Maciste (this time dubbed to "Goliath", showing the well-oiled muscles of Gordon Scott) lives somewhere and sometime in a little village. There, he has a peroxided fiancé Giulia (Leonora Ruffo), a mother, and his usual hobby of being incredibly heroic. While he is taking care of a child rescue situation, his home village is attacked by a band of raiders, wearing no armor but some silly black helmets. Even stranger is that they don't steal anything. It seems to be more fun to kill as many men as possible, burn the place down and get away with the women (including Maciste's Giulia).
We'll soon see that they actually didn't even want all women. Once onboard their ship, the elderly and middle-aged meet their destiny as shark-munch.
When Maciste returns and learns about this, he swears to get the people back and avenge the dead. One of the survivors even knows where the kidnapped are brought to, a place I like to call nearly-Baghdad.
Nearly-Baghdad's ruler is the mopiest Sultan around, nothing is fun for him anymore, not even mass belly-dances. This is less surprising when one keeps in my that he isn't the true ruler of the place anymore. Instead, the true power behind the throne is Kobrak (Guido Celani), a masked, blood-drinking fiend who usually appears with his own private supply of Bava-light. Kobrak plans don't end with the possession of nearly-Baghdad - he has started to use his power base there to build an army of featureless and mindless automatons that will someday conquer the world. For this, he needs the bodies of slaves.
Fortunately Maciste and his child sidekick soon arrive in town to set things right.
From now on the film is a cornucopia of fun things: Maciste throwing more pillars than can be good for his back, an early oriental surf instrumental band, said mindless automatons, distrust, treason, two women but only one Maciste, kidnappings, the battle of the two Macistes, the helpful kingdom of the Blue Men (who might be the least effective fighting force on the planet) and many more beautiful nonsense. Oh, and just to prove the script was written by Sergio Corbucci and Duccio Tessari, the death of the kid sidekick. Not that anyone would care afterwards or would at least mention Maciste's responsibility for his death.
Goliath versus The Vampires (who are in truth one vampire) is a fun peplum with many earnestly played moments of utter silliness and a handful of atmospheric sequences. Script and direction never forget the most important things in the genre and incessantly throw lots of strange stuff at the viewer like the hero throws with anything he can put his hands on. (And after one has seen the arm-flaying that is his other combat routine, one is thankful to see him throw things).
Some of those things are even original. The kingdom of the Blue Men, with their blue mask-like faces and their blue bread and wine for example is a nice variation of the underground kingdoms no good film should go without. The torture sequence is also quite singular. Maciste isn't stretched or tied with ropes or chains to show his physique off, instead he's thrown into a hole in the ground. The automaton then place a bell over the hole and start hitting the bell with large hammers. See, the soundwaves will destroy his brain and make him the prototype of an even better warrior for Kobrak. The vampire doesn't take the fact into account that our hero hasn't got a brain anyway. Well, truthfully Maciste's brain (such as it is) is saved thanks to a heroic deed done earlier in the film - a nice deviation from the norm.
If you like this kind of film, you'll like this one a lot. If not, I can't imagine it will change your mind about the peplum.
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