“Softness in his eyes, iron in his thighs, virtue in his heart, fire in every part – of the mighty Hercules!”

If the above lyrics from the Speed Racer-esque early ’60s cartoon The Mighty Hercules have a special place in your heart, then you are clearly both A) gay all the way, and B) a connoisseur of the countless costume epics churned out of Italy devoted to the heroic exploits of the famed demi-god Hercules.

In a time when legal hardcore porn was a good eight years away from becoming a reality, and people had to resort to more abstract forms of stroke-off fodder, the Sword and Sandal genre — christened Pepla in the land of its origin — was all the rage when it came to turning people on across the board.

Yes, the arena’s ostensible selling points were its gaudy period detail and awe-inspiring feats of manly prowess, but adults and kids alike were really grabbing groin at the sight of all that chasmic cleavage. And the ladies racks were nice too.

A winning peplum hinged on certain generic conventions that today have become fan-favorite cliches. If producers weren’t crafting a straight historical epic rife with political intrigue, “Our love is forbidden!” romance, and full-scale battles, then they had to go way over the top and present wacky quests, goofy takes on classic Greek myths, and plenty of paper-mache beasties whose limited dexterity allowed them to be easily felled with one felt blow. Actresses portraying various princesses, high priestesses, temple dancers, and enchantresses looked like show girls or burlesque dancers.

Most vitally, the hero of the piece must be essayed by a ridiculously over-pumped slab of beef clad in a loincloth who gives good swagger while overdubbed in the most stereotypically cartoonish “Handsome Man” voice imaginable.

Mr. America 1947 Steve Reeves (open photo and left) is the undisputed peplum king and the face even the uninitiated associate with the genre. One glance makes his immortality obvious; few mere mortals could possibly boast the staggering physique and perfect symetry Le Reeves did in 1958′s Hercules and its follow-up Hercules Unchained.

Reeves’s aesthetic — shimmeringly hairless and oiled up, sporting a silky pompadour, rocking an expertly trimmed beard, and testing the load-bearing limits of his costume — set the standard for every man who followed in his footsteps, and though Hercules was not the first peplum, it deserves a lion’s share of credit for transposing the genre across the Atlantic and turning it into a kitsch American phenomenon.

Reeves became not only an instant gay icon, but in equal measure was adopted by every hetero muscle boy who had him in mind when they picked up their first weight. Today he’s widely venerated in straight bodybuilding circles — where anything smacking even remotely of gay-for-pay is loathed — as the discipline’s patron saint.

Reality proved a tad murky than orthodox Reeves worshipers would care to admit. Like any comely young actor Tinseltown during the studio system era, Reeves did what he had to get ahead, as revealed in fellow ingenue John Gilmore‘s own biopic/expose of the Hollywood trip, Laid Bare.

Gilmore, Reeves, and a gamut of other male starlets were, ahem, handled by agent John Darrow, one of a number of Tinseltown managers who passed their male clients around like hors d’oeuvres. Darrow had a wink-wink nickname for each of his clients, Reeves being “Miss Peter,” a sly reference to his habit of racing out of bed within seconds of blasting his load in order to gulp down all the milk and eggs he could find in the refrigerator in order to replenish all the lost protein.

American theaters were happy to import Italian product after Hercules‘s runaway success, the character proving to have more contemporary filmic adventures and incarnations than he had mythical labors. With Reeves in big demand and unable to be cast in a deluge of similar features, other bodybuilding circuit and Muscle Beach regulars found themselves plucked out of obscurity and put on the first plane to Rome.

Pectacular Mark Forest (born Lou Degni — right) was the first to be recruited in Reeves’s wake, headlining Hercules Against the Sons of The Sun, Hercules Against The Barbarians, and Hercules Against The Mongols.

Reeves’s one-time stand-in, burly Italian Alan Steel (ne Sergio Ciani) soon found himself promoted to leading mans status for such exploits as the sublimely loony Hercules Against The Moon Men.

British colossus Reg Park proved to be a fan favorite thanks to starring roles in the likes of Hercules & The Captive Women, and notably, Mario Bava‘s stunningly phantasmagoric Hercules In The Haunted World, in which Herc not only ventures Dante-like into the Underworld to free the soul of his beloved, but comes across as — dare we say it — human.

With his piledriver build and ruggedly bearded countenance, Park was Colt before there even was a Colt. Fellow hard body Tarzan dish Gordon Scott essayed the Son of Zeus in the shot-in-English unsold TV pilot Hercules & The Princess Troy and even played Remus to Reeves’s Romulus in Duel of The Titans.

By the mid-60s, Herc was everywhere in the pop cult landscape, taking the form of comics, coloring books, toys, models, board games, Halloween costumes, Greco-Roman-themed gay porn loops, and the aforementioned syndicated cartoon series, the latter finding Herc and his centaur sidekick Newt outed by Scott Thompson‘s Buddy Cole on The Kids In The Hall years later.

By this time, Hercules’s look was beginning to diverge from the traditional brunet beardery. Gorgeous blond tower of muscle Brad Harris appeared in The Fury of Hercules and innumerable other strongman features.

Harris was just one of several decorative musclemen culled from The Mae West Revue (and presumably a few bouts in the hay in Ms West’s boudoir), joined by sinewy blond Gordon Mitchell, curvaceous Reg Lewis, rippling Dan Vadis, and Mr. Jayne Mansfield, Hungarian Mickey Hargitay. A Pre- Mission Impossible Peter Lupus was re-christened with the fabulously proto-gay porn parody moniker Rock Stevens for his turn in Hercules & The Tyrants of Babylon.

The Hercules explosion invaded live action American TV as well, with features being re-edited to spin-off Daddy Herc into various “sons” like Maciste, Atlas, Ulysses, Ursus, Anthar, Goliath, Perseus, and Mars, allowing for the introduction a new wave of younger, prettier stars like statuesque Richard Harrison, Olympian Ed Fury, and wasp-waited Kirk Morris culled from the pages of physique pictorials.

Though the genre proper largely ran its course by the late ’60s, Hercules and his ilk found their true longevity through their immersion into the post-ironic pop cognescenti, and in particular, the gay cult canon.

By the late ’70s, virtually every popular pulp character — from King Kong and Dracula to Zorro and Batman — had been introduced into the camp cathedral. Late Late Show airings, Saturday Night Live parodies, and gladiator magazines becoming both cherished gay artifacts and sitcom one-liners followed 1962′s The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (right) starring Samson Burke as the first ripple for Hercules’s entree into the band.

It was the 1970 turkey Hercules In New York with an unintelligible Arnold Schwarzenegger — inexplicably not overdubbed — that crossed the line into all-out caricature. With his one facial expression and Stockholm Syndrome line readings, Arnie would’ve needed godly connections to ensure that he ever set foot before a camera again.

Schwarzy’s Pumping Iron rival, the sex beast known as Lou Ferrigno, got his own shot in 1983′s delirious Hercules, employing his emotive torso alongside a cast of mechanized monsters, a bitchy pantheon of gods, great tits, lasers, the beautiful transsexual Eva Robin’s, and a fucking grizzly bear hurtling into space.

Post-80s, it was just a question of exactly where the ne plus ultra of gayness resided for Hercules and co.

Was it 1993′s Hercules Returns, a ’60s-era muscleman epic re-dubbed What’s Up, Tiger Lily?-style complete with goofy sexual innuendo and affected Aussie accents? Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with International Male stud Kevin Sorbo? Disney’s 1997 animated feature with its over-coiffed, Bel Ami-looking Herc? The 2000 Jason & The Argonauts remake featuring muscle monster Brian Thompson?

It’s ultimately a two-man toss-up as to who’s the most porn-ready: famed straight porn haunch-pulverizer Evan Stone in Wicked Pictures’s 2002 eponymous porn spoof, or doll-faced mini-hulk Paul Telfer (left) in the 2005 mini-series of the same name.

So do try to be diplomatic when your latest muscle trick leaps out of the sack to gorge himself on your stash of protein bars and chug down all the soy milk. Don’t think of it as vanity.

Call it a Herculean homage.

© 2009, Shawn Baker. All rights reserved. Nightcharm.com