John Martin remembers Incredible Hulk star Lou Ferrigno’s astonishing spaghetti sci-fi sword-and-sandal epics…

Born to Italo-American parents in Brooklyn, NY on 09/11/51, Louis Jude Ferrigno sustained significant hearing loss as the result of a childhood illness.

Encouraged by his dad (subsequently his coach) Matty to build his selfconfidence via the media of weight-lifting and body building, “Big Louie” rose rapidly through the oiled ranks to compete at the very highest level, crowned Mr Universe for two years in succession during the early ‘70s.

Unfortunately, as documented in George Butler and Robert Fiore’s celebrated 1977 documentary Pumping Iron, Lou’s pec pumping pomp was rapidly eclipsed by the meteoric rise of a certain Arnold Schwarzenegger. So it also proved when the titanically torsoed twosome took up their respective acting careers.

Although Lou actually beat out Arnie for the TV role of The Incredible Hulk (1977-82) on the grounds that he was a few inches taller than the Austrian upstart, their fortunes inexorably reversed thereafter. While Arnie went on to star in such big budget pyrotechnic action fests as James Cameron’s Terminator franchise, John McTernan’s Predator (1987) and Paul Verhoeven’s Total Recall (1990), Ferrigno headed for the old country to participate in a quartet of sword and sandal sci-fiefforts that Cannon Italia hoped would compete at the box office with the likes of Christopher Reeve’s Superman epics… at a fraction of the cost.

Well… the Hulk tagline was (give or take) that you wouldn’t like him when he’s mad, but nothing (not even his stint as Michael Jackson’s personal trainer) could have prepared Lou (or, indeed, the viewer) for the sheer madness of his mini stint in Italian exploitation cinema.

1983’s The Seven Magnificent Gladiators is “credited” to Bruno Mattei but as usual during this period in Mattei’s mind-boggling career, Claudio Fragasso had a guilty hand in it. Although a significantly more polished product than e.g. their official “video nasty” from two years earlier, Zombie Creeping Flesh (which went so far as to patch together its am-dram scenes with randomly selected, hopelessly mismatched stock footage), there’s nothing noticeably magnificent about this particular remake of Akira Kurosawa’s The Seven Samurai (1954).

Lou plays Han, a gladiator who defies the Emperor’s order to kill an opponent (Peplum veteran Brad Harris) and goes on the lam with him, building up the titular troupe of freedom fighters / fortune hunters (which also includes Sybil Danning from Corman’s Battle Beyond The Stars, itself another Seven Samurai rip-off) who take on the defence of a village populated by women, children and old men, which is being menaced by a bandit named Nicerote.

Played by another sword and sandal stalwart, Dan Vadis (decked out in Sonny Bono wig and jock strap), this guy contemptuously rejects the starving villagers’ annual tribute (“This is all you honour me with? One chicken and some pieces of cheese!”), slaughters some children and tells them he’ll be back for more.

Sybil Danning in the same movie

Lou Ferrigno and Brad Harris in I sette magnifici gladiatori (1983) aka The Seven Magnificent Gladiators

Enough is enough… the villagers break out the magic sword of Achilles (as you do) and seek a man virtuous enough to wield it. That would be Lou. Cue some of the most lethargically staged scraps you’ve ever dozed your way through, en route to a showdown between Han and Nicorete (how can you take a villain seriously when he’s named after chewing gum?) that redefines the term “anti-climactic.”