If you weren’t aware, there are A LOT of Hercules movies, and the one I’m going over today is one of the big ones. It made bodybuilder Steve Reeves a household name, and it kickstarted a whole new subgenre of Italian adventure films called peplum, or as it was more affectionally called, sword-and-sandal. Think sword and sorcery, but with a Greco-Roman twist to it. So there are lots of buff Italian dudes in togas, cheap sets, women doing sexy dances for no reason, damsels vying for the attention of the buff hero, and bad dubbing. Thanks to the success of Hercules, the genre thrived into the mid-’60s and spawned a crapton of sequels, spinoffs, and ripoffs (Until everybody got tired of it and spaghetti westerns replaced it in popularity, but that’s a whole other story). So Hercules must be an awesome movie if people deemed it worthy enough to profit off of its legacy for years, right?
Eh, not really? I mean, it’s not terrible, but I wouldn’t call it good, either.
“Looks like you got a flat, there. You got Ancient Greek Triple A?”
LONG AGO, back when shirts were apparently optional, the mighty Hercules (Reeves) is on his way to the city of Iolcus to teach Prince Iphitus (Mimmo Palmara), son of King Pelias (Ivo Garrani), how not to be a dumbass loser weakling. Hercules coincidentally runs into the daughter of Pelias, Princess Iole (Sylva Koscina), who exposits to him a recent family controversy. Her father is suspected of attaining his kingship through fratricide, which may also be connected to the disappearance of his nephew Jason (Fabrizio Mioni) and the city’s most prized possession, the Golden Fleece. Of course, Hercules gets drawn into this conspiracy, Iole and Hercules slowly fall in love, some monsters get their teeth kicked in, and there’s enough beefcake onscreen to feed a small country for a decade. Pretty simple stuff.
The story isn’t anything special, and it drags for the most part. Whenever there isn’t an action beat, the characters are either expositing, flexing, riding on horses, looking attractive, or turning the movie into a goddamn telenovela. Whenever two people of the opposite sex are in the same room, they start making goo-goo eyes at each other and whispering sweet nothings into each other’s ears until I want to vomit! There’s a whole section of the movie where that’s the main focus when they’re on the island of the Amazon’s, and it is so tedious I could cry. Hercules isn’t even on the island when this happens. It’s his traveling companions who visit Hot Lady Island and become infatuated with its inhabitants while Hercules stays on the ship (He’s loyal to Iole, I guess). He only gets involved when he finds out that the Amazons will ritually sacrifice his friends, so he rescues them and literally carries all of them back to the ship. And this pointless little side trip never gets mentioned ever again. Cool.
Por que, Jason? POR QUE?!
There’s some excitement to be had with the action scenes, but even those leave a lot to be desired. Sure, you got Hercules doing some of his famous labors, namely the slaying of the Nemean Lion and the Cretan Bull, and those scenes are alright, but between those action beats, the movie is pretty dry, so you’re willing to see any cheap action as long as SOMETHING happens. I give the filmmakers credit for using a mixture of real animals and fake ones for the fight scenes, but the fights are very short, and the animals look way too normal to be the monstrous beasts they’re supposed to represent. The Nemean Lion is…… a regular-sized lion. The Cretan Bull is…….a regular-sized bison. A bit lame, isn’t it? Wasn’t the Nemean Lion supposed to be twice the size of a normal lion?
TRULY, this is a mighty beast worthy of Hercules’ titanic strength!
Okay, I know the filmmakers didn’t have the budget for a growth ray to beef up the animals’ sizes, and they also probably couldn’t put any embellishments on them because……..well, the horns and claws and the fear of death. But without that extra “oomph” to their designs, it feels like something is missing. Maybe they should have bagged the animals altogether and went with a guy in a creature suit like they did later in the movie.
Yeah, the dragon that guards the Golden Fleece is a guy in a crappy-looking suit. It’s basically Italian Godzilla (they even use Godzilla’s trademark roar but lower the pitch). It’s the most fantastic-looking thing out of all the creatures in the film, but as I said, the fight is way too short. And it’s not Hercules who fights it, but Jason. Which is another problem this movie has: Its indecision with whether it wants to be a Hercules movie or a Jason and the Argonauts movie. Hercules is undoubtedly the main character, but most of the story concerns the myth of Jason, who’s awkwardly shoved into the leading character role for small snippets of time when Hercules isn’t onscreen. I’m pretty sure this movie is called Hercules, so why put Jason and his story in the front seat when that’s not who we’re here to see? There is no good reason why you should care about Jason in this movie. I’ve felt stronger emotions towards large piles of wet, sand encrusted seaweed. The whole narrative feels sloppily conceptualized. The filmmakers tried to meld together various parts of two different myths to make a cohesive story, but the result was a lackluster mess.
Hercules’ 13th Labor: Getting sued by Toho for copyright infringement!
It’s not all bad, though. Steve Reeves is a pretty good casting choice for Hercules, even if he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. Reeves sells it with his physicality. The guy was STACKED, and you buy that it’s Hercules doing all of these remarkable feats. Whether he’s showing off his strength in an Olympic sports competition against Iphitus, getting undressed with Iole’s eyes (And by his male entourage, come to think of it. I get a Top Gun shirtless volleyball “Playing with the Boys” vibe when they’re together), fighting off hordes of soldiers using giant chains as weapons like Kratos from God of War, or tearing down two gigantic pillars with his bare hands like Sampson. It’s the same reason Arnold Schwarzenegger was perfect for the Terminator. He can’t act, but he LOOKS the part, and even the woodenness of his acting gives the character some credence. An ironic comparison, since Schwarzenegger’s first acting role was Hercules in Hercules in New York, a movie even worse than this one.
Hercules is cheesy and cheaply made, but said cheesiness and cheapness save it from being an outright bore. So it’s good for a couple of laughs in that regard. And like I said, the action scenes are alright, but they’re smushed between talky, melodramatic fluff. So my advice here is whenever you see a man and a woman eyeing each other up, just fast forward until you see something goofy or vaguely violent. You’ll thank me later.
“You can be my wingman anytime, Hercules.”
“No Ulysses, you can be mine.”
The Bard of the Reel 