That was an excellent one.

best movie i've ever seen.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Cheesy greatness from Cannon and those geniuses Golan-Globus combines post-Star Wars science fantasy with 1960s Italian sword & sandal movies. The pre-credits history of the universe is highly informative. I never realized that's how it all came to be. My teachers were liars. Lou Ferrigno is an impressive sight to behold, for sure. Each of his pecs is bigger than my head. Zeus looks like Jon Stewart with a crown and fake beard. Sexy Sybil Danning isn't in this nearly enough but is enjoyable when she is. Ingrid Anderson is gorgeous and her revealing outfit in the latter half of the movie made me drool.The dubbing, special effects, sets, and costumes are all cheap but fun. The stop-motion mechanical monsters are beyond cute. The highlights of the movie are Hercules' many impressive feats of strength, such as hurling a bear into space and creating the constellation Ursa Major or pushing apart two bodies of land and creating the continents of Europe and Africa. Again, my teachers were liars. Watch baby Hercules kill the snakes -- that poor baby didn't understand what the heck they had him doing! This is an entertaining movie. I really don't see how you cannot find it fun to watch. Granted, most of that fun comes from the unintentional comedy it produces but that's still something, right? If I have to watch a movie that is technically and artistically lacking in any kind of quality, I would rather it be a movie like this that has some comedic value than some boring A-list movie that has me sitting on my hands the whole time.

The brave and mighty Hercules (an earnest, but extremely inept performance by brawny behemoth Lou Ferrigno of "The Incredible Hulk" fame) must rescue fair maiden Cassiopea (ravishing Ingrid Anderson) from the foul clutches of the wicked King Minos (William Berger, who somehow manages to keep a straight face while saying all this laughable philosophical hogwash) and his equally evil, yet bodacious daughter Ariadne (buxom blonde B-flick bombshell Sybil Danning vamping it up with deliciously lip-smacking brio). Helpful good sorceress Circe (the insanely gorgeous Mirella D'Angelo) assists Hercules on his valiant quest. Writer/director Luigi Cozzi crams this delightfully dreadful dimestore dreck with all the right wrong stuff: a ridiculously pointless opening montage about the creation of man and the universe, uproariously rinky-dink (much less than) special effects, a blithely silly script, lousy dubbing, larger-than-life hammy villains, an absurdly serious tone, clumsy occasional use of strenuous slow motion, and a ludicrously solemn narrator are all so outrageously funny and preposterous in their jaw-dropping badness that the whole ghastly mess plays like some kind of sly deadpan spoof of chintzy low-rent fantasy schlock. Among the unintentionally hilarious highlights are baby Hercules crushing the heads of two deadly serpents, Hercules beating up a bear and tossing the beast into space, Hercules battling a giant robot bee, Hercules unleashing a river to clean a filthy horse stable, a huge three-headed Tonka toy mechanical dragon, and Hercules using a massive stone to make a magical chariot fly. Pino Donaggio provides a suitably robust'n'rousing full-bore orchestral score while Alberto Spagnoli's glossy cinematography gives the picture an appropriately gaudy'n'glittery look. An absolute gut-busting kitschy riot.

Italian cinema had featured musclemen heroes as early as 1912's QUO VADIS (Ursus) and 1914's CABIRIA (Maciste) before making them truly their own and, by turns, seemingly invincible or buffoonish caricatures during the heyday of the peplum cycle around 1954-65. This, then, is yet a later variation clearly sparked by the recent spate of Hollywoodian mythological epics like CLASH OF THE TITANS (1981) and CONAN THE BARBARIAN (1981) but giving the old formula a new twist by sprinkling it with a dash of special effects wizardry a' la the STAR WARS saga! This shouldn't come as all that surprising when one realizes that its director is best-known for the infamous STAR WARS (1977) rip-off, STARCRASH (1979) – although, to be fair to him, he is also responsible for one of the unsung gems in the giallo canon, THE KILLER MUST KILL AGAIN (1975) and, at least, one other highly intriguing (and very rare) movie, TUNNEL UNDER THE WORLD (1969) which was also his directorial debut. Ironically, however, Cozzi only took over the assignment (from original director Bruno Mattei) when the producers were dissatisfied with the box office performance of the latter's previous film for them, THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS (1983)! Anyway, although I clearly recall watching this version of HERCULES (and its sequel; see below) on Italian TV at Christmas time in the late 1980s, the details of it all were so hazy in my mind that I virtually remembered nothing of the narrative other than that Hercules gets to do battle with several mechanical monsters and that there was a lot of footage of stars and planets and the like. Indeed, the film starts with a lengthy, potentially heretical prologue about the start of creation which, apparently, had everything to do with Zeus and the rest of the Greek gods colonizing the moon eons before the Russians did (by way of ultracheesy visual and sound effects) and nothing at all to do with…but this is not the right place to start debating the existence of God or otherwise – lest this review gets confused with another anti-THE GOLDEN COMPASS (2007) argument! TV's THE INCREDIBLE HULK and former "Mr. Universe" Lou Ferrigno certainly looks the part of the mightiest man alive but, unfortunately, can't act a lick and rarely changes his facial expression throughout the generous 100 minutes of screen time! He is abetted by a lovely Cassiopea (Ingrid Anderson – whose first and only film this was before going briefly into TV and then quitting for good!) and sultry villainess Sybil Danning and the supporting cast features a decent roster of both veteran and nascent Euro-Cult figures like ex-peplum beefcake Brad Harris, William Berger (as Hercules' No. 1 nemesis, King Minos), Claudio Cassinelli (as Zeus, Hercules' creator here – out of pure light, no less! – rather than his natural father), former Helen Of Troy Rossana Podesta' (her penultimate film, playing the rebellious deity Hera), Gianni Garko and Eva Robbins (as Berger's enigmatic scientific acolyte, with an unbelievably campy costume to match).Once one accepts the film's bizarre notion of setting the old Greek legends in outer space, this gets to be a veritable "so bad it's fun" show which possibly has few peers: an elaborately staged (relatively speaking), bloodthirsty coup d'etat early on comes to naught when the tyrant is never seen again in the rest of the movie!; Zeus's giant hand emerges from within a waterfall to catch Baby Hercules in his tiny boat inside which, however, are two snake-like creatures whom the infant soon squeezes the life right out of!; Hercules is adopted (in full-on Clark Kent fashion) by a family of simple folk and he is soon farming the fields single-handed via unwieldy contraptions but, when his putative father gets mauled by a grizzly bear, our Herculean hero gets so upset that he hurls the beast straight out into orbit and instant immortality as one of the stars in the constellation (I kid thee not)!; next up are a trio of mechanical assailants which, however, expire even before one gets to have a real good look at them (which is just as well, I guess as, otherwise, one starts to wonder why the weapon Hercules uses to dispatch one of the monsters looks suspiciously like a modern-day giant anchor)!; then Hercules tries his hand at a jousting tournament wherein he holds a dozen contestants simultaneously with their backs to the wall by means of a giant log which, once it serves its purpose in gaining him the championship title, also gets hurled into outer space!; later, Hercules sets his eyes on the veiled Cassiopeia and, to prove his worthiness, he cleans up the dilapidated stables (housing a thousand stallions we're told) with the aid of a nearby flowing river! I don't have time to go into all the other labyrinthine trials Hercules goes through before meeting up with King Minos for a hilarious confrontation with lightsabre-like swords but, in case you were wondering who was responsible for dividing Earth into the various continents, enquire no further! Oh, and he does get to ride a horseless chariot, too – by roping a rock and throwing it as far as...well, 'tis Hercules we're talking about after all! This Italian-made would-be epic – which also features a suitably rousing Pino Donaggio score – was a Cannon Group production (namely Israeli film-makers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus) and followed hot on the heels of the similar THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS (my memories of which are even more lost within my subconscious) which reunites Ferrigno, Danning and Harris from HERCULES; the latter must not have done too badly at the box office because other films of its ilk came in its wake: not just the sequel but also SWORD OF THE VALIANT (1984), THE BARBARIANS (1987), MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (1987) and the troubled SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1989; also with Ferrigno).

Sword and Sorcery, D and D, whatever you want to call it, it was a genre unto itself back in the day. And this, this is one of the defining movies of that genre, like it or not. I, myself, am a huge sword and sorcery movie, comic, and TV show fan. I own many things relating to Conan and started a 'barbarian brothers' website when there was no info on them to be found on the internet. So, naturally, the fact that this movie is cheesy, campy, and just plain over the top appeals to me. And, as an amateur bodybuilder and longtime fan of 'classic' bodybuilding- of which Lou is an integral part, I enjoy this movie as one of Lou's best. Every other comment has given the basic plot, told about the special effects and so forth. But, I just want to say, If you are into this particular genre, this movie is a must have. The coloring, scenery, effect, sounds and especially the magnificent muscles of Mr. Ferrigno make it very enjoyable. It's not so much like sipping champagne and dining on caviar as it is like having beef jerky and pop. But, hey, sometimes you just crave some calorie rich fun food! It is now available on a double-sided DVD with Hercules 2- which, yes, is even more over the top.