Even when I grew up and studied English literature, the title was still cryptic. It comes from "Adonais," an elegy written by Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley for his dead friend, John Keats.
He took the name from Adonis, the ancient Greek god of masculine beauty.
So audiences were supposed to expect a god of masculine beauty?
They got one: 37 year old Michael Forest as Apollo, an alien who was mistaken for a god by the ancient Greeks, and who still expects worship. It takes a femme fatale scientist to subdue him.
Although never a beefcake star of the Henry Willson stable, Michael managed to display his bare chest several times during the 1950s, in guest-spots in Westerns (as an Indian) and swinging-bachelor dramas, and in horror-sci fi movies like Beast from Haunted Cave (1959),
He fell somewhat short of the superlative physique necessary to cash in on the 1960s bodybuilder craze; his only peplum was Atlas (1961), directed by Roger Corman.
One of his most important was Deathwatch (1966), based on the Jean Genet play about two prison inmates, Maurice (Paul Mazursky) and Lefranc (Leonard Nimoy) competing for the affections the hot, muscular Green-Eyes (Forest).
That's right, Leonard Nimoy playing a gay character, a year before he became Spock.
It's actually rather homophobic.
In 2013, he reprised the character of Apollo on the web series Star Trek Continues (2013).
Apparently heterosexual in real life, he has retired to Walla Walla, Washington.