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Barry Lowe revisits the Herculean homoeroticism of Dan Vadis.
If, like me, you were growing up in the gay medieval period, Australia in the 1950s and early 1960s you got your gay spunk alerts from the mods and surfies of the period or, at the movies, from Tarzan or the peplum (word & sandal) epics then flooding the market, especially from Italy. The two biggest names in the genre were Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott.
But probably the cutest of all was Dan Vadis the brother, as one sarcastic critic put it, of Quo. Vadis had the most fuckable lips this side of the Tiber and a pout so potent you wanted to … well, get under his toga or whatever passed for a toga in the imagination of some demented costume designer. If Romans really went round covered in so little it must have been hard-on heaven.
I was reminded of the big boofy Vadis, who looked a lot like a dark version of the cartoon character Billy in the gay comic strip Poppers, when I stumbled across him in all his glory on YouTube which hosts a number of fabulous scenes from his movies.
Vadis was born Constantine Daniel Vafiadis in Shanghai on 3 January, 1938 and after serving in the U.S. Navy he became a member of Mae West’s notorious muscleman revues on the late 1950s. At 1.9 metres and a body that was just the right side of musclebound it was only a matter of time before films beckoned and at the behest of fellow bodybuilder Gordon Mitchell he tried Italy and was snapped up for a role in Colossus if the Arena (1962) with Mark Forest in the lead.
In quick succession he starred in The Rebel Gladiator, Hercules the Invincible, The Ten Gladiators (all 1963), and Zorikan the Barbarian (1964). His movies were full of male semi-nudity, women with prominent tits in scanty costumes, and as much bondage and torture as the filmmakers could get away with. The homoerotic content was Richter scale 10. It would be interesting to know how much the near naked actors realised their appeal to gay men. And played up to it.
After the demise of these costume epics it was an easy transition to the new Italian cinema cash cow, spaghetti westerns, and Dan became a stalwart of the genre particularly as a member of Clint Eastwood’s rep company of movie actors.
Vadis died 11 June 1987, in a car in the desert near Lancaster in California officially from an ‘accidental drug overdose; acute ethanol and heroin-morphine intoxication.’ He had made one final muscle epic in support of the new Hercules Lou Ferigno.
But it’s best to remember Dan in perhaps his greatest movie, The Triumph of Hercules, which is available on DVD (unfortunately in a full-screen version which laughably does not even bother to pan and scan so there are embarrassing scenes of the empty space between two actors). For sheer sensuality you can’t beat Dan Vadis running around in the cutest little butt hugging skirt you’re ever likely to see on film. And you’ll catch your breath as he hangs upside down on a rope and his skirt slides down to reveal … well, nothing really, as it’s in long shot and I’m sure his tackle has been well strapped down.
Sure the movie is camp: where else would you find a muscle wet dream fighting ten bronzed robots who look for all the world like shiny dildos? But it’s that smile, those lips …
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBWS7iq0OmI&feature=related
http://briansdriveintheater.com/danvadis.html
[If any readers look anything at all like Dan then … gasp! my sword is ready!
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