DId anyone notice that this film does NOT showcase the attractive girl at all, but rather has this rather long and lingering scene of muscleman Harris slowly taking off his shirt by the waterfall while beautiful music plays... laying on a rock.... taking a dip in the water and generally allowing the camera to roam over his impressive physique? I have never seen anything like it in any other film.
shareBrad Harris was a HUGE matinee idol back in the 1960s, mostly from playing Samson (or Sansone) in a series of Italian made sword & sandal peplums, and a few "Komissar X" spy thrillers. He had formerly been a Mr. Universe, and had been one of Mae West's beefcake review performers. He wasn't just the star of KONG ISLAND but probably an uncredited producer who more than likely "wrote" the scene in question himself -- which I agree is a very strange sequence.
Granted the movie was made with male audiences in mind, but it's more likely that Harris himself insisted on including the scene to show off his physique, which he routinely does in every significant film appearance I at least have seen. I also wouldn't necessarily regard it as homo erotic so much as self indulgent, though it is true that Harris and the rest of the Goliath/Hercules performers (Gordon Scott, Steve Reeves, Reg Park) certainly have a gay following just because of the nature of those Peplum films: Lots of beefy Italian guys running around dressed up like Freddy Mercury. There's even that great joke from AIRPLANE! where Peter Graves asks young Joey if he likes movies with gladiators as a gay insinuation.
But Harris himself is not gay and I seriously doubt that the scene was specifically included to get a rise out of gay audience members. More likely they probably thought the ladies in the audience would be delighted by the sight of this buff guy splashing around shirtless so their dates could make a pass at them. The film deserves to be resurrected & restored, Harris is still very much alive and a commentary from him in regards to the function of the scene would be very interesting. I love the whole movie but yeah, this is an especially odd moment in a very odd little flick.
I'm not sure which version of the movie you saw...but the version I saw (a widescreen DVD from Germany) had extended scenes of Eva, the monkey girl running naked through the jungle as well as that odd Brad Harris bathing scene. I found both scenes pretty sexy and adding spice to an already tasty movie :)
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