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http://letterboxd.com/zbender/film/hercules-against-the-mongols/
"I don't need weapons. Hands are the only weapons I use."
- a poorly dubbed Hercules
The year: 1272. Where? Tudela (I don't know where that is). In comes Hercules friend to chipmunk, child, and Mongolian women. Hercules and his strength are of intimidation across the kingdom. So much intimidation in fact that he has spread fear to Genghis Khan's whitest kids (seriously 16 million descendent and you can only get 3 white guys to play his sons). With the help of numerous tree trunks and his sandals, Hercules must defeat the Mongols in order to save the Princess (sorry not close to the quality of Star Wars), and overthrow the sons' rule.
Hercules against the Mongols I figure to be a typical film in these days. If you've watched The Ten Commandments (1956) or Ben-Hur (1959) there are thematic similarities. Who can really blame peplum genre filmmakers? The money was working for Ben-Hur. Unfortunately though this flick does not reach such heights. There are battle scenes with an impressive scale. Buildings are on fire, and numerous arrows are shot. The action was coming in steady. However, you will also have a slew of problems. The action scenes are poorly choreographed, wooden dialogue/acting, and I lost the story at one point because the battle scenes that I were once somewhat impressed by are repeated and become an annoyance (making me see it as an improvised game of LARP). It was a very long hour and thirty minutes.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/27/23
Full Review
Audience Member
A low-budget 1964 Italian film (one of many pepla, or sword-and-sandal productions, done in Italy in the late '50s and early '60s) with a cracked but cute premise and some irresistibly unterrible effects. So much horseplay! It's kind of great. Too many white people, though.
The titular hero... originally supposed to be Maciste (strongest guy in the world), I guess? I'm not sure how Hercules came into the production... is just felling a tree bare-handed to help some Asians across a stream. That's the opening scene. Then, there's a bunch of Mongolians running around, among whom are Genghis Khan's three avaricious heirs.
There are some wooden conspiracies and wooden dialogue, some forced and inscrutable hijinks, and a lot of ostentatious brawn. But HERCULES AGAINST THE MONGOLS has an interesting rhythm and some freshly comic elements: it's terribly MST3K-able.
Rated 2/5 Stars •
Rated 2 out of 5 stars
01/24/23
Full Review
Audience Member
Following the death of their father, Genghis Khan, the evil Sayan (Clark), Susdal (Ross), and Kin Khan (Moretti) violate the peace treaties he had brokered with the Western Christians and return the Mongol hordes to the of conquest. Standing in their way, however, is the wandering hero Maciste. Witness what happens when the unstoppable force meets an unmovable object.
"Hercules Against the Mongols" is another one of those Hercules movies that [i]isn't[/i] really about Hercules. The first hint is that it takes place in 13th century eastern Europe, and the second hint is that there's no reference to Greece and Greek gods at all. The film is actually one of the many movies about the Italian hero Maciste, but, for whatever reason, any of these Italian sword-and-sorcery flicks from the 1960s had to be about Hercules when they were imported into the United States and dubbed into English.
As far as this sort of fare goes, this film comes is about average. The bad guys are intereting--with Ken Clark being particularly fun as a Fu Manchu-mustachioed creep so untrustworthy he'd probably betray himself if he thought he could get away with it--the costumes and sets are pretty good (thanks to a dcent-sized budget, something some of these films unfortunately lack--one really can't make an "epic" on a $1.95 like some Italians have tried), and the script moves along at a nice pace.
On the downside, the actors who did the English dubbing are universally awful, and I don't think I've seen this many Caucasians trying to pass for Asians in a single movie. There's also the character of Maciste/Hercules. He doesn't have one-tenth the charisma of the charisma as villanious opponents, partly because he doesn't do anything particularly interesting for most of the film--he's heroic but unremarkable-- and partly because Mark Forest never rises above the level of a generic stongman.
Hercules Against the Mongols (aka "Maciste Against the Mongols")
Starring: Mark Forest, Ken Clark, Howard Ross, Nadir Moretti, Jose Greci, and Maria Gracia Spina
Director: Domenico Paolella
Rated 2.5/5 Stars •
Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars
01/18/23
Full Review
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