Hercules Unchained (1959) - Yeah, we're talking Steve Reeves baby! The man's manly man who looks absolutely stunning in his mini-skirt and lace up sandals!
Herc has to put the smackdown on Antaeus (son of the earth goddess) and then runs across King Oedipus. Oedipus has given up the throne to his two knuckle-headed sons who are expected to take one year shifts in the King job. Seems Eteocles doesn't want to give it up, so he and brother are preparing for war.
Herc tries to play peacemaker but drinks so special Alzheimers water and forgets everything. He and Ulysses are shanghaied by Queen Omphale who has a place set aside for Herc in her museum of mummified muscle men. Will Herc snap out of it in time to avert war and save his new bride?
I like the way Hercules is portrayed as the altruistic hero, but once his memory is gone he becomes a party animal. While being attended to by a squad of nubile young ladies and getting a massage from Ulysses (who is pretending to be his deaf-mute slave) Herc states that he thinks he should sleep during the day so he can party all night.
While I was checking this out on IMDB I ran across a listing for Hercules Revisited, where someone had edited together Hercules and Hercules unchained into a different story and added their own comic dialogue. Has anyone here seen this? I looked over at Amazon and saw that a used VHS copy was like $60.
Hercules Unchained and NOTLD are the best of these $1 DVDs that I've run across.
The Invisible Man (1933) - The Claude Rains original, this is one of the greats. I shouldn't have to review it for anyone here.
I watched the disc from Universal's Invisible Man collection set. I still need to watch the other 4 movies. There is a very good documentary about the film included. It covers a lot of information about James Whale the director.
Catch Me if You Can (2002) - A very entertaining movie about the real life great imposter. I think this is one of Spielberg's best , it doesn't get as schmaltzy as some his recent forays into comedy.
Astonishingly, despite having had Leonardo De Crapio (yes, I misspelled it) Catch Me if You Can is an excellent movie. And to think it was a true story. He'd stolen some ungodly number of millions before he turned 19 and is now responsible for developing the majority of the security measures on personal cheques.
Speaking of movies editted by somebody other than the studio, does anyone know where i can get my hands on the Phantom Edit? It's the Phantom Menace, editted to remove most of Jar Jar Binks scenes and is, according to rumour, a far better movie.
HERCULES UNCHAINED is actually one of the movies included in the SCI-FI CLASSICS 50 MOVIE SET. I watched it a couple of weeks ago and it is definitely worth the 40 or 50 cents that I paid for it!
Your right Trek Geezer HERCULES UNCHAINED is a good one made in epic proportions (always wanted to say that) and it might be the very best of the old Italian Hercules films from back then. Saw most of them, but still have a couple to view including the original HERCULES. There are also many SON OF HERCULES films, not to mention the numerous other strongman and sword and sandal films available on DVD now. There are quite a few good ones on the SCI-FI 50 pack, but they are a bit faded in color unfortunately. Oldies.com also has a large selection of these films. Maybe the transfer quality is better with them, not sure though. I enjoy watching these every once in a while.
(http://oldies.com/i/boxart/large/3/089218321695.jpg)
I own the MST3K'ed version of "Hercules: Unchained." It was part of the volume 7 box set I believe. It's quite awful, but not as bad as "Hercules VS the Moon Men" (I might not have that second title exactly right, but it's close enough). Unfortunately that second movie isn't a Steve Reeves flick.