Movie Reviews for Hercules Unchained

Hercules Unchained

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Movie Reviews of Hercules Unchained

Movie Review: The Herc is back!
Summary: 4 Stars

I greatly enjoyed this DVD - the colors were vivid and the sound was strong. There was only one problem. If you select chapters, chapter 1 starts 15 minutes into the movie. Not a big deal if you plan to watch it all the way through, and I didn't check the other chapters (there were only 4 listed) to see if they match. For the money spent, not much to quibble over.

Movie Review: Steve Reeves Hercules
Summary: 4 Stars

the sequel to the Steve Reeves Hercules. A must for any Steve Reeves collector! Actually continues from the original Hercules movie. Locations are great and the story is OK too.

Movie Review: Inferior sequel, but Steve Reeves is still fun.
Summary: 3 Stars

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.

Movie Review: The Golden Age of the Herc
Summary: 2 Stars

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.