Good start, but then it gets ruined

Entertaining from beginning to end, it maintains the spirit of the franchise while establishing it's own seal with a fun cast

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

British bodybuilder Reg Park stars as Hercules and he's gone visitng Pluto's aka Hades realm of the underworld. His mission to rsue his true love Princess Dainera where she's been sent to sample the waters of forgetfulness.It's all part of a big plan to take Dainera away by King Ligos. And playing Ligos is the main reason you shoud see this particular peplum film, Christopher Lee.Of course Lee brings the same brand of double dyed villainy to this part as he does to any of his famous Hammer horror roles. He plays the role of the evil king completely straight without a hint of spoof.That and Park's pecs are reason enough to see this film.

Not being a big fan of other Hercules films from the '60s I had seen, I wasn't excited to watch this one. But I was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. The reasons for why it is good can be attributed to director Mario Bava, who takes a flimsy story and brings it to life with rich visuals and an otherworldly atmosphere. Reg Park has muscles on top of muscles, which is pretty much all that's required of him for the part of Hercules. As others have pointed out, Christopher Lee is dubbed and that is pretty much criminal. However, Lee still has enough screen presence to do more with a look than lesser mortals could with two hours of dialogue. It's quite easily the best Hercules movie I've ever seen. I do like the camp value of the Ferrigno movies from the '80s but I don't think they are good for anything other than laughs. This film is a stylish and fun piece of entertainment for people who enjoy escapist fantasy movies. If your rear is sans stick, you should be able to find something to like about this.

The success of Ben Hur led to a whole cycle of Italo knock-offs over the next few years. Reg Park has now taken over from Steve Reeves, but he comes from the same acting school. Wooden. Christopher Lee provided the villainy and most of the acting chops, and handled the expository dialogue for the audience' benefit, as Reg mostly stood around looking impressively pumped up. To be fair, he certainly looked Herculean, and despite his acting inexperience, Reg handled the sword action scenes with a certain panache, while projecting a certain heroic grit. Then first time director Mario Bava pulled out the stops to give the thing as lurid a look as possible - out-Hammering Hammer House in this regard, no small feat. Some of the dark fantasy imagery takes on a nightmarish quality and proves quite effective, setting Bava clearly on his long career path. However, once again, most of the entertainment value of the item comes from its cheese factor. The interiors look cheap and stagebound, and some of the 'epic' battles appeared to have no more than about six people in the scene. The wooden dialogue had a rubbery English-dubbed-into-English look as most supporting actors did their lines in Italian and these were over-dubbed into English, while Par k and Lee worked in English but without synched sound. The result is a D- list action fantasy with some decent stuntwork amidst the sweating and flexing.

The mythological character of Hercules was among the most popular heroes of the peplum (sword-and-sandal) genre within Italian cinema; in fact, its heyday was largely heralded by the unprecedented success of HERCULES (1957), with Steve Reeves – on which the director of this one had actually served as cinematographer! Having watched (and suffered through) quite a few of these low-brow entries over the years, it transpires that only a handful were truly worthy of attention; the film under review being certainly one of them, with another being Vittorio Cottafavi's HERCULES AND THE CAPTIVE WOMEN (1961), both of which just happened to feature the same leading man (Reg Park). At his best an unparalleled purveyor of atmosphere, Bava was ideal for helming the muscle-bound demi-God's adventures in the Netherworld, letting rip his imagination to conceive a color scheme and special effects that would transcend budgetary constraints – and, at the same time, make up for narrative shortcomings (notably such obligatory conventions as youthful romance and comedy relief); however, another definitive trump-card here is the presence of an imposing villain in Christopher Lee (his first of two satisfying collaborations with Bava). To get back to the film's fantasy elements, Hercules consults with a masked clairvoyant throughout (to determine the fate of his beloved, held for the longest time under the spell of Lee's malevolent influence) and combats a flying legion of the undead at the climax (their 'costume' would actually be borrowed by Bava himself for a later sci-fi effort, the equally fine PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES [1965]!); as expected, the action is plentiful, if a bit overly vigorous and obviously artificial: however, instead of destroying the illusion, this rather lends the whole added charm (at one point, Hercules amusingly disarms a throng of pursuers by effortlessly hurling a cart at them - just as he would dispatch the undead with an array of flying boulders)! Despite being best-known in the English-speaking world with the title at the top of this review, the opening credits of the print I watched (presumably culled from the Fantoma DVD) sports a literal translation of the original Italian one i.e. HERCULES IN THE CENTER OF THE EARTH!