Maciste all'inferno / The Witch's Curse

Maciste is unusual amongst the peplum heroes in that his origins are not mythological but literary, making his first appearance in Emilio Salgari’s novel Cabiria. Though a relatively minor character in the novel and Giovanni Pastrone’s 1914 film adaptation, Masciste proved a hit with Italian audiences, with dockworker turned actor Bartolomeo Pagano going on to play him in a further 24 films in the silent era.

Maciste’s adventures in these films established the character as unbounded by time and space, setting a precedent for his reincarnations in the peplum boom of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In Maciste alpino, for instance, Maciste actually fights in the First World War for Italy, while in the original Maciste all’inferno he is presented as a 19th century petit bourgeois type.


The English language title screen

In this remake cum reinterpretation of Maciste all’inferno the action is relocated to 16th and 17th century Scotland.

If this setting is one against which Kirk Morris’s / Adriano Bellini’s pepla wearing, bare-chested Maciste looks somewhat out of place, it is at least consistent with the nature of the character’s previous adventures. For, as we see via flashback interpolations of footage from other Maciste films – none featuring Morris, it might be added – the character’s mission to fight injustice wherever it may be found had earlier saw him face the mythical Cyclops and the historical Mongols.

The choice of setting might also be attributed to either director Riccardo Freda and / or producers Panda film, given that their previous collaboration on The Ghost had also had seen the use of Scottish locations.

As with that film, Maciste all’inferno / The Witch's Curse’s representations of Scotland is unconvincing, particularly through what appears to be the Catholicism rather than Protestantism of the Christianity on display when the priest officiating at the ceremony recites “in nomine patris” and so on.


Some rather un-Presbyterian hand gesturing here

This is excusable given that the purpose of the film was to entertain its target audiences in Italy, not to educate them on religious distinctions that might have interfered with their enjoyment of the film.

It does, however, also provide a further clue to why the typical peplum was unlikely to be well received by anyone emphasising fidelity to myth and history.

The story comes across as something of a combination of two films by Freda’s former cinematographer turned director Mario Bava, Black Sunday and Hercules in the Haunted World.

The opening sequence seems inspired by Black Sunday as a woman is burnt at the stake for being a witch and dies leaving a curse upon the village and its people.


I Vardella, er Martha, will have my revenge!

100 years later another woman is feared to be the re-incarnation of the witch and to have brought her curse to fruition.

While having the same name as the witch, Martha Gunt, she is not a double / reincarnation in the way Barbara Steele’s Asa and Katya are in Bava’s film, with the witch Martha and the innocent Martha being played by different actresses.

With the innocent Martha placed in gaol, tried, found guilty and sentenced to also burn at the stake, Maciste makes a timely entrance.

At this point the film becomes more like Hercules in the Haunted World as Maciste determines that the witch Martha’s curse can be lifted if he enters into Hell itself and bests her there.


The entry to Hell is beneath a tree

The complication is that the witch then ensorcels Maciste so that he loses his memory and cannot remember why he entered Hell in the first place

Although its story has affinities with the two Bava films, Maciste all’inferno is somewhat distinctive in its visual style. In part this is unsurprising when we consider the differences between the black and white expressionism of Black Sunday and the expressive use of colour in Hercules in the Haunted World. But another aspect of the difference appears more budgetary than aesthetic. Freda appears to have had the kind of material resources at his disposal to do crowd scenes denied Bava and to be able to deploy the sort of spectacular Bava had to fake through skilful mise-en-scene.


A relatively populous hell

In this regard it is also worth noting that, despite the film’s historical setting, Maciste all Inferno’s version of hell is a largely mythological one, as Maciste encounters the likes of Sisyphus and Prometheus rather than Satan, leading one to suspect that the lord of this hell is in fact Hades rather than Satan.


Maciste and Sisyphus...


and with Prometheus

One of the ways in which Maciste all’inferno remains distinctive even in its The Witch's Curse is that Maciste goes by this name, rather than being renamed as Hercules or Goliath for the sake of Anglophone audiences unfamiliar with the character and his history.


Maciste crosses a ravine...


to fight a giant; there is some good use of trick perspectives here to make the giant seem bigger than he really is

As a Freda film of this period it is also odd in that it sees him credited under his own name rather than his Robert Hampton pseudonym. This is perhaps because, unlike the cases of the western and the horror film, there was no-one to fool as regards the national origins of the peplum.

In terms of its own influence, meanwhile, Maciste all’inferno’s Scottish scenes are reminiscent of Michael Reeves’s The She Beast and Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General. If this seems co-incidental, it is worth noting the visual similarities between the witch Martha and her She Beast counterpart Vardella. Moreover, Reeves was clearly familiar with Italian horror given his second-unit work on Castle of the Living Dead; the Italian co-production nature of that film and The She Beast, and the casting there of Steele in a distinctively Italian-style dual role.

Witchfinder General - Ronald Bassett

This novel by Ronald Basset was first published in 1966 and then reissued with a new cover in 1968 as a tie-in with Michael Reeves' film of the same name. Besides being a interesting curiosity in its own right, it's both worth a read and provides some insights into the adaptation process undertaken by Reeves and his collaborators.

The first difference that is apparent, as mentioned by David Pirie in his seminal A Heritage of Horror, is that the film-makers dispense with much of the psychological motivation underlying the self-styled witch-finder of all England's actions. In the book he's the original forty year old virgin, regarding women with a mixture of fear and loathing.

In keeping with this, the book, which is divided up into sections covering the years 1643 to 1947, starts with Hopkins and his assistant-to-be Stearne as reluctant pikemen in the Parliamentarian army. They soon desert and embark on a more profitable career as witch-finders. These initial excursions are absent from the film, which begins with Hopkins secure in his position and, as such, showing little sign of insecurity.

Running parallel to this narrative we are also introduced to the young soldier Ralph Margery, also in the Parliamentarian army but a bit more dedicated to that cause than his enemies-to-be.

The two men's paths cross, as in the film, when Hopkins executes John Lowes, a clergyman suspected of Catholic sympathies. While Stearn simply has his way with Lowes's ward, Sara, Hopkins makes a bargain with her for the life of her uncle.

Margery swears that he will have his revenge on Hopkins for defiling his fiancee, and pursues the witchfinder as best he can, given the contingencies of the war raging around them.

There's a strong western element to all this, strangely reminiscent of the picaresque structure of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, as the characters just manage to evade one another or, on occasion, unwittingly cross one another's paths.

At the same time the distinction between the resources available to Leone and to Reeves is highlighted by another omission from the film, that of the battle of Naseby where Hopkins is pressed into military service for a second time. Another omission, that of an orgy which turns out to be attended by the local magistrate upon whom Hopkins would otherwise depend upon for a successful prosecution, can presumably be attributed more to the censorship regime of the day.

The novel also has a different ending to the film, one that takes place in 1647 at a point by which the war has been won by the Parliamentarians but the peace has not yet been established. Compared to the film's unforgettable ending – Margery, consumed by his desire for revenge, hacks at Hopkins until one of his colleages puts the witchfinder out of his misery – it's somewhat anticlimactic.

Il castello dei morti vivi / Castle of the Living Dead

Castle of the Living Dead is famous for two main reasons.

First, Donald Sutherland took his son Kiefer’s name from the film’s writer and co-director Warren Kiefer AKA Lorenzo Sabatini

Second, it represented the first credit for Michael Reeves, who co-wrote the film and apparently functioned as more than just second unit man; producer Paul Maslansky subsequently backed Reeves’s official directorial debut The She Beast the following year.

The Reeves connection is immediately apparent, as a scene-setting voice-off establishes a somewhat disordered situation that prefigures Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General.

First, we are told that Napoleon may have been defeated, but that demobbed soldiers have turned to banditry and made the roads unsafe.

Then we are told that executions of bandits are thereby commonplace, and presented with what seems to be one such scene. The incongruities are the victim’s dress – a harlequin’s motley, rather than a soldier’s uniform – and the souvenirs being sold by a dwarf.

The harlequin then contrives to have his would-be executioner put his own neck in the noose and kicks away the stool, much to the (anti-authoritarian) amusement of those gathered.

Next it is revealed that executioner and executee, along with the dwarf, are in fact part of a theatrical troupe and the whole thing was a gag.

They collect their money and go to the inn.

There, the leader of the troupe, Bruno, and the harlequin, Dart (Luciano Pigozzi), argue over money – another trope whose mundane quality seems very Reeves if we think of the impoverished circumstances of Karloff and Lacey’s couple in The Sorcerors or the discussions between Hopkins and Stearne – another arguing (homosexual) couple, perhaps – in Witchfinder General.

Eric (Philippe Leroy) intervenes as Dart is about to kill Bruno, leading to Dart fleeing on the ex-soldier’s horse. (Ian Ogilvy’s Richard Marshall is also a soldier in Witchfinder General.)

Turning a bad situation into an opportunity, Eric decides to join the troupe, just as they have been offered the chance of doing a private performance for Count Drago for three gold pieces – a tidy sum, apparently.

Watching this, and the similiarity with what unfolds, I wondered if the makers of the 2000 French fantastique entry Deep in the Woods had also seen Castle of the Living Dead.

The troupe travel to Drago’s castle, en route encountering a witch, played in drag by a young Donald Sutherland, who had earlier played a soldier/policeman at the hanging, who foretells doom should they go there.

Since the film wouldn’t get much further if they heeded said warnings, the troupe continues on, greed outweighing other considerations.

There they meet Drago, (Christoper Lee) who makes his entrance in the approved Dracula-esque manner and who proves to be equally suspicious in his behaviour, as when he offers Bruno a pre-performance drink:

Bruno: "Aren’t you having any?"
Drago: "Alas, no. I give it only to my guests."

Indeed, having imbibed the concoction, Bruno suffers a fatal ‘accident’ whilst performing the hanging routine…

More character driven than most 1960s Italian horrors, Castle of the Living Dead is unusual for its relatively low-key approach to evil. Drago has no grand designs for revenge or ruling the world. Instead, he just wants to be able to perform his dubious experiments in peace. His victims, meanwhile, are neither particularly heroic nor bent on vengeance. Instead they just want to make it out alive in one piece.

Adequately directed and nicely shot in black and white (Luigi Kuveiller was camera operator), the film is atmospheric and benefits from wry performances from Leroy, Lee and Mirko Valentin (as Lee’s henchman, Hans), while Gaia Germani as Laura makes for an unusually active and level-headed love-interest cum victim.