Hercules and the Princess of Troy

This unsold TV pilot for a Hercules series starred Gordon Scott as the legendary muscular hero of Greek mythology. Hercules used a ship as his mode of transportation and had as sidekicks Ulysses and Diogenes before either of them did the deeds made them legends in their own right.

This movie has Hercules in Troy and when you consider he's there with young Ulysses that is quite ironical. Young Princess Diana (another irony) will in two months ascend the throne and her uncle the regent will cede power. But uncle Petra isn't about to do that.

Troy is plagued with a sea monster and believe me the special effects aren't Ray Harryhausen quality. They've got to sacrifice people occasionally because when they've tried to defeat the monster, the Trojans have come up way short. But that's before Hercules took on the job.

This one was played very straight in true peplum fashion. I'm sure Scott would have made a superb TV Hercules if he was given the chance. That would have to wait for another thirty years or so when Kevin Sorbo played the part in a series that had a nice satirical edge to it occasionally.

It's silly to complain that this is a B-movie made for television - because that's exactly what it is, and doesn't pretend to be anything else. And here's the good news - it's a pretty darn good B-movie made for television. One of the major problems with standard Italian Hercules films is that the are usually 100- 120 minutes long, too long for the amount of story they have to tell; consequently there's a lot of padding to them, usually in the middle. This film is kept lean and tight at 47 minutes - only the highlights of the story are here, and that's all we need.

I must remark that production values are gorgeous for mid-60s television. The acting is professional, the pacing is snappy, the story interesting (for this genre), the special fx are on a par with better television sci-fi/fantasy shows of the period - this is solid B-movie entertainment. Worth checking out.

In 1965 the boom in Italian sandal films was gradually coming to an end. As a result, a pilot film for a series was filmed for American television, but it was not realized. For almost 50 minutes you can watch Hercules (Gordon Scott) save a Trojan princess (Diana Hyland) from being sacrificed to a strange sea monster that looks terribly artificial. The only things worth mentioning are Gordon Mitchell as the pirate captain and Giorgio Ardisson (who would soon start off as the "Italian James Bond") as Leander.

The voice-overs, which comment on the events like a storybook, are particularly annoying. You can clearly see that this was not produced for the cinema, but for television.

Rightly forgotten!

This was pleasantly short. I thought the DVD this was on might be cut - I mean under an hour? This couldn't be true now could it? But yes it was and while I don't really have the will or time to gather more information about the backstory to do it this way, whoever likes Sword and Sandal movies and (wet) rubber monsters can watch this (wait that sounded bad - ah well you know what I mean in the end, don't you?).

So yes no historical accuracy once again, but don't expect that with those types of movies anyway ...

"Hercules and the Princess of Troy" was actually shot as a pilot for a proposed television series. This pilot wasn't picked up, probably because the sword and sandal genre was on its last legs both in Europe and in North America. It does have some interesting aspects, the main one being that for an 1965 American television production, it looks extremely lavish. Obviously, the makers of this pilot were able to recycle the sets, props, and costumes from past Italian sword and sandal movies. That's why this pilot feels exactly like one of those Italian sword and sandal movies, only shorter. The faster pace does indeed help, but for the most part this is no different than those Italian feature film productions. If you like the sword and sandal genre, you'll probably enjoy this. If you are not particularly crazy about the genre (like myself), you'll swallow it, but still be glad it's only half the usual length of the usual genre standard.