EDITOR’S NOTE: Goliath and the Vampires was on Chiller Theater on Saturday, October 5, 1968 at 1:00 a.m., Saturday, August 29, 1970 at 11:30 p.m. and Saturday, June 23, 1973 at 11:30 p.m. It played as The Vampires.

Released in its native Italy as Maciste control il vampiro, American-International Pictures thought no one in the U.S. knew who Maciste was. He’s also been called Hercules, Samson, Atlas, Ulysses and Colossus with several of his films being part of the Sons of Hercules TV package.

The character first appeared in the 1914 silent film Cabiria, has been in more than fifty movies and has been played by Mark Forrest, Reg Park, Gordon Mitchell, Reg Lewis, Kirk Morris, Samson Burke, Alan Steel, Richard Lloyd, Renato Rossini and Frank Gordon. This time, the man carved from rock is played by Gordon Scott.

Even Jess Franco made two Maciste movies, Maciste contre la Reine des Amazones and Les exploits érotiques de Maciste dans l’Atlantid.

Directed by Giacomo Gentilomo (Hercules Against the Moon Men, Slave Girls of Sheba) and Sergio Corbucci (Django, The Great Silence and, yes, Super Fuzz) and a script by Corbucci and Duccio Tessari (one of the fathers of the Italian Western), this movie is totally incredible. Seriously, it slowly built into something that exploded my brain.

Nearly all of the men in Goliath’s village are killed and the women and children taken. He swears to kill everyone until learning that they are all under the spell of the vampiric monster Korbrak (Guido Celano). Yes, pirates who are controlled by a vampire demon who set villages on fire and killing the mother of a demigod as well as kidnapping his girlfriend!

Korbrak is turning all the people he has killed into faceless monsters that serve as his foot soldiers and when Goliath finally meets him face to face, he learns that they are twins. Well, not for long, as Korbrak’s face gets ripped off revealing a horrible visage. There’s also a scene where Goliath is trapped inside a giant bell, as well as everything in the realm of the vampires being colored with gels.

There are also good guys with blue skin and a rubber spider that is one of the best giant spiders you’ll see. This would be the best peplum ever made if it wasn’t for Hercules in the Haunted World but you know, Bava and Christopher Lee together is a tough customer.

Goliath is pretty much a blank slate as a hero but everything else in this movie is just plain weird and by weird, read that as perfect. Monstrous bone and body eating bad guys, even the heroes threatening to send a beautiful woman into a pit filled with monsters while she begs for her life, a sultan who has become the ruler because he sold his soul, people falling on spikes, children being menaced by flaming trees and so much blood. Like, this has all the gore — in 1961, mind you — that every other peplum film not named Conquest wishes that it had.

This movie demands to be seen.

You can watch this on YouTube.