Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide (1961)

User Rating:

2.9/10   

Director:

Vittorio Cottafavi

Writers:

Vittorio Cottafavi (writer) and
Sandro Continenza (writer) ...

Release Date:

15 April 1963 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Fantasy | Sci-Fi

Tagline:

Heroic Hercules battles the seductive powers of the wicked Queen of Atlantis!

Plot:

Strong yet sleepy Hercules discovers that the Queen of Atlantis is plotting to take over the world with superhuman warriors.

Plot Keywords:

Hercules | Midget | MST3K | Peplum | Mythological

Cast

Reg Park	...	Ercole (Hercules)
Fay Spain	...	Queen Antinea of Atlantis
Ettore Manni	...	Androclo, Re di Tebe
Luciano Marin	...	Illo
Laura Efrikian	...	Ismene, Antinea's Daughter (as Laura Altan)
Enrico Maria Salerno	...	Re di Megara
Ivo Garrani	...	Re di Megalia
Gian Maria Volontè	...	Re di Sparta
Mimmo Palmara	...	Astor, il Gran Visir
Mario Petri	...	Zenith, prete di Urano
Mino Doro	...	Oraclo
Salvatore Furnari	...	Timoteo, il nano
Alessandro Sperli
Mario Valdemarin	...	Gabor
Luciana Angiolillo	...	Deianira

Also Known As:

Hercule à la conquête de l'Atlantide (France)
Hercules Conquers Atlantis (UK)
Hercules and the Captive Women (USA)
Hercules and the Conquest of Atlantis (International: English title)
Hercules and the Haunted Women

Runtime:

Italy:101 min | USA:94 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.20 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

USA:Unrated | Finland:K-12

Company:

Comptoir Français du Film Production (CFFP)

Trivia:

The soundtrack of the American release ("Hercules and the Captive Women") contains several short passages from the score of Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), in particular the easily recognizable three-note "Creature theme".

Goofs:

Continuity: Near the end of the film, Hercules swims away from the island to a boat, but when he climbs aboard he is completely dry.

Quotes:

Androclo, Re di Tebe: Uranus... to rule over all!
Ercole: What you say is blasphemy!

Movie Connections:

Featured in "Mystery Science Theater 3000: Hercules and the Captive Women (#5.12)" (1992)

Better Than the Last One I Saw

At least I sort of understood this Hercules movie's direction. He has been asked to help, and, doggone it, he does. There is a revolution going on and once again there's an evil queen. This time she's dealing with an impending catastrophe caused by the aligning of planets or some such thing. They say "Uranus" an awful lot. It's hard not to giggle. This one has an amnesiac named Androcles (isn't he the guy that pulled the thorn from the lion's paw). Then there's Hylas. He's Herc's son in this one. In mythology, he's the great muscle man's teenage lover (those Greeks in those days; you gotta love 'em). One thing you can count on. They throw names of characters around and they have nothing to do with any previous myth. This does have a few intriguing twists and turns, including the alliances against the evil queen. Every time she has a chance to be nice, she just can't do it. Some guy crawls about twenty miles to report the results of a battle. When she hears what he went through, she has him executed for his incompetence in battle. The queen is really quite nice looking and has a liquid she tries on Herc, but in one of the great scenes, he spits it in the air like an overinflated orca. There's also a group of men who have lived lives of deformity who are given hope by the great hero. Of course, they all end up dead, but at least they no longer had bumps on their noses and people didn't throw dead chickens at them (you have to see it; I can't explain). Until I bought this collection, it had been about 30 years since I saw one of these films. There's not much to recommend them.