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ERCOLE E LA REGINA DI LIDIA (HERCULES AND THE QUEEN OF LIDIA) (1959) [aka Hercules Unchained] |
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“Either
I am successful in overcoming the madness of these men, or I'll believe
that I, Hercules, am deserted by the gods!” |
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Director: Pietro Francisci Starring: Steve Reeves, Sylva Koscina, Sylvia Lopez, Gabriele Antonini, Sergio Fantoni, Mimmo Palmara, Andrea Fantasia, Primo Canera, Cesare Fantoni, Carlo D’Angelo Screenplay: Ennio De Concini and Pietro Francisci |
Synopsis: A man on a stretcher is carried into the presence
of Queen Omphale of Lidia (Sylvia Lopez) and her young lover. As she
caresses the unconscious man, Omphale gestures to her guards, who draw
their swords and kill her lover…. After many adventures, Hercules (Steve
Reeves), his bride, Iole (Sylva Koscina), and the young Ulysses
(Gabriele Antonini) land in Attica. Ulysses’ father, Laertes (Andrea
Fantasia), King of Ithaca, asks Iole and Hercules to look after his son,
then gives Ulysses two carrier pigeons, telling him to send a message to
Ithaca if he is in trouble. The adventurers set out in a covered wagon.
Hercules brags about the wonders of the city of Thebes. At that moment,
the wagon is overtaken by a band of mercenary soldiers who,
disturbingly, are commanded by a Theban. As the wagon enters a valley,
it is stopped by Antaeus (Primo Canera), a giant of a man, who announces
that no-one passes through without paying a price. When Antaeus decides
that he wants Iole, he and Hercules fight. When Ulysses realises that
Antaeus is the son of the Earth goddess, and draws strength from contact
with the ground, Hercules lifts Antaeus into the air and throws him over
a low cliff into the sea. The three companions travel on, entering a
forest, where they encounter the soldiers who passed them earlier. One
of them insults Iole, and Hercules strikes him down. It begins to rain,
and the travelers take shelter in a cave, where they are astonished to
hear voices. It is Oedipus (Cesare Fantoni), who is accusing his son,
Polinices (Mimmo Palmara), of driving him out of his kingdom, along with
his brother, Eteocles (Sergio Fantoni). Hercules approaches. Recognising
his voice, Oedipus tells him that Thebes is in danger; that his sons
convinced him to renounce his throne, agreeing to rule in alternate
years; but that at the end of his year, Eteocles refused to step down.
Hercules offers to go to Eteocles. Polinices agrees to let Hercules try
to enforce the brothers’ pact, then leaves with his soldiers. A violent
storm erupts, and the gates to the Underworld open in the cave. Oedipus
enters willingly…. Hercules and his companions travel to Thebes, where
Hercules forces his way into Eteocles’ presence despite the objections
of Creon (Carlo D’Angelo), the High Priest. Hercules tells Eteocles why
he is there, and after some circumlocution, the king agrees to adhere to
the pact. Later, Eteocles brings a formal treaty to Hercules’ house and
asks him to deliver it to Polinices. Hercules accepts the mission, even
though this means leaving Iole. Creon promises to look after her.
Hercules and Ulysses set out. In time, they stop beside a spring.
Hercules sends Ulysses to hunt for game for their dinner, then drinks
from the spring, not knowing that these are the Waters Of Forgetfulness.
The horses, too, drink the water, then bolt in a panic, passing Ulysses.
Hurrying back to the camp, Ulysses discovers Hercules trying to find the
singer of a strange song, which Ulysses cannot hear. Then he collapses,
unconscious. Ulysses realises that they are surrounded by soldiers. To
protect himself, he pretends to be a deaf-mute. Some of the soldiers put
Hercules on a stretcher. Others fill water-bags at the spring, which
then vanishes. Hercules and Ulysses are taken over the sea to the island
of Lidia. Queen Omphale is told of their approach by a young man, who
begs her not to desert him. As Omphale kneels beside Hercules, she
gestures, and her soldiers kill the young man. When Hercules finally
regains consciousness, he wanders out into a sun-drenched garden, where
waterfalls cascade into a lake. Passing beneath the falls, Hercules
finds himself in Omphale’s throne-room, and begs her to tell him who and
where he is. Omphale summons Ulysses, but Hercules says that he has
never seen him before. At that, Omphale invites Hercules to sit beside
her, telling him that he is King of Lidia – and her husband. Delighted,
Hercules takes Omphale in a passionate embrace….
Comments:
Although
I seem to be in disagreement with many commentators here, I find
Ercole E La
Regina Di Lidia to be an improvement on
its predecessor, the hugely successful
Le Fatiche Di
Ercole. The cinematography and
visual effects of Mario Bava are again very much in evidence; while an
increased budget allowed for more lavishly designed and beautiful sets.
The story is stronger and more interesting, and more full of incident;
and it's nice to see Hercules being rescued by his friends for once,
rather than the other way around. The sequel also gives Hercules a worthy antagonist in the shape – the very
shapely shape – of Queen Omphale.
This is where
Ercole E La
Regina Di Lidia
really has
it all over the original film. Readers may remember that I complained
about the lack of the traditional “evil” woman in
Le Fatiche Di
Ercole, the legendary Amazons being
depicted as nothing more than vacuous bimbos. Well, here that misstep is
more than compensated for. Although
Sylva Koscina scored second billing on the credits of this film, she is
offscreen for a large portion of the story (which is, frankly, a relief:
her Iole is no less irritating here than she was previously); and it is
Sylvia Lopez’s Omphale who steals both the limelight and the show. She
is, in fact, a thoroughly nasty piece of work – with a most remarkable
“hobby” – and it is her contribution that guarantees this film its slice
of cinematic immortality. All in all,
Ercole E La
Regina Di Lidia
is a more complete experience than its forerunner.
Of course, there are some problems with this film, too, although the main one is artificial: as was true of the original, in the English-language release the dubbing is very bad. One scene in particular is close to unbearable (more on that later), while there is also some evidence of memory slippage on the part of the voice artists: for instance, King Pelias becomes “Pelly-as”, rather than “Pel-i-as”; although I guess that’s a small point compared to the fact that in neither this film nor the preceding one could anyone agree on how to pronounce “Iole”.
Ercole E La
Regina Di Lidia
is a sequel in the true sense of the word, reuniting most of the
original cast and
picking up exactly where the first story left off, with the Argonauts
depositing Hercules, his new bride Iole and the young Ulysses on the
shores of Attica, from whence they plan to travel to Hercules’ home in
Thebes. Ulysses has a slightly tearful parting from his father, Laertes,
who gives him a gift of two pigeons which, he promises, will fly to
Ithaca when released, and can thus carry a message in the case of any
danger. These poor birds are eventually pressed into service, of course,
but not before suffering through some absolutely horrendous situations,
including being confined in a round wicker cage strapped to the saddle
of a galloping horse. No “No pigeons were harmed….” credit
here. In the course
of this scene, Hercules calls Iole, “The one who put me in chains”. “I’d
love to see anyone try to put you in chains,” scoffs Iole – and if you think
this might be a piece of Subtle Foreshadowing, go to the head of the
class. On the way to Thebes, Hercules brags about his hometown – the city, the people, their manners – although he fails to mention the fact that it’s ruled by a man who killed his father, married his mother, then put out his own eyes. Funny, that. At that very moment, mounted soldiers gallop by, leaving the travelers literally to eat their dust. Observing that the soldiers were led by a Theban – although how he knows this is a bit of a mystery – Ulysses remarks that he doesn’t care much for what he’s seen so far of the manners of Thebes. Iole and Ulysses continue teasing Hercules about Thebes until he hands the reins to Ulysses and climbs into the back of the wagon to take a nap (and sulk). To pass the time, Iole takes out her lyre and sings a song – and never were the horrors of dubbing more comprehensively illustrated, as what emerges from her lips (well – not exactly from) is an icky little torch song called “Evening Star”, which would be much more at home in a smoky fifties nightclub.
This painful interlude lasts several minutes, until the travelers are (thankfully) waylaid by the gigantic Antaeus. (Antaeus is played by Primo Canera, a professional wrestler, who is big enough to make Steve Reeves look small!) Antaeus starts out demanding the horses and any gold they might be carrying. “You’re taking advantage of the fact that you’re Antaeus!” complains Ulysses. Well, duh, says Antaeus, deciding he’ll have Iole, as well. When Ulysses intervenes (“I’ll show you what a ‘boy’ can do!”), he is thrown a considerable distance through the air (not a hell of a lot). “Hercules, he’ll kill him!” hisses Iole to her husband who, for reasons best known to himself, is still pretending to be too sleepy to do anything. (“Heh! I’ll let this big guy murderise them! That’ll teach ‘em to jeer at Thebes!”) Hearing that Iole has a husband who is dozing, as the embarrassed bride confesses, Antaeus goes to the back of the wagon and tells Hercules that he’s “adopting the lady”. “And what does the lady say to that?” inquires Hercules. “Oh, she’d like a new husband, like any women,” opines Antaeus. This settled, Hercules shrugs and goes back to “sleep”. But Antaeus now has other ideas. “C’mon, let’s fight!” he urges. “Gladly!” says Hercules, and finally springs into action.
The ensuing fight is interesting, since Our Hero
actually takes a fair pounding, and because every time Antaeus is
knocked down, he returns to the fight with increased strength (and an
appropriately giant-like, “Ho, ho, ho!”). Suddenly, Ulysses has a flash
of deductive brilliance worthy of Sherlock Holmes. “This must be Antaeus!”
Gee, no kidding!
Rather more helpfully, Ulysses adds that Antaeus draws his strength from
contact with the ground. Hercules then lifts his opponent into the air
and tosses him off a ledge into the ocean. Antaeus shakes his fist as
defeated bad guys are wont to do, and the travelers move on.
Some time later, the weary Iole asks if they can stop for the night. Hercules says that they will camp in the forest just ahead of them, a place he knows well. “It’s quiet there,” he tells the others, then adds encouragingly, “They say that the Gates of the Inferno are hidden amongst its trees!” Three stars in the Michelin guidebook, I’m sure. To Hercules’ surprise, they find the soldiers who passed them on the road camped up ahead. It then begins to rain. As Iole runs for cover, she is grabbed by the Theban leader of the soldiers. (In a subtle piece of characterisation, he: (i) wears black all the time; and (ii) says “Mwoo-ha-ha!” a lot.) Hercules intervenes, of course, leaving the soldier sprawling on the ground. He and Iole hurry away, and Ulysses scuttles after them, giving the glowering Man In Black a “What he said!” look.
The three travelers enter a cave, laughing merrily
over Hercules’ latest act of violence. Suddenly, they hear voices. It is
Oedipus, the king. In one of those helpful expository scenes, Oedipus
reminds his son, Polinices, that he and his brother, Eteocles, forced
him to renounce his throne, and that they agreed to share it, ruling for
alternate years; and further, that Eteocles has refused to step down,
and that the conflict between the two is likely to destroy Thebes. At
this, Hercules intervenes. Oedipus immediately recognises his voice,
saying that it reminds him of happier times. (Er---and when would
that have been,
Oedipus?) Hercules offers to go as an emissary to Thebes, to try and
convince Eteocles to keep his side of the bargain. Polinices is sulky,
but finally agrees, giving Hercules six days to complete the mission.
Polinices then leaves with his men. “Goodbye, father,” he says, adding
snittily – in probably the best line in the film – “I know you
wanted sons like
Hercules, but you deserved
us.” Polinices has barely withdrawn when a violent storm breaks –
within the cave. The
rocks behind Oedipus open up, and the blind ex-king voluntarily enters
the Inferno….
(By the way, Polinices is played by Mimmo Palmara,
who completely embarrassed himself with his performance as Iphitus in
Le Fatiche Di
Ercole. Here, he protects himself from
audience members with long memories by disguising himself in an orange
wig, mustache and beard, and – wonder of wonders! – by toning down his
performance. While it is still fairly ripe, it is overshadowed by Sergio
Fantoni’s maniacal ranting and giggling as Eteocles.)
The next thing we know, Hercules, Ulysses and Iole are forcing their way
into the company of Eteocles, who – not to put too fine a point on it –
turns out to be a Right Nutter. Along with his minions, Eteocles is busy
watching one more in a long line of suckers attempting to train his
captive tigers. As you might anticipate, it ends in tears. As the corpse
is carried away, Eteocles finally lends an ear to what Hercules has to
say. After much raving, punctuated by loud, “Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”-s,
Eteocles agrees to step down from the throne, saying he needs to go and
find more potential tiger trainers. Ulysses, never one to miss the
Bleeding Obvious, remarks, “Did you ever see anyone so close to
madness?” Later, Iole bemoans the fact that she and Hercules must part. He feels the same way, but answers that since Thebes is in danger, he has no choice. Eteocles brings a formal treaty to be taken to Polinices, and Hercules and Ulysses set out. After much galloping (with those poor damn pigeons being slammed back and forth in their wicker cage), the two discover a Mysterious Spring. We know it’s Mysterious, as a chorus of “Ooh-ooh-ooh” is heard on the soundtrack. Ulysses is suspicious, but Hercules is thinking only of his stomach. Sending Ulysses to hunt down some dinner, Hercules waters the horses and himself. As he drinks, the god-like voiceover that has been filling viewers in on the significance of various events chimes in again, telling us that, “These are the Waters Of Forgetfulness! Those who drink of them shall forget all!” (Obviously, you couldn’t expect an audience to figure something like that out for itself from subsequent events – such as Hercules announcing, “I can’t remember anything!” Nope, better spoon-feed ’em, just to be on the safe side….)
Ulysses is on his way back from a successful hunt
when the horses bolt past him, shedding those unfortunate pigeons, which
Ulysses notices, and the treaty, which he doesn’t. Hurrying back to
camp, Ulysses finds Hercules trying to locate the singer of a song
–
Iole’s
song, although Hercules does not remember that
–
that
Ulysses himself cannot hear. He then collapses. Ulysses tries to revive
him, but suddenly realises that they are surrounded by soldiers. He then
tries even harder
to revive him. When this fails, Ulysses calculates the odds against him
and decides to pose as Hercules’ deaf-mute servant – something that
involves much gesturing, eye-rolling, and, “Uh-uh-uh”-ing. The soldiers
carry Ulysses and the unconscious Hercules onto a ship, and they sail
for the island of Lidia.
Now, pre-credits we saw a perplexing series of events involving Queen
Omphale of Lidia and an unidentified young man. As a second man,
unconscious on a stretcher, was carried into Omphale’s presence, she was
seen to gesture to her soldiers, five of whom drew their swords and
hacked the first young man to death. This scenario is now repeated, as
another young man – the one from the stretcher? – nervously announces
that Omphale’s soldiers are returning, adding desperately, “You won’t
desert me, will you? You said you loved me!” Omphale – a gorgeous
redhead who must spend an incredible amount of time applying her eye
makeup – does not deign to reply, but merely approaches the unconscious
Hercules as he is carried into the room. Kneeling, Omphale runs
appreciative hands over his physique – and then gestures, and the second
young man goes the way of the first…. (Clearly, Omphale is a firm believer in being off with the old love before being on with the new.)
An unspecified time later, Hercules regains consciousness, suffering a splitting headache and having no idea who he is, or where. Staggering out into the sunlight, he sees a lake with a waterfall tumbling into it. Passing under the cascade, Hercules enters Omphale’s throne-room, finding her surrounded by the usual crew of giggly handmaidens, who run off in that way that the women in all these films, who are invariably clad in micro-miniskirts, tend to – i.e. carefully. Hercules confesses to Omphale that he can’t remember anything, not even who he is. To test him, Omphale has Ulysses brought into his presence, but Hercules denies ever having seen him before. Her eyes gleaming, Omphale serves Hercules wine, and has some girls perform a suggestive dance. (This is pretty painful: the dancing isn’t great, admittedly, but what kills the scene is that, as with Iole’s song, the altered music bears very little resemblance to the action.)
“What is my name?” Hercules asks Omphale. “Does it matter?” she
shrugs. Won over by her arguments, Hercules takes Omphale into his arms
and---well, perhaps we’d better draw a veil around the next bit.
Meanwhile, back in Thebes, Iole is doing pointless
embroidery, while her handmaidens, obviously even more at a loss for
something productive to do, are pawing through their mistress’s
possessions. One of them, finding a heavy piece of chain at the bottom
of a trunk, holds it up with a quizzical expression. “Does this
mean something to you
and Hercules?” Iole does not answer, but dissolves into tears, probably
leaving the handmaidens with a pretty kinky idea of what she and
Hercules get up to in their spare time. Creon, the High Priest of
Thebes, tries to comfort Iole by reminding her that Hercules is
negotiating a treaty, and that these things take time.
(“Negotiating a treaty”!? HA! Never heard it
called that
before!) In Lidia, Ulysses manages to release one of his long-suffering pigeons before being hauled off and put to “work”. This turns out to be giving Hercules a full body massage. Sleepily, Hercules imparts a piece of wisdom to his young companion: that you should sleep by day and stay awake at night – otherwise, you lose the best part of your life! (Nudge-nudge, wink-wink, say no more! Please say no more….) A soldier, accompanied by the Giggle Brigade, brings food to Hercules. The soldier fills a goblet with water. Having seen the soldier fill his water-bag from the Mysterious Spring, Ulysses manages to knock the goblet over. He then tries to convince Hercules that he is, in fact, Hercules. Having no success, he then pronounces, “Iole!” “Oh, go away! I don’t understand a thing!” responds Hercules grouchily. Not one to give up without a fight, Ulysses declaims rapidly, "Iole! Your marriage!! Eteocles!!! Polinices!!!! The message!!!!! The perilous war against Thebes!!!!!!" When this wins him nothing but a blank stare, Ulysses tries a new tactic: he brings Hercules the iron torch-holder that stands by the door and asks him to bend it. Humouring him, Hercules tries – but he can’t do it.
Ulysses hears footsteps, and returns the
torch-holder to its place just as Omphale – and really, there’s no other
word for it – sashays into the room. She and Hercules kiss, and she asks
him whether he slept well? “Wonderfully,” purrs Hercules. Hey, hang on!
Didn’t we just learn that Hercules favours
staying awake at night? Oh, wait a minute:
maybe “sleep” is a euphemism!
Then again, maybe not, as Hercules’ next line is: “I dreamt of ya.” (No,
really, that’s how he says it.) However, he adds, in the dream she
looked different. She was blonde, with a sweet smile. Omphale accepts
this with surprising good humour, considering, and the two canoodle a
bit more.
Ulysses’ pigeon arrives in Ithaca, and Laertes immediately gathers the
Argonauts and sets out for Lidia. Back in Thebes, Eteocles is busy
accusing Hercules of selling him out to Polinices, whose army is
gathering outside the city. When Creon protests, Eteocles has Iole, who
was caught while trying to run away, brought into the room. Iole denies
knowing Hercules’ whereabouts. Eteocles announces that she will be held
as a hostage, and that all Thebans who support Polinices will be
arrested – starting with Creon!
Meanwhile, in Lidia, Hercules is lying around
stuffing his face with what looks awfully
like pizza (pan pizza, too!) when Ulysses sees him about to drink The
Water, and literally dives across the room to knock it from his grasp.
(No slow motion “NOOOOO!!!!”, though, strangely.) Telling Hercules that
it is The Water that has caused his memory loss, Ulysses takes one more
crack at convincing him of the truth. For one brief instant, the name
“Hercules” seems to mean something…. Encouraged, Ulysses tells Hercules
how the two of them came to be in Lidia, and that they have to escape
immediately,
as he has managed to discover Queen Omphale’s Terrible Secret – which,
amazingly, isn’t
just her serial slaughter of her serial lovers….
So …. In a flashback, it transpires that while Ulysses was hunting
around for a way to escape, he found a cave behind some bushes, leading
away from the throne-room. And in this cave is the evidence of The
Terrible Secret: that Omphale does not merely have her discarded lovers
killed---
She has them stuffed and mounted!!
The cave is a museum of sorts, filled with the previous imbibers of the
Waters Of Forgetfulness, all posed to represent the way they were in
life (leaving us to see Omphale as a distant ancestress of Madame
Tussaud). As Ulysses wanders through the cave, gawping in horror at
Hercules’ predecessors, he discovers an opening that leads to a chamber
below. It is here that Omphale’s handymen – all imported from Egypt –
toil; and as Ulysses watches, the young man who died crying, “You said
you loved me!” (heh!) is lifted out of a large tank of smoking, bubbling
liquid. As Omphale, who is nearby (along with her completely unperturbed
handmaidens), praises her team for their skill in “fixing for eternity a
man’s character”, the head man – who clearly loves his work – asks
enthusiastically, “When can we expect to get to work on Hercules?”
Omphale, however, leaves without answering, raising a Nasty Suspicion in
the viewer’s mind….
Hercules, of course, does not believe what Ulysses
tells him, but he is at least made uneasy. He tries once more to bend
the torch-holder, and this time he succeeds. He then storms off. Ulysses
follows hopefully, but rolls his eyes in disgust as he sees Hercules and
Omphale lip-wrestling once again. The two are interrupted by distant
horns, and learns that Laertes and his companions have landed. Hercules
demands grumpily that they be sent away, but Omphale says that as queen,
she must greet them (her first and last attempt at anything remotely
“regal”). Omphale’s greeting of the crew is interrupted when Hercules
stalks into the room. Astonished, Laertes greets him by name and asks
after Ulysses, but Hercules brushes him aside and storms out again. The
Argonauts are forced to accept Omphale’s lame insistence that this is
not “Hercules”
at all, and allow themselves to be escorted away. At the last moment,
Omphale runs her eyes over Castor and asks him suggestively, “Haven’t we
met somewhere before…?”
Hercules struggles desperately to regain his memory, hearing his
friends’ voices in his head; while elsewhere, Omphale breaks off a
snogging session with Castor, asking him to leave her. “Why did you ask
me here? You don’t really want me,” he observes, with an acuteness
uncommon amongst the characters of these sorts of films. His first guess
is that she wants to coax information out of him as to the reason for
the Argonauts’ presence. His second hits the mark: she has fallen in
love with Hercules who, he tells her, she can never hold. Omphale
collapses in tearful rage, announcing, “I curse the day he entered this
palace!”
At this unfortunate moment, Hercules enters,
having regained his memory. Omphale faces his fury, confident that he
will not hurt her, as he must know that she truly loves him. Hercules
does stay his hand, and Omphale throws herself at his feet, clutching
his calf and pressing her face against his thigh. “If only my sincerity
could make you stay!” she warbles, looking straight up his loin-cloth.
But when Hercules rejects her, she observes snidely that even
Iole can’t take away
from her what they’ve shared. To Hercules’ surprise, Omphale then
gathers the Argonauts, announces that this
is Hercules, and that they are all free to
leave. But at the last moment – surprise! – an ambush is sprung. Omphale
urges her soldiers on, begging, however, that they, “Spare me Hercules!”
This, of course, is the film’s traditional Hercules Wrecks The Palace scene, with the Lidian guards being squished in numbers first beneath a huge marble table, then under statues flung from the top of the staircase. (I love the way these enemy soldiers always choose to hang out in clusters, making Hercules’ job all that much easier.) Hercules and his friends then escape through the cave that contains Omphale’s Terrible Secret, and finally make it to their ship. Omphale, unable to live without Hercules, then commits suicide by putting her Terrible Secret to gruesome and ironic use.
On the Argo,
Hercules learns that he was in Lidia for twenty days, and that the time
for negotiating the treaty is well past. “I’ve been tricked, by the
gods!” he bellows. Or possibly: “I’ve been tricked by the gods!” Which
in either case seems an odd reaction, since frankly, it was ol’ Herc’s
tendency to listen to his stomach rather than his instincts that got him
into trouble in the first place.
Back in Thebes, Polinices and his army have
gathered at the city gates. Eteocles shows his brother how his
supporters will be dealt with by tossing Iole’s handmaidens off the wall
(a surprisingly brutal scene). As Polinices and his men withdraw,
carrying the bodies, Eteocles lets rip with a burst of maniacal “Ahhh-ha-ha-ha-ha!”-s.
Hercules and the others encounter Polinices on the shores of Attica.
Realising that Iole is still a hostage, Hercules immediately heads for
Thebes. Polinices receives a message from Eteocles, suggesting that the
two settle their problems mano-a-mano
– something Polinices’ soldiers think is a
great idea. Hercules and his companions enter Thebes surreptitiously, and Hercules heads for the dungeon where Iole and the other prisoners are held. To reach it, he enters the arena. Immediately, Eteocles’ minions (who all seem to be exactly where they were three weeks earlier!) reveal themselves and start laughing hysterically as the tigers are released. But the tigers are no match for Hercules, of course. (This scene is not exactly convincing. When it’s a lion fight, at least you usually get to see the stunt lion and the person “battling” it make contact; but here they obviously weren’t taking any chances. Besides, there’s one poor tiger that just really wants to get back into its cage....)
Approaching the huge wooden
doors of the dungeon, Hercules sends them crashing off their hinges with
one mighty blow. (Just as well none of the prisoners were directly
behind them!) But Iole isn’t there. Creon tells Hercules that they
thought it would be best if she ran away – although if it’s that easy,
why are the rest of them just sitting there on their duffs? However,
Iole’s bid for freedom is short-lived, as she falls into the hands of
the black-clad Captain of the Guard. Old Mwoo-Ha-Ha is about to do
unspeakable things to her when a horn sounds to announce the duel
between Polinices and Eteocles. “You just wait here!” the Captain,
obviously a trusting soul, tells Iole, and hurries away to see the
fight.
The brothers confront each other using four-horse chariots – and of all the incidents in the film, this was what the distributors chose to go with in the advertising! “See the mammoth war of the chariots!” I can only imagine that the fact that the film was released during the Ben-Hur bally-hoo might have had something to do with their decision…. Anyway, “mammoth” isn’t exactly the first word that springs to mind when describing this conflict. Polinices and Eteocles ride past each other a couple of times, knock each other off their chariots, and finish their fight on foot. Eteocles slays Polinices, but is mortally wounded himself. Staggering towards his cheering supporters, Eteocles claims victory, gives one more hearty burst of “AHHH-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!!” and dies. The Captain of the Guard then delivers the eulogy:
“As evil
and stupid as his brother!” Hercules and his friends appear on the ramparts of Thebes. The Captain taunts Hercules by waving Iole’s scarf at him. “She’s in my house now! And I’m going there!” he announces. However, the gates of Thebes then swing open, and the Theban army pours out. A full-scale battle then takes place between the Thebans and the mercenaries, during which Hercules revenges himself on the Captain by pulling a tower over on top of him. Squish!
After the battle, in which the Thebans are, of
course, victorious, Creon presides over the cremation of the dead
(a regular cookout!), and Hercules is reunited with Iole. “How you’ve
suffered!” he says to her. (HA! She doesn’t know the half of it!) “The
gods have placed many obstacles against us,” he continues, and we wait
for him to explain all about how those cruel gods forced him to spend
three weeks having non-stop sex with a gorgeous redhead –
forced him, I tells
ya! But for once in his life, Hercules seems to feel that discretion
might be the better part of valour.
Ercole E La Regina Di Lidia suffers from the usual shortcomings of the peplum
genre, including a distinct preference for action over logic, and an
overabundance of alleged comic relief, in this case Ulysses’ painful
deaf-mute routine, and the various wailings of Aesculapius, the oldest
of the Argonauts. On the other hand, the story is better structured than
is usually the case, with only the fight with Antaeus really feeling
tacked on. As I mentioned earlier, this is a lovely film to look at,
with marvelously designed sets and – particularly during the revelation
of Omphale’s Terrible Secret – some beautiful lighting effects. The most
memorable aspect of Ercole E La Regina Di Lidia,
however, is certainly the Queen herself. Omphale, with her casual use
and abuse of any man unfortunate enough to wander across her path, is an
unforgettable character. What a pity that she should finally be – if
you’ll pardon the expression – emasculated by falling in love with
Hercules; although I guess that was inevitable.
Still, while it lasts this aspect of the story lends some interesting shadings to the film as a whole, through its manipulation of the character of Hercules. Whereas in Le Fatche Di Ercole, our titular hero was fairly one-note, here the Waters Of Forgetfulness subplot allows a different Hercules – grouchy, selfish, short-tempered – to take centre stage. Given what we’ve seen of “the gods” in most of these films, we might be inclined to suspect that this is Hercules’ divinity showing; but the reverse is actually the case, as demonstrated by his inability to bend the iron torch-holder. Hercules’ strength being linked to his memory, his sense of self, is one of the film’s most interesting touches. .
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