Hercules and the Princess of Troy

This unsold TV pilot for a Hercules series starred Gordon Scott as the legendary muscular hero of Greek mythology. Hercules used a ship as his mode of transportation and had as sidekicks Ulysses and Diogenes before either of them did the deeds made them legends in their own right.

This movie has Hercules in Troy and when you consider he's there with young Ulysses that is quite ironical. Young Princess Diana (another irony) will in two months ascend the throne and her uncle the regent will cede power. But uncle Petra isn't about to do that.

Troy is plagued with a sea monster and believe me the special effects aren't Ray Harryhausen quality. They've got to sacrifice people occasionally because when they've tried to defeat the monster, the Trojans have come up way short. But that's before Hercules took on the job.

This one was played very straight in true peplum fashion. I'm sure Scott would have made a superb TV Hercules if he was given the chance. That would have to wait for another thirty years or so when Kevin Sorbo played the part in a series that had a nice satirical edge to it occasionally.

This was pleasantly short. I thought the DVD this was on might be cut - I mean under an hour? This couldn't be true now could it? But yes it was and while I don't really have the will or time to gather more information about the backstory to do it this way, whoever likes Sword and Sandal movies and (wet) rubber monsters can watch this (wait that sounded bad - ah well you know what I mean in the end, don't you?).

So yes no historical accuracy once again, but don't expect that with those types of movies anyway ...

Not a great movie, this was (as has been pointed out) a pilot for an unsold television series (produced by Joseph E. Levine, who distributed the original Steve Reeves HERCULES) based on the adventures of Hercules. I remembering looking forward to this after seeing a magazine article featuring Carlo Rambaldi's sea monster. In truth, the monster is the only thing worth watching in the show. It's well crafted but badly used. In a few shots it looks very convincing, in others like a big mechanical puppet pointlessly waving its claws around. Still worth checking out for pre-CGI monster fans and Gordon Scott makes a solid Hercules as usual.

Joseph E. Levine and B movie maven Albert band get together to produce a TV pilot that never got off the ground because the tykes were beginning to bore by this time but for revisiting a campy genre this one is painless and fills the void.The plot is well...minimal so who cares? The main points here are in their highest form. It's short and sweet,beefy and is never at a loss for action. It's also mercifully done in English. The Sea Critter is a Carlo Rombaldi creation (E.T.) worthy of A.I.P. creature constructor Paul Blaisdel's envy.In short it's wacky and original if not very menacing.The major fault I would say that in comparison to many other sword and sandal epics this one is not too babe-a-licious.We only get one semi hot princess and the obligatory harem dances and snake charmers are conspicuously absent.Guess they weren't aiming the series towards the dads. At 47 minutes it's a sweaty trip to fun land.

It's silly to complain that this is a B-movie made for television - because that's exactly what it is, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. And here's the good news - it's a pretty darn good B-movie made for television. One of the major problems with standard Italian Hercules films is that the are usually 100- 120 minutes long, too long for the amount of story they have to tell; consequently there's a lot of padding to them, usually in the middle. This film is kept lean and tight at 47 minutes - only the highlights of the story are here, and that's all we need.

I must remark that production values are gorgeous for mid-60s television. The acting is professional, the pacing is snappy, the story interesting (for this genre), the special fx are on a par with better television sci-fi/fantasy shows of the period - this is solid B-movie entertainment. Worth checking out.