Though best known for playing Hercules, Steve Reeves only played that character twice and spent most of the rest of his Italian film career playing similarly situated mythological or legendary heroes. "Goliath and the Barbarians" (originally titled "Il terrore dei barbari") has him, in the English-language version anyway, playing Goliath, the nom de guerre of Emiliano, a woodcutter whose Italian village is over- run by the multicultural barbarian hordes in the oddly specific year 568 A.D. Conveniently ignoring that Italy had been the seat of the most powerful empire in the West and had done plenty of conquering and pillaging of its own, this film portrays the Italians as salt-of-the-Earth, hardworking peasants beset by the evil foreigners. You know they're evil because 1) they are boorish; 2) they spend a lot of time in revelries and generally seem to be having much more fun than the Italians; 3) one of them is named Igor (a terrific Livio Lorenzon) and sports a vaguely Mongolian hairstyle; and 4) they spend as much time plotting against each other as they do conquering and pillaging. Basically, they're rude and not very disciplined -- straight up signs of bad guys.
Among the least disciplined is Chelo Alonso, as the barbarian chief's headstrong daughter Landa, who naturally falls for our hero as soon as she lays eyes on his big biceps. Alonso is usually one of the star attractions of Peplum cinema and she doesn't disappoint here, having not one but two exotic dance numbers (the second especially energetic and involving fire), and a parade of fabulous costumes. She brings a manic energy to her role and to the film and helps carry Reeves, who is more subdued here that he was in "Hercules Unchained." He has almost as much chemistry with Alonso as he did with Sylvia Lopez in that film. Also appearing is former Hollywood boy starlet, Bruce Cabot, who never quite managed to become an A-list star (despite rescuing Fay Wray from the original "King Kong") but had a long career as a supporting player.
The plot gets fairly convoluted, what with in-fighting and double- crossing among the rival factions of barbarians plus the Romeo-and- Juliet nature of the romance between Emiliano and Landa (being from opposing sides and all), but it mostly holds together. It tries hard to sell a particularly nonsensical bit where a captured Emiliano, whom the barbarians strongly suspect is this Goliath guy who has given them so much trouble, is given two tests of strength, called by Landa "Tests of Truth." The fact that he is strong enough to pass them is supposed to mean he's telling the truth when he says he isn't Goliath, but the fact that he passes them is also a pretty clear indication that he is the heroic strongman. It's a conundrum the film doesn't quite manage to solve, but it's fun watching it try, and those scenes are the best opportunities in the movie to show off Reeves's impressive physique. (Alonso is very impressed!) The only major Peplum trope omitted is a battle with some kind of mythological or wild creature, but since Emiliano dresses in costume as Goliath, to scare the barbarians, I guess he is supposed to substitute for an actual monster.
This is a crisply directed, well-paced film that provides plenty of battles and plundering and an all-around good time, if you're inclined to like this genre.
