Hercules Unchained

Steve Reeves flexes back into frame for the direct follow-up to Hercules, and Joseph E. Levine gives it the same saturation-advertising treatment that made the first one a fortune. The plot has Hercules drink from the Waters of Forgetfulness, lose his memory and wind up the pampered captive of Queen Omphale of Lydia, while a war over the throne of Thebes grinds on without him. It is exactly as stiff and episodic as the original, Reeves posing more than acting, Sylva Koscina waiting patiently at home. What it lacks in craft it made up in receipts, and the three hundred sword-and-sandal films that followed all owe their existence to this one turning a hit into a habit.