Hercules the Invincible (1964)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

good back-story, and good acting

A brilliant film that helped define a genre

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

HERCULES THE INVINCIBLE is a low budget sword and sandal adventure for Dan Vadis, the good-looking muscleman with limited acting ability. He isn't one of my favourites of the peplum genre but he certainly gets a lot of screen time here and the plot seems to lurch from one strong-man heroic act to the next. The film was dubbed and re-edited before release in the States as THE SONS OF HERCULES IN THE LAND OF DARKNESS. A strongman goes on a perilous quest when an evil queen takes over the kingdom. There are fights with lions, bears and dragons, alongside battles with mounted soldiers. Expect rivers of lava, collapsing kingdoms, falling bridges, and the usual bar-bending. A pity about the extremely lame comic relief sidekick, but then you can't have everything. This isn't one of the best of its type, but it's good for a laugh regardless.

Sword and Sandal films are perhaps the most nerve-wracking movies to try and track down. They usually have numerous different titles, versions and edits. This one is a prime example. Many of the reviews here trashing it for "stealing scenes" from other flicks (including the iconic 1958 Hercules starring Steve Reeves) are actually reviewing the more commonly available US TV Edit by Joseph E Levine which did in fact replace scenes from this flick with that previous one, which he also did US distribution for. In such a case when you are literally viewing half the movie, not just the edits but the chopping off of half of the screen to get a cinemascopic picture to fit to a 4x3 TV, one's assessment can be unfairly ravaged because you are only seeing fragments of what a movie is meant to be! I was fortunate enough to catch the original and superior Italian version which is likely to please anyone who finds a title like "Hercules The Invincible" tantalizing enough to merit a watch in the first place. Although the Italian version is missing the groovy narration added to the US Version - guaranteed to take you back to your childhood living room floor in front of the old TV set - it is an overall better viewing experience.

In this peplum movie Hercules saves a king's daughter from a lion attack. The king offers him her hand in marriage if he can slay a dragon. Hercules goes off to do just that but while he is away the kingdom is over-taken by the forces of an evil queen, who takes everyone hostage to her subterranean lair below a volcano.I don't truthfully know an awful lot about the Hercules movies. It seems from what I can gather though that this one is both very typical but also pretty bad. Seemingly, the plot synopsis above is interchangeable with many of the films from the sub-genre. To be fair, I certainly didn't find this to be a good film but it has some moments. Hercules gets to fight a lion, a bear and a dinosaur-like dragon before taking on the forces of the evil queen. Unfortunately, he also has another typical feature of these types of movies - a comedy relief side-kick. I say 'unfortunately' because this character – like most of his ilk – is an appallingly tedious presence, who at no point could genuinely be classified as a relief from anything. If you take him out of the equation though then you have a moderately entertaining bit of sword and sandal nonsense. It also has a silly, cheesy theme tune which was quite amusing.

Take all the "Hercules" movies and boil them down to a series of plot essentials and you'll come up with something close to this movie. It has the muscular hero whose hairless chest is almost constantly on display and whose favorite wardrobe items are mini-mini-skirts and lace-up boots. The hero fights a few real beasts -- a lion and a bear -- as well as a mythical one: a dragon. He acquires a chubby, timorous sidekick who provides comic relief. He falls in love with the daughter of a king whose kingdom is taken over by a wicked queen. The hero becomes this queen's captive. She orders him to be pulled apart, wishbone-style, by teams of wild animals. (Elephants, this time, instead of horses.) The hero emerges unscathed from this ordeal. The queen falls in love with him but he remains true to the deposed king's daughter. The queen's slaves rise in revolt and her city is destroyed by a wave of lava. The hero and the king's daughter walk hand-in-hand to the cheers of the liberated citizenry.So, if you see this movie, you've seen virtually all the other "Hercules" movies! Dan Vadis lacks Steve Reeves' looks and charisma but he's in his physical prime here, looking appropriately brawny but not muscle-bound. Particularly noteworthy are his silver-dollar-sized nipples which punctuate his chest like a pair of decorative decals.Ken Clark lists this movie on his filmography and the credits list a "Ken Klark" but if he's in here, he's hard to spot. Possibly he plays the evil general with the Fu Manchu make-up?