Goliath and the Vampires – review

Directors: Sergio Corbucci & Giacomo Gentilomo

Release date: 1961

Contains spoilers

In Italy he was called Maciste but in the US dubbed release he became Goliath (Gordon Scott) and this was a sword and sandal flick that I wondered, for a while, as to whether it should actually be a ‘Vamp or Not?’ I decided that it was vampire and didn’t need the investigation but the vampiric element is unusual and fairly small.

shifting rock

But that hardly matters for we are in the totally camp world of heroes and villains, swords and sorcery, and all that jazz. Things begin with Goliath ploughing his field and coming across a boulder in the soil. With a mighty flex he removes the offending item but the field doesn’t get ploughed as his help is called for. Ciro (Rocco Vitolazzi), a young boy, is drowning. Goliath saves him and then takes him home as Ciro’s sister, Guja (Leonora Ruffo, Hercules in the Haunted World), is Goliath’s fiancée.

Amahil leads the raid

They see smoke and Goliath realises their village is under attack. We cut to a protracted scene where the menfolk and old women are cut down by raiders, led by Amahil (Van Aikens), who kidnap the young women. This doesn’t gel later when we hear that menfolk have vanished also, so we’ll assume we didn’t see them captured and they were put in a different ship’s hold! Hercules gets there too late but a survivor tells him they have gone to the island of Salmanak. He swears revenge and rescue and he and Ciro follow.

Magda in the slave market

On ship the women are frightened. Eventually Amahil goes to the hold and bleeds some of the prisoners into a goblet. Guja offers herself but is ignored. This makes the women, bar one called Magda (Annabella Incontrera), turn on her as they think she is to blame. Amahil goes to a cabin and, from behind a screen and out of smoke, we see a hand appear and take the goblet. This is the villain credited as Kobrak the vampire (Guido Celano). Now, later we will hear that he has a robot slave army that he powers on blood but in this scene it appeared that the blood was for him, being in a goblet and all. Perhaps, perhaps not but it is our vampire connection.

summoning Kobrak

Indeed the robot army is actually made up of kidnapped men, their brains destroyed by sound (put in a giant ringing bell) and given a treatment that turns them into living statues. Seemingly these are powered on blood. Why, then, the women are simply sold as slaves at the market in Salmanak rather than transferred as blood stock, is unexplored. Kobrak seems to be able to be summoned in spirit form that becomes solid at will and is described as a sorcerer also.

Kobrak's true face

When we first see him he is in gaudy armour with a big, face-covering helmet. He can shape-shift, which leads to Goliath fighting himself until he pulls away the Goliath mask and reveals Kobrak’s true form – sort of skull like and fanged. The plot twists and turns for a bit, but essentially Kobrak controls a puppet sultan (Mario Feliciani), whilst the true heir to the throne, Kurtik (Jacques Sernas), is leader of some (literally) blue men and Kobrak wants to make Goliath a robot slave to defeat the world… phew…

It’s all very camp and very silly. It isn’t a good movie but, in the right mood, it might be a little bit of what you fancy. However there are better Italian sword and sandal films out there. 3.5 out of 10.

The imdb page is here.