Arriving just as the Italian sword ‘n’ sandal epic was reaching its peak, Vittorio Cottafavi’s Hercules and the Captive Women imported a new Hercules that some say was the best, champion bodybuilder Reg Park. Although in some ways a fairly modest production, it was filmed in the same large-format process as Kirk Douglas’s Spartacus. Attractive sets, fun characters, a reasonable script and vigorous direction from Vittorio Cottafavi help out as well. It’s not world-class cinema, but it’s much better than Cottafavi’s earlier Goliath and the Dragon.
From Hercules to Odysseus to Benoit’s Lt. de Saint-Avit, heroes in far off places habitually ‘fall under the spell’ of alluring, predatory females, and it’s never their fault: ‘Honest, Penelope, I was thinking of you all the time.’ How did Hercules explain all his dalliances to his beloved Iole? Did he even bother? Does being a demi-god mean never having to say you’re sorry?
Hercules and the Captive Women sees our hero once again courted by a powerful, evil woman. Thebes is having hard times, and King Androcles (Ettore Manni) talks his friend Hercules (Reg Park) into a voyage to find out what country or force is threatening all of Greece. Hiding in the ship is Hercules’ adventurous son Hylus (Luciano Marin). Abandoning a disloyal crew, they continue sailing until separated by a storm. Hercules ends up on the magic island of the monster god Proteus (Maurizio Coffarelli), who transforms into several animals before Hercules kills him. That frees young Princess Ismene (Laura Efrikian aka Altan) from confinement within a rock wall. Hercules returns Ismene to the island of Atlantis, to the cold embrace of her mother, the conniving Queen Antinea (Fay Spain). She lies to Hercules, drugs him and tries to rob him of his memory. Antinea has also used drugs to turn Androcles into a remote-controlled murderer. Hylas and his midget helper Timoteo (Salvatore Furnari) come to the rescue when Antinea gives orders for Ismene to be killed. Hercules frees Antinea’s scarred captives and learns the Queen’s real purpose from Zantas, the Priest of Uranus (Mario Petri): she’s using a magic stone to create an army of super-men to conquer the world!
Hercules and the Captive Women / Hercules Conquers Atlantis tries to be a cut above the booming competition in Hercules / Maciste / Samson / Goliath pictures. The Italian producers distinguish the show with an early scene that gathers three name actors as Grecian kings — Enrico Maria Salerno, Ivo Garrani & Gian Maria Volontè — before sending Reg Park’s laid-back muscleman off on another ill-defined adventure. The story moves along quickly via a series of ellipses. We don’t see Hercules initially being drugged to go on the voyage, and we cut from the mutinous crew sabotaging the water skins, straight to the next day’s search for water on a nearby island (the same archway beach seen in Ray Harryhausen’s Jason and the Argonauts). Reg Park’s Herc prefers to sleep through everything until it comes time to rescue the cute Ismene, who Proteus has locked into solid rock, just like the damned souls of Dante’s Inferno. ↑ Brisk pacing and a good sense of humor brighten the proceedings, and Vittorio Cottafavi’s camera direction is excellent. Unlike some lower-echelon sword ‘n’ sandal groaners, this is a carefully-filmed show.
Having been impressed at age seven that there’s no substitute for Steve Reeves, this reviewer tends to find fault with Reg Park, who seems like a perfectly nice guy but just hasn’t the attitude of a demi-god. Physique-wise Park is probably even more developed than Reeves, and we’re told that he was incredibly strong. In his one scene with his wife Deianira (Luciana Angiolillo) she caresses his chest as if fascinated by his shape. Park has the regulation Steve Reeves beard but can’t do much with his one facial expression, which always evokes a bemused patience… he’s a pleasant, slightly bovine Hercules. Director Cottafavi has Park sleep through various minor problems. When a fight breaks out in a tavern, this laid-back Hercules refuses to become flustered.
A good supporting cast fills in the acting gaps. Luciano Marin and Laura Efrikian are a cute couple, and she’s particularly deserving as a teen princess in need of rescue. Ettore Manni is just okay as the brainwashed Androcles, who initiates the adventure but sits most of it out; for much of the running time the story makes us suspect that he’s an Atlantean double agent. Mimmo Palmari is appropriately sinister as Antinea’s Grand Vizier. Her drugs and/or magic give him a strange, somewhat Metalunan beetle-brow, an appearance he shares with his lady’s personal guard.
The one acting standout in this costume pageant is Fay Spain, previously the U.S. exploitation queen of drive-in pix like Dragstrip Girl and Teenage Doll. Ms. Spain is visually one of the best evil Queen types ever — her Antinea could have been a model for illustrator Wallace Wood’s slinky, viper-smiled vixens. Ms. Spain does good things for a strange black hairdo, a stack of raven hair at least four inches in height. She also rocks the overdone, over-emphatic ’60s eye makeup — those hypnotic eyes are as startling as those of Claude Dantes in Blood and Black Lace. In this kind of story, the right look can provide most of the performance.
Italo fantasies often fronted malign, perfidious female villains, which invited charges of sexism and misogyny from English genre critics. Like the other truck stop sirens that got the hots for Steve Reeves’ Hercules — Sylvia Lopez’s Queen Omphale, Gianna Maria Canale’s Antea — Fay Spain’s Antinea tries to lobotomize-monopolize the muscle hunk with a date-rape drug. Unlike the others, she doesn’t seem to fall in love with him. Herc drinks the Queen’s sleeping potion but is smart enough to spit it out and escape from her icy clutches. Actually, Antinea’s maidservant serves Herc with a look that would tell anybody they were drinking poison, so maybe he’s not that smart after all.
The replacement English dialogue is better than usual with one pointed exception. Antinea has obtained her wicked magic by usurping the powers of the god Uranus, which cues lines like, “All hail the power of Uranus!” and “The blood of Uranus can never be destroyed!” The American importers surely knew a gold mine of juvenile humor when they saw one.
The special effects are basic but make their point. The dissolves and other (potentially) in-camera effects look fine. Proteus is a goofy rubber-suited lizard monster and not all that impressive. ↑ Thanks to some interesting special makeup, all of Antinea’s invincible super-soldiers share her Grand Vizier’s albino beetle-brow look, under Eloi-like white wigs. They are meant to be the vanguard of a future world-conquering Atlantis. (Last photo below ↓ )
Hercules, Hylus and Ismene witness a byproduct of Antinea’s experiments with transformational magic, a hundred or so scarred, sickly citizens banished to a quarry not far from downtown. The situation seems inspired by the outcast lepers in William Wyler’s Ben-Hur: soldiers arrive to throw food down into the quarry. The ‘scarred ones’ insist on starting an impromptu rebellion, just after Hercules has advised them to stay cool because he’ll fix everything. That’s an interesting wrinkle considering that Herc’s ‘fix’ is to nuke the whole island-nation, including its unfortunate peasants.
The costumes are also given special attention, especially Fay Spain’s many form-fitting gowns. The film has several large crowd scenes and a couple of reasonable fights; the only moment that comes off as silly is a crane shot that reveals dozens of dead bodies. It’s all too-neatly posed, like the unconvincing post-orgy scenes in quasi-Biblical epics. Reg Park’s reaction is vacant as usual: he stares at the corpses as if disappointed that there’s nobody left to play with him.
The enormous main exterior set consists of two large buildings with columned façades given a ‘carved from solid rock’ look. I’ve seen this set in several muscleman movies and wouldn’t doubt that it was constructed for this one, although it might have been repurposed from Hercules Unchained. The ubiquitous underground grotto location (presumably close to Rome) also gets a lot of use. Reg Park appears to drive a real chariot with six or eight horsepower, charging right through the narrow grotto.
The titles for Hercules and the Captive Women announce that it was photographed in Super Technirama 70. Ordinary Technirama (Night Passage, The Vikings) just gives VistaVision a slight squeeze, and prints out to normal anamorphic 35mm. Super Technirama 70 performs a blow-up to the larger film format. For some venues (in Europe only) this sword ‘n’ sandal romp was thus elevated to the elite club of 70mm productions like El Cid, 55 Days at Peking and The Music Man. This was quite an anomaly considering that most sword ‘n’ sandals used the cut-price half-frame Techniscope 35mm format. The lighting may not be up to the fantastic standard of Mario Bava’s Hercules or Hercules in the Haunted World, but is again much better than the norm.
The story stays fresh and exciting up to the scene in which Hercules crumbles the ceiling of the Uranus shrine to let in a shaft of Evil-Banishing light — a feat nicely staged. From that point forward formula takes over for the rescue of Hylas, Ismene, and the ‘possessed’ King Androcles. The concluding inundation of Atlantis utilizes some good angles of real volcanoes amid falling miniatures and giant fake rocks. A colossal-looking falling stone column clobbers Fay Spain’s mannequin stand-in. I can see Hercules and the Captive Women playing well to audiences of cheering ten year-olds, who can laugh at the Uranus jokes, too.
In his chapter ‘The Wedding of Poetry and Pulp’ in Films and Feelings, critic Raymond Durgnat makes the case for political interpretations of juvenile movie fare, as with the pacifist-warlike alien civilization in This Island Earth. Durgnat then contrasts Cottafavi’s Hercules Conquers Atlantis with another Italo Atlantis tale, Umberto Scarpelli’s The Giant of Metropolis with Gordon Mitchell and Bella Cortez. He notes that both stories hinge on the idea of transforming men into supermen … who of course are no match for our handsome, ‘natural’ muscleman heroes. Durgnat calls Scarpelli’s film “the reactionary retort to all that is democratic and happily pagan in Cottafavi’s film.” (para.) Liberal Cottafavi condemns Antinea’s scheme because she victimizes the peasantry for her experiments. Durgnat sees Scarpelli’s more conservative film as unyielding, Catholic: its ‘wise man’ character blames the evils of Metropolis (Atlantis) on science itself.
I don’t think that Hercules Conquers Atlantis and The Giant of Metropolis were ever again discussed on such lofty terms. Following Durgnat’s thought process, the super-spy movie Our Man Flint is a reworking of the same themes — a mysterious island civilization threatens New World Order that will enslave men, create a new race, whatever. Our bigger-than-life hero singlehandedly wipes it out. It’s not ‘Hercules conquers Atlantis,’ but ‘Hercules Obliterates Atlantis.’
