Hercules and the Captive Women (1963)

Why so much hype?

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

I'm probably just so used to seeing movies shown on MST3K being awful that I found this to not be that bad. It probably helps that it actually does get good near the end with all the explosions and stuff. The special effects get better. I still wouldn't recommend it of course. This was the time when most movies were in color. You can kind of see how gaudy it looks. It's not as bad as some other movies, but still pales in comparison to even older movies like the 1940 "The Thief Of Baghdad". I guess the atmosphere wasn't bad.Of course, I haven't been following the Hercules films in this series that much, so I didn't really care what was going on. I thought Atlantis was supposed to be underwater? What's the deal with that? A lot of the acting is pretty corny too. I guess this series as a whole wasn't as awful as most. It starts so abruptly. There's just all this action out of nowhere. Well, at least there was something going on at the beginning. **

It takes awhile for this Hercules entry to get going, giving a very dull half hour to start the film. These Italian gladiator movies are a mixed bag, but they all seem to have one thing in common. An evil woman is somehow responsible for disparity out of her people or in the case of this film, her own daughter. She has sentenced the princess to death because she believes that if her daughter outlives her, their kingdom will be destroyed. So the young heroine becomes the subject of Hercules and his son's efforts to rescue her from certain death, which means fighting a horny rubber alligator and using a sling to kill the guards who are preparing to test the princess off a cliff. Reg Park takes on the role of the Greek hero in this film, which opens with very attractive credits of suppose Greek artwork which actually looks more Egyptian. Even though the names of the Queens change from film to film, their motivations are pretty much all the same, and the characterizations are one-dimensional and without any sort of variation. The dubbing is better than normal in the print that I saw, but the film remains more chatty in its emphasis to attempt a more solid story. Lacking in action for the most part, this is deadly dull in many moments, and ultimately this leads it to be quite tedious and predictable.

I'm not sure how much of this movie was "real." There was a small amount of dialogue that was obviously inserted into the movie just for Elvira's version. Such as when two characters from ancient Atlantis mentioned Elvira.But surely the dialogue that Elvira ranted about really happened. I'm guessing nearly all the lines spoken were really in the movie. The voices didn't match the actors' lips moving, though, but I should have realized: this meant the movie was dubbed. I've seen only one humorously dubbed movie, but because that was a respected movie, I concluded the original must also have been humorous and that the lines were legitimate. I could also tell at least one actor did a really good job without ever hearing him speak. I didn't have that advantage here, so I can't really evaluate anyone's performance.One thing is certain: this was a poorly dubbed movie. The actors speaking English were atrocious. Elvira commented on how bad it was but I never saw her say that was why. And I finally had to agree: they couldn't have made a worse movie if they were trying to make it bad. It is entirely possible the original in Italian was actually worth seeing. But I have only this version to evaluate.Here's what I believe happened: in ancient Greece, Androcles felt threatened by a nearby kingdom and took Hercules, one of his greatest warriors, and a group of slaves, along with the midget (Elvira's term) Timotheus, along on a large boat to deal with the problem. Before leaving, Hercules said goodbye to his wife and his son Hylas, and it appeared he really loved them and was going to miss them. What he didn't know was that Timotheus was hiding Hylas in the boat.There was some sort of mutiny and the slaves left. Androcles and Hercules felt that leaving the slaves behind was not cruel because they were still alive and the island had resources. But the land of Atlantis, normally invisible to humans, became visible. Hercules landed there and rescued Ismene, daughter of the Queen of Atlantis, who was imprisoned in a stone. He did this by defeating an evil creature who kept changing shape. The people of Atlantis had to make sacrifices to please one of the gods, so Ismene was chosen but now could be set free. Or could she? The title suggests more captive women, but there weren't any. Instead, Hercules had to deal with a queen who seemed appreciative and yet at the same time wanted Hercules dead. Plus Androcles was missing. And the young boys of Atlantis were being sacrificed in order to create a master race. Something similar to a leper colony was the result of failures in the attempt.That's what I believe happened, leaving out the ending.The plot seems interesting enough. Hercules faces up to all his challenges, and even though he has some really big ones, he is after all one of the greatest warriors of his time. And Timotheus is a good friend, even if his dialogue is difficult to understand. Hylas also proves very helpful. There are plenty of good fights, and one of the effective-looking weapons, never actually used, reminds me of a modern movie microphone.Maybe this isn't so bad.

In the late 1950s and through the 1960s, an odd sort of film became very popular--Italian strong-man tales set during the classical period. The characters were usually named Hercules, Maciste, Ursus or Samson--and often, due to HORRIBLE dubbing, the same movie might be dubbed so poorly that in one version he's Samson and in another he's Hercules. It seems that the names weren't really that important, nor was the dubbing. What was important is that, at the time, it was cheap to make films in Italy and with some less than expert dubbing, you could sell the film to many different markets...and people, surprisingly, came to see the films even though most of them are pretty terrible. If you see this particular one, you might think it's among the worst--it isn't. In fact, it's pretty typical of the crappy strong-man films.Like so many of these films, a foreign guy stars as the strong dude. However, Reg Park hails from the UK and South Africa--most of these men were Americans in these films. I assume back in those days, Italian men must have been pretty wimpy, because they didn't just use Italian leading men for these roles! Most of the leads were body builders in real life (Park had been Mr. Universe--though I doubt if other planets sent representatives to the competition).As for the plot, this one involves an insane and power-mad queen (also a pretty typical plot--it's the third film like this I've seen and I've only seen about 8 or 10 of the films). And, like the others, she had designs on taking over the entire world and serves an evil god. However, Hercules and his buddy Androcles don't know this--all they know is that they are on a rather pathetic expedition (with practically no men--just a rag-tag group that includes a midget and Herc's son who is a stowaway). The journey is prompted after some soothsayer announces that there is a threat from an army overseas. And, of course this takes our friends to the evil queen--who rules in Atlantis!! The evil queen has three goals. First, to kill her own daughter and anyone else if the mood strikes--including her own henchmen (good henchman are hard to come by--this seems very wasteful). Second, to take over the world. Third, to see if what's inside Hercules' tunic is of Olympian proportions!! It's a pretty standard cliché that the evil queens ALWAYS want a piece of the Herc-meister! Hercules' goal is to find his friend Androcles. Once he does, oddly, Andy doesn't recognize him and even tries to kill him. I'd much prefer if he'd tried to kill the midget. I am NOT anti-midget, but this guy (like the dumb satyr or 'goat boy' from the awful Hercules cartoons of the same era) was just annoying--mostly because his dubbed voice was so dreadful. Eventually, after LOTS of fighting, the city of Atlantis is destroyed by an exploding volcano--and THAT'S how the lost city apparently became lost.Overall, the dubbing was by far the worst part of the film. However, the costumes, sets and action were all pretty lame. In particular, I loved the lameness (or is it 'lamitude'?) of the reptile man who attacked Herc on the first island he came to in the movie. It's so dumb you can't help but laugh. My score of 3 is probably way too generous...but compared to many others in the genre, believe me, it could be MUCH worse (such as "Maciste Vs. the Moon Men"). Perhaps it's good for a laugh, but make sure not to watch too many of these films--your brain probably can't take THAT much!