"I'll put a stop to this!"
—The title character in response to hearing about some local evildoing, Triumph of Maciste
Maciste is the name of an Italian series of films featuring one of cinema's oldest recurring characters, possibly the oldest one to have originated from the cinematic medium itself.
Maciste first originated as a supporting character in 1914's silent film Cabiria, a two-hour long leviathan of a film and one of the first true epics. Maciste's characterization from Cabiria onward, even across a slew of films over a period of decades, has remained mostly consistent; Maciste is the World's Strongest Man (played by Bartolomeo Pagano in the silent era, usually played accordingly by an American beefcake bodybuilder during the 60s revival) and a champion of the innocent and the disenfranchised. Common rogues of Maciste include sinister evil priests with a tendency for Human Sacrifice (most of which derive from the Big Bad of Cabiria), evil queens with a Villainous Crush on Maciste, evil bandits, or any combination of the above. Maciste's foes weren't always necessarily human; he's fought everything from Martians to demons to mole men.
The Maciste films have two points of popularity. The first ranged from 1914 to 1927, predominantly during The Silent Age of Hollywood. The series was subsequently resurrected in the 1960s during the peplum boom in Italy. Many of the '60s Maciste's films were dubbed in English and released in America with Maciste's name replaced with Hercules or Goliath, who were considered more recognizable and mainstream to American audiences. The films have an extremely broad continuity, if any at all, as Maciste has appeared from periods ranging from the Ice Age to the witch trials.
Maciste films from the Silent Age
- Cabiria (1914)
- Marvelous Maciste (1915)
- Maciste the Range 1916)
- Maciste the Warrior (1916)
- Maciste the Athlete (1917)
- Maciste the Detective (1917)
- Maciste the Clairvoyant (1917)
- Maciste the Tourist (1917)
- Maciste the Sleepwalker (1918)
- Maciste's Last Will and Testament (1919)
- Maciste's Journey (1919)
- Maciste the First (1919)
- Maciste vs Death (1919)
- Maciste in Love (1919)
- Maciste, Rescued from the Waters (1920)
- The Revenge of Maciste (1921)
- Maciste on Vacation (1921)
- Maciste and the Silver King's Daughter (1922)
- Maciste and the Japanese (1922)
- Maciste vs Maciste (1923)
- Maciste and the Chinese Chest (1923)
- Maciste's American Nephew (1924)
- Emperor Maciste (1924)
- Maciste vs the Sheik, 1925)
- Maciste in Hell (1926)
- Maciste in the Lion's Cage (1926)
- The Giant of the Dolomites (1927)
Maciste films from the Peplum Era
- Maciste in the Valley of the Kings (localized as Son of Samson, 1960)
- Maciste in the Land of the Cyclops (localized as Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops, 1961)
- Maciste Vs. the Vampire (localized as Goliath and the Vampires, 1961)
- The Triumph of Maciste (localized as Triumph of the Son of Hercules, 1961)
- Maciste at the Court of the Great Khan (localized as Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, 1961)
- Maciste, the Strongest Man in the World (localized as Mole Men vs the Son of Hercules, 1961)
- Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (Hercules in the Vale of Woe, 1961)
- Toto vs. Maciste (1962)
- Maciste in Hell (localized as The Witch's Curse, 1962)
- Maciste Against the Sheik (Samson Against the Sheik, 1962)
- Maciste, the World's Strongest Gladiator (localized as Colossus of the Arena, 1962)
- Maciste Against The Monsters (Fire Monsters Against the Son of Hercules, 1962)
- Maciste Against the Headhunters (localized as Colossus and the Headhunters, 1962)
- Maciste, the World's Greatest Hero (localized as Goliath and the Sins of Babylon, 1963)
- Zorro Against Maciste (localized as Samson and the Slave Queen, 1963)
- Maciste Against the Mongols (Hercules Against the Mongols, 1963
- Maciste in Genghis Khan's Hell (localized as Hercules Against the Barbarians, 1963)
- Maciste at the Court of the Czar (localized as Atlas Against The Czar, 1964)
- Maciste, Gladiator of Sparta (localized as The Terror of Rome Against the Son of Hercules, 1964)
- Maciste in King Solomon's Mines (Samson in King Solomon's Mines, 1964)
- Maciste and the Queen of Samar (localized as Hercules Against the Moon Men, 1964)
- Valley of the Thundering Echo (localized as Hercules of the Desert, 1964)
- Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus: The Invincibles (localized as Samson and His Mighty Challenge, 1964)
- The Invincible Maciste Brothers (1964)
- Maciste, Avenger of the Mayans (1965)
Tropes common to the entire series
- Bond Villain Stupidity: A recurring tendency of the villains is to, upon capturing Maciste, place him in an elaborate spiked contraption that will kill him unless he can perform some spectacular feat of strength. Performing spectacular feats of strength is, of course, Maciste's specialty, and this scene usually makes a big spectacular setpiece that appears on the poster. Mole Men justifies this, with Halis Morab deliberately saying she wants to give him a fighting chance and test the limits of his strength.
- But Now I Must Go: Most movies will end with Maciste, having restored peace and justice to the realm, saying goodbye to his friends and going off in search of more adventures and more people to help. Sometimes the female characters will beg him to stay and marry one of them; in Against the Monsters, the heroine actually goes with him.
- Girl of the Week:
- Most of the Maciste films have some form of love interest for Maciste to rescue, often a member of whatever persecuted society he's saving in the film. Sometimes his love interest is even the villain of the film; in The Witch's Curse, Maciste has nothing to do with the film's resident damsel and film's romantic tension comes from Fania, the titular witch.
- If Maciste doesn't have a love interest, there will usually be some kind of Official Couple around that he is helping.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: By far one of the most recurring villainous archetypes from the series is the evil Queen, and very occasionally the evil Princess. Films such as Moon Men, Son of Samson, King Solomon's Mines, and Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops (though the Queen from Cyclops was a particularly sympathetic version of this) have evil queens vamping onto and brainwashing Maciste in order to turn him into their slave.
- Heel–Face Turn: The more sympathetic villains would usually redeem themselves, usually with the attached Redemption Equals Death:
- Queen Capys from Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops was enslaved by a horrible curse, compelled to do evil by an unknown and malign entity to whose service she was bound to, and halfway through the film ends up turning to Maciste's cause. Her own Dragon ends up accidentally striking her down when she dives in front of Maciste. Said Dragon is denied this trope; though he's horrified when he kills his Queen, Maciste throws him to the Cyclops of the title just a second after.
- Halis Morab, queen of the resident mole people in Mole Men vs the Son of Hercules, learns her entire life has been a lie, she's been murdering hundreds for no reason, and she can go to the surface after all after believing it would kill her. Halis Morab takes this as cause to finally stop the oppression and the torture, only to be be so dazzled by the sun she falls from a cliff.
- Human Sacrifice: A recurring act of the villains.
- Made a Slave: In Cabiria, Maciste was a slave in Rome, but well-treated and loyal to his masters. In the peplum era, however, he - and the people he is helping - will frequently be enslaved by the villains, and he'll end up leading a revolt.
- Ms. Fanservice: Just as Maciste himself was a Walking Shirtless Scene, the various female characters - from sexy villainesses to good-hearted heroines - would usually be put in stripperiffic outfits of their own, with lots of leg and cleavage on full display. There was something for everyone!
- Negative Continuity: Maciste has done everything from converting to Christianity (The Terror of Rome Against the Son of Hercules), to defeating the Mongols three times over (Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World, Hercules Against the Barbarians, Hercules Against the Mongols), to falling in love over and over. None of it sticks to the film except the consistent elements of him Wandering the Earth, protecting the innocent and being the World's Strongest Man. Even his origins is unclear; the very first film Cabiria has it that Maciste is a North African who liberates himself from slavery, but one of the last films, Valley of the Thundering Echo, offers the explanation that Maciste is immortal and that the translation of his name Maciste—"born of the earth"—is quite literal, with the persecuted citizens invoking him from a certain cave.
- Race Lift: In Cabiria, Maciste was supposed to be a black man (which is to say, he was played by a white actor in Blackface). Once he started getting his own solo movies, Maciste was simply a white guy.
- Villainous Crush: The Queens are almost always crushing on beefcake Maciste. Some use drugs or other such traps in an attempt to make Maciste their slave; this was a trope common to the genre at the time (a similar Queen in another unrelated peplum film, Hercules and the Captive Women, tries to do this, where the hero deliberately anticipates it and manages to avoid the same trap Maciste always falls into).
- Walking Shirtless Scene: The bodybuilder physiques of the actors playing Maciste - and various secondary characters, albeit to a lesser extent - was a big selling point, so there was very little modesty in the wardrobe department.
- World's Strongest Man: Maciste is required to prove his title as this by obligation with each film. Whether this is through overpowering a man-eating lion, a vicious monster or the villain's latest booby trap, Maciste always shows his guts by the end. Maciste does seem unusually vulnerable to nets, as far as Moon Men and King Solomon's Mines are concerned.
