Am I Missing Something?

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

If you are going to watch this movie, or read this review you must be pretty desperate. So why am I writing it? As a spoiler. Compared with other Hercules films, this one has almost nothing going on, except for the fact that Peter Lupus (credited as 'Mark Stevens') of 'Mission Impossible' and 'Police Squad' the TV show, is Hercules. What an upper body!It's basically infighting and intrigue between kings and a queen, none of whom are very interesting or distinctive acting wise. The film makers have loaded it up with tedious dialogue ("No contractions allowed!"), stilted stiff acting (the actors mostly stand around like statues), a pompous music track with bombast substituting for dramatic interaction between characters, and a a final chain pulling scene that seems to go on forever. The best part is seeing over a thousand soldiers on horseback, but that scene may have been taken from another film. This is really bottom of the barrel. I'll give it a 2, just for Peter Lupus.

Okay sword & sandal epic. Lupus isn't really that bad; this film portrays the strong man as smarter than usual, which is a plus.The hero of the film is really the Biblical Samson (the slaves are quite obviously Hebrew, the promised land obvious Isreal). God knows why they bothered to reference Hercules on release - maybe they were afraid of being accused of blasphemy for making a cheap B-movie about the Old Testament hero.As noted by others, the best scenes in the film are actually borrowed from other films. But the action sequences filmed for this movie itself are pretty much par for the course, but nothing special.Dull in spots, but not without its occasional flashes of Saturday matinée fun.

I knew that Peter Lupus had made a number of Hercules movies, but hadn't seen any until coming across this flick in the fifty movie DVD pack from Mill Creek/Treeline Entertainment under their Sc-Fi collection. His role in the TV series 'Mission Impossible' only hinted at his size, but not the impressive physique he reveals here as the Greek strong man. There's also some hint of his acting ability shown as well, but let's face it, he wasn't surrounded by Shakespearean actors here.Hercules' mission, which he's chosen to accept, is to rescue the Queen of Hellenes from her captors, the three sovereigns of Babylon. King Phaleg of Assyria has the same thing on his mind, but his motive is to unite his country with Hellenes to form an even more powerful state. You know the Babylonian trio will fall apart at some point, as lone sister Taneal would like nothing better than to rule singlehandedly without the interference of her brothers Salman Osar and Azzur.Taneal offers viewers an early insight into how Babylon will fall when she reveals the existence of an ancient wheel underneath the city that's chained to strategic pillars and walls. When it's time for Hercules to spin the old wheel of fortune, the city of Babylon comes crashing down, but didn't he make it look just a little too easy?Lupus, going by the name of Rock Stevens for this film, seemed to symbolize the adage, 'walk softly but carry a big stick'. Some of his scenes wielding that huge billy club looked almost comic in execution. It also seemed to me that it might have had a boomerang quality to it as well. Check out the first time Hercules throws the club in the direction of a Babylonian rider in an early scene. Herc is positioned behind the man on horseback, but when the club knocks the rider from his horse, it's shown hitting him from the front! If you ask me, I'd say THAT was 'Mission Impossible'!

So it was Peter Lupus from Mission Impossible. There is nothing much to recommend this film. It has a silly plot with Hercules attempting to rescue a Babylonian queen who has been enslaved with many others. There is an evil queen. There is a potential suitor for the queen who brings all kinds of gifts and money to the triumvirate which is in control. There is a ridiculous wheel which, when turned, will destroy an entire city. Only one guy can turn it (hint hint). There are some good actions scenes and the print isn't too bad. One thing that was concerting for me were the sound effects. When someone was hit with a club, it made the sound of one of those plastic whiffle ball bats. I'm sure they were made out of plastic, but couldn't they have disguised the sounds a bit better. I have to admit I fast forwarded through the riding and walking scenes which cut out about 15 minutes of the movie.