Atlas

... that is, if you dig flicks that involve men wearing really high cut "togas" that look more like skirts. The battle scenes are absolutely laughable, with lots of shots of shields being hit by things (occasionally the wooden swords), and lots of guys who throw spears really poorly at their crew-cut Greek rivals. The charges just sort of slow in front of enemy lines, once even to turn around and change a formation four feet from the "battle line." Some of the editing looks like it may have been done by a deranged chimp, and that's just for the important dialogue scenes. There are a few shots where the camera literally gets knocked out of place. A final word of warning: the director took full advantage of shot width, so if you are unfortunate enough to watch this on tv, several scenes will have half of the speakers cut off at the edge of the screen. If you need something to MST3K, come and get it!

Proximates the Tyrant is a brutal arrogant conqueror. Atlas is his personal warrior but eventually, the hero sees the evil within his king.

Roger Corman is trying to do a sword and sandal epic. It's bad. The acting is bad. The writing is bad. They are able to use some nice sets. Most of them are ruins in Greece. Otherwise, it's all rather bad.

1960's "Atlas" was Roger Corman's impoverished attempt at a Hercules-type epic (shot on location in Greece), without the budget. Charles B. Griffith could always be relied upon to deliver a script very quickly, and the haste is quite evident here, as the dialogue sounds risibly modernistic, and American actor Frank Wolff hilariously dubbed. Judging from his previous work on "A Bucket of Blood" and "The Little Shop of Horrors," one can easily conclude that this was written as a satire, and it does deliver a few chuckles. Star Michael Forest, like Wolff a veteran of Corman's "Ski Troop Attack" and "Beast from Haunted Cave," looked more impressive years later bare chested on both GILLIGAN'S ISLAND and STAR TREK. As the battle scenes come off as anemic, the only visually arresting image remains the comely Barboura Morris, who spent her entire career in Corman's service, until her untimely death at age 43 in 1975. "Atlas" made its only appearance on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater during its first season, alternating Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights, airing Sat March 14 1964, while the Sunday night co-feature (which likewise never repeated) was 1958's "Spy in the Sky!"

Cheap, sure. Corman --- of course. But not the usual fare, not even for the King of the B's. Here's the backstory: Corman was in Europe shooting another feature and supposedly entered into a co-production deal with another company. At the last moment his co-producers pulled out and took their money with them. Now Corman had two choices: abandon the project, or shoot the script he had for half the money he'd budgeted. Which did he choose? Well, the movie got made didn't it? Screenwriter Charles Griffith had also written LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and originally wanted to call this movie ATLAS, THE GUIDED MUSCLE, but Corman nixed that. So we get Steve Forrest (who also played Apollo on a STAR TREK episode) as a slightly malnourished looking Atlas, standing around with a bunch of extras in Greek costumes (including Griffith and Corman himself), looking around at the "grandeur" of ancient Greece, a bunch of the crumbling ruins which the villain explains away by saying "Well, we've been at war so long all the buildings have been demolished" or something like that. I'm not going to pretend this is a GOOD movie, but it's a great example of the unstoppable Corman machine in action.

In the early to mid-1960s, there was, believe it or not, a major craze for films set in the classical period starring such heroes as Hercules and Maciste. They were churned out by the dozen by the Italians and they made a butt-load of money throughout the world. So much that American director Roger Corman decided to try to get in on the act, though he never made much of an impact on the genre--and after seeing this film, I could see why.

Here, Michael Forest stars as 'Atlas'--a guy who is pretty much like the other muscled heroes of the era (such as Steve Reeves and Peter Lupus). And, like many of the films, he was an American playing lead and the rest of the cast were mostly Italians--especially the extras. In this case, however, more of the supporting cast is non-Italian. Much of the dialog, then, was often dubbed.

By the way, although he was not an especially well-known actor, you may just recognize Forest as the man who guest starred on the original "Star Trek" series as the god Apollo. My assumption is that he was probably picked to play this "Star Trek" character because of his prior film experience as Atlas.

Oddly, despite the American director who was known for action and horror films, this film is amazingly low-key and a bit dull. You'd think he might have breathed some life into the films, but for the most part, the film is just another tepid action flick--with hardly any action. The costumes aren't especially good and the cast seems tiny--even for a sword and sandal epic. If you note the trivia for this film, you'll see that Corman's original army of 500 extras ended up being, at most 50 through no fault of his own and as filming continued the numbers dwindled. Yet, believe it or not, this tiny cast isn't unusual, as I've seen several films not made by Corman in the genre that had equally tiny "armies". A great example is the rather silly film "Maciste vs. the Moon Men".

By the way, I am one of those who has marveled at Corman's ability to do wonderful things with tiny budgets (such as "Little Shop of Horrors" and "Bucket of Blood"). He is a brilliant director, though like most, he has made his share of disappointing films. This one, clearly, is among his worst. This isn't just because it's silly, as I LOVE his silly 1950s horror films, but because the script is so lifeless. It practically puts you to sleep because you keep expecting action and excitement but it just never delivers. Frankly, I wish it HAD been cheesy and silly--that at least would have made watching it fun! As far as fun or funny goes, I had to take what I could find due to bad dubbing. A funny aspect of the film you should look for are the dubbing mistakes. First, there were the trumpeters. When they blow on them, you hear NOTHING--as they apparently forgot to dub this! I especially loved when the boss-man ordered a fight to the death to begin with the blowing of the trumpets. You see the guys blowing away...and absolutely no sound at all!! Yet, miraculously, the guys begin fighting! Another scene consists of dancing girls flitting about...and absolutely NO music!!!! Now that's funny!