Goliath and the Dragon, like most of the sword and sandal films, doesn’t really make much sense. The reason why it in particular doesn’t make much sense is that the US release was handled by American International Pictures, and it was heavily re-edited and re-written with new scenes added. It’s actually a Hercules film, and follows the story of Hercules’ twelfth labor fairly closely, but the English dub changes so much of the story it actually becomes quite hard to follow. It opens promisingly enough with Goliath travelling to the underworld to recover the blood diamond of the god of vengeance, fighting a puppety Cerebus and a giant man-bat along the way. Meanwhile his brother Illus is sneaking off to see Thea, princess of Ancient Greek Country, who Goliath hates because he wrongly believes she had his family killed (it was actually her uncle/warder/creepy guy King Eurystheus). All of this is part of an elaborate plot to kill Goliath, have Eurystheus marry Thea, and attack Thebes. Because that is what evil king’s do, apparently. When that doesn’t work, they send a slave girl to convince Illus and Goliath’s wife that Goliath is secretly in love with Thea. When that doesn’t work they convince Illus to poison Goliath. When that doesn’t work they kidnap Illus and attempt to execute him by elephant. When that doesn’t work they send Goliath’s wife to hell after she is kidnapped by a convenient centaur. Eventually all the plans come to naught, Illus marries the princess and the villain is thrown into the snakepit.

There’s a glimmer of a, if not good, at least entertaining, film in here, but the editing so badly butchers the story that all the little subplot and villainous plans blur together. The effects are ambitious, if a little obviously puppety, save for a stop-motion dragon added in for the US release. But the draw is Mark Forest as Goliath/Hercules, and he’s a bit disappointing. Like most sword-and-sandal stars, they’re playing off the Steve Reeves look, and pretty closely at that in this case. And while Forest’s singlet is impressive, he’s actually fairly dull and needlessly serious looking for the entire film. Very little personality shines through, and no fun at all. The film is also relentlessly heteronormative, with no camp or accidental homoeroticism to salvage it.

Vulcan, Son of Jupiter is ambitious, you have to give it credit for that. The story is steeped in Roman mythology and features regrettable looking monster costumes that are a special effects stretch for this type of film by any means. The film opens with Venus traveling to Earth for a tryst with Adonis, much to the annoyance of Jupiter, who decides that she must be wed to either Mars or Vulcan in order to tame her. Vulcan and Mars engage in some not at all homoerotic wrestling before Mars and and Venus escape to Earth with the help of Pluto. While Mars and Venus go to Thrace, to hatch a plot with the king to overthrow Jupiter, Vulcan pursues them, losing his godly powers in the process. He’s found by Etna, a daughter of Neptune, but they are quickly captured along with some Sicilians by monsters. Everyone is saved by tritons sent by Neptune and then the plot goes completely off the rails. Mostly this is probably due to poor dubbing and editing, as people race back and forth across the countryside, get captured, escape, get recaptured, Pluto may or may not be helping Mars, Venus may or may not be betraying Mars, Jupiter may or may not be orchestrating all this as a test, etc. In the end the day is saved thanks to more not at all homoerotic wrestling and Vulcan is rewarded with life on Earth as a mortal with Etna.

It’s nice to see at least an attempt at a semi-faithful depiction of mythological themes, instead of the usual willy-nilly name borrowing you usually get with fantasy films, but the goodwill engendered by that is squandered by how poorly made the film is. The camera angles are awkward, the editing is atrocious, and the plot doesn’t make any damn sense. Iloosh Khoshabe plays Vulcan, and even by the standards of a physique film, he’s a fairly obscure actor, though nice to look at. The rest of the screen-time is given mostly to Roger Browne as Mars and Gordon Mitchell as Pluto, and having three bodybuilders run around does make for some pleasant eye-candy. There are plenty of shots of Venus lying around languidly in semi-seductive poses for the nominal audience as well.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen is another Italian sword and sandal film in which the title character is never actually called that. “Colossus” is actually Glauco, and despite being the title chaaracter, Ed Fury only gets third billing, behind Rod Taylor and Dorian Gray (who isn’t the actual Amazon Queen, either). The plot is a fairly basic affair: Pirro (Rod Taylor) is conned by a couple of effeminate Jewish stereotypes into press-ganging Glauco into serving on a ship’s crew, after the stereotypes see Glauco’s impressive performance in a not at all homoerotic 30 man wrestling match to celebrate the Greek victory over Troy. The ship makes landfall at a beach where several chests are loaded with gold and jugs of wine have been laid out, and the crew are told that they have been hired to guard the treasure. The wine of course is drugged and the men are taken captive by Amazons, save for Glauco who is rescued by Sofo, an Egyptian sailor too smart to drink obviously drugged wine. Glauco has a meet-cute involving spying on Amazon general Antiope while she bathes, followed by some light bondage courtesy of Antiope’s rival for the democratically elected position of Queen, Melitta. The Amazons are impressed with the rugged marital prowess of the Greek men, which isn’t all that surprising given that all the men currently running around their island are extremely gay, and marry them off to the military women. Much scheming between Antiope and Melitta for the position of Queen ensues, with Pirro playing both sides against the middle, resulting in Glauco ending up back in Greece and tricking a band of pirates into bringing him back to the island, whose timely arrival prevents a civil war between Antiope and Melitta’s forces. And then everyone gets married.

Surprisingly, this film is actually fairly clever, despite the plot that veers between trite cliches and needless complications. There’s a strange mix of deliberate homoeroticism and camp gay characters that you sort of suspect that the film-makers knew exactly who part of their audience was, and that level of self-awareness is pretty rare in the genre. The script itself is also fairly clever and even funny at times. True, it’s a corny sort of humor, and fairly broad, but it’s there beyond the usual level of lame comic relief. It’s also refreshing to see a fantasy Amazon film in which the central conflict between female characters isn’t a love rivalry over the asshole male lead, but over a completely practical and understandable political ambition. Granted, there is an awful lot of women gazing lovingly at scantily clad men, but that just brings us back to the film-makers apparently realizing who their audience is.

Fortunately, we’re watching this because it’s an Ed Fury film, and easily 90% of the film is Ed in a small, tight toga running around flexing and punching people. He gets tied up quite a few times as well, and even shares a mass shower with the men, as well as the giant wrestling match that opens the film. Rod Taylor gets a fair amount of screen time as well, usually covered up, and it’s hard to tell if we’re mean to like him or not, as he’s almost a villain and played vaguely gay, but he’s the only male character with anything approaching a personality, as Ed is only required to look pretty.

So, Hercules and the Masked Rider is not a Hercules film. It’s an Italian Zorro knock-off set in Renaissance Spain, in which the second-banana is called Hercules in the dub. Mostly what the film is about is this guy, Don Juan:

Somewhere in Spain the evil Don Romero is kidnapping peasants and forcing them to work in the fields, apparently in the name of the war effort against Flanders. Two peasants, Jose and Delores, barely escape across the river to the lands of the good Don Francisco, who is brokering a marriage between Don Romero and his daughter Donna in order to keep peace in the region, despite Donna’s love for Don Juan, fresh back from the war. Jose and Delores are pressed into service as Donna and Juan’s servants, thus delaying their ability to enjoy their connubial bliss (seriously, their inability to screw is a running gag), and Juan is exiled for being a threat to Donna’s marriage to a tyrant, despite being explicitly named as Don Francisco’s heir. Luckily Juan falls in with Estrella and her band of gypsy bandits, who are harassing Don Romero’s men in revenge for the murder of Estrella’s husband. Juan is only allowed to join their band after fighting Hercules to a standstill in a scene not even remotely homoerotic, honest.

At this point, the plot more or less starts, and by that I mean that things just happen without a lot of good reasons as to why. Juan adopts the secret identity of the Masked Rider to fight against Don Romero, because otherwise we wouldn’t have a plot. Romero betrays Francisco and murders him, but not before Francisco set word to the king about Romero’s actions. The gypsies pose as entertainers to get a message to Donna that Juan still loves her, but Estrella is captured when she tries to assassinate Romero, but luckily the captain of Romero’s mercenaries, Blasco, is in love with Estrella and is able to delay her execution by promising to bring in the Masked Rider, whom he knows is Juan because they served together in Flanders. The gypsies kill the guards of the king’s inspector and sneak in to Romero’s castle in disguise to free Estrella and Donna and Juan pushes Romero off the balcony. Then everyone gets married and Jose and Delores finally get to fuck.

To be honest, none of the story makes much sense, nor does it need to. The reason we’re watching is that Alan Steel is shirtless almost the entire time:

The big problem is that “Hercules” is the second fiddle to the second fiddle, and the entire plot revolves around Don Juan swordfighting and not shirtless Alan Steel punching guys or lifting heavy objects. And this isn’t a case where the English dub throws Hercules into the title to take advantage of the fact that Steel played Herc in some sword-and-sandal films, the Italian title translates as “Goliath and the Masked Rider” so we’ve got blatant false advertising all around here. So while we do get some buff guy action, there’s too little of it to really justify the hour or so the film takes to watch.

So, I went to Bent-Con and had a nice time and was on a seemingly well received panel and got to say hello to some friends and creators I haven’t seen in a while.
And here’s the list of stuff I picked up that’s worth your attention:

• Mahou Shounen Fight, a charmingly illustrated gender-bending, queer teen super-hero book in the “magical girl” tradition.
• Kyle’s Bed and Breakfast: A Second Bowl of Serial, the newest collection of the webcomic.
• Bludgeon, an extremely action-orientated gay bear superhero book.
• Several items from Northwest Press, including Rick Worley’s oversexed bunny strip A Waste of Time and the absolutely gorgeous Hindu-inspired lesbian sword and sorcery fantasy The Legend of Bold Riley.
• Sina Grace’s “retail hell” story not my bag.
• The Art of Rader, a Brad Rader sketchbook
• Butch McLogic’s lushly illustrated and extremely fun sci-fi sex comic Tug Harder.
• And last, but certainly not least, Alex Woolfson’s and Winona Nelson’s amazing, romantic, and beautifully illustrated sci-fi romance webcomic in collected form Artifice

I’ve become a pretty strong fan of Bent-Con, despite some organizational issues cropping up as the event still finds it’s feet, but it’s nice to have a showcase for gay, lesbian and transgender comics and sci-fi/fantasy and gaming, that doesn’t get lost in the crowd the way they could in a general convention. It’s also worth noting that, at Bent-Con, every single thing I bought was really, really good and worthwhile, which is not something I can say for other conventions I’ve gone to.