"I know how you betrayed us and dishonor the memory of [Pharaoh] Armiteo. And you persecuted my people terribly, and ransacked the whole country, even selling our women into slavery!"
—Kenamun, about Queen Smedes and her vizier, Son of Samson
The strongest man of Italy—if not the world—has been fighting evil since The Silent Age of Hollywood, and his enemies—whether evil tyrants, sorcerers, or bandits—are often nothing less than pure evil.
The localized movie titles are used (though not the localized names for the character Maciste), and the entries are ordered by release date.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
- Cabiria: Karthalo is one of the earliest examples of a cinematic Complete Monster, and still one of the vilest. The High Priest of the devilish, three-eyed Moloch, Karthalo engineers the mass sacrifice of hundreds of children at a time to be stripped naked and dumped one-by-one into a furnace to be burned alive as tribute to Moloch. Karthalo coldly tortures and murders any opposition to the sacrifice, having Croessa, the nanny of the young Cabiria, painfully flogged and later ripped apart by his followers, and later brutally torturing the good-hearted servant Maciste before chaining him to a millstone and condemning him to grueling labor at the millstone's side for the rest of his life. In his lowest moment, Karthalo attempts to rape Cabiria, the same girl he had attempted to sacrifice over ten years ago, out of nothing more than a fit of cruel lust. A zealot, a slaver, a torturer, and a madman with countless atrocities on his hands, Karthalo's evil shines just as wickedly today as it did over a century ago.
- Maciste in Hell (1925): Barbariccia is King Pluto's envoy to Earth, responsible for the corruption of souls so they may be damned to Hell's torments. Taking a wicked pleasure in his job, Barbariccia targets Maciste's ingénue neighbor Graziela, arranging for her to fall in love with, have children with and be subsequently abandoned by an unfaithful nobleman. Barbariccia leaves Graziela's infant son in the woods to die and tries to trick Graziela into renouncing God then and there so his fiends can pounce on her. Later in the film, Barbariccia kicks off a full-on coup of Hell whereupon he has his forces start slaughtering everyone between him and Pluto's throne.
- Son of Samson (1960): Queen Smedes of Egypt, and her royal vizier partner, are a pair of Persian sympathizers looking to maintain control over Egypt. Murdering the goodhearted pharaoh and brainwashing his son Kenamun, Smedes and her vizier put the people of Egypt under a terrifying, despotic reign of torture, slavery and massacres, with one luckless rebel taken and burnt with hot pokers until the vizier simply tortures him to death. Smedes also has women taken to be sold into slavery, targeting Kenamun's beloved Nofret, intending on control of Egypt without caring how many she has to slaughter.
- Goliath and the Vampires (1961): Kobrak is the vampiric master of the kingdom of Salmanak, ruling through its Sultan. Seeking world domination, Kobrak has entire villages burned to the ground, with survivors taken to be made into his robotic slave army, while women are forced into harems. After the Sultan defies him by allowing Maciste and his love Guja to escape, Kobrak murders him and later has Maciste and Guja captured himself, attempting to destroy Maciste's brain through sound waves to make him his mindless slave. When Maciste escapes, Kobrak assumes his form and infiltrates the cave of the rebel Blue Men to attempt to kill them all, fatally impaling his former slave Astra when she warns them.
- Triumph of the Son of Hercules (1961): Queen Tenefi and her uncle Prince Agadon took over the throne of Memphis in a brutal coup, with Agadon murdering the fair king and attempting to kill his young son to ensure he had no heirs. Together, Tenefi and Agadon tax and oppress Memphis's citizens, torturing and executing those who stand up to them, with one village revealed to have been entirely massacred. They also, on a daily basis, kidnap unwilling women and then have them burned alive in offering to the god of fire Tenefi and Agadon serve. Tenefi, lusting after Maciste, makes him prove his strength by forcing him to prevent a bladed carriage from decapitating his rebel friends, before brainwashing him to make him her own, furiously attempting to burn his true beloved, Antea, when she frees him.
- Samson and the Seven Miracles of the World (1961): Garak is the Great Khan of the Mongols during their conquest of China in the thirteenth century. Under his rule, the rightful Emperor is assassinated, his son the Prince arranged to die in a hunting accident, and thousands are put to grueling slavery while hundreds more are either publicly executed, tortured for months, or massacred in retribution for rebellion. When noble Maciste proves his exceptional strength to him, Garak forces Maciste to prevent a carriage of horses from trampling his rebel friends. Garak has no issue torturing his own soldiers, and when his co-conspirator betrays him, Garak has her flogged before rubbing saltwater into her wounds with vile relish.
- Mole Men vs the Son of Hercules (1961): Kahab, High Priest of the mole men, is The Man in Front of the Man to the queen Halis Morab. Kahab stole Halis Morab from the surface world as an infant, raised her as a tyrant, and lied to Morab her entire life that she, like the mole people, would die in the sunlight. All the thousands upon thousands of people the mole men have slaughtered and enslaved ultimately go back to Kahab, and when Halis Morab repents, Kahab orders her assassinated and the rebelling slaves all killed. Independent of his role of the Queen's "advisor", Kahab kills his own men and has Maciste's allies tortured with a red-hot poker.
- The Witch's Curse (1962): Judge Edgard L. Parris(h)'s cruelty caused the evil of the Wicked Witch Martha Gaunt. Parris, spurned by Gaunt in life, executed her lover before burning her alive. Cursed to follow her in damnation, Parris torments Gaunt and shadows her as their curse drives women to insanity and suicide for a century. When Gaunt's ancestor is about to burn, Maciste invades Hell, softening Gaunt's heart with his courage-–while Parrish remains scornful to the end, attempting to slaughter Maciste with Hell's torments.
- Maciste Against The Monsters (1962): The brutal Fuwan leads the cave people to massacre the Sun People in a near genocide, kidnapping their women to take amongst themselves, and sacrifice to the moon goddess. After the mass murder and the liberation of the hostages, Fuwan enlists a group of cannibals as soldiers, promising them his tribe's own women, while plotting to betray and burn them alive in their forests before attempting to complete the extermination of the Sun People.
- Colossus and the Headhunters: Kermes is a ruthless usurper who aims to rise to rule his tribe, betraying them to Goona's headhunters. He overthrows Princess Amoa's father and tortures him, trying to force Amoa to marry him to obtain access to the throne, before he allows the headhunters access to her tribe. Kermes has a man decapitated to prove a point to the others, and is willing to have hundreds more killed for the sake of power.
- Goliath and the Sins of Babylon (1963): The evil Morakeb is the true power behind Babylon's throne, organizing sacrifices where innocent women are taken to Babylon to be sacrificed regularly, thirty in each sacrifice. Morakeb has a grieving father fed to lions when the man attacks him; murders his own spy when the man asks for a reward; and shows a willingness to completely wipe out an opposing city and all who live there. Morakeb forces Maciste into a sadistic torture trap involving spears dropping down from the ceiling inches away from him—one of which may prove fatal—and forces Maciste's allies to cut the ropes supporting the spears to psychologically torture them with the anticipation. When Babylon finally falls, Morakeb even murders his own king before trying to escape.
- Hercules Against the Mongols (1963):
- Sayan, Susdal and Kariyan "Kin" Khan, defying their father's desires for peace with Europe, launch a bloody war of conquest with the Mongol hordes that sees entire cities razed to nothing, with countless innocents massacred and enslaved. Subjecting their prisoners to torture, with the women taken to be concubines, the brothers conspire with a traitor to usurp the next kingdom to wipe it out, even murdering Kariyan's wife when she attempts to help the fallen princess Bianca.
- Adolphus is the wicked traitor who sells out the city of Tuleda, conspiring with Susdal Khan to find the treasure hidden beneath the city. Adolphus goes as far as to fake his own torture to convince Princess Bianca of his loyalty, while secretly kicking up his feet with the knowledge his fellow citizens are being subject to indiscriminate torture, slavery, and murder. When trying to slime out of Tuleda before he's captured by the Christians, Tuleda gives over a child to the Khans as a hostage, and tries to have Bianca crushed by a Descending Ceiling, mocking her by telling her he won't be around long to hear her final cries of agony.
- The Terror of Rome Against the Son of Hercules (1964): The cunning and envious Zefatius is the Dragon-in-Chief to Emperor Caesar. Through his Praetorians, Zefatius is responsible for the arrest, slaughter, and torture of countless Christians, knowing full well that they're a peaceful people. Those who survive his purges end up meeting their fate at the hands of hungry lions or Caesar's bloody Gladiator Games. When Maciste gains favor with Caesar, Zefatius begins undermining him out of jealousy, promising to hurl a Christian woman that Maciste has fallen for into the arena naked to die for the entertainment of thousands. Zefatius even cuts the throat of his own ally Olympia for helping Maciste, spitefully leaving her corpse in bed for Maciste to find.
- Samson in King Solomon's Mines (1964): Queen Fazira is the queen of a group of bandits whom the treacherous, power-hungry Riad allies with in order to stage a bloody coup in the city of Zimba. The two establish a horrible slavery operation for the gold in Zimba's mines that results in constant deaths. Fazira immediately becomes drunk with power upon seizing the throne, unnerving even Riad with her tendency to kill everyone she deems as useless, at one point ordering a batch of dozens of prisoners mostly consisting of the young and old executed, in another wiping out an entire village, and even rampantly trying to execute every single child that comes into the city in a paranoid attempt to kill the surviving young legitimate heir of Zimba's throne. Fazira, lusting over Maciste, enslaves him to her will and condemns him to slavery, sending her adviser to join him in the mines when he balks at this, and even attempts to have the noblewoman Samara killed by being covered in molten gold to use her as a human statue.
- Hercules Against the Moon Men: Queen Samara, allying with the evil Moon Men and their leader Redolphis, plots to help them conquer or destroy most of the world for her own benefit. Sending countless innocents to the Mountain of Doom to be sacrificed, Samara gathers up numerous children to be sacrificed in hopes someone's special blood can revive the queen of the Moon Men, coupled with having loyal soldiers killed, even if they survive a battle with Maciste.
- Hercules of the Desert (aka Valley of the Thundering Echo) (1964): Queen Farida is a power-hungry despot seeking to make the emerald land of El Scíukrí for herself. Farida subjects El Scíukrí's native population to "dispersion"—that is to say "slaughter", attempting to wipe them all out one massacre at a time while selling the women into slavery. Farida has her own underperforming minions tortured to death and even has her second-in-command executed in a fit of rage.
