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Thursday, January 11, 2018

Hercules And The Tyrants Of Babylon (1964)

Starring Rock Stevens, Helga Line, Mario Petri, Livio Lorenzon, Anna Maria Polani
Directed by Domenico Paolella
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)

Hercules trails his love, the missing queen of the Hellenes, to Babylon where she's been enslaved by a family of despotic rulers.

Peter Lupus, who per Wikipedia would become better known later on for his roles on television, including the original Mission: Impossible, plays Hercules under the name of Rock Stevens in this Italian production, and certainly has the build for it.  There's little connection to any Greek mythology here, with no supernatural creatures or menaces, as the filmmakers instead focus on showcasing Lupus' feats of strength in the title role, primarily by whacking members of Babylon's army with a club or throwing rocks at them.  The climax does employ Hercules in bringing an end to the Babylonian empire, but in a rather poorly staged sequence which is not very exciting.  All of that being said, I think the most interesting parts of the film centered around the Babylonian rulers, two brothers, one warlike, one more reasoning, and a sister, played by the astonishingly beautiful Line, who keeps a disgraced soldier as her lover, and has a secret plot to seize power for herself alone.

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