I've not seen a lot of peplum, but this has surely got to be one of the weirdest. The film starts in Scotland in the year 1550 where witch Martha Gaunt is sentenced to be burned at the stake by Justice Edgar Parrish (Andrea Bosic), who was spurned by the woman when she was young and beautiful. Before she dies, Martha places a curse on the land.
100 years later and the curse is in full effect, local women succumbing to madness and suicide, a gnarled tree sprouting a flower with each death. After newlyweds Martha (Vira Silenti ) and Charley (Angelo Zanolli) move into the local castle, the village folk get wind of the fact that Martha's maiden name was Gaunt, and decide that she is the reincarnation of the witch and must also be burnt at the stake.
So far, so fairly normal, but then things get totally bonkers
Out of nowhere, Maciste (Kirk Morris)—a muscleman wearing nothing but a loincloth—rides his horse into town to try and prevent the execution. Pushing the tree over, he leaps into the hole underneath and enters Hell, where he faces many challenges before confronting the witch, the only one who can break the curse.
First Maciste wrestles a lion (a drugged-up real lion for long shots and a really manky stuffed lion head for close ups); then he wanders past the tortured and the damned where he helps Sisyphus to push his giant boulder. A massive flaming door is opened using a pair of rocks, although Maciste burns his hands in the process. Next, he narrowly escapes a booby trapped tunnel with a spiked roof that slowly lowers. A beautiful woman, Fania, heals his hands. Maciste is attacked by snakes, and a troglodyte, Goliath, who wrestles with our hero when he rushes to Fania's rescue. Having defeated Goliath, Maciste uses a boulder to shield himself from hot sparks, and has a chat with Prometheus, who is condemned to have eagles peck at his innards for all eternity, learning that he has been put under a spell by Fania, who is really Martha the witch.
After clearing his mind by watching some clips from his other movies in a pool of water (the one with the cyclops looks like good schlocky fun), and steering a herd of stampeding cattle off the edge of a cliff, Maciste finally breaks Martha's curse by kissing her. On the surface, a rainstorm puts out the fire about to burn Martha and Charley, the locals seeing this as a sign of their prisoners' innocence. Meanwhile, Maciste ascends from hell, mounts his steed, and rides off to help some other poor people in need.
Even with its constant barrage of bizarreness, I found Maciste in Hell a bit of a bore, the action consisting of Morris unconvincingly straining as he lifts supposedly heavy prop boulders or wrestles with stuffed or doped-up animals. Stunning location work (the scenes of hell were shot in the picturesque caves of Castellana) and great lighting ensures that the film is aesthetically pleasing, but director Riccardo Freda fails to bring much life to proceedings, making the film strictly for the most avid of sword and sandal fans, or those just wanting to see something completely random.
