Hercules (1958)

I've watched several of the Bible-themed movies that were spectacles back in the 1950s and early 1960s, but not so many of the sword-and-sandal Italian movies. Recently, I noticed that the 1958 version of Hercules was available on one or another of the streaming services, so I decided to watch it.

Surprisingly, there are two somewhat recognizable names in the cast. The first is Steve Reeves, a former professional bodybuilder from the US who was hired by the Italian studio probably because he'd come cheaply, and because he certainly has the physique to play a hero who is supposed to be a demigod. As the movie starts, Hercules is lying around in some seaside location, or more accurately a location near cliffs overlooking the sea. There's also a road going dangerously close to those cliffs, and we see a pretty young lady struggling to keep her chariot under control. With the chariot perilously close to going over the cliff, Hercules picks up a tree and puts it in the path of the chariot, stopping it.

The chariot was being driven by Iole, played by the other recognizable name in the cast, Sylva Koscina. In a nice bit of good news for Hercules, Iole is a princess, being the daughter of Pellas, who happends to be the king of Iolcus. Saving a king's daughter from death can be a valuable thing, although there are also going to be people at the royal court who are worried about the newcomer.

But royal intrigue isn't that much of the plot. Other, of course, then a legend of a man with one shoe who is destined to ascend to the throne of Iolcus. Hercules happens to meet just such a man when he runs into Jason, of Argonauts fame. Granted, Jason hasn't lost his shoe yet, and hasn't found the golden fleece. The shoe part is going to come first, and then after Pellas sees Jason sans shoe at the palace, Jason, Hercules, Ulysses, and some others are going to go looking for that fleece.

They find the fleece on an island full of Amazon warriors who have no men around, and indeed put men who show up to death. Now, you wonder how they can keep the civilization going without men since they haven't discovered artificial insemination yet. But that's not germane to the plot. Hercules has to come up with a way to get Jason off the island, and also deal with a way to deal with the disgruntled sailors who have had to stay on the ship since the island doesn't want men.

The big problem with this version of Hercules is the relative lack of a plot. There aren't Hercules' traditional labors here, and it feels like the writers didn't know what to do, so they instead took a whole bunch of elements from Greek mythology and threw them together in a mish-mash that doesn't quite work. It's moderately entertaining, and reasonably well photographed, but it's certainly not anything great.