For American audiences, the genre began in July 1959, with the release of Hercules (Le Fatiche di Ercole; The Labors of Hercules). Produced by Federico Teti for O.S.C.A.R. Galatea Film, and directed by Pietro Francisci, it starred American body-builder Steve Reeves as Hercules, and Sylva Koscina as his love interest, Iole. Though the budget was reported to be large for an Italian film of this era, the authors have been unable to locate exact figures. Suffice it to say that, however large the production budget may have been, when Joseph E. Levine purchased the rights to distribute the film in North America for $120,000, he spent more than that amount on the promotional campaign he mounted for the movie’s release. He lead into the film’s release with a substantial ad buy, both in print and on television. The release itself was massive; six hundred prints were sent out, a huge number at that time. Levine’s gamble paid off handsomely; the movie earned one million dollars in it’s first ten days in theaters, on its way to a final North American box-office take of more than four million.

    Hercules’ success in conquering the box-office guaranteed there would be more mythological muscle-men on the way, and soon Drive-Ins and hardtops alike found themselves waist-deep in ancient Greeks and Romans. Samson, Atlas, Goliath, Achilles, and a score of gladiators were soon appearing on screens everywhere, with varying degrees of quality and success. Though Reeves only appeared in the first two Hercules films, the series continued for seventeen more films, though many were retitled for American distribution, with other heroes’ names, particularly Goliath and Samson, substituted for that of Hercules. There were also several movies made using the Hercules character that were not part of that series. These were, in the main, inferior, bottom of the barrel productions seeking to capitalize on the name recognition of the character.

    There were other long-running series of Pepla produced in the ‘60s. Maciste, the hero of a series of at least twenty-four Silent Pepla that ran between 1914 and 1927, was resurrected in 1960, in Son of Samson (Maciste Nella Valle Dei Re; Maciste in the Valley of the Kings). This led to a series of twenty-five Maciste films produced between 1960 and 1965, twenty-four of which were distributed in the US. If the ‘Maciste’ brand fails to ring any bells, the films weren’t released in this country using the unfamiliar to American audiences character of Maciste. Instead, they were reworked into Samson films, or Hercules Films, or Atlas films. These films were more fantasy than mythology, with Maciste appearing in various eras and locales. He might be found battling witches in Scotland in the 1500s (The Witch’s Curse; Maciste all’Inferno), or pursuing vampires to the island of Salmanak (Goliath and the Vampires; Maciste Contro il Vampiro). As one might expect in a series that comprises twenty-five films in five years, there are wide variations in quality, in script, direction, and acting throughout.

    Originally a character in Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Quo Vadis, published in 1895, Ursus was a minor character, the devoted bodyguard of Lycia. In the 1951 film adaptation directed by Mervyn LeRoy, Ursus, played by Buddy Baer, must fight a wild bull in the arena to save Lygia (renamed from Lycia in the novel, and portrayed here by Deborah Kerr). With his bare hands, he manages to break the bull’s neck, saving his mistress from being gored. A decade later, when Italian producers were casting about for inspiration for new mythological heroes, they recalled this scene, and the ‘Ursus’ series of Pepla were born. Composed of nine films, once again the American distributors played around with the titles, occasionally redubbing Ursus as the ‘son of Hercules’, or even as the big man himself. These films were, generally speaking, slightly better than the Maciste series, though that’s a subjective determination. The first film, titled simply Ursus, and released in the US as Ursus, Son of Hercules, is perhaps the best of the series. It starred Ed Fury in the title role, and he would become the actor most commonly associated with the role of Ursus, playing him twice more.

    Samson, doubtless inspired by the 1959 film Samson and Delilah, was featured in a series of five movies released between 1961 and 1964. These included the Pepla equivalent of the old Universal Monster group projects such as House of Frankenstein or House of Dracula, 1964’s Samson and the Mighty Challenge (Ercole, Sansone, Maciste, e Ursus: gli Invincibili; Hercules, Samson, Maciste, and Ursus: the Invincibles). This movie is an excellent example of the Peplum at the tail end of the Golden Age of the genre, though not an excellent film on its own merits. It has all the hallmarks of the later Pepla: over-the-top action, wall-to-wall musclemen, stereotypically evil ruler—and a mishmash of a script, with a director that barely cared. Despite all of this, for some indefinable reason it, like the entire genre, works. There were others, of course. There was a series of films with Goliath as the hero, as well as a veritable onslaught of standalone gladiators, Spartans, Barbarians, Vikings, and any other ancient people who ever swung a sword. The Peplum craze was a brief one though, and had faded out by 1965 or ’66.