Another Hercules, another Hercules. Yeah, they recast this guy in every single danged entry, with but scant counterexamples. For a series with otherwise no dedication to anything like inter-entry continuity, a new star merely combines with new story, setting, characters, what-have-you. Even so, there used to be a certain tonal consistency to the Herculeses, at least up through Hercules in the Haunted World (the best one). It was something, at least, to distinguish the top-drawer Herc from other, lesser pepla. That tone is also gone, now, with its attendant fantasy embellishments, making all new Hercules movies little more than random, disengaging, non sequitur pepla. It’s all so arbitrary now.
Any rate, Brad Harris is now Hercules.
Brad Harris is a god among shirtless goons. Beyond being a mere bodybuilder, a man occupied solely with embiggening his own hulk, Harris comes of a background in stuntwork valid enough to make even the great Yakima Canutt envious. His most pertinent prior stuntmanship involved doubling for Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, an American-made (and Kubrick-directed) attempt to utilize the Italian zest for shirtlessness for the powers of good rather than evil. Harris saw a quick rise through the peplum ranks, starring in 1961’s Samson – which was enough to warrant promotion to the role of mighty Hercules (as we’ll see – ye gods, tomorrow!).
The Fury of Hercules offers little to comment upon which we haven’t already addressed, as it is a most middle-of-the-road, formulaic peplum, with not enough creative factors to lend it personality, and made neither well enough nor poorly enough to be otherwise notable. It’s just the standard thing: A Grecian (or Roman) city is in danger of a potential tyrant, a strong man rides in from wherever, leads opposing armed forces against the goons, and gets seduced.
Right, I could call it quits right now!
But I won’t. I gotta justify having watched this dispiriting non-art, which means recounting it in a little more depth. What joy!
Hercules rides into Thebes, because it’s always Thebes, which is itself becoming boring, and the set is always the same old temple anyway. Which they don’t bother redressing when invoking “Thebes,” so that’s a low budget way to justify cheapness.
So Hercules rides into Thebes (sounds like the start of a joke), come to “see” his old master Theseus. Myth? Nah! In truth, Hercules’ plotdar is actin’ up again, as he’s stumbled upon the vile, usurpulous (?) schemes of the grand vizier Menistus. Though Herc doesn’t know it, nor will he for 2/3rds of this, lest we not reach feature length. Menistus is played by Serge Gainsbourg, who is famous for things completely unrelated to acting. Basically, Gainsbourg is France’s Bob Dylan, as far as I can tell, a singer-songwriter-mythmaker-hero-icon-legend, thought the nation’s best ever. For a little context, check this out (psst, Brigitte Bardot’s in it). Can’t act, though.
Meanwhile, some more characters: Fulfilling the ostensible seductress role is Mara Berni, another Samson alumni. She plays Queen Cnidia – or at least that’s the spelling IMDb offers up. To hear it spoken, she’s called “Chlamydia,” and that’s what I’m gonna call her. She doesn’t serve much purpose in this film, as they can barely muster the seduction subplot to begin with, meaning she’s just someone else for Menistus to talk with.
There’s another woman, apparently unnamed (Elka Arendt), whom I later on decided was named Jallia (sp.?). She does nothing.
Some more fun with the cast: Appearing in his first role ever is Sergio Ciani, aka Alan Steel, who also shares a Samson connection. More on him tomorrow.
And totally out of left field, the Zagreb Opera ballet is in this thing! Actually, come to think of it, that’d be them all dancing before Chlamydia now, listlessly fulfilling our need for the dancing servant scene.
Then there’s Daria.
Yeah, that’s her. Daria (Brigitte Corey, yet another freaking Samson alum!) is Chlamydia’s handmaiden. She’s also the “good girl,” but in a proactive sense which totally undermines whatever value Chlamydia would usually have. It’s she who warns Hercules about all the villainy and anti-rebellion schemery taking place in Thebes. Apparently part of this scheming – which is all Menistus’ doing, mind you – is that Menistus wishes to assassinate Daria herself, because somehow killing the Queen’s handmaiden is what gets you promoted to king. But Menistus cannot do that himself – he’d be culpable – so he wishes to frame the rebels. And when the “rebel” assassination fails, Menistus declares for the sheer hell of it he’s just gonna go ahead and execute Daria in full public view, and become king anyway. Whatever. I probably got that all hugely wrong, but attempting to parse out these political intrigues is never worthwhile.
Even prior to this public execution, Hercules is busy running Daria’s “whatever” pattern of chores, racing through a “Prince of Persia” style dungeon system smacking around guards and soldiers with no greater goal or sensibility. Also, there’s goddamned elephants! Hercules talks them away, ‘cause that’s easier than intermixing your animal footage and your Harris footage.
Then Hercules can make his big, bellowing, burly entrance in the midst of Menistus’ grand public execution scene, on the one day of filming they could afford extras.
Herc pleads for Daria’s life, because he is horny. Menistus is a man of his word, willing to free Daria should anyone in all of Thebes request it…as long as the guy survives the Path of Death. Mwah hah hah hah hah HAH! [Lightning crackle!] That is, three successive Feats of Strength™ (or F.O.D.s) of such an arbitrary nature, it’s almost like the filmmakers (i.e. director Gianfranco Parolini) simply had a formula checklist they were marking off one by one. And each “test” is down in a cramped cell (the same cramped cell set, in fact), meaning the extras don’t come into play ever.
Test # 1: Hercules vs. lions. Not only is this the same setup as always, I think it’s the same footage too. Sure beats doing something interesting.
Test # 2: Hercules vs. a man in Italy’s only rotted ape suit. Er…Hercules vs. a genuine ape! Yeah! Actually, this scene is familiar, for it is the beat-for-beat inspiration for the spiked pit scene in Army of Darkness, only minus little things like Deadites or chainsaws or a sense of humor or entertainment value.
Test # 3: I’ll just refer to my notes on this one…“Fight a dude in a spike-floored cage with one arm chained to the ceiling as the cage floats above the arena. Pretty weird, this.”
Hercules succeeds in all these tasks, so Daria is freed. Then Menistus tries suddenly killing Daria (and the Herc) again, right there, for no good reason. Whatever, it lets the goodies’ escape through the gates of Thebes, in a moment Brad Harris desperately wishes had 1/50th of the élan Errol Flynn brought to such stunts in The Adventures of Robin Hood.
Hercules and Daria make it to the rebel outpost in the forest, Hercules finding it using that same plotdar which occasionally works when it is narratively convenient. And here I must pause, for I realize I was mistaken. It wasn’t Daria getting executed, but that frustratingly unnamed woman we only now come to call Jallia. Not that it makes her any less useless, for she now recedes into shrieking, unjustifiable insanity, hollering madly about what big muscles Hercules has, then falling over dead from absolutely nothing. Or…not dead, quite, but nearly there, in the Pythonesque way, only not funny. But she does die soon enough.
As for Daria, whom I’m clearly more obsessed with, well…She was the one who arbitrarily sent Herc off to face elephants and whatnot, which somehow ties in with all this other crap we’ve seen so far. Am I not giving this movie a fair shake? Probably. And it turns out Daria is a spy for the rebels. Queen’s closest consort a spy? Not bad placement, that.
Wanna try for The Departed-style double spied-in goodness? Oh sure! Hercules, itching for action and a plot, runs back over to Thebes and frees some prisoners. There’s the idea of an action sequence somewhere in that pile of words, but it’s nowhere up on screen.
It turns out one of these prisoners Herc brings back to the rebels’ stronghold is a spy for evil. A more efficient spy, too, because good is dumb. All Daria’s done so far is shuffle Hercules around the playing board rather inefficiently, like a screenwriter. The good guys have taken no formal plot action, being the worst sort of passive heroes. But the bad spy, it takes him no less than an evening to report the rebels’ location back to his superiors on the Death Star – excuse me, in Thebes, as Menistus’ men then close in with something resembling Greco-Roman AT-ATs, only the rebel’s camp looks like an Ewok village and – Oh my brain hurts!
The bad guys kill whatever of Jallia isn’t dead yet, then kidnap the hell out of Daria. And where’s Hercules been during all of this? Why, for over the past two screen caps, he hasn’t been seen on screen once. Nope, he’s been off in the “night” (bad night filter – a ‘60s special!) with his male “friends.” They were “hunting.”
Anyway, he ambles casually back into the plot as the Third Act rears its predictable head. That means, no matter where in the “story” we happen to be at this stage, it doesn’t matter, because it’s time to start assembling the armies from both sides for the bog-standard sub-Braveheart battle scene. Actually, I think I’ve seen this specific battle scene before, in Maciste in the Valley of the Kings. Indeed, The Fury of Hercules is pretty much the exact same movie as that one, only with a Roman setting instead of an Egyptian one. What’d I say about the interchangeability of these pepla?!
And now, something like an hour after watching it, I genuinely cannot recall the rest of this film. …Oh well, how’d I phrase it in my notes? (Weird abbreviations, etc. preserved.)
“Hercules in POD (same pit as the monkey scene – cheap!). C saves him, H climbs out, M spears C dead, he forgives her, runs off after others. Lengthy, Matrix Revolutions death scene, most tittersome. H, mad, runs. Fights jerks in throne room. The climactic fight scene, same as always, much thing-tossing. He even throws a dude. Hercules wins.
Field of lame-ass battle. Armies charge. Hercules does a F.O.S., opens city gates, lets rebels in. Extras everywhere, yet I do not care. All so much disengaging, variation-free non-spectacle. Stuff burns.”
Nope, still doesn’t ring a bell! Then it’s Menistus’ last stand, taking Daria at knife-point as Hercules looks on. Yes, it’s exactly the standoff with Hans from Die Hard, and holy crap, they even resolve it the same way – a hidden weapon (but not duct-taped, sadly) gets utilized, kills the villain. But for reasons which are arbitrary, even for a peplum, the one who ultimately saves the day turns out to be…some kid we haven’t seen since the pre-titles! Seriously, all we saw this brat do previously was screech at Hercules from a distance that someday he’s be stronger. Oh…kay…then. And the kid’s name? Mosquito. “The End.”
These things are turning into shaggy dog stories.
I lament the lack of fantasy in some of these underachieving pepla. These are the worst ones, typically, or at least the ones I find least interesting. Consider it a sign of the peplum’s reduced ambition, reduced budget. We need more fantastic rubbery monsters – which were never that great to begin with. Yet it seems even this is beyond the latter day sword-and-sandals’ capability. And there’s nothing else of distinction in The Fury of Hercules, nothing else to respond to. Oh well, at least I’m done with it.
Next up: The Erotic Adventures of Hercules, with Normal Fell as Zeus – Whoohoo!
No…wait…that’s from “The Simpsons.” The next real series entry is another damned crossover, necessitating another damned detour into another damned franchise. A shame really. Still, “The Simpsons” pretty succinctly sums up what this genre’s become, how artful it is:
“Hercules, the Cyclops tore off my clothes!”
“HA HA HA HA!”
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Hercules (1958)
• No. 2 Hercules Unchained (1959)
• No. 3 The Revenge of Hercules (1960)
• No. 4 Hercules vs. the Hydra (1960)
• No. 5 Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (1961)
• No. 6 Hercules id the Haunted World (1961)
• No. 7 Maciste Against Hercules in the Vale of Woe (1961)
• No. 8 Ulysses vs. Hercules (1962)
• No. 10 Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (1963)
• No. 12 Hercules in the Land of Darkness (1964)
• No. 16 Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon (1964)
• No. 17 Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus (1964)
• No. 18 Hercules and the Princess of Troy (1965)
• No. 19 Hercules the Avenger (1965)
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