“Hercules
and the Captive Women†(1963), a sword-and-toga epic directed by Vittorio Cottafavi, has been released in
a Blu-ray special edition by The Film Detective.In the movie, a strange and seemingly
supernatural force from across the sea threatens ancient Greece.Troubled, the rival kings of the Greek
city-states gather to confront the problem.They do so in the same way that our modern leaders take the stage to
debate COVID relief, climate change, gun violence, and other crises.They posture, jeer at each other, and
dither.It’s left to King Androcles of
Thebes to set sail and figure out what’s going on.He seeks the help of his friend Hercules (Reg
Park), but the fabled strongman has promised his wife that he’ll stay home and
give up adventuring.Androcles can’t
even get the backing of his own advisors -- “the soothsayers, the senators, the
commanders of the army†-- so he’s left with a second-string crew of debtors
and jailbirds.Fortunately for the
success of his mission, Hercules comes along after all, although not of his own
choosing.With the help of Hercules‘
son, Illos, the king has drugged and shanghaied his friend.Not that the jovial Hercules seems to mind
when he wakes up after the ship is well out to sea.The decision was out of his hands, and his
friend needs his support.Anyway,
gorgeous wife back home or not, the legendary hero seems happy to get out of
the house.
Presently,
it’s revealed that the aggressor behind the weird phenomena is Antinea (Fay
Spain), the ruthless queen of Atlantis, who schemes to conquer the world.First, she needs to find the right consort
and grow her army of invincible warriors to large enough numbers.Androcles fails her test for a suitably
pitiless mate.He becomes an amnesiac
phantom who wanders her palace with a blank stare.She next approaches Hercules, but the
strongman is already committed to his wife, and besides, he wants nothing to do
with her scheme.Elsewhere on the
island, having rescued Antinea’s teenaged daughter Ismene from sacrifice, Illos
discovers a quarry where scores of starved and disfigured men are
imprisoned.Meanwhile, Hercules learns
that Atlantis harbors a stone with infernal properties.The stone formed from a drop of blood shed by
the god Uranus.Young boys are
confiscated from their families by Antinea and exposed to the stone’s
power.Those who succumb to the
radiation become supermen who join the expanding ranks of the queen’s
army.Those who resist it become
miserable scarecrows and are thrown into the pit with their predecessors.It’s up to Hercules in the usual formula of
such movies, from Steve Reeves’ “Hercules†in 1959 to Dwayne Johnson’s
incarnation in 2014, to administer justice and thwart Antinea’s tyrannical
plot.
“Hercules
and the Captive Women†debuted in Italy in 1961 as “Ercole
alla conquista di Atlantide,†at the height of the sword-and-sandal or “peplumâ€
genre.Released in the U.K. as “Hercules
Conquers Atlantis,†it impressed British critic Ian Cameron with the “strength
and economy†of Cottafavi’s direction.By the time it reached the U.S. in 1963 -- edited, dubbed, minus six
minutes of footage, and retitled by two B-movie entrepreneurs, Bernard and
Lawrence Woolner -- toga epics were already on the wane.I remember seeing the movie ad in the local
newspaper in July 1963.I was
interested, as what thirteen-year-old wouldn’t be?The ad showed a scantily clad blonde cowering
between a guy’s bare legs.She seems to
be staring up under the bottom of his tunic.A chalice dangles and drips suggestively from one of the guy’s hands.“Could she subdue this GIANT OF A MAN with
her SORCERY?’ the ad teased.I had other
(if not necessarily better) things to do that summer, so I never made it to the
movie theater.If I had, I probably
would have been duly entertained, notwithstanding that the ad art was something
of a bait-and-switch tactic.There isn’t
anything in the story that wouldn’t be PG-rated today, nor any “captive womenâ€
aside from the winsome Ismene.Still, I
would have been entertained by the fantasy elements of the story, including
Hercules’ fight with a shape-shifting god, Proteus, who looks like an elderly
man one minute, and then a lion, a vulture, a flame, and a horned monster the
next.As a kid, I had been disappointed
that some of the Italian-made Hercules, Goliath, and Samson sagas turned out to
be quasi-historical movies with no supernatural content, so I would have
welcomed the comic-book vibe of “Hercules and the Captive Women.â€I wasn’t familiar with Reg Park, who had been
Mr. Universe in 1951 and 1959, and later would become Arnold Schwarzenegger’s friend
and mentor in competitive bodybuilding, but I did know the gorgeous Fay
Spain.Fay guest-starred in nearly every
Western and Private Eye TV show in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s, sometimes
playing a good girl, sometimes a bad one.As in “Hercules and the Captive Women,†she was memorably sultry in
bad-girl roles.I definitely would not
have name-checked Gian Maria Volantè, nor probably would have any other casual
filmgoer in 1963.As the king of Sparta
in the scene where the monarchs assemble to argue the Atlantis problem, he has
seventeenth billing in the cast list.He swaggers and sneers through his two minutes of screen time as
flamboyantly as Sir Laurence Olivier playing royalty from Shakespeare.Maybe the classically trained Italian actor
was hoping the role, even if a minor one, would be a step up to bigger things.
But his breakout part, as the central villain in “A Fistful of Dollars,†was
still three years away.
The Film Detective’s Blu-ray special edition offers “Hercules
and the Captive Women†in the sort of dressed-to-the-nines package usually
reserved for more prestigious films.The
print is a 4K restoration from the original 35mm negative.If not as sharp as a transfer from today’s
digital prints of FX spectacles like “Wonder Woman 1984,†it’s nevertheless a
vast improvement over the way the film used to show up dismally on TV and
VHS.The always-informative Tim Lucas
provides audio commentary, and a new mini-documentary, “Hercules and the
Conquest of Cinema,†nicely summarizes the history of the peplum genre.There’s also an illustrated booklet by C.
Courtney Joyner, and, almost like the second feature on a double-bill, the
complete episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000†from 1992 that made fun of
the movie.Predictably, Tom Servo,
Gypsy, and Crow are ready with a joke whenever Hercules and Antinea mention
“Uranus.â€At least “Uranus†is always
good for a laugh.After thirty years,
the other wisecracks involving “Bonanza,†Bob Dylan, “A Chorus Line,†and other
pop-culture relics will be as inscrutable to younger viewers as the ancient
inscriptions on the Parthenon.