The Loves of Hercules (1960)

What a great film. What a great shame that it's so under-appreciated. Packed with some of the cheesiest monster effects this side of THE GIANT CLAW and lots of hilarious stilted acting and unbelievable dialogue, THE LOVES OF HERCULES is the peplum genre at its peak of unintentional hilarity. Fans of these bizarre Italian muscleman flicks will no doubt find this a hugely entertaining experience, even if the acting is poor and the dubbing is even worse. Seemingly every review I've seen comments on how "bad" this film is, but I've seen a heck of a lot worse. At least this is an action-packed experience, and one which is never boring.Mickey Hargitay takes over the reigns from Steve Reeves as muscleman hero Hercules, his body packed with rippling muscles, his mind the size of a pea. Hargitay was of course Mansfield's husband which is probably the sole reason of him appearing in this film. As he is dubbed - by himself I think - it's difficult to assess his performance, but he does pull a lot of strange and amusing expressions along the way. Interestingly his character is given a strong Italian accent, whereas heroes of these peplum films typically have strong American accents - this difference makes things a little more genuine, don't you think? Jayne Mansfield is this film's biggest selling point. Her presence is so great that she has a dual role, that of a good queen and an evil queen. Mansfield isn't really required to act in the film, only scream occasionally and look as ravishing as possible at every moment. Also in the cast is the great Italian actor Massimo Serato playing the "baddie"; he's evil in the classic old-fashioned sense of the word (double-crossing friends, murdering off people all the time, being cruel, torturing and whipping those who oppose) yet still manages to be the gentleman at times (notice the way he protects Mansfield from a threat at the film's conclusion). The rest of the characters are either village idiots, simpering buffoons, or beautiful yet dumb women who amusingly scream "aaaah!" when they are killed. Oh, and the stuffy old courtiers who spend a lot of time talking but not actually doing much. The film is quite well made, and the low budget is disguised through some lovely crisp photography. One thing I particularly liked about this film was the score, which really helps to give it that historical, epic feel.Hercules gets to show his might at various intervals during the film's course, from the expected picking up of incredibly heavy items (a cartwheel, a tree trunk, a rock) to fighting off nasty opponents in the form of a mountain ape man and a huge, fire-breathing dragon. The dragon fight scene is the film's centrepiece and, although the special effects aren't up to much, I found it very impressive. The dragon, supposedly the Hydra (although it's nothing like the Hydra of Greek mythology, for a start it has only three heads and doesn't grow them back after getting them cut off) is a gigantic puppet, okay it may not be very realistic but the sheer effort that they put into animating it is the impressive thing about it. For me, this is a sheer unmissable experience! The ape man turns up unexpectedly at the end, as a means to dispose of the villain (whom it strangles) and providing yet another cheap adversary for Hercules to battle. The ape man's appearance can be described in one word as "laughable", although I felt quite sorry for it. One minute its eyeing up a half-naked Mansfield, the next it gets crushed by a huge rock! There are plenty of other fantastic elements to keep this film interesting. One evil woman changes her appearance at will, helped by a black-cloaked witch who hangs around with her. She also kills all men in her kingdom after loving them, transferring their souls into trees where they remain trapped forever (in order to demonstrate this amazing fact, a minor characters breaks a branch on one of these trees and sure enough, blood spurts out!). This "trees of woe" scene is also pretty cool.Lots of minor characters get killed off in this film, either getting stabbed or shot with arrows and stuff. A couple of people fall into a bubbling pit of acid for good measure at the end. There are a couple of big battles to enjoy, including an uprising for the film's finale, as well as mild torture (whipping seems to the preferred torture method for these guys). In all, it's pretty exciting. If you don't mind cheesy adventure flicks in the same tradition as JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS then this one is for you. See it to believe it!

The film begins with Hercules returning home after some time--only to discover that his lady love is dead as are just about everyone! It seems that the evil King of Ecalia and his armies are responsible and it's up to our hero to kick butt and right wrongs.The fact that "The Loves of Hercules" was a terrible film should have come as no major surprise for me, as every Hercules/Maciste film I have ever seen from Italy have been rather bad. In the late 50s to about the mid-1960s, the Italian film industry produced a ton of these films. Most starred some foreigner (such as Steve Reeves, though there were GOBS of others, such as Peter Lupus and Mark Forest) and had otherwise all-Italian casts--with generally lousy dubbing in the English language versions I've seen. So why did I watch this bad film? Well, curiosity. I was curious to see the stars--Mickey Hargitay and his then wife, Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield plays two characters and Hargitay plays Hercules.So what did I like about the film? Well, Miss Mansfield looked nice. I particularly liked seeing her in a brown wig for a change of pace. Now you know it's bad when this is the only thing I really liked! The acting was stilted, the plot was quite boring and for an epic, it sure was amazingly small and non-epic! Overall, it's no better or worse than any of the other films of the genre--which isn't saying much. My advice is see a couple, then you've pretty much seen them all. And, if you want to see the most enjoyable of these, see the much later film "Hercules in New York" (with Arnold Schwarzenegger). It is so incredibly bad that it's actually a lot of fun to watch! As for "The Loves of Hercules", it's forgettable and dumb--no more, no less.

Perfectly awful peplum/Hercules-movie: you know you're in trouble when leading lady Jayne Mansfield's prominent bust (forever on the verge of bursting through her togas) commands greater attention than the plot, the action or the special effects!; of course, the fact that the muscular hero is played by her real-life husband – Mickey Hargitay – adds to the fun quotient (of the unintentional kind, that is)…for rarely has there ever been an actor so clueless as to how to approach this mythical part! Usually seen as a blonde, Mansfield here dons a black and a red wig: she appears as a couple of sovereigns – the heroine and an Amazonian (though the latter is technically played by another actress who takes up Mansfield's appearance via a magic potion in order to ensnare Hargitay). Of mild interest is the fact that the latter has a penchant of disposing of her lovers by having them turned into living trees – as if one needed further proof of how wooden this thing could be, the plot here takes it to a literal level! The chief villainous role in this one is entrusted to Massimo Serato, often a reliable presence in this type of flick, but in this case sporting long curly hair – which only serves to enhance the film's overriding camp factor. Also in the cast, as one of Serato's advisors, is Giulio Donnini from the obscure peplum FRINE, CORTIGIANA D'ORIENTE (1953) – which I watched as part of last month's "Epic Movie Challenge" (in time for the Easter period); incidentally, I had intended to rent the 5-Disc/7-Film set among which this was included back then but it wasn't available.By the way, THE LOVES OF HERCULES was also known as HERCULES VS. THE HYDRA: this monster, which appears fairly early on in the game, is one of the worst of its kind ever constructed – what's the point of having a three-headed menace if lopping one of them off kills it instantly! Indeed, the mechanical creation is so bulky that it can barely move and so obviously fake that one is liable to burst out laughing at the mere sight of it, as I did, thus effectively destroying the illusion of the entire scene! Another hilarious obstacle the hero has to overcome during the course of the film is a meek-looking cow absurdly sprayed black by the penny-pinching film-makers in a lousy attempt to pass it off for a menacing bull!

**Possible Spoilers Ahead**Former Mr. Universe Mickey Hargitay takes his turn as the top-grossing strong-man of the early 1960s. At the beginning of the film he goes gallivanting off and leaves his wife unprotected. Smart move, Herc. She's murdered and our muscle-bound, muscle-headed hero is out for revenge. The hydra of some titles turns out to be a giant, triple-headed dragon that guards the gate to the underworld. It has all the mobility of a washing machine and just sits there nodding its heads and looking stupid as Hercules runs up and kills it. The loves of another title are Queen Deinera (brunette Jayne Mansfield) and evil amazon queen Hippolyta (red-haired Jayne Mansfield). Hippolyta has the nasty habit of turning her lovers into talking trees when she's tired of them. The actors playing the tree-men, ironically, give the least wooden performances in the picture. Mansfield, a blonde in most pictures, manages to be equally dopey as a brunette and a redhead. However, on this production, there was plenty of dopiness to go around. Hubby Hargitay hardly comes across as a rocket scientist. The director, writers and whoever did the deplorable dubbing weren't too swift either. When this lulu aired on AMC in 1999 they followed it with 1960s Hercules cartoons, clips from drive-in intermissions and home-movie footage of Mansfield trying to touch her toes while wearing high heels. I don't know which was funniest.