FILM REVIEW OF''SEVENTH SON" (2015)

Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges has made many memorable movies.  “Thunderbolt & Lightfoot,” “Jagged Edge,” “The Big Lebowski,” “The Fisher King,” “Fearless,” “Against All Odds,” “Men Who Stare at Goats,” “Iron Man,” “True Grit,” and “Crazy Heart” stand out among the more than 60 theatrical features that he has starred in since he started acting back in the 1970s.  Bridges’ latest outing “Seventh Son” (** OUT OF ****) proves that he can make an occasional stinker, too.  Making his English-language film debut, Oscar-nominated Russian director Sergey Bodrov, who helmed the 1997 Tolstoy tale “Prisoners of the Mountains,” has spared no expense in bringing this sprawling but predictable $95-million, medieval fantasy to the screen.  A posse of demon-possessed souls that can turn into voracious supernatural beasts tangle with our venerable hero and his naïve sidekick as the two struggle to vanquish an unforgiving witch.  Interestingly, this larger-than-life adaptation of retired English teacher Joseph Delaney’s young adult novel "The Spook's Apprentice: Revenge of the Witch," the first of fourteen books in his “Wardstone Chronicles,” has generated greater enthusiasm overseas.   Chinese and Russian audiences flocked to it.  Meantime, American audiences have shunned it, and box office analysts have branded this Universal Pictures release as a flop based on its dismal opening weekend receipts of little more than $7 million.

“Seventh Son” opens as the last of the Falcon Knights, Master John Gregory (Jeff Bridges of “TRON”), locks up the malevolent Queen of Witches, Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore of “The Big Lebowski”), in an oubliette in a remote mountain range.  Gregory and Malkin, it seems, once loved each other.  Gregory abandoned Malkin for another woman, and the jealous Malkin killed Gregory’s wife.  Gregory retaliated and imprisoned Malkin for what he thought would be an eternity.  Designated as a ‘Spook,’ Gregory earns his living as a spell-casting, witch-busting, dragon slayer equipped with a flame-throwing staff.  He has dedicated himself tirelessly to the destruction of anything supernatural that frightens common folk.  Despite Gregory’s elaborate precautions, Mother Malkin breaks out of captivity many years later as a result of a centennial lunar event termed ‘the Blood Moon.’  The Blood Moon revitalizes Malkin’s evil powers, enabling this witch to transform into a winged dragon, and flap away to her own mountain-top fortress.  Master Gregory and young apprentice William Bradley (Kit Harington of HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) recapture this diabolical dame with arrows and a silver net.  Unfortunately, Malkin kills poor Bradley, and Gregory must recruit a new apprentice.  Gregory comes across another ‘seventh son of a seventh son,’ Tom Ward (Ben Barnes of “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian”), a farm boy living in relative obscurity who slops his father’s swine.  Tom reminded me of Luke Skywalker when he appears initially in “Star Wars.”  Anyway, Tom takes advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to escape from a life of drudgery.  Surprisingly enough, Tom had visions of his chance encounter before Gregory actually bargained with his dad to apprentice him.  Meantime, Tom’s doting mother, Mam Ward (Olivia Williams of “Sabotage”), entrusts her son with a unique magical pedant to wear out-of-sight around his neck.  While Gregory tutors Tom about witches, Malkin assembles her own culturally diverse posse of sinister shape-shifters.  Initially, Malkin enlists the aid of her younger sister Bony Lizzie (Antje Traue of “Pandorum”) as well as Bony’s pretty niece Alice (Alicia Vikander of “Ex Machina”), who are witches, too.  Alice beguiles young Tom and keeps the lad hoodwinked for about three-fourths of the film until he wises up about her treachery.  Ultimately, Malkin and her devils lure both Gregory and Tom into her own mountain-top fortress for a fight to the death under a blood red moon.

Essentially, “Seventh Son” suffers from second-rate scripting despite its impressive scribes: “Blood Diamond’s” Charles Leavitt, “Eastern Promises’” Steven Knight and “Reign of Fire’s” Matt Greenberg.  These guys have scrapped most of Delaney’s narrative in favor of something more bombastically cinematic but at the same time hopelessly incoherent.  For example, neither Mother Malkin nor any of her witches mutate into dragons.  Our heroes never ride horses and Gregory doesn’t ride off and leave Tom with his former residence.  Alice doesn’t leave of her own accord; Tom’s mom doesn’t die; and Gregory’s only other friend Tusk works for Mother Malkin. If you loved Delaney’s novel, you will probably abhor “Seventh Son.”  Moreover, the characters in the film lack depth, dimension, and/or decadence.  If you’ve seen “Season of the Witch” with Nicolas Cage and “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” with Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton, you’ll know when to yarn during the formulaic, by-the-numbers, adventures.  Mumbling as if with a mouthful of marbles, a bearded Jeff Bridges appears to be imitating not only his own cantankerous “True Grit” character Rooster Cogburn, but also he channels a combination of Alec Guinness’ Obi-Wan from the original “Star Wars” and Ian McKellen’s Gandalf the Grey from the “Hobbit” movies.  Whereas Obi-Wan and Gandalf emerged as flamboyant, Gregory is far from flamboyant.  His best scene takes place in a tavern where he wields a cup of ale without spilling a drop to thrash a presumptuous swordsman.  Oscar nominated actress Julianne Moore restrains herself as a despicable witch who can morph into an airborne dragon, entwine adversaries with her chain-link tail, and then skewer them without uttering a clever line.  Mind you, this description of Moore’s character sounds like she could have had a blast indulging herself, but she refuses to chew the scenery.  Comparatively, Moore’s lavishly attired, red-haired sorceress is nowhere as audacious as Charlize Theron’s wicked witch in “Snow White and the Huntsman.”  Sadly, secondary leads Ben Barnes and Alicia Vikander generate neither charisma as stock characters nor chemistry as an amorous couple.  Barnes is about as wooden as Hayden Christensen was in the second “Star Wars” trilogy.  Meanwhile, talented thespians like Olivia Williams, Kip Harrington, Djimon Hounsou, and Jason Scott Lee languish on the periphery of this synthetic sword and sorcery saga.  

Although it drums up minimal intensity between fade-in and fade-out, “Seventh Son” boasts some lively combat scenes that the 3-D visual effects enhance.  “Star Wars” visual effects specialist John Dykstra has created several outlandish CGI monsters, but few are terrifying.

The picturesque mountains of British Columbia are as scenic as “Canterbury Tales” production designer Dante Ferretti’s sets are spectacular.  Unfortunately, “Seventh Son” recycles the usual dungeons and dragon shenanigans with little to distinguish it from its prestigious predecessors.

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE HOBBIT: THE UNEXPECTED JOURNEY" (2012)

Long before he took the helm of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, New Zealand born Peter Jackson had acquired both a name and a reputation for himself as an independent splatter-gore horror movie maestro. If you haven't seen "Bad Taste" (1987), "Meet the Feebles" (1989), and ultimately "Dead Alive," you've missed three memorable epics. Repellent in some respects but brilliant in others with the brilliant winning out over the repellent summarizes these films. The squeamish should shun them. "Bad Taste" lives up to its title, while "Meet the Feebles" teeters on the brink of puppet porn with scenes that anticipated the 2004 gross-out fest "Team America: World Police." Jackson courted mainstream audiences with "Heavenly Creatures" (1984) starring Kate Winslet of "Titanic" fame.  Later, in 1996, he put "Back to the Future" lead Michael J. Fox through the paces in his supernatural chiller "The Frighteners." These two are both worth renting if you've never seen them.  Ultimately, Jackson ascended into the pantheon of movie directors with the "Rings" trilogy.  Sadly, his creative star plummeted with his dreadful "King Kong" remake and the lackluster but sympathetic crime thriller "The Lonely Bones."  Now, Jackson sets out to relive his glory days with "The Hobbit." Essentially, Jackson's Golden Age consists of his J.R.R. Tolkien adaptations of "The Lord of the Rings" with "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), followed by "The Two Towers" (2002) and finally the Oscar-winning "The Return of the King" (2003). 
 

Unfortunately, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" emerges as a pale imitation of Jackson's earlier Middle-earth triumphs.  No end of money has been lavished on this sprawling spectacle that serves as the first act of the planned "Hobbit" trilogy.  Virtually everybody from the earlier trilogy reprises the roles they created in the "Rings" extravaganzas.  Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, Cate Blanchet, Hugo Weaving, and Elijah Wood drop in for a scene or two.  Ian McKellen doesn't wander through every scene, but he clocks in more time than anybody else.  By now, you're probably shaking your head about the decision Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema made to make more than one film out of "The Hobbit or There and Back Again."  Wasn't it bad enough when Hollywood divided the last "Harry Potter" novel into two movies?  Or that they perpetrated the same strategy with the final "Twilight" novel "Breaking Dawn?" Audaciously, Warner and New Line have gone one film further by stretching "The Hobbit" into three, not just two films! 

  
Ostensibly, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" (**1/2 out of ****) qualifies as an above-average but predictable first installment in Jackson's newest, larger-than-life, mythological, sword and sorcery trilogy.  Martin Freeman, who co-stars as Dr. Watson in the BBC series "Sherlock," was born to play furry-footed Bilbo Baggins.  Freeman displays a knack for comedy. He is an unobtrusive comic.  He doesn't attract attention to himself, and he savors subtlety the same way the great silent era comic Buster Keaton did.  This minimalist approach makes Freeman appear far more hilarious.  One can only hope either or both of the remaining "Hobbit" movies do Freeman justice.  Freeman imparts both a sparkle and sense of spontaneity to these formulaic antics that nobody but lanky McKellen can rival.  On the other hand, as sympathetic a character as Bilbo is, he is one of the few who has nothing to worry about regarding his own survival. Similarly, Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen of "X-Men") is immune from death, too.  Meantime, it is reassuring to see his peaked hat as he looms above Bilbo and the dwarves.  Everything in "The Hobbit," you must understand, is spelled out in flashback by Ian Holm's elderly Bilbo at the genesis of the action.  For the record, the action in “The Hobbit” occurs 60 years prior to the “Lord of the Rings” adventures.

The grungy villains are a step down in quality from the "Rings" trilogy.  The problem is they aren't very menacing, even for a PG-13 film.  Jackson keeps the violence fairly immaculate, too.  "The Hobbit" suffers because it lacks a centerpiece villain.  The gauntlet of computer-generated adversaries that our heroes encounter isn’t especially impressive.  The "Twilight" wolves looked far more ferocious than these wolves Worst, the movie ends eleven minutes shy of three hours.  Comparatively, the theatrical "Rings" movies ran about the same length.  Nevertheless, Jackson subjects us to lengthy expository-laden scenes throughout and this loquacity slows down "The Hobbit" until our heroes wade into warfare with trolls, orcs, wolves and other mountainous monsters. 
 

The first 40 minutes of "The Hobbit" channels "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs." Various dwarfs assemble at Bilbo's home in the Shire for an impromptu party.  Jackson plays this scene largely for laughs, but nothing about this scene is outrageously side-splitting.  Naturally, these fellows with their droopy snouts gobble down everything in sight, while Gandalf entreats the Halfling to join them. . Mind you, Bilbo is content in his easy chair with a library and a larder within arm's reach.  Gandalf persuades Bilbo to join them and experience life first hand.  Actually, Bilbo differs very little from contemporary couch potatoes.  An evil dragon named Smaug, it seems, has evicted the sword-wielding dwarfs of Erebor.  "The Hobbit" depicts the quest of Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and thirteen dwarves to reoccupy their kingdom known as the Lonely Mountain.  Not until fadeout do these pugnacious dwarfs accept Bilbo as one of their own.  The "Transformer" mountain warriors are imaginative and reminded me of the asteroid in "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back" where a desolate rock changed into a creature when Han Solo took refuge in it.  The best scene in "The Hobbit" takes place when Bilbo stumbles onto Gollum, and they challenge each other with riddles for possession of the ring.  Andy Serkis is superb once more as the creepy Gollum.  The best part of "The Hobbit" occurs in its final hour when our heroes take a ride in the skies and scramble through a set reminiscent of "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." Sadly, what was once magical has lost its luster, and "The Hobbit" is only half as good as the "Lord of the Rings" masterpieces.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SUCKER PUNCH" (2011)

Watching “Sucker Punch” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) may feel like the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy. “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder’s bizarre, babes-in-bondage, fantasy epic imitates Terry Gilliam’s far darker, Orwellian, science-fiction satire “Brazil.” Like “Brazil” (1985), “Sucker Punch” taps into the fertile imagination--where anything goes--of an individual--a single, white, female here--before a doctor performs a lobotomy on her at a corrupt mental institution. This ensemble, female-empowerment, chick flick arms Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung to the teeth with samurai swords, sub-machine guns, automatic pistols, and attitude galore as they slash, shoot, and kick their way through a hellzapoppin' variety of “Heavy Metal” escapades with wizen Scott Glenn briefing them about each mission. Of course, their fetish costumes and make-up are as immaculate as the situations that they encounter. This PG-13 rated movie rarely grovels in blood, guts, and gore, and the crisply staged violence is nowhere as savage as “Saving Private Ryan.” Meanwhile, the adventures that Baby Doll and her accomplices embark on before her lobotomy will make you feel like you’ve been plunged into a swirling vortex of popular culture imagery. This imagery ranges from doll-faced manga-influenced comics to high-stepping musicals like “Moulin Rouge,” to strange sword & sorcery sagas with vengeful mother dragons, to actual events like World War I trench warfare with Zeppelins air ships that burst into high-octane orange explosions. The soldiers in the World War I sequence are thoroughly ominous-looking, steam-powered German zombie-cyborgs. Every time that either a bullet strikes them or a sword blade gashes them, steam erupts in pneumatic jets from their uniformed bodies.

“Sucker Punch” takes place in the 1960s. The prologue that establishes our heroine’s predicament blends the creepy look of E.C. Comics with gritty Hollywood B-movies about woman behind bars. Baby Doll (Australian actress Emily Browning of “Ghost Ship“) and her younger sister discover their mother dead in her bedroom. Later, Baby Doll’s wicked stepfather (Gerard Plunkett of “2012”) flies into a rage when he reads his wife’ will. He gets nothing, while the two daughters get everything. The furious stepfather decides to rape the younger daughter. First, he locks Baby Doll in her bedroom. Second, he kicks down the door to the younger girl’s room. After she breaks out of her room on the second floor during a storm, Baby Doll grabs a gun from downstairs to kill him. Accidentally, she misses the stepfather and tragically blasts her young sister. In no time at all, the stepfather has Baby Doll committed to the spooky Lennox House for the Mentally Insane in Vermont. Snyder films this entire opening gambit as if it were an extended MTV rock video. An asylum orderly, the slimy Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac of “The Nativity Story”), demands that the stepfather pay him $2,000 to forge the signature of asylum psychiatrist Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino of “Sin City“) on the form to authorize Baby Doll‘s lobotomy. Mind you, the stepfather neither wants for the authorities to discover what really happened at home nor does he want Baby Doll to receive her mom's fortune. Initially, Baby Doll learns that she has five days before the lobotomy is scheduled.

The first jarring thing about “Sucker Punch” is the abrupt change of settings. Once you have resigned yourself to watching a movie that takes place in a mental asylum like the one in “Shutter Island,” you find the setting shifted to a classy bordello where the girls perform exotic dances for the well-heeled customers. Each time that Baby Doll dances, she mesmerizes her audiences. She imagines that each dance is like completing a larger-than-life mission. During the first mission, she meets a sword master (Scott Glenn) who furnishes her with an arsenal of weapons to battle three gigantic samurai warriors who have piercing red eyes. Baby Doll behaves like an invulnerable heroine. She survives blows from these humongous samurai warriors that would kill ordinary people. Later, she makes friends with the first inmate/dancer when she saves Rocket from being raped by a porcine cook. Eventually, Baby Doll assembles a “Fox Force Five” unit of dames -- Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of “Limitless”), Rocket (Jena Malone of “The Soloist” ), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens of “High School Musical”) and Amber (Jamie Chung of “Sorority Row”) -- to cavort in the strip-club fantasy costumes with a combination of S.W.A.T gear and samurai swords to obtain four crucial things. Sweet Pea is the hardest of them to convince because she is the most hopeless member of the quintet. Once they come together, they act like a team until the villains whittle down their numbers.

Three far-fetched, outlandish sequences with our glamorous ensemble carrying out a mission occur in the episodic “Sucker Punch.” Mind you, each mission yields rewards that will enable our heroines to escape from the dreadful insane asylum. According to Baby Doll, they need an asylum map to get past the guards. Furthermore, they need fire--in the form of a butane lighter, a knife, and a special key. Obviously, the special key is a master key that will open any asylum lock. Naturally, none of the imaginative, over-the-top missions that transpire on screen apart from those opening and closing moments aren’t remotely realistic. Compared with “300,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch” delivers lightweight blows, but deploys them out with greater sophistication. The characters are as stereotypical as the set-pieces are formulaic. Of course, our heroines are constantly out numbered. Ironically, our heroine surmounts her bigger-than-life obstacles, achieves her incredible goal, but she pays a dear price for it in the long run.

Director Zack Snyder immerses our ear drums with atmospheric chart-topping tunes for more than the sake of their rock’n roll cult status. This music propels Baby Doll into her different states of mind. Moreover, Snyder observed that the music thematically holds the film together. Listening to “Sucker Punch” is like grooving to golden oldies such as "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," "White Rabbit," and two Queen songs “I Want It All,” and “We Will Rock You.” Despite its one-dimensional characters and formula-scripting, “Sucker Punch” qualifies as a suspenseful, above-average, metaphorical, but downbeat fantasy about gals with guns, guts, and get-up & go!

FILM REVIEW OF "HERCULES" (Italian-1958)

Anybody who enjoyed this larger-than-life mythological adventure should know that “Attila” director Pietro Francisci’s “Hercules” (***1/2 out of ****) spawned the sword and sandal genre. These films constituted a sub-genre of the Hollywood historical epic, and the stories occurred either during classical antiquity in Greece and Rome or Biblical times in other Mediterranean locales. Basically, these European produced films featured a brawny, footloose warrior as the protagonist who performs incredible feats of strength that enabled him to destroy supernatural monsters, topple evil tyrants and free enslaved peoples. Sometimes, the hero was a gladiator like the Kirk Douglas hero in “Spartacus.” Often, the hero’s name varied when these films arrived in America. The muscular champion was called Hercules, Samson, Goliath or he was a son of Hercules with an entirely different name. In Italy, however, the strongman hero was always known as Maciste.

Although “Hercules” was the first of some 300 sword and sandal sagas to follow until the Spaghetti western eclipsed the genre around 1964, the Italians had been producing sword and sandal movies long before “Hercules.” One of the first major silent films, director Giovanni Pastrone’s “Cabiria” appeared in 1914 and concerned the abduction of the eponymous little girl that pirates kidnapped during an eruption of Mount Etna during the third century B.C. A Roman spy and his mesomorphic muscle-bound slave Maciste rescued Cabiria. Aside from revitalizing a moribund genre, Francisci’s “Hercules” is notable not only for its star, bodybuilder Steve Reeves of “Mr. Universe” fame, but also for lenser Mario Bava and his splendid widescreen pictorial compositions as well as his atmospheric lightning. Bava’s photography is nothing short of brilliant. His cameras are always in the best place to capture the action. Reeves went on to star in several more pepla, and Bava later helmed “Hercules in the Haunted World.” “Hercules Unchained” with Reeves and co-star Sylva Koscina followed “Hercules.”

Aesthetically, “Hercules” qualifies as an above-average effort for the genre. Francisci and his scenarists derived their screenplay from Apollonius of Rhodes’ Greek epic poem "Argonautica" that dealt with Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece. In this film, Hercules literally usurps Jason as the hero when in reality the son of Jupiter played a peripheral role in the exploit. British director Don Chaffey helmed the best cinematic version of the Golden Fleece myth in 1963 with his exciting “Jason and the Argonauts” that boasted the superb stop-motion animation of Ray Harryhausen. One of the problems with “Hercules” is that Jason recovers the fleece rather too easily from a giant reptile that sleeps near the tree where the fleece hangs. Reeves has a few uncomfortable moments when he goes on the rampage, literally blowing his cool, and sounds a mite unbelievable. Mind you, this was the bodybuilder’s first starring role so he can be forgiven. Francisci plays everything straight down the line, except for the campy monster guarding the Golden Fleece that Jason tries to retrieve. Of course, some of the hand-to-hand combat scenes where Hercules tangles with livestock such as a lion and a bison looks staged. Typically, the animal trainer would substitute for the star or the director would orchestrate the fights so ersatz animal heads and paws could be used. Consequently, while it is an entertaining escapism, “Hercules” isn’t as much hokum as later strong man sagas. Indeed, "Hercules" concerns murder in the palace; a princess who fears the truth about her father

"Hercules" became a blockbuster during its North American release and the success of the film in the United States can be attributed to Joseph E Levine. According to A.T. McKenna in his thesis “Joseph E. Levine: Showmanship, Reputation and Industrial Practice 1945 - 1977,” “Hercules” made Levine an “industry big shot.” After every Hollywood studio passed on Francisci's film, Levine bought the film for a modest $120,000, dubbed in English dialogue, and changed the title from "The Labors of Hercules" to simply "Hercules." Levine's folly wound up raking in a fortune from its U.S. release and sequels that followed. Levine pioneered 'saturation' booking and opened "Hercules" in 600 theaters. According to the Turner Classic Movies website, this method of opening a movie was "unheard of" in the 1950s. Levine relied on radio and television advertising to arouse the public's curiosity and he succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. “I had no misgivings about Hercules,” Levine explained to the media. “It had something for everybody. It had a dragon for kids, musclemen for growing boys, a shipwreck scene for waiters and clerks. Who doesn’t dream of getting stuck on an island with some broads? And the picture had Steve Reeves. He appealed to women.” Gordon Scott, Gordon Mitchell, Ed Fury, Dan Vadis, Mark Forest, Reg Park and other American bodybuilders went to Europe to star in these films. Inevitably, continental bodybuilders took umbrage because of the reliance by their own producers and directors on Americans when just as many suitable muscle-bound specimens resided in Italy, the foremost being Alan Steel.

“Hercules” unfolds with a venerable scene straight out of an old western. A beautiful woman, Princess Iole (Sylva Koscina of "Michael Strogoff"), shatters the afternoon calm when we loses control of a pair of horses hauling her chariot. She scatters a herd of goats. Francisci cuts to a close-up of tree roots being torn out of the ground and shows Hercules (Steve Reeves of “Jailbait”) hurl the tree it into the path of the runaway horses. “I thank the gods for providing me such a strong man when I needed him,” Iole says. Hercules carries her from the chariot and sets her on a rock. “I’ll admit that the sight of those runaway horses had me worried about you.” Hercules suspects Iole is royalty from the standard on her chariot. As it turns out, Iola is the daughter of King Pelias of Iolcus (Ivo Garrani of "Roland the Mighty"), and our hero is in route to train Pelias’ son Prince Iphitus (Mimmo Palmara of “Attila”) in the art of warfare. Iole furnishes Hercules with a brief history of her father’s suspicious rise to power, the death of his brother the king, and the thief of the Golden Fleece. Afterward, Hercules accompanies Iola back to the palace. An impulsive, arrogant young man, Iphitus hates Hercules. When a lion terrorizes the land, Hercules slays the beast. Iphitus interferes with Hercules, and the lion kills Iphitus before Hercules can kill it. A grief-stricken Pelias tells Hercules the only way that he can redeem himself is to kill the Cretan bull.

Hercules believes that Pelias has treated him unfairly and he goes to the temple of The Sybil (Lidia Alfonsi of “"Hercules vs. the Hydra") to demand an explanation. During the conversation, Hercules reveals that he wants to shed his immortality and be like mortal men so that he can love Iola and have a family. The gods release Hercules from his immortality and he praises them. Before he can kill the bull, Hercules spots a young man crouched over the body of a dying man. Hercules kills the bull after a brief struggle; essentially, he slams two lethal blows with his fist into the bull’s head. Later, he follows the young man to a cave and discovers his old friend Chironi (Afro Poli of “Tosca”) has been gored by the bull and lies dying. Chironi brings Hercules up to date about the disappearance of the Golden Fleece and how Jason and he left the country with it but lost it. Chironi hid the Golden Fleece in an oak tree before they sailed back home. Before Chironi dies, he explains that the mystery of the king’s death can be solved by reading an inscription written in the Golden Fleece. The dying Chironi entrusts Jason (Fabrizio Mioni of “"Roland the Mighty") to Hercules’ care. During their journey back to the palace, Hercules and Jason encounter a woman trying to cross a river with her three daughters. She doesn’t want them to get wet and she entreats our heroes to help her. While Jason is helping two daughters across the river, he loses a sandal. Hercules remembers that a man with one sandal will take Pelias’ kingdom away from him. Jason treats the loss of the sandal as no big deal.

Pelias gives Hercules three months to bring back the Golden Fleece to prove that Jason is the rightful heir to the throne. Ulysses (Gabriele Antonini of “"Head of a Tyrant") and his father Laertes (Andrea Fantasia of “War and Peace”), the shipbuilder Argos (Aldo Fiorelli of "The Barbarians"), the twins Castor (Fulvio Carrara of “"Hercules Unchained") and Pollux (Willi Colombini of "Odessa in Flames"), the lyre-strumming Orpheus (Gino Mattera of "Faust and the Devil"), the physician Aesculapius (Gian Paolo Rosmino of “Il fanciullo del West”) and others accompany Jason and Hercules on a long, rough sea voyage on the ship Argos. One of those others is the treacherous Eurysteus who is King Pelias’ spy and troublemaker. After a storm that frightens the men enough to prompt Eurysteus to lead a mutiny, our heroes land on an island of gorgeous Amazon women. Initially, the women are helpful to the starving sailors and allow them to replenish their store of supplies. Later, however, the women try to kill them with poisoned wine, but the men outsmart them. Eventually, our heroes make it to the island of Colchis and fight with a tribe of hairy ape-men. Meantime, Jason reclaims the Golden Fleece after an encounter with a dragon. Just as Chironi had told them, the answer to the mystery of the king’s death is revealed. When the Argos docks in Pelias killed his brother. Jason becomes the rightful ruler of Iolcus, Pelias’s henchman Eurysteus (Arturo Dominici of "Yvonne of the Night") snatches the Golden Fleece so that Jason has no evidence to present to the King. Pelias imprisons Hercules, but the strong man escapes after ripping the chains out of the wall meant to restrain him. Hercules wraps the chains around Eurysteus’ neck and kills him. Afterward, he stops Pelias' cavalry by looping the chains around the palace portico and bringing it down upon them like Samson did to the Philistines. The vanquished Pelias swallows poison and Jason wins the throne back. “Hercules” ends with Iole and he walking away arm in arm.