Reeves in GOLIATH AND THE BARBARIANS (1959)

MARK FOREST...

 

One of the sad aspects with the recent passing of Mark Forest is the almost complete lack of articles or even mentions of his death. Of course, for someone who hasn't made a movie in over 50 years, one can accept the fact that he wasn't known with today's generation but still, a little mention would have been cool. I searched the internet and the only one I could find in English is this one. I found this one in Italian.

I was also pleasantly surprised with the reaction of last week's article, 'WHO'S LEFT?'. Many people were surprised by how many PEPLUM stars were left. Some people thought I should have included even the non-bodybuilders like Brett Halsey but the article was in response to the recent death of Mark Forest.



CINEMATIC CONFUSION

VHS cover for THE LOVES OF HERCULES...with the Barbarian Brothers, twins David and Peter Paul. Probably the wackiest cover yet!



RECENT ACQUISITIONS

Nothing earth-shattering. I got 3 Blu-rays, ATHENA (1954) starring Steve Reeves and Edmund Purdom; HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1 (1981) starring Mel Brooks; and the dubious 'Blu-ray' FURY OF ACHILLES (1962), which is a DVD quality print upscaled to Blu-ray. The disc also includes PERSEUS THE INVINCIBLE and THE TROJAN HORSE. 

And I got a set of lobby cards for SINS OF POMPEII (1951). Only $4.50 each photo. Not a bad deal.

Dubious 'Blu-ray' disc

 

I got ATHENA for it's direct connection to the PEPLUM genre. It has 3 PEPLUM stars, Edmund Purdom, Ed Fury and Steve Reeves, in all his glory. It's a strange musical with incongruous elements but thank god someone in Hollywood back then decided to film Steve as a bodybuilder for a movie. 

 

6 lobby cards of SINS OF POMPEII 

HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 2...

Speaking of HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 1, Variety has reported that HULU is working on a TV series based on the 1981 Mel Brooks movie called...HISTORY OF THE WORLD PART 2. How clever. Anyone, with no Madeline Kahn, what's the point of this series?

Anyway, does anyone but me remember this movie?

Identify the movie!

Can you identify this movie from this screenshot?

This is from HERCULES (1983). Someone in the comments identified it correctly. 

Have you seen...

 

AGE OF TREASON (1993)?  I've never heard of this TV movie. Then again, I stopped watching TV back in the 1990s so I'm not surprised by this. A PEPLUM starring Bryan Brown, with full Aussie accent, and Matthias Hues. The production actually looks decent. 

STATS

The blog's stats are all over the place.

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One of the pitfalls of buying stuff overseas...I was supposed to have the German Blu-ray of SODOM AND GOMORRAH as a 'recent; acquisition' but the package was stolen. It's one of those annoying things about getting difficult to track stuff from Europe. 

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Speaking of Blu-rays, one of the most frequently asked question I get is where to buy titles on Blu-ray or which movies are available on Blu-ray or even DVDs. People are desperate for decent releases of their favourite PEPLUM titles. 

I created HD Alert! specifically for this. But then when I post about a movie available on BD, they complaint it's an old release. 

I can't win...

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Coming soon:

Edmund Purdom: obituary and that book on his life!