Les amours d'Hercule

The totally rare Danish videorelease of this "trashy" film is full screen running 96.00 mins precisely. Italian tv channel RaiUno showed a letterboxed print(1: 1.70 cirka) the other day running ½ a minnute shorter. The 2 versions features a whole bunch of scenes filmed from different/alternative angles and many are diff/alternative takes. Quite "interesting" to compare actually...if you are into this sort of movie-watching. One scene found only in the Danish version shows Miss mansfield (hidden behind some see-through cloth)covering her naked body with some clothes. Extremely...uuhuuhhh...daring!!!!! I give it 5 out of 10.....but "reflecting" on it afterwards is worth a good laugh and....10 !!! Cheers sandal-genre comrades!!!

Mickey Hargitay is Hercules in this go-around, with wife Jayne Mansfield playing a couple of roles in a movie in which all the women seem to be what Jane Russell called 'full-figured women' in those Playtex commercials. Hargitay rides around in a very short chiton that must have caused considerable chafing, speaks with an Italian accent in the dubbed version I saw, and fights a three-headed hydra that looks and moves like a carousel critter.

There's almost nothing positive to say about this movie, which looks like it was made for an audience of libidinous five-year-olds.

Years ago I managed to catch this one on a Saturday morning TV broadcast and watched it through to the end, with an amused smile. As other comments here attest, it's definitely not one of the better sword-and-sandal epics and, if you're a fan of that genre, you'd better appreciate what Jayne Mansfield has to offer should you give it a look-see. Like so many others in this canon, it's one of the tombstones marking the declining careers of Hollywood expatriates.

A side note: In the early 1960s Carol Burnett, in a one-woman engagement, appeared at the Greek Theater (an outdoor ampitheater, northeast of downtown Hollywood in Griffith Park, which each year had a summer season of big-name acts, ballet companies, fully-mounted operas, etc.) and, as part of her show, she did a very funny bit in which she imagined Jayne Mansfield accepting her Academy Award as Best Actress in a Hercules extravaganza. In her acceptance speech Carol/Jayne recreated a scene and I can still remember her screeching: "Hercules! Hercules! Put me DOWN!!" Got a BIG laugh. Carol must have used this film as her inspiration, for in it there's a scene toward the end where Mickey is rescuing Jayne from some peril or other and he appears to be staggering under the totality of her considerable assets. Before they had left for Italy, Jayne and Mickey had frequently performed a stunt, well-documented in filmed interviews, in which Mickey effortlessly lifted Jayne overhead and paraded her around airplane-style. His seeming inability to recreate that feat in this movie is one of the film's comic highpoints for this viewer.

In THE LOVES OF HERCULES, the titular titan (Mickey Hargitay) is vengeful after his wife is murdered. Herc goes on a quest that includes great tests of strength and feats of derring-do, complete with his toting of an enormous tree as if it was a toothpick, as well as senseless cattle slaughter.

Soon, Queen Deianira (Jayne Mansfield!) falls hopelessly in love with the big lug. A lot of time passes with no real action, though the mighty, shirtless one does glisten like a rotisserie chicken in the sun!

Then, Big H gets a chance to battle the hydra, which looks like a Rose Bowl parade float. He also gets captured by amazons, who look even better in mini-skirts than he does, though their cockatoo headdresses remain a mystery.

This isn't one of the more dynamic of its sub-genre. It mostly exists as an excuse to show off the physical attributes of Hunkules and Ms. Mansfield. So, don't expect a scintillating story line...

HERCULES VS. THE HYDRA definitely ranks in the top 5 of the hundreds of Hercules films made in Italy in the 1960's (the others being HERCULES IN THE HAUNTED WORLD; the original Steve Reeves HERCULES; THE FURY OF HERCULES; the delirious THE WITCH'S CURSE; and the equally gonzo HERCULES PRISONER OF EVIL.) But back to HYDRA -- first, you've got Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay, and the fact that they eventually married, and that Mansfield died tragically, lends an undeniable poignancy to this movie. There's no way around it, it's part of Hollywood history, and it makes this a very melancholy portrait of two people falling in love. Second, there's Hargitay -- and dammit, he's a REALLY GOOD Hercules, possibly the best on a pure acting level (and Hargitay wasn't really an actor, so that's saying something.) He's dubbed (of course), but there's a real emotional yearning quality that comes across here, and he puts his heart and soul into almost every scene. Watch a bunch of the other Hercules actors and you'll see what I mean. Best of all, the movie veers off into delirious Alexander Ptushko territory about halfway through, when Herc encounters the three-headed Hydra in the land of the Amazons. Anyone who loves Ray Harryhausen type fantasy films will get a kick out of this one. The weird-ass forest of human trees is especially good. Definitely a winner.