Kirk Morris is Maciste, one of the Sons of Hercules! Again we have an evil character sacrificing young virgins to a fire god this time and the villain is the the wicked Queen Tenefi! Of course Maciste will come to save the day for the women and restore the throne of Memphis its rightful ruler, Prince Iram.We have the same thing, almost the same story as most of the others of this nature - just different faces and names for the characters. And this version of the same basic story plot is not all that grand.My Mill Creek copy is severely faded, not that that it really matters because it's a terrible film. Easy to see why this one (along with most of the others) fell into the public domain. No need for a restore here.1/10

This movie trots out all the usual peplum clichés, but gives some of them a little spin. The good girl, for once, is a brunette, which makes her confusingly resemble the evil queen who bewitches Maciste, making him her love slave, in a plot twist stolen from HERCULES UNCHAINED. In the typical test of strength, the hero here has to survive with a team of horses chained to each arm -- this scene occurs in a number of pepla, but here they add the touch of having sharp scythes attached to the chariots, threatening to decapitate proisoners buried up to their necks in the ground ... a little extra creative sadism, lol. Kirk Morris is, as always, a beautiful physical specimen, with the face of a Botticelli angel.I've only viewed this film in the awful, fuzzy, color-faded print in the WARRIORS DVD pack.Can someone explain one thing to me? This is billed as Morris's first peplum, yet it contains a long underground sequence lifted from THE WITCH'S CURSE, released the following year. Was WITCH made first and released later? Or was the WITCH footage added to this one some time after its release, maybe to pad its length?

Maciste Triumphs finds him in ancient Egypt which was more ancient than ancient Greece where these muscle dudes usually operate. It seems as though an evil queen has triumphed over the rightful heir to the throne of Memphis and is keeping her subjects in line with sacrifices to a fire God aka volcano and some black magic tricks of her own.In fact when her soldiers capture Kirk Morris as Maciste she doesn't want him killed, but simply to serve as her slave in all kinds of capacities. One look at him and who could blame the lady, but even her allies think she's behaving badly.When Maciste has to confront the volcano to save his true blue girl friend he has to deal with some creatures that look like they escaped from Dr. Moreau's island. That's the highlight of the film because it sure isn't an original peplum plot.

I just saw this one yesterday (on one of those big, cheap DVD sets from "Mill Creek" - thank heaven for that company), and I have nearly the opposite opinion of Bryce David (though maybe for pretty flimsy reasons). One thing about this one is that it broke a few "Peplum" clichés. First (unless I missed something), the "sidekick" character (think Ulysses in "Hercules Unchained") had a much smaller role in this one, which is fine with me, since I don't always care much for that stock character. Also, it was just a little surprising to see the Hercules character riding off with the heroine at the end (having the opposite thing happen seems like almost as much of a Peplum tradition as a tradition of earlier westerns). And, I think the actress Liuba Bodina (an actress I know from nothing else, at least by name) knew how to play the "evil queen" role just right. One unusual thing about Kirk Morris is that he always seems to have a "sensitive" look about him, which almost clashes with the general idea of these films. What's more odd about that is that, judging by this one and "Conqueror of Atlantis," his Peplum characters are some of the more ruthless ones, even breaking a (sort of) rule in these films, by having the hero get rid of the femme fatale character pretty directly (usually that happens some other way).