![]() Ferrigno had signed on to make The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1985) but the results were near unwatchable. In the documentary FantastiCozzi (2016), Luigi Cozzi tells a number of amusing anecdotes about how the film came to be. As a result, the film does not collapse into laughability with such persistent regard, which one supposes is at least something to be said in its favour. This now makes The Adventures of Hercules into more of a standard Italian peplum adventure. This time Luigi Cozzi doesn’t attempt to depict the fabulist exploits of Hercules – throwing himself in a cart, tossing a bull into the heavens and so on – that failed so laughably in the first film. This is something that makes The Adventures of Hercules marginally less terrible a film than Hercules was. One thing this version does do is eliminate the bizarre attempts to mix Greek myth with science-fiction that the first Hercules did. Like the first film, The Adventures of Hercules borrows the names of characters from Greek Myth – Clotho, Lachesis, Euryale, Aphrodite, Hera, Poseidon and Daedalus (who is misspelt as ‘Dedalos’ on the credits) – but completely changes their respective stories. There are far too many gods scheming, far too many magical artifacts and far too many occasions where people have miraculous powers granted to them. The plot itself is slight and indifferently developed. On the plus side, like the first film, there are some imaginative cheap sets – a woman chained to what looks like a giant Pilates ball as sacrifice a sarcophagus of white light with a translucent plastic lid a forest of mannequins hung from trees a mountain shaped like a giant head half-submerged in a valley of mist a giant face resting on pillars in the middle of a valley a temple shaped like a spider with the legs as giant arches overhead. (l to r) Hercules (Lou Ferrigno), Sonia Viviani and Milly Carlucci The opening credits that play against a travelling starfield with the names lit up in lights has been copied directly from Superman (1978). There are also some incredibly cheap-looking animation effects, with the worst part of the film being an utterly bizarre sequence where two fighting combatants become glowing line-drawn figures against a starfield, where they transform into dinosaurs, gorillas and snakes. One of the worst effects is the utterly tatty looking stop-motion animated Medusa that briefly turns up. There are some incredibly bad effects, many of which are recycled from the first film. Most of the cast are poor actors – the most notable offender being Lou Ferrigno, a bodybuilder whose main claim to fame was starring as the transformed Hulk in tv’s The Incredible Hulk (1977-81). The dialogue is frequently laughable in its pomposity. Unlike Hercules, The Adventures of Hercules failed to receive a theatrical release and was consigned to direct-to-video release in English-speaking countries.Įxpectedly, The Adventures of Hercules is just as terrible as its predecessor in most regards. Hercules ended up being laughed off the screens by most audiences, nevertheless Cannon, along with director Luigi Cozzi and stars Lou Ferrigno and William Berger, returned for this sequel. ![]() ![]() The Adventures of Hercules is a sequel to Hercules (1983), which was produced in Italy by the US-based Cannon company. ![]()
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