Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964)

You won't be disappointed!

Terrible acting, screenplay and direction.

Instant Favorite.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This movie takes place about 3000 years ago with a man named, "Salman Osar" (Livio Lorenzon), his brother "Azzur" (Tullio Altamura) and their sister, "Taneal" (Helga Line) jointly ruling the Babylonian Empire. Although the affairs of state are being effectively managed by mutual consent, the fact is that all three desire sole authority and each of them secretly scheme against the other two. This intrigue soon becomes even more heated when a Babylonian raiding party sent to obtain slaves unknowingly captures "Asparia" (Anna Maria Pollani), the Queen of the Hellenes. Soon both the Assyrian "King Phaleg" (Mario Petri) and "Hercules" (Peter Lupus) set out for Babylon to release her from Babylonian captivity. While King Phaleg seeks to force her to marry him in order to extend his empire, Hercules only wants to reunite her with her subjects. Now, as far as the overall movie is concerned, although I thought it started off pretty good it seemed to lose its sense of direction towards the end. In any case, Peter Lupus managed to portray Hercules reasonably well and both Helga Line and Anna Maria Pollani certainly added to the scenery. But other than that I really didn't see anything that remarkable about this movie. Accordingly, I rate this movie as just slightly below average.

After the King of Abyssinia (Petri) is double-crossed by the three rulers of Babylon (Line, Lorenzon, Altamura), he enlists the aid of the mighty Hercules (Lupus, billed as 'Rock Stevens') to overthrow Babylon and capture a Queen (Polani) hiding amongst serfs in the city, to be his bride. Polani also happens to be Hercules' girlfriend, leading to further treachery as Petri seeks to rub out Hercules once the Queen has been delivered to safety.Lupus is a more affable Hercules than most, a likable hulk who went on to co-star in the "Mission: Impossible" TV series in the late sixties. But my favourite part of this Herc episode is the appearance of German bombshell Helga Line. She's something special, and has a sizable role as the seductive and scheming sister, seeking to take the throne of Babylon that she reluctantly shares with her two brothers through an elaborate plan involving a massive underground winch system primed to literally tear the city apart.All the elements are present with fierce battles, glorious colourful costumes and sets, heroism and tragedy, inane dialogue ("look our king is dead, let's surrender") and the usual array of villains and conspiracies to entertain fans of the genre. In terms of highlights, don't miss the scene in which Hercules is invited to fight with pretenders to his mantle and discovers that the fight has been fixed in his opponents' favour - pity the fool.

When the King of Babylon died, he left the throne to his three children to rule the land equally. But, and it should come as no surprise, they all have designs on running things for themselves – making for lots of treachery and backstabbing. Their kingdom also needs a steady supply of slaves. But one of their newest slaves just happens to be the Queen of the Hellenes. Hercules gets the signal and jumps into action to rescue the Queen before her true identity can be discovered. Along the way, he'll do what he can to free the rest of the slaves and bring an end to the tyranny of Babylon.As far as peplums go, Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon is on the down side of average. The two biggest problems are the lack of a memorable, big moment and Peter Lupus as Hercules. Most all sword and sandal movies worth their salt have one big memorable moment – it might be a fight scene against a Cyclops or a battle against a mechanical giant or it might be the destruction of an army – but there's usually a moment or scene that stands out. That's not the case with Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon. The closest you'll find here is probably the scene where Hercules turns the big wheel to bring down the walls of Babylon. But it's so ridiculous that it's hardly THE moment. I mean what city is constructed on top of a giant wheel that can be turned to bring about its destruction. It's the equivalent of building a modern city on top of an atomic bomb. It's just stupid! Besides the lack of a big moment, the rest of the screenplay is pretty dull. I'll admit that some of the scenes with the siblings scheming against each other were pretty good, but that's about it. Overall, not a lot of interesting things to hang your hat on.As for Lupus, he makes for one very dull Hercules. He's got the body for it – tanned to perfection with the ever present sheen of oil – but like the screenplay, he's also dull. The man just didn't have the command or screen presence to pull of being the lead in a movie like this. It doesn't help matters that his version of Hercules insists on carrying a very large club that obviously weighs no more than five pounds. And the sound it makes when he goes into battle – bong, bong, bong. When I was little, I had a game called Bing, Bang, Bong. You arranged these small drum like trampolines just so and bounced a metal ball from one to the other. That's what Hercules club sounds like in Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon – a metal ball hitting a rubber trampoline. For some reason, I doubt that's what it would sound like if someone were to hit you in the skull with a huge club. (I do realize that it's a tricky thing to criticize anything related to sound in a low-budget Italin movie from the 1960s that's been dubbed. But in this case, I can't help myself.)I've listed the negatives, so what about the positives? I can sum-up the film's biggest highlight with two words – Helga Line. She is the lone (and very beautiful) bright spot. Though I must admit that some of her outfits probably weren't right for Babylon in 1,000 B.C., but still, she looked good. She also has the best part in the plot. Her scheming is by far more interesting that that of either of her two brothers. But as much as I enjoyed seeing Ms. Line, by herself she can't save the movie. I usually enjoy even bad peplums, however, in the case of Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon, a 4/10 seems about right.

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.