Vulcan, Son Of Jupiter [1962]

Last week Adam pulled out a 50 pack of gladiator movies that he just had sitting around and started reading off titles. Most of them were unsurprisingly Hercules related, but because of that homogeneity we were all pretty drawn to one called "Vulcan, Son of Jupiter." It just seemed like such a strange idea to make a movie about Roman Hephaestus, the disabled god of fire and blacksmithing who was most known for getting cucked by Aphrodite. Kay, being a giant mythology nerd, was ready to dispel inaccuracies and we all hopped on board.

From the opening credits we could tell this was one of those cheap Italian films where they hire a bunch of foreign actors and dub it later, leading to built-in dialogue comedy throughout. The plot starts off with Venus messing with Adonis so Jupiter commands that she marry someone, either Vulcan or Mars. Both want her but she runs off with Mars to Milos, king of the Thracians, where the men hatch a plan to build a tower to overthrow Jupiter. Meanwhile, Vulcan (who isn't disabled but is a bodybuilder) ends up in Sicily and meet Aetna, a daughter of Oceanus. He gets captured by monsters, gets out, hangs out with Aetna in Neptune's lair, and then leaves to go find Venus again in spite of the vibes between him and Aetna. Vulcan meets up with his dwarf buddy Geo, and Aetna gets kidnapped by the Mars crew so Vulcan has to rescue her. Venus and Aetna act catty and then brawl while a giant fight scene happens among soldiers and Vulcan and Mars. The fighting ends with a Zeus Ex Machina when Jupiter comes in to stop it. Jupiter vows to punish Mars and Venus but "condemns" Vulcan to stay on Earth. It's implied to be a great thing since he gets to be with Aetna. Also in the background of the film Pluto acts like a jerk to Jupiter for some reason and then enlists Eris to cause conflict between Aetna and Venus. According to Sarah, Pluto was trying to get in on Mars' overthrowing plan but it was mentioned so briefly we missed it. Pluto is important mainly because in this cheesefest he is the actual hammiest.

Some fun facts about this movie include the fact that it was originally called "Vulcan, Son of Giove" which seems to be a town in Italy but doesn't have anything in particular to do with Vulcan and the only thing under "Reception" on Wikipedia says, "The film's romantic scenes have been dismissed as lacking chemistry."

Aside from the already mentioned bad dubbing and over-the-top acting, this movie has a lot of greatness. The whole movie has this sexless porno vibe, especially any and every moment Venus is on screen. The editing is weirdly abrupt every time, there are random dancing and fighting moments, matte painting backgrounds, and everyone is wearing the sluttiest clothes possible that only vaguely allude to Ancient Rome. Also, there's a lizard monster that is just a man in a suit and they don't even try to hide it. It's amazing. Give it a watch.

Spoon Rating: 6