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Rating:  -
After reading several of the reviews of this movie, I would like to add my two cents.First of all this is a good sword and sandal film from the late 1950's.If you want superior acting then I suggest Hamlet with Lawrence Olivier.This is a lightweight, fun film that picks up where the original HERCULES leaves off.Although most of his movies follow the same plot formula, this Steve Reeves film is still very entertaining.Alot of the characters in the first film are in this movie as well.The movie also has an above average musical score.In my opinion his three best films are HERCULES, HERCULES UNCHAINED, and THE THIEF OF BAGHDAD.I also have several videos of him appearing in a number of television shows with his real speaking voice. Although his voice was not baritone, it is hardly "tinny".He turned down the role that eventually went to Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns.Reeves did not like the direction in which 1960's films were headed, so he decided to retire from acting.
Rating:  -
This DVD is produced by Westlake Entertainment Group. It runs for 107 minutes and is presented in the fullscreen format. There is an interactive menu that includes scene selection, photo gallery and very short biographies and filmographies.
The real problem is that the digital transfer used Westlake Entertainment Group is very poor quality. The resultant film imagery is like a very old VHS tape.
I would not recommend you buy from this distributor. This is symptomatic of a wider problem in which classic films that were made before the advent of the digital age are being treated disgracefully by producing bad low budget DVDs transfers. Show some respect to the director, actors and movie viewer and do it properly or dont do it at all and leave the market open for some other distributor to do it the way it should be done.
Rating:  -
If you like poorly made movies from the 50s and 60s then the Hercules movies are good ones. This is the second movie that featured Steve Reeves as the title character and he was clearly the best of the lot. The way he looked and moved and spoke, you could really believe he was Hercules.
In this movie Herc and his wife and young Ulysses are headed to his home city of Thebes when they get sidetracked. Herc drinks from an enchanted pool of water and forgets who he is. He ends up with Queen Omphale, convinced he is married to her. Ulysses pretends to be Herc's deaf mute servant and tries to restore the Big Man's memory. There are other political elements to the plot but not much of it makes sense. Herc flexes his muscles, Omphale flexes her cleavage and there is a big free-for-all fight scene at the end. Hercules ends up back with his wife Iole and everyone lives happily ever after. The acting is cheesy, the direction erratic and the script bizarre.
Rating:  -
This movie opens with a confusing scene where a woman brings a man into her domicile, and shortly thereafter the young man who was there meets his end. Okay, what the heck was that all about? Next we see Hercules (Steve Reeves), Ulysses (Gabriele Antonini), and Iole (Sylva Koscina) arriving on land as they journey home to Thebes. Shortly thereafter the trio encounters Antaeus (Primo Carnera), a half-god giant who appears to enjoy either killing people or snacking on them. Antaeus is another moment of confusion because other than being a pausing point in the movie, Antaeus does not appear again. I suppose you could argue that the encounter with Antaeus shows that Hercules is lazy, thus what happens later might be in Hercules' character; or not.
Soon Hercules encounters his old friend King Oedipus of Thebes, except the king is hiding out in a cave with one of his obnoxious sons trying to get the king's help in making his brother keep his promise to relinquish the throne. Now the story gets complicated. Hercules does convince the other brother to turn the throne over, but soon Thebes is threatened and Hercules volunteers to go on a diplomatic mission to make peace. Unfortunately, Hercules drinks the waters of forgetfulness and ends up on an extended dalliance with Queen Oomphale of Lidia, forgetting completely that he was recently married.
Meanwhile, back in Thebes, things are starting to look grim for Iole. The brother who is the king of Thebes (I kept losing track of which brother was which) threatens to kill Iole. Next, the other brother has allied himself with another kingdom and the leader of that army has the hots for Iole.
In the meantime, Ulysses, clever lad that he is, rescues Hercules just about the time that Laertes, Ulysses father, and a group of other men land on the island en route to perform the diplomatic mission that Hercules was supposed to perform. They were also hoping to find Hercules and Ulysses in the process. After a rousing round of action, they manage to escape the island and head back to Thebes.
Back in Thebes things get really exciting. The brother in Thebes threw a bunch of Iole's kinfolk off the city wall, which did them little good, and threatens to kill Iole the moment Hercules shows up. Hercules and company sneak into Thebes about the time that the two brothers duke it out in a duel, ultimately killing each other. Then the army outside Thebes attacks, beginning a very good battle scene that impressed me.
After having watched several other Hercules movies, I found this one much better in general. The plot was more complex, the special effects were better, and the action was nearly epic at the end. If you are looking for a good sword-and-sandals movie, as these types of movies were called, I recommend this particular movie as a good example of the genre.
Rating:  -
This 1959 Italian classic is a sequel to Hercules, also with Steve Reeves, the first and in some ways best muscleman-turned-actor, and these Hercules films opened the door for endless "sword and sandal" epics to follow. This sequel is slower and inferior to the first Reeves film as Hercules spends much of the film lounging around under the influence of the "waters of forgetfulness." Beautiful dancing girls abound as Hercules spends his days eating grapes and snuggling with the beautiful but way overly made-up Queen Omphale (Sylvia Lopez). There is some action at the beginning and again at the end of the film, but the middle is extremely slow and not too taughtly directed. Except for the beautiful dancing and serving girls prancing around in between the lounging scenes, nearly nothing happens at all for quite some time. Nevertheless, the film has its fun moments.
This film is also available in The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Volume 7 4-disc set and it is terrific and funny. The crew of the Satellite of Love (SOL) makes it a special treat. The host segment where the robots (puppets Tom Servo and Crow) try and get Joel Robinson (Joel Hodgson) to explain what Hercules and the "nice lady" do all day as if they were kids asking a parent about a sexual situation is drop-dead hilarious, yet as always it is handled so that kids can watch the show, enjoy it, and yet have no idea what they've missed in the way of adult-level jokes. Even the slower parts of the film are fun when the writers and performers of MST3K get done with them.
Whether you watch this film in its original form or the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version, it is classic family fun and still entertaining.
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