Muscleman fights sea monsters and Amazon warriors, then returns home to find a race of giants living in a valley, into which fellow countrymen are being thrown as punishment for opposing a usurper king and his consort.
Goliath against the Giants is another of those typical peplums bolstered by pace, good production values, Brad Harris, fine cinematography and superb location work - there's a beautiful sequence where our heroes walk across a desert and the valley of Janopah where the giants live is an impressive mixture of bleak crags and volcanic ash. However, its downsides is its tendency to languidness and having muddled elements. The red-head appearing from nowhere was confusing. There's a lack of sharpness in the plot, but overall not a bad entry in the world of peplum. Things liven up in the last thirty minutes with a lady placed on a rack, gladiator spectacles, Goliath appearing and facing a lion, giants, lizards. Fernando Rey as the usurper King Bokan is a right sadistic cretin who likes to have citizens tossed down a cliff into the smoky lair of the giants and dragons. His character is played with some hammyness.
As for the monsters, the giant sea lizard (an iguana superimposed on the image, and quite a lethargic one who didn't do much accept stare at the hero and wait to be killed) in the fog was well done, in terms of the atmospheric fog and its build-up, and the "giants", who are guys 10 centimeters taller than the protagonist, is a disappointment, though. They look like cavemen with daddy bods.
