In ancient Greece, the city-state of Thenis, led by King Telektos, is in a war with Seronikos, led by the tyrant Praximedes. Praximedes, realizing that Thenis has enough supplies to hold off his attacks for several months, offers an alternate way of deciding the fate of the battle: each side will offer one man to fight the one from the other to the death. If Praximedes’s guy wins, Telektos will hand the city over to him. If Telektos’s man wins, Praximedes will agree to leave Thenis alone from that point forward. Telektos puts his son Indros up as his warrior immediately; however, Praximedes asks for ten days to find a suitable guy for his side.
Luckily for Praximedes, the Olympics are being held right down the street (okay, not LITERALLY right down the street, but nearby), so he and his high priestess Candia and his state philosopher/right-hand man/flunky Garnis head that way to find themselves a strongman. They see a guy named Atlas (but not THE “holding-the-world-on-his-shoulders” Atlas, as they take pains to point out) win a wrestling match and decide that he’s their guy. They ask him for his services, and he tells them that he’ll go check things out and make his decision when he gets there. This gives him time to get to know Candia a little better, as they hit if off immediately. (If this were taking place in, say, modern-day Seattle, her dog would have already tangled Atlas up in its leash, dragging Candia in with him, much to the embarrassment of all involved.)
To cut a long story short, Atlas agrees to the fight and wins it, but says he won’t kill Indros. After Praximedes takes control of the city, Atlas realizes that Praximedes is a real jerk, and he and Candia decide to escape to Egypt to get away from him, since he’s now sore that Atlas has stolen Candia from him. Unfortunately, they don’t get far when they’re recaptured by Praximedes; however, a rag-tag band of Thenisian outlaws luckily stumbles across the skirmish and takes out enough of Praximedes’s men to make the rest retreat. Atlas and the outlaws then hatch a plan to take back the city-state from Praximedes and his goons, which they’re able to do without too much apparent trouble. At the end, Atlas and Candia head off to Egypt, but the door is left open for further possible adventures with Atlas.
You really have to give Roger Corman a lot of credit. In addition to cranking out movies at an astounding pace (between the years 1955 and 1964, he averaged over four movies per year), he also started his own film distribution company, Filmgroup, which he and his brother Gene ran from 1959 until 1963, when Gene took a job at a major studio. Every film that Corman produced during those years that didn’t go out through AIP went out as a Filmgroup release, and, as it was made using Corman’s own money, Atlas went out through Filmgroup. As I’ve mentioned before in this blog, Corman had an amazing knack for tapping into the zeitgeist, which helped to make almost all of his films as director and/or producer money-makers. Atlas arrived right after the huge success of Hercules and its sequel Hercules Unchained established a market for these so-called “sword and sandal” epics, and Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus only helped to fan those fires. So Corman, while scouting around in Europe for locations for an upcoming film, wrangled a deal with Greece wherein he could shoot at some of the classical-age ruins. He also worked out a deal with the Grecian army which entailed the loan of 500 soldiers to be in the battle scenes of his film. Unfortunately, some wires must have gotten crossed somewhere, and only 50 or so soldiers showed up to shoot the big battle scenes. Because of this, Corman’s only recourse was to shoot the battle scenes from much closer than he had originally planned. So instead of sweeping vistas full of battling soldiers, the film shows small groups of soldiers fighting. To help pad out the warring armies, Corman shot more close-up footage of more guys fighting once he got back to California. If you look closely, you’ll see perennial Corman favorite Dick Miller cameoing as a Greek warrior, and if you look even harder, you may be able to pick out Corman himself all dressed out in fighting gear.
As was often the case in the early years of his career, Corman turned to Charles B. Griffith to write the film. Griffith had been cranking out screenplays for Corman since 1956’s Gunslinger, including the screenplays for the horror/comedy hybrids A Bucket of Blood and The Little Shop of Horrors; Atlas marked the twelfth collaboration between the two in five years. According to a published interview with Griffith, he had originally written Atlas as a comedy as well, under the title of Atlas, the Guided Muscle. By the time that the film was shot, however, most of the comedy (at least of the intentional sort) seems to have disappeared.
Making the trip to Greece with Corman were several actors with whom he’d worked before – Michael Forest (who plays Atlas) and Frank Wolff (Praximedes), who’d both been in Ski Troop Attack, and Barboura Morris (Candia), who’d been in several Corman films by this point, including A Bucket of Blood. The cast was rounded out by a bunch of Greek actors.
While it’s undoubtedly not Corman’s best movie, if you’ll give it half a chance, you might find yourself enjoying it. At the very least, Michael Weldon in The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film nailed this one on the head when he called it “[u]nlike any other muscleman epic you’ve ever seen.”
Here’s the trailer from YouTube:
Oddly enough, I can’t find a free copy of Atlas anywhere on the Interwebs, even though the film is pretty squarely in the public domain, as far as I can tell. If you’re really, truly aching to see the film, however, it can be rented or bought from Amazon.
Up next: Journey to the land of the one-eyed giant!
Psychotronica Redux 