Anthar l'invincible (1964]


Multiple Mirror Effects in Movies
Anthar l'invincible [Anthar the Invincible] (1964]
Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.

Anthar, the son of Hercules, is a giant muscleman who can break iron shackles and fight a rhinoceros with his bare hands, and Ganor (Devil of the Desert) is a slave-merchant villain in this Italian sword and sandal picture. We don't know where or when it takes place, but it's somewhere in the desert Orient at a time when kings had harems and belly dancers and men could kidnap stray women and sell them as slaves. There are two long scenes in a hall of mirrors.


In the first house of mirrors scene, which begins at about 60 minutes into the movie, Ganor leads Akrim, a slave merchant who tried to blackmail him, into a hall of mirrors in the castle that he recently stole from a king when he murdered him. Ganor calls it the chamber of death. Apparently he likes to have fun disorienting people before killing them, because it would be easier to kill them somewhere else. There was no flat glass at that time, which means there were no large flat mirrors, so being in the hall of mirrors must have been especially disorienting to Akrim and Ganor's other victims. Ganor uses Akrim's panic and confusion to sneak up on him and stab him in the back. Anthar, who snuck into the castle earlier, was hiding in a window above the hall of mirrors so he witnessed Akrim's death, and this helps him later when he fights Ganor inside the mirrors.




The second hall of mirrors sequence is at the very end of the movie, beginning at about 1:25:50, when Anthar is chasing Ganor. As he watches Ganor go into the mirror room a harem woman tells him not to go in because only Ganor knows "...the secret of the magic glass." Anthar grabs a torch and goes inside anyway. Inside the mirror maze, Ganor laughs continuously like a movie villain and taunts Anthar with a knife, but Anthar saw the secret of the mirrors earlier and returns the smack talk. Then he starts throwing his torch to break the glass. Ganor panics when he sees that Anthar has figured out what mirrors are and offers him all his gold and riches. Anthar refuses saying that his riches are covered with blood. After he breaks a mirror that leads to an exit and Ganor sneaks out of the room, Anthar chases him and tells him he'll choke him to death with his own hands, but Ganor backs up to an open window and falls to his death. As Ganor falls, Anthar's sweetheart Princess Soraya, her brother Prince Daikor, and Anthar's companion Mute show up inside the hall of mirrors. Anthar goes inside and hugs Soraya as Daikor escorts Mute outside so Anthar and Soraya can have some privacy. The movie ends with them kissing in the hall of mirrors.

Anthar l'invincible [Anthar the Invincible] (1964]