HERCULES AGAINST ROME (1964)
aka ERCOLE CONTRO ROMA
Article 2036 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 10-11-2006
Posting Date: 3-10-2007
Directed by Piero Pierotti
Featuring Sergio Ciani, Wandisa Guida, Livio Lorenzon

Hercules must save the Roman emperor from a plot against him by the pretorian guards.

At least that’s the plot I got off of IMDB. You know, I usually don’t have much trouble locating the Sword-and-Sandal movies that pop up on my list; I manage to find them without a great deal of hassle (if I don’t already have them in my collection). This one was far and away the hardest to get. When it finally made itself available, I was quite glad, even if the print was undubbed and subtitled in what looks like Dutch; if the latter statement is true, that means that in the Netherlands they subtitle Sword-and-Sandal movies, a fact that actually gives me pause.

In truth, it hardly made a difference to me. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a Sword-and-Sandal movie where the plot made much of a difference to me, and the fun things about it (watching Hercules kick butt) are still here in spades. I really like Alan Steel; he looks like he’s having the time of his life during the fight scenes. Not only does he knock someone off his horse with a really big mallet, he also attacks people with pillars, hits them with logs, pushes a huge rock off of a cliff, and when it comes time for him to bend the bars back, he chooses instead to just pick up a big rock and knock the whole cell door down. He even dispatches one of the villains with an anvil, an act that would make Bugs Bunny proud. The main fantastic content is, of course, Hercules’s great strength; you try dispatching someone with an anvil and see how hard it is.

I wonder just how many more of these I’m destined to see.