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Of all the bodybuilders who shot to fame in Italy in
early 1960's sword-and-sandal movies (or peplums, as they're called), it was probably Brad
Harris who had the longest career after the decline of the genre, and
his fame was also the most enduring. And it was not because he was such a
good actor - actually he was pretty bad, but in an enjoyably camp way - but
because he had a certain weird charisma, because he chose his roles more
wisely than his conemporaries, never restricting himself to the sword and
sandal genre, because accepting supporting roles was never below
him - and because besides an actor he was also a versatile stuntman and
stunt coordinator, and such a two-in-one package was - hardly surprisingly
- welcomed with open arms by his employers, most of them from lower budget
production outfits. Plus, Harris was never one averse to travelling, so
he, a born US-American, popped up in many a film from all sorts of
European as well as Asian countries, and in films of almost every genre,
from peplum to Western, from Eurospy to horror, from martial arts to soap
opera (!) ... and thus over the years, his filmography has come to include
many a trashfilm-classic, which is why bad movie fans tend to have a soft
spot for him ...
Early Life, Early Career
Born Bradford Jan Harris in 1933 in the small village St Anthony,
Idaho, Brad Harris became interested in sports, and especially football,
at a fairly early age, an interest that eventually landed him a football
scholarship at UCLA, where he played fullback while studying
economics, with the intention of keeping up the family tradition and later
embarking on a banking career.
His stint at football however was cut
short by a nasty knee injury, and to make up for it, Brad started getting
involved in martial arts of all kind, and bodybuilding, inspired by Steve Reeves, Mister Universe of 1950, whom
he met in the early 1950's and became acquainted with.
Soon,
young Brad would scrap his plans to go into banking and instead became a
stuntman in Hollywood. doing uncredited work on many an Elvis Presley film
and the like. From the late 1950's onwards he also played small roles in
films like Monkey on my Back (1957, André De Toth) and Li'l
Abner (1959, Melvin Frank), but nothing big, his role was usually that
of a muscleman or a hulking figure of sorts. The most important
film Brad Harris worked on during his early years was without a doubt the
sword and sandal-epic Spartacus (1960) by Stanley Kubrick, in which
he was one of many stuntman and also had a small part as a gladiator, and
in a way, this film was a precursor for the films with which he would rise
to stardom only a short time later.
Rise to Stardom - Brad
Harris and the Peplum
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After the success of Spartacus,
Brad Harris made the wise decision to go to Italy for more moviework - Italy, where since the success of Le
Fatiche di Ercole/Hercules
(1958, Pietro Francisci), starring none other than Harris'
inspiration Steve Reeves, bodybuilders were in high demand. And what made
Harris even more bankable than most other bodybuilders of his time was
that he had a background in stuntwork, which was ideal for peplums, which
never relied too much on acting but all the more on action - which was
totally alright with Harris since his acting skills were, shall we say,
limited.
Brad Harris' first peplum was Goliath contro i
Giganti/Goliath against the Giants (1961, Guido Malatesta), in
which he of course played the lead. The film is pretty much your typical
genre outing, based on a naive storyline that makes good and evil a bit
too easily distinguishable, it features many a grande idea (like sea
serpents of giants) that is let down by the film's modest budget, but on
the other hand, the film is carried, for better or worse, by its muscular
hero (that would be Harris), its beautiful sets (which were re-used again
and again to cut costs), some wonderful European landscapes, and a certain
naivité that seemed to be missing from Hollywood-produced epic movies
from the time. And if
you're able to overlook the film's shortcomings, you might even find Goliath against the Giants
enjoyable - and it sure enough was successful enough to grant Brad Harris
more lead roles in the genre ...
Sansone/Samson (1961) and La
Furia di Ercole/The Fury of
Hercules (1962) were shot back to back in Yugoslavia by
Gianfranco Parolini, which is why the two films share much of the main
cast, sets and even costumes. And by the way, besides the name, the lead
characters in these two films (of course played by Brad Harris) have
little to do with the actual Samson
or Hercules
- so little in fact that the German distributor for whatever reason
interchanged the names of the films' title characters. Within the
peplum genre however, both films rank among the lesser efforts, they are
just a little too cheaply made and too uninvolvingly told to really leave
much of an impression. The films' director Gianfranco Parolini however,
who has also co-scripted Goliath against the Giants, would team up
with Brad Harris time and again throughout the 1960's, making some of his
most entertaining movies in a variety of genres ...
And really,
Gianfranco Parolini was right back for Harris' next film, Anno 79: La
Distruzione di Ercolano/The Destruction of Herculaneum (1962),
a historically totally inaccurate blend of Christians, gladiators and all
that jazz culmitating in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, with Brad Harris
of course playing your friendly neighbourhood muscle-bound hero. By the
way, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius was a subject fellow muscleman Steve
Reeves [Steve Reeves bio -
click here] also tackled in Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of
Pompeii (1959, Mario Bonnard).
Il Vecchio Testamento/The
Old Testament (1962) was also directed gy Gianfranco Parolini, but
despite its epic title it doesn't even try to cover all of the Old
Testament but merely a tiny portion, depicting the fight of the Jews
against their Syrian oppressors, with - in true spirit of the peplum
genre - a muscleman (Brad Harris of course) thrown in and any faithfulness
to its source material thrown out. By 1962 though, the general
audience's interest in peplums has already begun to die down, and Brad
Harris was among the first bodybuilder-turned-actors to realize that, and
as a consequence he bailed out before he had outstayed his welcome,
seeking fame and fortune in other genres ...
Action, Adventure, Eurospy,
Westerns - Brad Harris All Over the Place
Brad Harris' first film away from the peplum was the
German/Italian adventure flicks Heisser Hafen Hong Kong/Agente 310
Spionaggio Sexy/Hong Kong Hot Harbor/Secrets of Buddha (1962)
and Der
Schwarze Panther von Ratana/La Belva di Saigon/The Black
Panther of Ratana (1963), both by Jürgen Roland, rather insignificant
escapist features set in Hong Kong and Thailand respectively in which
Harris only had small roles - but still, the films proved to be important
to Harris inasmuch as they were his first German films, and back in the
day in Germany, stuntmen or even stunt coordinators were a rarity - and
since the German film industry started to focus more and more on
action-oriented fare in the wake of the James Bond-series,
actors with a background in stunts were suddenly in high demand ... so
soon enough, Harris found himself in similar action fare like Weisse
Fracht für Hong Kong/Da 077: Criminali ad Hong Kong/Mystery
of the Red Jungle (1964, Helmut Ashley, Giorgio Stegani) and Diamantenhölle
am Mekong/Sfida Viene da Bangkok/Mission to Hell (1964,
Gianfranco Parolini), more escapist flicks set in exotic locations, in
which he never had the lead role but always provided able support and of
course stunts.
Das Geheimnis der Chinesischen Nelke/Il
Segreto del Garofano Cinese/Secret of the Chinese Carnation
(1964, Rudolf Zehetgruber) by contrast is a film that has more in common
with the then incredibly successful German
Edgar Wallace-series, being an over-convoluted murder mystery
set in foggy London Town starring Paul Dahlke, Dietmar Schönherr, Klaus
Kinski and Horst Frank. The film though is not all that important for
Harris' career because
it was a certain change of pace in Harris' output, nor because it was such
an significant film (it quite simply wasn't), but because on the set of this
film he met Czech actress/sex symbol Olga Schoberová aka Olinka Berova,
one of the few actresses from behind the Iron Curtain who made films in
both the East and the West back in the day with at least reasonable
success on both sides of the curtain - quite apart from her being the
first Czech model to appear in Playboy-magazine. Eventually,
Harris and Schoberová fell in love on the set of Secret of the Chinese
Carnation, appeared in a few more films together and married in 1967.
The marriage though, which produced a daughter, Sabrina, came to a divorce
after only two years ... before the last of their films together was even
released. By the way, Rudolf Zehetgruber, director of Secret of the
Chinese Carnation, is another name that will pop up time and again in
Harris' biography ...
With Die Flusspiraten vom Mississippi/Agguato
sul Grande Fiume/Pirates of the Mississippi (1964, Jürgen
Roland), Brad Harris turned yet another page in his filmography as he made
his first Western. In Germany in the early to mid-1960's, well before the
spaghetti Western boom, Westerns were hot stuff after the amazing success
of the Winnetou-series,
so for a while, German producers were adamant to get their Westerns into
the theatres, and of course, an actor who could also do and coordinate
stunts was someone who was always welcome on a set of an action-oriented
film like a Western. The film itself is rather insignificant of course,
but it marks the first collaboration of Harris and Tony Kendall, his most
frequent co-star in some of his funniest movies ... By the way, besides
Harris, Pirates of the Mississippi also featured fellow former
Hercules
Dan Vadis in a small role.
After Pirates of the Mississippi,
Brad Harris remained with the (German) Western genre for two more films, Die
Goldsucher von Arkansas/Massacre at Marble City (1964, Paul
Martin) - which besides Harris and Olga Schoberová also featured many a
familiar face from German movies of the time including Mario Adorf, Horst
Frank, Dieter Borsche, Ralf Wolter, Marianne Hoppe, plus former British
matinée idol Anthony Steele - and Die Schwarzen Adler von Santa Fe/The Black Eagle of Santa Fe
(1965, Alberto Cardone, Ernst Hofbauer), which reunited Harris with
Kendall and also featured Olga Schoberová and once more Horst Frank.
None
of these Western left too big an impression on the audience and they are
by now largely forgotten - and the same can actually be said about Harris'
next two films, the Eurospy-movie A 001, Operazione Giamaica/Scharfe
Schüsse auf Jamaika/Our Man in Jamaica (1965, Ernst R. von
Theumer), in which Harris has only a small role and for which he was
mainly hired as stunt coordinator, and the crime film Supercolpo da 7
Miliardi/The Ten Million Dollar Grab (1966, Bitto Albertini).
Hot
on the heels of these films though followed a role in a series of films
that would pretty much become Brad Harris signature character - for better
or worse -, that of Captain Rowland in the Kommissar
X-series. Kommissar
X was actually a German pulp series that ran from 1959 to 1992
and was conceived by Karl Heinz Günther alias Bert F.Island for the Pabel-Moewig
publishing group as a competition to the popular Jerry
Cotton-series by publisher Bastei-Lübbe. Essentially,
the series chronicles the adventures of private eye Joe Walker alias
Kommissar X going against all kinds of criminals, aided by his friend
Captain Rowland of Manhattan homicide. In the mid-1960's, when the
phenomenal success of the James Bond-series triggered all
kinds of producers to churn out their own (low budget) espionage films, an
already established James Bond-like character must have
meant box office gold, and thus in 1966, Kommissar
X first saw the light of day (or rather of the projection
room) in Gianfranco Parolini's Kommissar
X - Jagd auf Unbekannt/Kiss
Kiss, Kill Kill. The title character in this film was played by
Tony Kendall in a too-cool-to-be-true manner, with Brad Harris playing his
sidekick/accomplice Captain Rowland, who disapproves of X's methods but
can't help but help him, since after all X is on the right side of the law.
The film was successful (and cheap) enough to spawn six sequels in the
next five years, which hardly strayed from the formula of the first film,
a combination of exotic locations, sexy girls (including occasional
nudity), plenty of action and a tongue-in-cheek approach to the genre as
such - which makes the Kommissar
X-series one of the most entertaining Eurospy-series of its
time.
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Later films of the series were Kommissar
X - Drei Gelbe Katzen/Death
is Nimble, Death is Quick (1966, Rudolf Zehetgruber), Kommissar
X - In den Klauen des Goldenen Drachen/So
Darling, So Deadly (1966, Gianfranco Parolini), Kommissar X -
Drei Grüne Hunde/Kill me Gently (1967, Rudolf Zehetgruber) -
this one once again also stars Olga Schoberová -, Kommissar X - Drei
Blaue Panther (1968, Gianfranco Parolini), Kommissar X - Drei
Goldene Schlangen/Island of the Lost Girls (1969, Roberto
Mauri) and Kommissar X jagt die Roten Tiger (1971, Harald Reinl [Harald
Reinl bio - click here]).
But while the Kommissar
X-series was only slightly over-the-top, Gianfranco Parolini
opted for all-out-camp with the next film in which he teamed Brad
Harris up with Tony Kendall - and threw in Nick Jordan for good measure: I
Fantastici Tre Supermen/The Three Fantastic Supermen/The
Fantastic Three (1967), an action comedy combining Eurospy and
superhero motives to hilarious result - even if the funniest moments are
often those not intended to be funny and the actual jokes are often
terrible. The Three Fantastic Supermen
was soon followed by Tre
Supermen a Tokio/Three Supermen in Tokyo (1968, Bitto
Albertini) but with an entirely different trio of superheroes (and no Brad
Harris), and Che fanni i nostri Supermen tra le Vergini della Giungla?/The
Three Supermen in the Jungle (1970, Bitto Albertini), for which Brad
Harris returns to the series, this time siding George Martin and Sal Borghese. There were actually more Three Supermen-films
made after The
Three Supermen in the Jungle, including Süpermenler/Three
Supermen against Godfather (1979, Italo Martinenghi), a Turkish-Italian
co-production starring Turkish superstar Cüneyt Arkin in the lead, but
Brad Harris did not return to the series.
The Eurospy-movie Mister
Dynamit - Morgen küsst Euch derTod/Spy Today, Die Tomorrow
(1967, Franz Josef Gottlieb) is ineresting inasmuch as just like Kommissar
X it is based on a pulp character created by Karl Heinz Günther alias Bert F.Island
- but Brad Harris only plays a small role in this one which is actually a
starring vehicle for Lex Barker [Lex
Barker bio - click here].
Harris would again play
bigger roles in the action flick Cin... Cin... Cianuro (1968,
Ernesto Gastaldi) and the Spanish-Italian Western Un
Hombre Vino a Matar/Rattler
Kid (1968, León Klimovksy) ... however, in 1968, Harris would
also make (and even executive-produce) a movie that many - me included,
regard as the ultimate Brad Harris film: Eva,
La Venere Selvaggia/King
of Kong Island (Roberto Mauri).
King
of Kong Island is pretty much a highlight of jungle trash and
so-bad-it's-good-moviemaking alike: It starts out as a pretty routine
adventure flick in fake jungle sets, but soon, your typical neighbourhood
jungle girl (Esmeralda Barros) is thrown into the proceedings, wearing
very little to sex things up a bit. She does not have all that much of a
dramaturgic significance in the film though because eventually, the whole
thing turns out to be about a madman (Marc Lawrence) trying to conquer the
world with mind-controlled gorillas (!). Add to this pulp cliché upon
pulp cliché, bad gorilla suits, a way too low budget and a scene in which
Brad Harris shows off his dancing skills (really!) and you've got one bad
movie ... but at the same time amazing entertainment.
By the way,
international schlock producer Dick Randall had his hands in producing
this one.
Both the sex-peplum Le Calde Notti di Poppea/Poppea's
Hot Nights (1969) and the racing movie Formula 1 - Nell'Inferno del
Grand Prix/Maniacs on Wheels (1970, both directed by Guido
Malatesta) reunited Harris with Olga Schoberová on screen, with the
latter being the more interesting film inasmuch as Harris once again had
his hands in production and co-wrote the script, and it features real life
Formula 1 star Graham Hill and motorbike champ Giacomo Agostini.
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Over the next few years, Harris could be seen in quite a
number of films from war films - Quando Suona la Campana/When
the Bell Tolls (1970, Luigi Batzella - in this one, Harris plays a
priest) -, spaghetti Westerns - Wanted Sabata (1970, Roberto
Mauri), Arriva Durango, Pago o Muori/Durango is Coming, Pay or
Die (1971, Roberto Bianchi Montero - Brad Harris also had his hands in
production of these two films), Seminò a Morte ... Lo Chiamavano
Castigo di Dio/Death is Sweet from the Soldier of God (1972,
Roberto Mauri) - and action flicks - Questa Volta ti Faccio Ricco/This
Time I'll Make you Rich (1974, Gianfranco Parolini), the Italian-Turkish
co-production Antonio e Placido - Attenti Ragazzi... chi Rompe
Paga/Firtinalar Istanbul'da - Kiranlar Öder (1976, Giorgio Ferroni) -
to a quite amusing attempt to revive the pelum genre - Il
Ritorno del Gladiatore piu Forte del Mondo/Three
Giants of the Roman Empire (1971, Bitto Albertini) -, a hilarious Tarzan-like jungle flick - Zambo, il Dominatore della Foresta/Zambo,
King of the Jungle (1972, Bitto Albertini) -, a giallo - the Dick
Randall-production La Casa della Paura/The Girl in 2A (1973, William
L.Rose) - and two outright horror flicks - the vastly underrated Lo
Stranglatore di Vienna/The Mad Butcher (1971, Guido Zurli) starring Victor Buono,
and the
decidedly weird The Mutations/Freakmaker (1974, Jack Cardiff) starring
Donald Pleasence [Donald
Pelasence bio - click here], Tom Baker [Tom
Baker bio - click here] and Julie Ege.
The Long Decline
Flix.com
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By
the mid-1970's the filmworld as such started
to change: With the creation of the blockbuster, brain- and lifeless
American movies along the lines of Jaws (1975, Steven Spielberg)
and Star Wars (1977, Geoge Lucas) were starting to take over
theatres on an
international level not so much thanks to their inherent quality but to
their enormous advertising budgets and their ability to flood whatever
country with enough copies of whatever film to squeeze out the
competition, and suddenly, B-movies from whatever genre and whatever
country became a less and less profitable business venture - and the
direct result was that B-movie-producers a) produced less films and b)
tried to cut even more corners to make their films as cheap as possible
... which explains a Brad Harris starrer from 1977, La Bestia in Calore/SS
Hell Camp (Luigi Batzella), a film Harris (whose name
isn't mentioned inthe credits) didn't shoot a single scene for and which revolves
around a Nazi scientist (Macha Magall) and her raping and killing monster
- but which was padded out with whole sequences from Batzella's own When
the Bell Tolls from 1970, with Harris playing a priest, to bring
the whole thing to feature length on a budget.
But even apart
from SS
Hell Camp, Brad Harris's star was on the decline - like that of so
many B-movie stars from Europe actually - and he was forced to play more
and more supporting roles, like that of a villain in Rudolf Zehetgruber's
final Superbug-film
Zwei Tolle
Käfer räumen auf/Return of Superbug
(1978) or that of the investigating cop in the German horror comedy Lady
Dracula (1978, Franz Josef Gottlieb [Franz
Josef Gottlieb bio - click here]) - which stars Evelyne Kraft in
the title role, Stephen Boyd as Dracula,
and which is not even a bit funny despite the involvement of German comedy
actors Theo Lingen, Eddi Arent, Walter Giller and Roberto Blanco.
Interestingly, Brad Harris was responsible for the story of Lady
Dracula - but he simply can't be made responsible for the lack of
humour of the script of this proposed comedy. Brass Target
(1978, John Hough) is another film in which Harris only plays a supporting
character, but at least, this one - an American production by MGM
- has a fine principal cast, including Sophia Loren, John Cassavetes,
George Kennedy, Robert Vaughn, Patrick McGoohan, Max von Sydow and Ed
Bishop. Still, after the relatively high-profile Brass
Target, Brad Harris went to television for a guest spot on the highly
propular German crime show Derrick in Besuch aus New York
(1979, Helmut Ashley).
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In 1980 though, Brad Harris played a
supporting role in what can only be described as a trash gem in its own
right, Challenge of
the Tiger (Bruce Le, Luigi Batzella), a piece of bruceploitation
so funny it simply has to be seen. The film, a Hong Kong-Italian
co-production headed (once more) by schlock maestro Dick Randall, is
basically an over-the-top blend of martial arts and espionage motives
starring Bruce Le and Richard Harrison [Richard
Harrison bio - click here], with Hwang Jang Lee, Nadiuska,
Bolo Yeung and Brad Harris providing able (?) support, but what sets this film
apart from most chop-socky and bruceploitation flicks of its time is its sheer
number of crazy setpieces - and Brad Harris trying his hands on Kung Fu is
only one of them - that totally put the film into a league of its own. To put
it shortly, Challenge of
the Tiger is a must-see for all bad movie enthusiasts ... Unfortunately,
after Challenge of
the Tiger Brad Harris decided to return to his native USA, where
he tried to break into the movie business as well - but only with moderate
success, since he was reduced to playing minor supporting roles in
films like the Melissa Gilbert-starrer Splendor in the Grass (1981,
Richard C. Sarafian) and the comedy Good-bye Cruel World (1983,
David Irving) ,and the TV-series Dallas (1984, 1988, 1989), Falcon
Crest (1984, 1985, 1989) and Hunter (1988, 1990).
Only
one of Harris guest spots on a TV-series seems to have any siginificance
for his later career, that on The
Incredible Hulk (1982), since it was his first collaboration
with Lou Ferrigno [Lou Ferrigno
bio - click here], with whom he would soon make two movies back in
Italy, both Cannon-produced
attempts to revive the Italian peplum in the wake of the newly created
barbarian genre - the rather disappointing I Sette Magnifici
Gladiatori/The
Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983, Bruno Mattei [Bruno
Mattei bio - click here]), which also stars
Sybil Danning [Sybil Danning
bio - click here] and Dan Vadis, and Hercules
(1983, Luigi Cozzi), again co-starring Danning, plus Eva Robins and
William Berger ... and Hercules,
in which Harris plays the foster father to Ferrigno in the title role, is
quite simply put a revelation, a self-conscious, entirely tongue-in-cheek
piece of low budget 1980's trash with some of the trippiest special
effects there are and one of the weirdest plots ever. Quite simply put, a
masterpiece ... though I have to add, to really enjoy this film, you
mustn't take it seriously for even a single minute! In 1987,
Brad Harris made his last German film, the adventure flick Der Stein
des Todes/Death Stone/Kiss of the Cobra (Franz Josef
Gottlieb [Franz Josef
Gottlieb bio - click here]), but despite its relatively stellar cast - Heather Thomas, Elke
Sommer, Serge Falck, Albert Fortell, Christian Anders, Siegfried Rauch,
Katja Flint and Harris' old partner Tony Kendall, the film failed to leave
too much of an impression, especially since the old school German
adventure cinema seemed already horribly out-of-date by 1987. In
the 1990's, Brad Harris only returned to the movie-screen twice, in the
Italian comedies Vita da Reussio and Boom (both 1999, Andrea
Zaccariello), neither of them a remarkable film. Away from movie work,
Brad Harris had started his own business called Modern Body Design,
successfully designing and selling exercise machines - with Harris
himself, who has kept in perfect shape over the years, being the company's
ideal spokesperson. In 2001, Harris received a special achievement award
at the Muscle Beach Bodybuilding Championship for his filmwork, along with Mark Forest, Ed
Fury, Mickey Hargitay, Richard Harrison [Richard
Harrison bio - click here], Reg Lewis, Peter Lupus and Gordon
Mitchell, all bodybuilders also having had careers in Italian 1960's
sword and sandal cinema. In closing, I can't but repeat that
Brad Harris was not a good actor, and he did not make any big
contributions to cinema history - but that said, in his career as an actor
spanning approximately 40 years, he has acted in some of the most
entertaining pieces of trash there were, several of which were made
special exactly because of his lack of acting skills - and at least for a
trash movie conoisseur like myself, at least some of his filmwork is
simply put priceless.
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