ERCOLE E LA REGINA DI LIDIA (Hercules Unchained,1959) *1/2 Steve Reeves swims and wanders around Greece resolutely refusing to wear a shirt, perhaps because they don't have one big enough. This causes him to be kept as a sex slave, fight tigers, bend iron, bowl art pieces at centurions in funny hats, and generates various generally unsteady psychological manifestations. Not interesting in any regard, but perhaps most so in its juvenile arechetypal treatment of sexual incongruity: when Hercules fools around it's because of his accidentally drinking "the forgetting waters" (yeah right, long time since I heard that one at the laundrymat), but when she gets special attention they open up the gates and an entire army battles to salvage whatever virtue remains. No wonder Frank N. Furter of Rocky Horror was so caught up in the thing. They spent more money on advertising than on the film itself, the only possible explanation for word of its glory spreading all the way to Transexual, Transylvania.
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