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So much average

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The Queen of Atlantis, Queen Antinea, has developed a race of superhumans warriors to take over the world. Ercole / Hercules is out to stop her and all of them.Typical. Standard stuff of the 1960s sword and sandal craze. I didn't find it all that bad of a film but it's far away from being a good movie. It's mindless entertainment that you veg-out and become a couch potato when you are tired. It's one of those films you just relax and fall asleep too. It's not the best Hercules type of film, but it's not the worst of the bunch. No matter, as I said before just veg-out mindlessly watching and drift off to dreamland - you aren't missing out on much of anything with this ending.2/10

I'm probably just so used to seeing movies shown on MST3K being awful that I found this to not be that bad. It probably helps that it actually does get good near the end with all the explosions and stuff. The special effects get better. I still wouldn't recommend it of course. This was the time when most movies were in color. You can kind of see how gaudy it looks. It's not as bad as some other movies, but still pales in comparison to even older movies like the 1940 "The Thief Of Baghdad". I guess the atmosphere wasn't bad.Of course, I haven't been following the Hercules films in this series that much, so I didn't really care what was going on. I thought Atlantis was supposed to be underwater? What's the deal with that? A lot of the acting is pretty corny too. I guess this series as a whole wasn't as awful as most. It starts so abruptly. There's just all this action out of nowhere. Well, at least there was something going on at the beginning. **

Reg Park was a champion British bodybuilder from Leeds known for his size. He prefigured the bigger man who dominated the sport when it gained in popularity, especially Arnold Schwarzenegger, who considered Park a friend and mentor. He was a natural choice to play Hercules and, I think, the second-best at it after Steve Reeves. He just has to stand there to look imposing, but he had a natural athlete's grace, an easy charm, and looked good with a beard.Originally titled "Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide" (Hercules at the Conquest of Atlantis) the American title doesn't make much sense because there is only one captive woman and she is freed by Hercules, then recaptured and freed by Hercules's son. That, however, is only the tip of the stop-making-sense iceberg, even though the film tries to build a half-baked political backdrop for the story (the early scenes could have inspired "The Phantom Menace," except that this is more entertaining). The Atlantis story the film concocts is not one that has any basis in any mythology I'm familiar with, but it involves an evil queen Antinea (Fay Spain) who plots to take over the world and destroy Greece with her army of super-soldiers, who's capabilities she badly overestimates. Naturally, she falls for Hercules, which is one of the many Peplum tropes the filmmakers squeeze in: the comic-relief sidekick, played by little person Salvatore Furnari; the dancing girls; the monsters and animals Hercules has to dispatch. This time, the film gets that out of the way with the character of demi-god Proteus, who can shape shift, so Hercules takes on a serpent (man in hilarious rubber suit), snake, lion and bird of prey in rapid succession. There is a surprising amount of armchair philosophizing, with Hercules insisting he couldn't do what he does if the gods didn't approve but otherwise being quite the skeptic. He tells Queen Antinea he likes his nature to be natural, as opposed to augmented by magic, and she basically tells him to check his privilege. Overall, this is very silly but very watchable and enjoyable, even if it is slow to get going. See also the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version.

Ostensibly these films provided an opportunity to fill the screen with fantastic spectacle, but still, you can't ignore the fact that most of the time you're going to be watching an incredibly buff and virile actor running around clad in next to nothing. I can't help but wonder who the intended audience was here. Anyway, Hercules and the Captive Women is a genre exercise and so, if we are to properly evaluate it, we should run it against the Hercules Movie Checklist to see just how well it delivers the mandatory elements! 1. Is the title character portrayed by an actor with an almost ridiculously huge and bloated physique? Check! 2. Does he lift large, seemingly heavy objects and chuck them around? Check! 3. Does he fight a wild animal? Check! 4. Does he fight absurd monsters or creatures from outer space? Check! 5. Does he cause a natural catastrophe (buildings toppling, mountains exploding, world economies collapsing)? Check! 6. Does he bend iron objects out of shape and then bend them back again? Check! 7. Is there an evil queen? Check! 8. Does she have the hots for Herc? Check! 9. Does she try to drug Herc with poisoned wine? Check! 10. Does she seem to really enjoy killing other people? Check! 11. Do the men wear miniskirts while the women wear diaphanous gowns? Check! 12. Are there chariots, spears, bows and arrows and soldiers wearing helmets and carrying shields? Check! 13. Are there enormous temple sets? Check! 14. Are there caves? Check! 15. Are there secret passages and trap doors? Check! 16. Is there at least one Pagan Splendor Dance Number? Check! So, to be fair, this movie does seem to touch all the Hercules bases! It loses points, however, for the inclusion of several unwanted and unwarranted elements. The first is a hopelessly convoluted and confusing plot that is so riddled with holes that it resembles a corpse at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. The second is the pointless inclusion of Hylas, the son of Hercules. He seems to be in the movie to provide some kind of love interest for the Princess who is condemned to die to save the life of her mother, the evil queen. But shouldn't the Herc be her love interest? It seems to me that a love triangle between Hercules, the queen and the princess offers more plot possibilities than wedging a son into things. There is really nothing he does in the flick that couldn't have been accomplished by Daddy with a lot less plot machinations. Hylas really drags the movie down. The third is the inclusion of Timotheus, the dwarf and companion to Hylas. My guess is that he is there to provide comic relief, although the movie is already so full of unintentional laughs that Timotheus really comes off as completely unnecessary. In fact, he is just plain annoying. There are some folks in Hollywood who think that dwarfs are completely adorable and endlessly entertaining. Those folks are wrong!