‘The Three Fantastic Supermen’ — A Socio-Political Analysis.
So it’s back to 1960’s Italy and more amoral antics in ‘The Three Fantastic Superman’ (1967), a perfect example of explaining why the peninsula had the reputation for being riddled with financial corruption because if these are the good guys then I dread to think what the bad guys were up to.
The film starts in spectacular fashion as two of the Fantastic Supermen, Tony and Nick, are in the process of stealing a shit-load of money and jewels from an Embassy. And yes, these are the good guys. To do this they utilise trampoline-work, acrobatics, bullet-proof suits and a weaponised yo-yo (is this the best movie the Shaw Brother’s never made?). Yet it turns out this was a trap/test set by FBI agent Brad McCallum who wishes to recruit the Fantastic Supermen to help combat Golem, an evil scientist who has stolen the Universal Replicator — a device that can replicate anything except the human body. Golem is using the Replicator to replicate gold bars and money from his underground lair underneath a children’s school.
Brad teams up with the Fantastic Supermen and gets his own bullet-proof suit along shoes with suction cups allowing him to walk up walls and, generally, act like as big a tit as they do. And it’s just as well the Fantastic Supermen have a new member as Professor Schwarz (inventor of their super-suits and the Universal Replicator) and his niece have been kidnapped by Golem. Shit!
Along the way they fight Golem’s henchmen who have been replicated and, when attacked, are so unstable they explode into precious jewels although they do have rocket-launchers so I guess that makes up for being unstably replicated. And then it’s on to a fashion show!
Will the Fantastic Supermen stop Golem before he can take over the world? Will Golem succeed in replicating children to he can… can… kill them?! And then there’s the biggest question of all — just how ridiculous (ridicola) can these Italian movies get?
‘The Three Fantastic Supermen’ is a lot of fun. In fact, it’s possibly too much fun as pretty quickly the entire film starts to break down and fall apart like a badly replicated henchman. Logic doesn’t exactly fly out the window because it was never there to begin with and you’d have more luck figuring out the narrative to ‘Last Year at Marienbad’ (1961) than whatever the fuck is going on here.
Fortunately it’s all very colourful, pretty fast-paced and with a few genuinely cool set-pieces. The opening is great although it’s a shame the weaponised yo-yo wasn’t used more. Also, because the actors playing the Fantastic Supermen were all stunt-men there’s a decent amount of impressive physical action. Unfortunately it’s not all positive as these three idiots can get VERY grating after a while and with the pacing and plot fluctuating wildly it’s a hard film to settle into and click with its rhythm (mainly because it is so erratic it doesn’t have one).
The influences on ‘The Three Fantastic Supermen’ are obvious, mainly being 60’s Batman, Zorro, The Green Hornet, James Bond etc. Although there is something else going on here and it’s something with a specifically Italian lineage, and that’s the idea of the bodybuilder as hero. All superheroes have a link to the bodybuilder to some extent (it’s one of the reasons they wear their underwear on the outside) but whereas American superheroes tended to have additional elements to their persona — other worldly powers (Superman) or detective skills and super intelligence (Batman) — Italian superheroes tended (although not always) to rely purely on self-made strength. This allows us a glimpse into the specific idiosyncrasies of Italian cinema which can be traced back to the character of Maciste.
Maciste (essentially an Italian Hercules) made his first appearance in the Italian silent epic ‘Cabiria’ (1914). To say Maciste was popular is an understatement with the character appearing in 26 films before 1926. His appeal was that of reassurance and virility and this appeal was not lost on a certain Benito Mussolini who adapted a similar style to promote himself, even though the “fascists never used Maciste for their propaganda but the character perfectly fitted the kind of human being they wanted to promote” (*). Also Maciste’s powers were never explained so this could also be why Italian superheroes tend not to have origin or back-stories, something unthinkable in America cinema.
The legacy of Maciste was then resurrected with the Peplum (sword and sandal) era of films in the late 50s/early 60s which, again, had an emphasis on the bodybuilder as hero and who was the “single most important feature of the Italian peplum: a strong man, usually a bodybuilder, whose muscular physique dominates the screen and defines the nature of the various plots” (**). Although by this time many other influences were making their mark on Italian film, notably spy and superhero films as well as the whole design aesthetic of the decade. Combine that with a ‘look out for yourself’ attitude and you can get an idea of how the superheroes of 60 Italy were arrived at. These are self-styled heroes, not men given powers from on high and heaven forbid they’d ever act benevolent or Christ-like. In fact, the exact opposite and not just on-screen either as the guy playing Nick (Aldo Canti) in ‘The Three Fantastic Supermen’ was actually working for the mafia at the time and was allowed out of prison on day-release to film his scenes (Canti was later murdered years later after being shot in the head for unpaid gambling dues).
All this gives a bit of an idea as to why these films have such a specific ‘flavour’ along with the fact that these “superheroes” don’t feel the need to stick to any sort of moral code. In fact, their strength almost gives them licence to break it. After all, the closing message of the film is — “There’s an awful lot of dollars waiting to be stolen if you know how.”
‘The Three Fantastic Supermen’ is a bizarre, fun, stupid, infantile piece of nonsense that doesn’t quite work despite all the stylish craziness occurring on screen. Yet any film that uses kazoos in its soundtrack is always worth checking out.
(*) ‘Italian National Cinema’ by Pierre Sorlin, p. 49/50 (Routledge)
(**) ‘A History of Italian Cinema’ Second Edition by Peter Bondanella and Federico Pacchioni, p 167 (Bloomsbury)
