Born Edmund Holovchik in June of 1928, Ed Fury gave himself a tough sounding name and went on to a successful career as a fitness model during the 1950s, and by fitness model I mean he was in lots of photos with compositions like, "Ed is naked and tangled in a fisherman's net. Ooo, be a sexy merman! Be a sexy merman!". His acting career started on the stage, and he later moved into small roles in films like Athena (alongside Steve Reeves). In 1960, he packed his bags and set sail for Italy, where he made his sword and sandal debut in the wild peplum comedy Colossus and the Amazon Queen. It's a clever film, playing off many of the gender cliches already emerging in the genre. The women perform tasks most often associated with men, while the men all run around like a bunch of howling fops. It’s also one of the only peplum films to feature a hero who shouts, "Yahoo!" in a high-pitched voice.

The film decided to have some fun with things by turning everything upside down while also delivering the sexiest -- yet most feminist (as feminist as these movies could be) -- peplum adventure there had been. The city of the Amazons is a subversion of everything people expected from peplum. Effeminate men prance around and swap tips on getting the whites whiter when doing laundry. When the women come home, the men all giggle and run home to engage in arguments with their wives in which the wife complains that the men don't understand the value of a hard day's work while the men whine, "You think cooking and cleaning all day isn’t work?"

Eventually, some marauding pirates threaten to upset the Amazonian society, and the two sexes must unite on equal ground in order to combat this common enemy. Fury is great as a way goofier hero than peplum was used to, and Rod Taylor (who would make b-movie history by appearing in the superb films The Time Machine and World Without End before hitting the big time with a starring role in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller The Birds) manages to provide comic relief that is actually funny as he sashays around with delight in order to lead the dames along and get himself a little nookie.

Many people have analyzed the homoeroticism of the sword and sandal genre then patted themselves on the back for their clever insight and reading of homosexual tendencies boiling just below the surface of the film. Given that many of these films contain greased-up, stripped-down muscleman heroes bent over a table covered in spikes and whipped mercilessly by some foppish henchman, revealing to people that there may be some homoerotic shades to the films is about as insightful as revealing that Pink Floyd's The Wall is about a guy going insane and is “really cool to watch while tripping.” Of course, none of the heroes were expressly homosexual. They still lusted heartily after the ladies, even if they also loved a good grappling session. Athletes will slap each other on the ass after a good game, and gladiators will slick themselves up with sweat and oil and do that Spartacus handshake where you grasp your buddy firmly by the forearm and slap him on the back. As with all things in peplum films, the underlying message is simply, "Relax, buddy. Don’t worry about it. Here, let work that tension out of your lats."

Fury starred in a few other sword and sandal films, including Ursus in the Land of Fire (1963), Samson Against the Sheik (1962), Ursus in the Valley of the Lions (1961), and The Mighty Ursus (1961). Obviously, the guy was really into Ursus.

Labels: Set: Warriors