I love how these spaghetti muscle men movies would casually mix up the names of the mythical heroes. In the Italian title of this flick, Alan Steele is playing Maciste, who as we all know was the son of Samnson. Yet the English title makes him Herculkes. I just love this kind of stuff. Steele, who certainly was handsome and muscular, played both Hercules and Maciste, depending on the movie.
shareChanging Maciste's name to Hercules was actually very common at the time, seeing as how hardly anyone outside of Italy had heard of Maciste, so they changed his name to Hercules as Hercules is better known and therefore presumably would equal better box office.
shareActually, Maciste doesn't have a "back-story" and appeared in all time periods from biblical times to ancient Grece or Rome to the 19th century. He just appears out of nowhere, without explanatioin of his powers or where he comes from.
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Hmmm?
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Joseph Levine dubbed an Italian sword & sandal film into HERCULES (1957) and for a tiny investment, he reaped millions in box office profits. Other distributors saw this as easy money and hopped on the bandwagon. Machiste? Goliath? Hercules? Who cares? Hercules was a public domain name and if Machiste became Hercules for the sake of audience association, then it was all good. His name could have been "Bob" but he is Hercules cause it will make audiences line up. American International bought Hercules movies but named them Goliath to keep on Joseph Levine's good side. It's amazing to me that the sword & sandal fad lasted for about 10 years.
shareI think Samson, Atlas , Ulysses and Colossus were also used for the hero's names in this type of movie. Strictly speaking Hercules was of divine birth whereas Machiste is a slave.
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