When Men "Were Men as Men Should Be"

I saw it as The Son of Hercules
in the Land of Darkness.

While growing up in North Carolina in the 1960s and 1970s, I frequently watched the Sunday afternoon movies on WSOC Channel 9 in Charlotte. That's where I first saw all the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes movies as well as the Charlie Chan series. It was also where I watched--for what seemed like countless months--the Sons of Hercules movies. Each film would start with a male chorus singing:

The mighty Sons of Hercules

Once thundered through the years

These men of steel could never feel

The curse of a coward's fears

The Mighty Sons of Hercules

Were men as men should be

They burned with dreams

 And turned their dreams into history

A hundred giants, brave and bold

They ruled the world in days of old

The Mighty Sons of Hercules

You can listen to this classic song on YouTube. I didn't have to--I can still remember the tune and the lyrics. After all, these guys were "men as men should be" and that's pretty manly stuff.

Kirk Morris as Maciste...probably.
Because he was blonde in some movies,
he's also known as the "Blonde Hercules."

There are at least a dozen of these Sons of Hercules movies, pitting the title character against Medusa (who looked like a rubber tree), the Devil of the Desert, the Mole Men, Fire Monsters, the Terror of Rome, and more! Most of the time, the hero was played by an unknown Italian actor, but sometimes the lead went to better-known, second-tier muscle men like Kirk Morris, Dan Vadis, and Mark Forest. Made in the early-to-mid 1960s, these films weren't very good...but I still watched them and my Dad even joined me occasionally (I swear...there's something hypnotic about that song).

Here's the kicker, though. Years later, when my wife and I were doing some film research, we learned that there were no Sons of Hercules movies. These films were actually about Maciste, with an occasional Hercules or Goliath movie tossed in. A savvy producer had simply packaged them for TV, retitled them all so they appeared to be a Sons of Hercules series, and added that catchy song.

Yes, I was disillusioned. I consoled myself, though, by humming the famous theme song. It didn't matter if the hero was really Maciste or Goliath or even the original Herc. They were all "men as men should be."