TCM had a spotlight in July of movies based on mythology. One of those movies is getting another airing during Summer Under the Stars: My Son, the Hero, at midnight tomorrow (ie. between August 12 and 13, or late in the evening of August 12 in more westerly time zones) as part of a day devoted to Pedro Armendáriz. I'm putting up this post a day early because I already have another post planned for a movie that's airing relatively early on August 13 as part of that day's star, and that post has to go up early tomorrow, August 12.
Armendáriz plays Cadmos, an ancient Greek king who isn't exactly faithful to his wife. Indeed, although she's just given birth to a daughter, he's been stepping out with Ermione, and eventually kills his wife. For this, the gods punish Cadmos with the curse that if the daughter, Antiope, ever falls in love, Cadmos will die. Cadmos responds by making himself a god and shutting Antiope off in the ancient Greek equivalent of a nunnery, where she's raised by women and the only "men" she'll ever meet are priests who, although they're biologically men, have no interest in being with anybody but the gods. Antiope, too, will be betrothed to a god, which presumably won't violate the terms of the curse.
The gods, however, are not happy with this. So they turn to the Titans, who had been defeated by Zeus' lot but could still be useful. Zeus frees Crios (Giuliano Gemma), who is physically the Titan with the least strength, but also the cleverest one, which is just what is needed to defeat Cadmos. Crios goes to Crete, where Cadmos is the king. There, he fairly quickly meets Achilles, who here is a mute who apparently can't write, although to be fair writing material wasn't as common in those days. So he has to use some form of sign language. Crios' job is to send Cadmos to Hades for eternity, and since Achilles is one of Cadmos' retainers, even if not so loyal to Cadmos, could be useful to Crios.
Crios gets another ally in the form of Rator, a slave who is good at trial by combat at least until Crios uses his wits to come up with a way to defeat Rator. The punishment should be death, but Crios convinces Cadmos not to kill Rator. Meanwhile, Crios has seen Antiope and fallen in love with her, which is pretty much as good as sending Cadmos straight to Hades. Or, at least it is if Crios can marry Antiope and consummate the marriage. Ermione is no dummy, and figures out what's going on, so does everything to thwart Crios, such as by sending Antiope to the island of the Gorgons. Cadmos, for his part, tries to kill Crios and Achilles.
There's a fair bit more to go on until the eventual happy ending, with quite a few fights and a surprising minimum of special effects. My Son, the Hero is one of those Italian sword-and-sandal movies that got picked up by an American distributor for release in America. I have a feeling that if we in America had a subtitled version of the movie, the movie we'd have gotten wouldn't have been all that bad, but also not all that great. Of course, once an American distributor picked it up back in the early 1960s, the result was going to be that the movie got dubbed. Worse, the original ad campaign apparently implied that the movie was going to be reworked as a comedy. Indeed, the synopsis in the on-screen listings guide implied that it is. It isn't, although some of the dialogue is inane. But as a result the movie is wildly uneven, and not helped by the pedestrian at best acting.
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