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 The King of Eurito kills Hercules' wife so Hercules heads off to Eurito to get
some revenge. Once he gets there, he finds out that the King is already dead.
We also learn that the guy that killed the King is looking to take the throne
for himself. Somehow it all means that "Hercules must battle three headed
monsters and Cyclops to defeat the evil villain and save the kidnapped
Dejanira." 1960, 93 minutes, VHS
Well, here's another one of these Hercules that doesn't have a beard. I
understand shaving the rest of your body for these types of roles, because even
us guys that are into girls would rather not have to stare at some gladiator's
back hair if at all possible. The clean-shaven Hercules though remains one of
my greatest pet peeves in cinema. I don't get why these beefy ancient types
are portrayed like they run around in the underworld and various temples like
they have a little shaving kit with them. I suppose it could be hidden under
those little school-girl miniskirts they seem partial to wearing (thank god
that hasn't caught on like it did with girls when Britney kickstarted that
pseudo-pedophile fashion statement a few years ago with her obscene video), but
wouldn't the aftershave they use attract unwanted creatures like bugs,
minotaurs, and the skinny guy that always is hanging around Hercules in these
movies anyway? So I was outraged to see a baby-faced Hercules would be firing
up the leather fetish-wear in this particular adventure, but my outrage also
turned to delight when I discovered that this particular Herc would be played
by none other than Mickey Hargitay! Mickey of course brought us joy in such
classic fare as Bloody Pit Of Horror and was also seen in Lady Frankenstein (though used sparingly in a decidedly "straight" role as a police detective).
Mickey was some kind of bodybuilder that really had that Hercules style of
acting done pat. By that, I mean he was able to stand at odd positions, with
his arms jutting out from his body so that we would be able to see that he was
super-jacked and ready to flex some no-good enemy monster to death. Mickey
also knew that in any battle scenes, Hercules had to do a lot of exaggerated
lunging and groping. This was obviously to communicate to the audience how
mega-powerful Herc was, because if he was quick and sure in his attacks, we
wouldn't get to see him role around with his foe, put chokeholds on him, or
hold him up above his head like one of those papier mache rocks that littered
the ancient lands.  I'll be up front with you on this one. Your story is not what I would call the
tightest. In fact, it's about as loose as that broad that plays a lot of pool
down on the east side of town in my favorite honkytonk, but just like her, this
movie makes up for that by pacing the rolling around, stabbings, love potions,
and
farm animal attacks so that we remain in its thrall for most of the hour and a
half our ten bucks buys us. In a move that defies any logic (ancient or
otherwise) all of this muscle-headed adventure begins because some moron
thought it would be a good idea to invade Hercules' kingdom while he's out of
town (at some all-male retreat no doubt) and kill his wife. I need to lodge
one complaint that seems endemic to these "hunks and punks" films. Other than
Hercules (or whatever alias the main character happens to be going by - it
helps to keep the numerous male companions you have stashed away in every
village from finding out about each other), I can never understand, remember,
or keep track of the names that all these characters use. All their names end
in "pedes" or "icus" and the dubbing is usually so wanting that these names are
just kind of slurred out in a hurry and I'm never sure who they're referring to
or what name they actually said. Thus, as in most Godzilla movies, I am forced
to give each character my own name, just to keep track of them. For instance,
the dope with the strange facial hair (skinny beard with upper lip shaved) who
hatched this ridiculous plot to kill Hercules' wife, will henceforth be known
as Ploticus. I wasn't ever too sure what he was trying to do by killing Mrs.
Hercules, but once he did it, he then doublecrossed his own king and killed
him. The thinking here was that Hercules would think that the king killed his
wife, but since the king was dead, there would be no vengeance to take. The
people back home would just be told that the king fell honorably in battle and
then this guy would be in charge. Well, except for the daughter of the king,
who just became queen and is already betrothed to another guy. Ploticus is
non-plussed by all this and hatches another diabolically dumb scheme wherein
he'll frame Hercules for the murder of the new queen's fiancee and then move in
on the queen himself. The problem I see with this is that Hercules isn't the
kind of guy that's going to sit still for some murder trial. Add to that the
fact that this guy gets murdered by being stabbed by Hercules' dagger in the
back and everyone will tell you that's not Herc's style. He likes to get his
hands all over a man when he's battling him, wrestling around on the ground,
putting exotic holds on him everywhere his tan muscular hands can find purchase
on his opponent's bronzed body. Herc may be looking to stick his dagger
somewhere in this guy, but it surely isn't in his back, if you smell the baby
oil.  Hercules gets word that his *ahem* wife has been killed by some dirty dogs from
the other village and he immediately stomps off to see what the heck is going
on with those guys. Hercules is a man's man (but I surely didn't need to tell
you that) so he doesn't show a lot of the emotion that most of guys would
probably experience when our wives turned up dead and we had an alibi. Mickey
plays Hercules as a guy with a perpetually dull-witted look on his face, though
sometimes he's able to move that look into "haughty" territory when the
situation requires it (i.e. his face tires of holding the dull-witted
expression).
Hercules hauls arse over to this village to find out what in the dickens is
going on.
He demands to see the king so he can get started with his vengeance and is told
that the king is already dead. While he is there though, he may as well
participate in some trial that the queen has to go through. I was never
terribly clear what precipitated this trial that the queen would have to endure
(Ploticus says something about how the people would never accept her as the
legitimate ruler until she went through with it) and I don't know why they asked
Hercules to do it, but you know the big guy! Hand me those battle axes! The
queen is tied up to some apparatus and Hercules has to throw four battle axes
at her. If he nails her, she quite obviously fails the trial (some would say
it was Hercules that failed, but he gets to go home for dinner that night no
matter what). Hercules demonstrates some pretty funny throwing techniques and
manages not hit her, which considering her Anna-Nicole Smith-sized figure is
quite an accomplishment. I suppose a few words about the queen are in order
right about now. She's played by Mickey's then real-life wife, Jayne
Mansfield. Jayne was famous as some type of sex symbol known for her really
big bazooms (that's what we called them in the sixties, right?) and is also
famous for getting killed in a car wreck later on (though she apparently wasn't
really decapitated, it was just her wig that the wreck knocked off, though for
Jayne the difference was probably immaterial with her being dead and all).
Just like in real life, Hercules takes one look at the queen and is immediately
entranced by her talents. I personally think Mickey and Jayne spent a lot time
comparing their breast sizes with one another, but that's just rank
speculation.  Hercules and the queen get on famously (they're both big-boned foreigners in a
land of skinny Italians) and they go out riding when all of a sudden there's a
stampede of cows! I was riveted to my chair, biting my nails as I wondered
whether Hercules had ever worked a dude ranch and would have the skills to
defeat these evil cows. Well, I needn't have worried, because Herc has always
had a soft spot (just don't ask where!) for farm animals (see also Hercules Vs. The Sons Of The Sun) and he sets about rounding up those little doggies. Just
then, a rampaging hell-bull (looks like regular bull, but rampages) goes after
the queen (I think her name was Diphtheria or something) and Hercules has to
quit playing cowboy and switch to rodeo mode! He jumps off his horse and goes
after this bull just like it was some Roman soldier. In a movie filled with
spectacular moments (the battle with the Hydra, the fate of the tree-men, the
battle with the guy in the ugly ape suit), this battle with a really big cow
was probably the best. Hercules literally grabs this thing by the horns and
starts rassling with it as the queen makes worried faces in reaction shots.
Now, the cow wasn't really doing much in the way fighting Hercules, other than
resisting being wrestled down to the ground, but eventually this farm animal
had no choice but to yield to the superior strength and fighting prowess of
this demi-god (Ahh, to live in olden times, when the gods would walk among men
and beat up their cattle!). Hercules stabs this poor beast and then stupidly
leaves his knife behind so that it could later be used to frame him up. Of
course once he finds out about the big frame up, he goes running off the
underworld to find some guy who was a witness to something or had information
about someone. I rewound this scene to try and figure out who this guy was and
why he would prove Hercules as being innocent (Why did he even care?), but the
next thing I know this dude is in the jaws of this Parade of Roses Hydra float
and is apparently dead. Hercules embarrasses himself early on in this battle by
slapping this big three-headed fraternity float upside the head with his sword.
He finally chops off one of its heads (shown mostly off-screen: we see a
little blood from its neck and then we see its head laying on the ground), but
just when it seems that Hercules has defeated the Hydra, he bumps into one of
its other heads and gets knocked out (and yes, it involved Mickey doing some
really fake-looking stumbling and flopping around moves). Don't worry about
him though, because he wakes up in the land of the Amazons! With the help of a love potion that makes the queen of the amazons look like a
red-headed Jayne Mansfield, Hercules plum forgets about how mad he was that
he'd been framed for some murder or something back somewhere or other.
However, he isn't completely out of danger here with these amazons. See,
whenever their queen gets down with her lovers she takes them out to the Forest
of
Death or someplace and turns them into living trees. That didn't make a lot
sense to me either, but maybe it's some sly comment about guys really just
being big pieces of wood or something. Hercules is warned about this and he
escapes (eventually, after like laying around with the queen for a few nights)
and the queen is caught up in one of these trees and is killed. Hercules makes
it back to his village, is told that Diphtheria is imprisoned by the bad guys
back at the other village, leads an invasion force, chases after Diphtheria and
Ploticus and ends up in a cave fighting a guy that looks like he's wearing a
brown shag carpet. Classic strongman action all the way around in this one!
There's something for everyone in this movie. Guys with big boobies, gals with
big boobies, wild bulls, stabbings, monsters, amazons, and even some type of
acid bath! It's clear that the filmmakers used the lack of a story that made
any sense to their advantage. Unfettered by the needs of plot and continuity,
they shuttled Hercules all over the map into lots of different and fairly
short-lived adventures. I like a movie that distracts from its dumbness with
the sheer volume of its antics. Sure the monsters are low-rent costume shop
type things, but at least this movie has Hercules getting his sweaty biceps on
some monsters. Some of these Hercules things only have him thumping other guys
in
skirts and a little of that goes a long way. I will confess that I was
somewhat let down that they constrained Mickey in his Hercules role, never
letting him loose to do the whacked out stuff we know he's capable of from such
hits as Bloody Pit Of Horror. He played it really straight, without any of
the over-the-top humor we know he's capable of, but maybe with him surrounded
by all the stupid stuff happening he felt like he needed to be an anchor of
realism in this ocean of rummage-sale costumes. This is pretty good as far as
deranged sword and sandal happenings go. When one of my buddies found out that
I had seen this, he claimed to have watched it in the movie theatre years ago.
I
knew he was lying, because if he really had seen it, he would've bragged about
it sooner than this, instead of just hopping on the Hercules bandwagon now.
This is probably stating the obvious, but he if he really wants to see it,
he'll have to buy his own copy, because there's no way I'm letting this one out
of my sight!
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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