In 1958, the movie Hercules was released in Italy, starring American body builder Steve Reeves. This started a phenomenom of similar movies over the next five or six years, when dozens of gladiator, biblical and mythological movies were made. The wave continued until the advent of the spaghetti western.

These films are collectively referred to as "sword-and-sandal" or even as spaghetti-sword-and sandal. From Wikipedia:

Another name for the genre is peplum, from a Latin word for a sort of tunic that was easy to make and favoured by the costume departments for these films.

Hercules was only one popular figure in these movies. Ulysses, Jason (of argonaut fame), Samson, Goliath, and the ubiquitous Maciste were also common heroes. A lot of these movies were eventually (poorly) dubbed into english and released on American television, becoming a staple of weekend afternoon movie features.

I've had the chance to watch several Hercules movies over the last couple of weeks, and I thought that rather than doing straight movie reviews, I'd look at them through a comparison of the various actors playing Hercules.

One thing I did notice was that the best part about being Hercules is that evil queens automatically get the hots for you.

Steve Reeves was the first and best Hercules. I did a biography on him here.

The Reeves movie I watched for this review was Hercules Unchained, and it was a lot of fun (as these all are). Two brothers are vying for the throne of Thebes, and Hercules is enlisted to set up a peaceful transfer of power. One brother is insane, the other is a perpetual whiner, and in the middle of these touchy negotiations Hercules is taken prisoner by the evil Queen Oomphale, who uses magical "waters of forgetfulness" to keep him under her control.

In the end, Hercules escapes with the help of his friend Ulysses, the brothers end up killing each other in a duel, and Hercules kills the other bad guy and rescues his bride (played by the stunning Sylva Koscina).

Let's see... pretty servant girls (eye candy for the guys): check.
Plenty of Steve Reeves beefcake for the ladies: check.
Hercules fights beast (tiger in this case): check.

The fights and battles are only fair, quality-wise, which is about as good as it gets in this genre. One nifty scene happens early on, when Hercules and party are stopped by Antaeus, the giant (played by former world boxing champion Primo Carnera). Antaeus is bested by Hercules twice, but both times comes back to conciousness laughing. They finally figure out that Antaeus is the son of an earth god and draws strength from laying on the ground. Hercules' solution is to pick him up and heave him off a cliff into a lake. Problem solved.

Worth watching, even if it's just to see Reeves do his thing.

Peter Lupus - best known to US audiences as Willy Armitage from the television series Mission Impossible, Lupus did several peplums under the pseudonym "Rock Stevens". I watched him as Hercules in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964). The man has an impressive physique!

In this movie, Babylon is ruled jointly by two brothers and a sister. Of course, the sister is beautiful, one brother is scholarly, and the other is a warrior. They all plot and intrigue against each other as they attempt to gain sole control over their empire. Their troops make frequent raids on surrounding kingdoms to collect slaves to do physical labor, and in one raid manage to unknowingly capture a queen.

Hercules keeps thwarting the slave raids in his country, although the stories about a single man defeating many warriors aren't believed. With his mighty silly club, he rights wrongs and all that happy crap. At some point, Hercules allies with the Assyrian king (who knows about the captured queen and wants to marry her for control of her kingdom) and the fun moves to the city of Babylon itself. The sovereigns each double-cross and backstab (figuratively) each other without a second thought, and when they get busted everyone does the ol' "no harm, no foul" act and moves on as before. Hercules is played as a pawn the entire time, but you know an honest and virtuous man always comes out on top.

If you've ever seen a Hercules movie before, you know that there's always some scene where he performs a physical feat that would normally take dozens of normal men. In this case, the royal sister has secretly rigged up the city of Babylon with a giant underground wheel. To the central shaft of this wheel are attached huge chains, and the other ends of these chains are attached to various walls of important structures in the city. When the time comes, one hundred slaves will turn the wheel, which in turn will cause the collapse of the city itself. She'll then rule alone from the city of Nineveh. Guess who does the wheel all by his lonesome? Yep, and he doesn't wait for the signal, which throws a monkey wrench into everyone's plans. I liked the wheel.

The fight scenes are often wretched, which is to be expected. What really grates though is Hercules' club. He wields this giagantic telephone pole of a club as if it's made of balsa (which it very well might be), and is just generally silly-looking doing it. I was trying to figure out how to describe the odd noise that the club makes when it hits something and a reviewer at IMDB nailed it. It sounds like a whiffle-bat!!! There was no attempt to disguise it either.

Peter... er, Rock is no Steve Reeves. There's no charisma, and instead of the hearty "what the hell" laugh from Reeves we get this goofy Gomer Pyle grin throughout. Reeves looks like Hercules. Lupus looks like Forrest Gump's stronger brother.

Funniest moment not involving a club: At the end of the movie, Hercules and the rescued queen and entourage are walking across the barren desert towards their home country. As they crest a rise, Hercules sweeps his arm across the vista and announces, "My Queen, you are home". The scene cuts back to the scenery, and it's just more endless miles of scrub brush and dirt. Hilarious!

Funniest moment not involving a club before the ending scene: According to the credits, the name is spelled "Christophisis", but everyone pronounces it "Chris Syphilis". I had to rewind the movie twice to make sure I was hearing that right the first time.

Overall though, this is an ok movie for the genre. Worth a watch.

Alan Steel (real name: Sergio Ciani) - Hercules Against the Moonmen.

Here we've got another evil queen. This time, she's allied herself with moonmen who arrived in a meteor and live under the mountain. Every three months, she supplies children as sacrifices to the moonmen in an attempt to reawaken a moon goddess. Or something like that.

Hercules gets involved when asked by an old family friend, and has to figure out how to stop the sacrifices, overthrow the queen, and defeat the moonmen. He's not working alone, but his allies tend to die or get seriously injured at the worst times.

There's plenty of intrigue, double-crosses, traps and nick-of-time rescues. In addition, *this* Hercules knows how to fight! He's ambushed on the road into the city, and we get to see the old Hercules standby: throwing something big and heavy at the bad guys to knock several down at once. This time, he uproots a good sized tree and uses that. No whiffle-bat here, as he takes the time to snap off a big tree limb to use as a club after tossing the rest of the tree.

This Hercules is probably my favorite after Steve Reeves. Everything about him is "not quite". He's not quite as handsome, not quite as charismatic, and his physique is not quite as perfect. All in all though, he's excellent in every way, right down to his joyous "come and get me" laughter during a fight.

The chief of the moon men walks around in a robe and full face stylized skull mask, but the moon men themselves are made of rock. This would've worked a lot better if every last one of them wasn't identical. Maybe that was the idea, because they were stone robots from the moon. Or something like that.

A Hercules movie must have a fight with a beast, and rather than the standard tiger or lion we get some kind of odd moon monster hiding in the dungeons. Really, it was a gorilla suit with spock ears and sabre-tooth cat fangs (sticking up!) attached. Pointless but required standard fare.

Favorite out-of-context quote: "For the cause of liberty and justice I'm ready to do anything!" -- Agar, daughter of Claudis, upon first meeting Hercules.

Beavis and Butthead moment: "When the planet Saturn comes into conjunction with Mars, and under the evil influence of Uranus, then will occur unimaginable disasters..." - Moon Man to Queen Samara.

I wasn't expecting much from this flick, considering the title. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised by how much fun it was!

The last of the foursome I watched was Hercules and the Captive Women, starring Reg Park as the hero. I think that by now a little genre-fatigue had set in, because this one was a real chore to sit through.

Reg Park has everything needed to be Hercules: massively impressive physique, deep booming voice, thick black beard and short curly hair, narcolepsy... Hmmm, maybe he's overqualified.

This is the sleepiest Hercules I've ever seen. His answer to everything except a direct attack seems to be "nap time!". I do wonder if maybe he hadn't seen advance rushes of the film, and the director desperatly worked scenes of Park falling asleep from boredom into the story.

As for the story, it's got the mandatory beautiful evil queen, this time from Atlantis. There's more to the story, but boiled down it's Hercules saves the day from a power-grab from another greedy monarch. Again. The plot is done to death, but this time it's done badly enough that it just might have stayed dead and buried. Even the frequent shouting of "Uranus" couldn't save this silly mess.

So there you have it. By the hand of Zeus, I heartily recommend Hercules Unchained and Hercules and the Moonmen. Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (which I saw in the dollar-DVD stacks in WalMart) is an ok flick (certainly worth the buck), and Hercules and the Captive Women will make you as sleepy as that version of Hercules.

Posted by: Ted at 07:11 AM | category: Cult Flicks
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