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How well I know!–the Old King cried from beyond the Styx–the rest of you can’t remember, but I can. We had her on top of us all the time, that enormous moon, and when she was waxing she sailed so low she just about impaled herself on the peaks of Thermopylae. Climb up on her? Of course we did. All you had to do was row out in a boat, prop up your spear with a corpse on the end for support, then scramble on up.

But what did we do then that Maciste hadn’t already, my army of critics wondered, in Cabiria for Pastrone, that impostor! Stand around and flex in front of porticos and stelae–it’s all the man was good for, but we had plasma, cubits upon cubits of Type A, Type O, and of course he didn’t. So call us poseurs in our sandals and thongs, but let me tell you, you don’t get splatter effects like that on the cheap.