La furia del coloso

At first glance, one might say that this is a typically cheap, thrown-together sequel from the given era that repeats the promises of the first film but fulfils them with a smaller budget. The narrative, in which Hercules has to return Zeus’s lightning bolts, comprises episodes conceived along the lines of video-game levels and filled with stunts and special-effects sequences. As in the case of Cozzi’s first Hercules and his legendary Starcrash, naïve stylisation, colourful sets and primitive effects are combined with stiff acting to form a unique style that’s easy to love. Cozzi doesn’t make any attempts at hyperrealism or believability, as he was a lover of the handmade effects, cardboard and naïve fantasies of Ray Harryhausen, Ishiro Honda and Georges Méliès. Unfortunately, due to the hastiness and cheapness of the production, The Adventures of Hercules II is rather only a vague reminder of the virtues and distinctiveness of Cozzi’s best works. _____ On the other hand, in light of the film’s frantic genesis, the result actually proved to be a major miracle and a testament to Cozzi’s skill. When he was editing the first Hercules for Cannon Italia, S.R.L., the Italian offshoot of Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus’s legendary trash factory, the company’s first Italian effort, The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, was being completed in parallel. Golan was so horrified by the result that he immediately fired the directors and the head of Cannon Italia, and asked Cozzi if he could salvage the fiasco by re-editing it and shooting some new scenes. He agreed with Ferrigno that the latter would make himself available for two-weeks for one-tenth of his usual fee (because if anyone saw Gladiators without the touching-up, it would ruin his career), and Cozzi wrote and started shooting new scenes. But then Cannon’s bean counters figured that instead of salvaging this shit, it would be better to write it off and get a completely new film for a negotiated fraction of the cost. Cozzi thus had to come up with an entirely new screenplay for the new sequences and it was kept secret from Ferrigno that a new film was being made instead of just repairing the existing one. Cozzi agreed to take on this project only because he had been promised that Cannon would finance his dream project, Sinbad of the Seven Seas (though the making of Sinbad turned out to be even more terrifying in typical Cannon fashion). In the context of the frantic production conditions, throttled budget and irrational supervision from above, Cozzi demonstrates considerable flexibility and ingenuity, as he managed to squeeze the most out of the whole situation and even made a relatively cohesive film. Because the agreed time for the supposed touch-ups had expired, Ferrigno was no longer available for the final scenes, so Cozzi animated the final duel using rotoscoped sequences from the first film. In the first movie, he was able to have a field day with his beloved stop-motion animation and indulge in a variety of different miniatures, effects and studio sets (which are recalled through recycling them in the properly drawn-out opening credits of the second film). This time he had to do without all of that, so he handled everything with punk filming in the woods and on publicly accessible ruins around Rome. The various monsters and supernatural creatures were again created by means of rotoscoping, which he further saved money on by having the animators trace over shots from their favourite fantasy movies like Mothra, Forbidden Planet and King Kong instead of using new material as the basis of their work. (16.01.2023) (menos) (más)