Muscles, Myths and Movies

here's an interesting and well written book from 1993 (and a little from 1994).  it is written by Stephen Flacassier and does a commendable job with the material he had at the time- mostly fullscreen dubbed and faded prints of a LOT of peplum movies.  he has a good sense of humor about them and knows a LOT about the stars of the movies, both male and female.  he also has a cool way of rating the movies, where he shows how much the star is "pumped", whether or not the women have actual character, if there are monsters and how the movie ends, i.e. hero vs villain, hero vs army, hero vs everything.  it's an effective and memorable way to do it.now this book is about 20 years old, and a TON of these movies have shown up.  some he doesn't think exist, like SAMSON AND THE SLAVE QUEEN and some he didn't even know existed to review, like HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER.  soon after the book was published, Sinister Cinema and/or Something Weird Video released a lot more peplum movies on VHS, and he did do some nice right ups for them.

at the end of the book he mentions doing a future volume, but I never heard if he did or not.  I was kind of surprised he didn't include CLASH OF THE TITANS in here, when he did include both of Lou Ferrigno's Hercules movies.  he mentions CLASH, but doesn't review it.

an interesting note- he makes mention of the "current" audience for these movies.  he never states who they are, but he mentions them a lot, and usually in reference to the way the star's body looks.  perhaps he means Dr. Frank N. Furter.  now I don't think he would have any problem saying who this "intended" audience is, which is really a good thing.