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Mistakes and the PEPLUM genre

Mistakes, confusion and the PEPLUM genre go hand in hand. For example, here’s a screenshot of the massive book, L’ANTIQUITE AU CINEMA by Herve Dumont. You’d think they would know their stuff but alas even authors who write books on PEPLUM movies don’t know their stuff.

Mistakes are normal (I’ve done my fair share of mistakes) but this one is inexcusable. The author cites this photo as being from HERCULES (1958…not 1957) when in fact it’s from HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959). It’s pretty obvious to anyone who has seen these two films. With Steve Reeves, Sylva Koscina and Gabriele Antonini.

PEPLUM database that almost was…

10 or so years ago I began the long and tedious project of creating a database of the PEPLUM genre which was never completed. The project fell through after Youtube closed all of my channels: PEPLUMz, SapphoPEPLUM and WITH FIRE & SWORD. You can see the channels’ thumbnails on the left column.


Since everything was in turmoil back then I decided that it wasn’t worth pursuing since the channels were all closed. Since then I created new Youtube channels but the project was put on hold indefinitely. Now I’m thinking of resuming the project which might take up to a year to complete. It’s a slow process. Anyway here are some of the banners I made for the website.

How can you tell if a movie poster is authentic…

How to determine if a movie poster is legit. This one looks real but it’s actually not. It’s quite clever but not authentic. How can you tell?

Addendum: it looks like the poster is actually legit. It’s from the UK release. The reason it looked fake to me because of the misspelling of Giuliano Gemma’s name but mostly because the part of the artwork is from the original US poster (the chained women) of GOLIATH & THE SINS OF BABYLON, released in 1963, but the image of Mark is from HERCULES AGAINST THE SONS OF THE SUN, which was released in 1964. How can a poster from 1963, in English, have a photo from a movie made a year later? This aspect didn’t make any sense to me but it seems the UK release was in 1965, after both films were already released and they cobbled images and artwork from both movies for this specific release. Cinematic confusion!

About this blog…

Many might wonder what exactly is the intent of this website/blog.

I’m still in the process of its creation and I don’t want to jinx it so I’ll announce it soon enough, once it’s completed or near completion.

Thanks for your interest.

That’s Steve Reeves on the magazine cover I recently acquired. In the magazine, they mistakenly identify it as HERCULES & THE QUEEN OF LYDIA when it’s actually from THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII (1959). Always some Cinematic Confusion going on. Aside from that mistake, it’s a pretty decent magazine with a good number of articles on PEPLUM movies.