bkoganbing Those impressive sets built in Italy for some major productions like Quo Vadis and Ben-Hur were not wasted. The Italian cinema found serious use for them with a series sand and sandal epics that lasted through the 60s. This film brought to our shores in America by Joseph E. Levine and it started a craze for these peplum films. I am told that this is the accepted term for these films, the peplum being the kind of tunics the male characters wear.Steve Reeves wore as little as possible the better to show off that muscular body that it took years to perfect. The success of Hercules internationally led to a series of muscle dudes from Europe mostly taking Anglo names for our markets doing films if not with Hercules in the title we would Samson, Goliath, Maciste, etc.The plot here interweaves several of the legends of Hercules plus the story of Jason and the Golden Fleece in which Hercules was a supporting player. Sylva Koscina plays a Greek princess and Luciana Paluzzi a couple of women who did have careers on this side of the pond will probably be the only other names we know.Back in 1958 this got a considerable juvenile audience. Today we get a more sophisticated Hercules from Kevin Sorbo, etc. Reeves is not the greatest actor in the world, but really who cares.

MartinHafer It's amazing that this first 1950s Hercules film was the stimulus that led to bazillions of Hercules and Maciste films over the next 15 years. Why is this so hard to believe? Well, you'd expect that this film would be really, really good since it was such an important film--and you'd be 100% wrong. This mish-mash film was just as bad as many of the later films and is only marginally watchable. Not surprisingly, it has passed into the public domain--after all, who would want to renew rights to this film?! Some of the film's problems may or may not exist in the original Italian print. I don't know, as I have only just watched one of the English dubbed versions. The biggest and most obvious problem are the voice actors--their voices are too mechanical and bigger than life--so much so that they seem nothing like real people at times. The original Italian voices might be a lot better. Another problem (mostly for history freaks like myself) is that the films are a bizarre melange of both Greek AND Roman mythology--with Roman and Greek names interspersed throughout the film and the stories often bear little semblance to the originals. This is very sloppy but could also be the fault of the dubbers--perhaps the original film was based only on Greek or Roman characters--not both. Maybe in the original Italian it all made more sense.However, despite the sloppy dubbing, another major problem is that the film has too much in the way of plot. There are enough stories for two films. Why they chose to combine the story of Jason and the Argonauts seeking the golden fleece (a Greek tale) AND Hercules (Roman) dealing with an annoying king and his really annoying son is beyond me--especially because both characters could easily have several films of just their own adventures. In fact, with the story of Jason, huge portions of the tale are missing (such as the most important part--his relationship with Medea and her father) and the Hercules one simply doesn't look anything like the classical tales--nothing.The film has a few fun moments, but overall it looks cheap and sloppy--like most Hercules films. Some of the characters make no sense at all (such as the princess who loves Hercules but fights with him when Herc sets out to do EXACTLY what she'd asked him to do) and some are so one-dimensional they looked like they were written by a 3rd grader. If you LIKE cheap and sloppy films (I know I sure do), then this is definitely for you. If not, then see the Disney version. It's also very bad history and bastardizes the story terribly, but is still much closer to the original source material than this silly film.

Hang_All_Drunkdrivers Steve Reeves makes a pretty good hercules and the show moves along very nicely. Not a lot of standing around talking except for the visit with the Amazons. That is a snore as nothing happens for around 20 minutes. Of course the movie is dubbed and poorly so, but that's better than damn subtitles which amount to no more than a silent movie.Lots of silliness in the movie as expected. At the end Hercy has these big 15 foot chains on each arm which he slings around these two huge pillars and pulls them down ala Sampson. But the chains only wrapped around the pillars once so what kept them in place? And the fight with the lion was a laugher as the "ferocious beast" appeared totally drugged. I guess it's really tough to stage fight scenes with lions or tigers cause once they find out how weak humans are, they can never be trusted again.

tanik-1 I had seen this movie many years before when I was a teenager. Then, I loved the movie because it had elements like strong good man fighting against the bad, beautiful women, myth, and good movie techniques regarding those days. By chance, I watched it again today and I enjoyed it again -maybe nostalgia played a major role-. But I missed those days films; noble feelings, not exploiting sexuality too much etc. I remember watching the movie together with some of my friends and deciding that we could start body building as Steve Reeves did. Maybe we hoped to be like Mr. Reeves. Indeed, we started the exercises -and of course, we couldn't have a physical look like he did- However, I can frankly say that we had benefited from our efforts regarding our healths -and surely we had builded a more good looking body- I recommend to our coevals that they watch this movie and similar ones from time to time.