HERCULES AND THE PRINCESS OF TROY (1965)
TV-Movie
Article 2987 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 7-12-2009
Posting Date: 10-18-2009
Directed by Albert Band
Featuring Gordon Scott, Paul Stevens, Mart Hulswit
Country: Italy / USA

Hercules agrees to free Troy from a curse that requires the residents to sacrifice its maidens to a sea monster. However, he soon discovers that there are some Trojans who don’t want the curse lifted…

Those who can’t stand the bad dubbing and think sword-and-sandal movies are way too long may find this one more to their liking; since it was originally intended as a pilot for a TV series, it runs only 47 minutes, and the cast consists entirely of English-speaking actors. Gordon Scott had already appeared in a number of these types of movies in Italy, as well as having played Tarzan for several movies prior to that. The cast also features another veteran of sword-and-sandal films; that’s Gordon Mitchell as the pirate captain. All in all, it’s pretty much what you’d expect for a TV-series attempt at the genre, and the monster is one of the better ones out there for these movies. I suspect the idea of a Hercules TV-series would have flown better a few years earlier; by this time, the genre had burned itself out through an excess of product, and the trend was turning towards James Bond imitations. Besides, given the repetitive nature of the movies of the genre, I wonder if a series could have come up with a fresh plot for each episode, or fallen into formula (with, say, an evil queen every other week). We’ll leave Diogenes to figure out that question.