Cheyenne is a Gorean Western. Son of Sinbad is a Gorean Arabian Nights epic. And perhaps the most Gorean of the sword and sandal epics of the pre-1970s era was Jupiter's Darling. In certain respects, it was the most Gorean of any sword and sandal epic.

In the movie, Howard Keel plays Hannibal the Conqueror, invading Italy through the Alps and giving the Roman armies a good trouncing in the process. His enemy, the Roman emperor Fabius Maximus (not to be confused with the lead character in Gladiator) was one of those rare decent, easygoing emperors, who's also a bit weak unfortunately. Emperor Fabius Maximus' fiance, Amytis, played by Esther Williams, is not so weak -- in fact she's a firebrand. (Note: this is one of Esther's relatively non-swimming roles -- there are a couple of swim scenes, but they're side notes, not the meat of the story.)

As Hannibal's armies advance on Rome, Maximus' mind is mostly on planning his wedding to Amytis. Amytis is not so weak, but she's also not so bright. She understands the danger that Hannibal represents, and conceives a plan to sneak outside the walls of Rome and spy on Hannibal, thus gaining valuable information about Hannibal's plans that you have to figure are obtainable in no other way, and also possibly getting plenty of bondage and rough sex in the course of it.

(Maximus, as portrayed by Sanders, is a very soft man, if you get my drift -- Amytis' sortie seems as much like a desperate attempt to get laid while she still can as it is an act of patriotism.)

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Well, Amytis' lurking and skulking skills being what they are, she's very quickly captured by Hannibal's men. They strip her naked, tie her to a post in a tent, gag her and gangbang her. (OK, this doesn't really happen, but hey, we can dream, can't we?) She does wind up in Hannibal's tent, and on the verge of being condemned to slavery, she tells Hannibal that if he spares her, she'll show him a secret location where he can overlook the city so he will know it is not worth capturing. (Unh-hunh.)

Hannibal goes for it, heading out for the city at night with Esther. While wandering around the walls of Rome at night, they bond, but not in the fun way. They kiss, and in Hannibals' blazing eyes Amytis sees her conquest, and in Amytis' liquid pools of desire Hannibal sees a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. It's love, alrighty, fifties style, which means nothing more sexy than a kiss and an embrace occurs -- onscreen.

Their tryst is interrupted by Roman soldiers who have sortied beyond the walls at night because, well, that's the sort of thing you do when you're beseiged. You sortie, you fold, you spindle, you mutilate.

Hannibal is furious, thinking that Amytis has deliberately led him into a trap. He binds and gags Amytis, fights off a few Roman soldiers, tosses Amytis into his chariot and makes a mad dash through the Roman lines to get back to his encampment.

Hannibal is so mad when he gets back to his camp (for one thing, the Romans set fire to his chariot, forcing him to drive it through some really scummy water) that he throws Amytis' bound form out of the chariot as soon as he comes to a stop, sending her rolling helplessly in the dust, then tells his men to "Kill that woman!"

This sets up the most powerfully Gorean scene in the movie. Amytis' personal slave Meta (Marge Champion) removes Amytis' gag, and Amytis, who really has the hots for Hannibal, despite having being treated like a sack of potatoes, follows Hannibal into his tent. There, her hands still tied behind her back, she has a lengthy scene in which she tries to persuade Hannibal that she didn't know there were Roman soldiers out there and she would NEVER have led her people's chief enemy into a trap.

The persuasion turns into seduction halfway through, and we have some pretty steamy (by fifties standards, anyway) interplay between Hannibal and Amytis with her hands still bound behind her back. Eventually he cuts her bonds, but the scene ends with Hannibal placing the knife at her throat and saying, "You're going to die." Instead of cutting her throat, Hannibal kisses her, her throat still at knifepoint, and she returns his kiss ardently. Yeah, we're talking bondage and edgeplay in a fifties film.

Left to right: 1) In a musical number in which Howard Keel, who plays Hannibal, sings that "I will always be the master!" there are some very strong maledom/femsub poses, with Esther constantly placing her arms behind her back and exposing her neck to Keel as he sings. Another point: some female fans have complained that captors in DiD scenes are rarely good-looking. Well, ladies, we think you'll be REAL happy with Howard Keel's looks. 2) Amytis offer her throat to Hannibal's knife and her lips to him in general. Pretty "edgy" for the fifties.

This being the fifties, the scene ends with the kiss, but the next morning Hannibal fetches Amytis from her tent, and they're both all smiles and have that little strut to their walk that people who haven't had any good sex in a long time but have just had their brains fucked out have.

Later, Hannibal finds out that Amytis is the fiance of the Maximus, which leads him to suspect that she's been fucking him in more ways than one. Amytis winds up chained to a post in a slave holding tent full of chains, along with her Vera. They're both pretty glum. That's about all the bondage to be seen in the film.

Well, things happen plotwise from there on in, including a Marge and Gower Champion dance with elephants where Gower insults Marge by estimating her slave price at a tenth what she thinks she is worth, and which includes an elephant-butt-waggling scene that's wrong, all wrong, in so many, many ways.

One more nice Gorean touch -- Hannibal lifts his seige of Rome in return for Maximus' delivering his fiance Amytis to him. Maximus, of course, complies. Amytis is hoisted over the walls or Rome in a sling to Hannibal, who now realizes there's more to life than killing Romans and herding elephants. This is, of course, strongly reminiscent of the scenes where Gorean masters pay incredibly exorbitant prices for their beloved slavegirls whom they have earlier treated in ways that would make you think they considered said slavegirls nearly worthless, much to the delight of said slavegirls.)

Adding even more to the Gorean nature of this scene, Hannibal halts the transfer while Amytis is still suspended in mid-air, saying he can't accept Amytis for Rome's safety unless she comes willingly, forcing Amytis to declare publicly that she is willingly becoming Hannibal's captive. OK, granted, it's not quite the same thing as forcing a slavegirl to publicly declare her slave needs and beg to have them satisfied, but it's still pretty darned good, and very much true to form for Gor novels.

The captor/captive romance is at the heart of the story in Jupiter's Darling putting it squarely in Gorean turf, and there are plenty of verbal references to chaining, binding, gagging and such. Sadly, the powerhouse song, "If this is slavery, I don't want to be free!" is sung by a guy.

Manly men, womanly women, slavegirls, chains, captive/captor romances, an exotic locale and a primitive culture all add up to a Gorean film of the first water. As it should. The sword-and-sandal flicks of the fifties and sixties probably inspired Norman when he wrote the Gor novels. So seeing Gorean elements in them is no big surprise. Even if they didn't directly inspire Norman, both Norman and the creators of Jupiter's Darling were drawing from the same well so to speak, so it's not surprising they came up with similar results.

Esther Williams is one hot damsel in distress.

Jupiter's Darling, like Son of Sinbad, is a film that just begs to be updated with some great bondage imagery and some strong sexual content. Of course, it can't be remade as it was for several reasons.

First and foremost, there's budgetary considerations.Jupiter's Darling was one of a string of big-budget musicals that drove MGM studios to the bring of bankruptcy (another was the nearly useless Arabian Nights musical Kismet). The sets, costuming and extras forJupiter's Darling cost plenty, and it's all up there on the screen. And don't forget the elephants. They're up there, too, poor things, and even if they were former circus elephants lured by the bright lights of Hollywood, you can bet they cost plenty.

Second, there's changing times.Jupiter's Darling had strong maledom/femsub/bondage/slavegirl themes that slid under the radar back in the 50s. Nowadays you have to deal with these themes more directly because audiences are going to be right on top of them. So you either have to make a camp parody of the original that plays with the hidden sexuality of the movie, like the recent Psycho Beach Party played with the sexual themes of the old beach musicals, or you have to update the film, making clear the nature of the attraction between Hannibal the Conqueror and the Roman slavegirl bound and gagged in the back of his chariot.

The spate of low-budget sword and sandal films made in the 80s show what aJupiter's Darling remake could be like if it's done carelessly. Films like Warlords managed to reduce the Arabian Nights fantasy movie to a bunch of idjits running around in the desert with a few tarted-up hoochies in bellydancing costumes shaking their moneymakers in a tent. And films like Amazon Warrior reduced the sword-and-sandal genre to a bunch of idjits running around the desert with a few tarted-up hoochies in barbaric rags shaking their moneymakers by the fire.

In short, filmmakers of the 80s attempted to substitute a little nudity and softcore sex for EVERYTHING ELSE THAT MADE THE SWORD AND SANDAL FANTASY FUN! Even worse, for films that had minimally well-made plots and delivered on the sex, nudity, bondage and barbarism like Barbarian Queen and Deathstalker, it WORKED!

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As Barbarian Queen, Deathstalker and a few others demonstrate, a little bondage, nudity and softcore sex can add a LOT to the genre, so much that it can make audiences forgive the shoddiness of the productions in other respects.

But that's not the end of the tale, because it has been demonstrated quite convincilngly that it's possible to do an excellent job of recreating the sword and sandal genre in a way that's entertaining even without nudity and/or softcore sex, and on a very limited budget. Anybody who's seen the television series Hercules and Xena (especially Xena) will know EXACTLY what I'm talking about.

The series used good costume and set design, as well as good scriptwriting and acting to make their stories compelling and believable. Where the story involved mythological creatures or skylines of ancient cities they used inexpensive CGI artwork or matte paintings. (The monsters in the first season of Hercules were done on an Amiga Video Toaster, to give you some idea.) But most scenes were set in villages, camps and hovels and so didn't require expensive sets.

A large part of the appeal of Xena and Hercules was to create costumes that made their wearers look sexy to modern viewers, the most striking case in point being the black leather dominatrix bodice with matching leather skirt that Lucy Lawless wore in Xena. Instead of going with rags because they were cheap (as Roger Corman did) or with flowing robes because they looked Roman, as a lot of 50s films did, the creators of Hercules and Xena went with SEXY -- and boy, did it work. What's more, it doesn't cost a hell of a lot more to create a sexy ancient costume for a heroine or damsel than it does to dress her in furry rags.

And of course, Xena and to a lesser extent Hercules were quite productive of bondage scenes -- as noted in an earlier banter, Xena had some of the edgiest, most stringent bondage scenes on television during its tenure.

In addition, the film Gladiator has demonstrated that there's still a large, appreciative audience for sword and sandal flicks.

No filmmaker as yet has drawn the obvious conclusion here, so I'll just point it out, if only for the pale pleasure of being able to tell somebody who isn't listening "I told you so" someday.

IF

sword and sandal films as basically crappy as Barbarian Queen and Deathstalker 2 can succeed almost entirely on the strength of their bondage, nudity and softcore sex scenes

AND

the TV series Xena and Hercules have convincingly demonstrated that it's perfectly possible to create good sword and sandal films on a limited budget

AND

the film Gladiator demonstrated that there's a modern audience for good sowrd and sandal flicks

THEN

it is possible to create a good sword and sandal flick on a limited budget, and

AND

if it includes bondage, nudity and softcore sex as well

THEN

it will be a FUCKING MONSTER HIT OF A B-MOVIE SUCCESS!

CAN'T. FUCKING. LOSE!

Hear me, risk-aversive Hollywood types?

CAN'T! FUCKING! LOSE!

I know I'm shouting.

But really, I think that a sexy, naked, bondage-y B-grade remake or ripoff or whatever ofJupiter's Darling ... JUST. MIGHT. WORK!