‘Maciste in Hell’ or — A Puritanical Peplum?
What’s the first thing that automatically springs to mind if I mention the ancient Greek muscleman Hercules, Ursus and Maciste? That’s right — Presbyterian Scotland!
It’s Sixteenth Century Scotland and a bunch of men, presumably masons, are burning a woman at the stake for witch-craft. However, it turns out she really IS a witch and so puts a curse on the town declaring she’ll exact her revenge one day from the netherworld.
A hundred years later and the tree growing on the spot of the witch’s burning is driving the town’s young women into a state of suicidal madness. Seeking a scapegoat the townsfolk arrest a young bride-to-be, who just so happens to have the same name as the evil sorceress, and decide she must be executed. Fortunately Maciste suddenly appears to rip-up the tree and descend into Hell to kill the witch and lift her curse before that can happen.
What’s immediately apparent watching ‘Maciste in Hell’ (1962), aka ‘The Witch’s Curse’, is that director Riccardo Freda is no Mario Bava with the film’s visual palette possessing none of the striking bold colours or hallucinogenic imagery that made Bava’s work so ravishing. Instead, Freda opts for a more straight-forward approach by illuminating the fiery pits of the underworld through the liberal use of flames.
Freda also lacks the energetic touch of Cottafavi, something which helped make the latter’s ‘Hercules in Atlantis’ (1961) so much fun. This is best illustrated during the fights Maciste has with the various animals he encounters, specifically a lion that’s so obviously heavily drugged it looks less like the poor creature is going to maul our hero and more fall asleep on top of him and have a nap.
At another point Maciste fights a giant but rather than sell the size of the behemoth through forced perspective, or any other form of in-camera effect, Freda simply replaces Maciste with a tiny child in a wig. It’s all rather silly.
Then there’s Maciste himself or, more precisely, actor Kirk Morris who comes across as so wooden it’s frequently impossible to distinguish the guy from the tree he’s uprooting. Either way, he certainly doesn’t come close to matching the easy going charm of Reg Park’s Hercules, and quite what this Greek hero is doing wandering around Seventeenth Century Scotland in stretchy pants never comes close to being explained.
So it’s bloody god-awful, right? Yeah, pretty much, although it’s not a complete loss. For one thing, the mash-up of sword-and-sandal peplum with Hammer-esque witchcraft horror certainly gives the movie a distinct character, and although Freda’s visual style isn’t as outlandish as others he’s more than capable of pulling-off some incredibly appealing compositions and flourishes. Also, despite heavily relying almost purely on fire to create a sense of a demonic realm they’re used to good effect, a great example being the massive iron door which suddenly ignites to the touch.
The film also gets weirdly meta near the end with, at one point (and presumably to save money), Maciste sits by a magical pool and starts watching the movie he’s simultaneously appearing in (along with a few other, completely different ones) for a good couple of minutes.
All in all ‘Maciste in Hell’ is not particularly great but it’s got an off-kilter allure that just about holds the attention with its novelty. It’s also a nice reminder that whilst being somewhat overshadowed by other filmmakers that Freda himself was no slouch. But dear god, did I miss Bava’s lighting.
