Well.Hercules style movies are normally, by convention, pretty silly and lightweight, but this one is juvenile and stupid and cheesy in a way that takes the genre to new depths. Ever since I saw "Bloody Pit Of Horror", I've had a soft spot for Hargitay, but he and Mansfield (and, let's be fair,everyone else) are pretty bad here. Not horrible, mind you - the casting leans toward attractive and interesting looking people, and everyone in the cast acts at about the same level - but pretty bad.In Hargitay's case, especially, the vocals (dubbing?) just sucks. It's as if they used Tommy Wiseau (the epically awful actor from "The Room") to utter his lines, and Tommy had a bad migraine that week and couldn't be bothered to pay attention to what he was saying. Combine that with Hargitay's perpetually dopey, yearning expression and you have a screen portrayal that's at the opposite end of the scale from the gravitas and dignity you'd get from someone like Steve Reeves or Reg Park.And Hargitay's blocking and fight choreography are off. For a strong man and body builder, Hargitay seems stiff, awkward and unconvincing. I know he can do better than this because he moved like a different person entirely in "Bloody Pit". The fight with the Hydra in the middle of the film is an especially egregious example of this - I've seen fights staged better at my local community theater productions. Mansfield - well, I 've read that she was actually an intelligent and multifaceted person, but you'd never guess that from her role here. She stands around and pulls various tragic faces and, well, juts a lot. Adding insult to injury is a screenplay that calls for the murder of Hercule's innocent wife in the first 5 minutes of the film, and then has the character (and the movie) forget all about her immediately afterwards. Seriously, she's never mentioned again. And there's a "plot" against Hercules that can only succeed if all the characters display less mental acuity than the girls in a junior high locker room. Which they do. Oh, and there's a "trial" against the Queen that proves her innocence when Hercules throws 4 axes at her...and succeeds in MISSing her on purpose instead of hitting her. (You'd think that missing a woman who occupies less than 30% of a target area would be ridiculously easy for a demi-god and professional warrior, but here the movie acts as if it's a heroic miracle). Hmmm, and the central plot point of the movie - where the queen of the Amazons decides to seduce our hero - just marks time for 20 minutes until Herc's shield bearer finds him and then he basically walks away without doing anything heroic whatsoever. (The queen gets killed by a tree. Really). Boy.Take my advice and watch the Reeves or Parks or even Gordon Scott Hercules movies again, instead.

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!

I came across this movie on Netflix streaming movies, with the title "Hercules vs The Hydra." I was curious for several reasons, and two of the biggest are because of Jayne Mansfield. Jayne Mansfield was probably most noted for her very large breasts which when displayed next to actresses of "normal" endowment actually makes those actresses look flat chested. But as large as they were, Jane carried them very well. And, while she was often considered a "dumb blonde" she in fact was very smart, and was a fine actress. I remember when she died, in 1967, in a car wreck in Louisiana, not very far at all from where I was working on a post-graduate summer Chemistry project.In this movie Jayne Mansfield is dark-haired Queen Deianira. When her husband, the King, is killed she becomes the sole ruler of the small kingdom. From some other battles with his people, Mickey Hargitay (who in real life was Mansfield's actual husband) plays the part of Hercules , seeking justice. Massimo Serato is the traitor Licos , a member of the King's own inner circle, he had the King killed so that, once he romanced Deianira and married her, the kingdom would be his. But after a side trip, and an encounter with the Hydra, plus an encounter with an Amazon who made herself look like Deianira (Mansfield also played the seductress, Hippolyta, with red hair) to entrap Hercules, he made it back to Deianira and helped defeat the traitor Licos. The ending was like an American Western, with Hercules and Deinira on a horse, riding into the sunset with lush music playing. By today's standards this is not a good movie at all, the sets looks fake, most of the action looks amateurish, as well as most of the acting. But it is a good watch for Mickey Hargitay and Jayne Mansfield, icons of a bygone era, plus it shows how far production values have come in 50+ years.

**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.