Underplayed Gems

Goliath and the Dragon (1960)

Goliath and the Dragon poster
Original title
La vendetta di Ercole
Directed by
Vittorio Cottafavi
Genre
fantasy film, sword-and-sandal film
Country
France, Italy
Runtime
1h 38m
Rated
12
Rating
5.3 of 10 from 24 voters
Elsewhere
IMDb
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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How it feels

A strong hero named Goliath (but originally Hercules) fights monsters and villains in a mythical ancient world. The American version added a stop-motion dragon that was not in the original Italian film.

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What happens

Goliath and the Dragon (Italian: La vendetta di Ercole, lit. 'Revenge of Hercules') is a 1960 sword-and-sandal film directed by Vittorio Cottafavi and starring Mark Forest and Broderick Crawford. The name of the main character was changed from Hercules to Emilius (known in the film as Goliath) for release in North America by American International Pictures to sell it as a sequel to their earlier Goliath and the Barbarians (1959). American International Pictures had announced plans to create a sequel to Goliath and the Barbarians called Goliath and the Dragon based on a script by Lou Rusoff for star Debra Paget, but the project fell through, so they bought the rights to an already-made Italian film called Revenge of Hercules and retitled it Goliath and the Dragon. American International Pictures also added a Wah Ming Chang stop-motion animation sequence inserting a dragon sub-plot into the story. The dragon sequence is only in the Americanized English-dubbed print, not in the original Italian version. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

More like this

This page is from Underplayed Gems. Not quite it? You can browse by genre, country and year, or take this one into the 3D catalogue and ask the Catbot for something closer.