Ancient Fantasies presents
Hercules the Invincible (1963)

Director - Alvaro Mancori
 

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Plot
Commentary
Facts and Fancies from the Notebooks of Edison J. Nello
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

Hercules (Dan Vadis) saves a princess from a hungry lion. Returning her to the King, Hercules is told if he will also kill a dragon, he gets to marry the Princess. This deal sounds pretty good to Hercules, who it seems has just been walking around the forest for no particular reason. By the time he returns from his dragon mission, the little kingdom has been destroyed by marauders and the King, the Princess and their subjects have been captured and taken to an underground kingdom. Hercules goes to the rescue and there is much mayhem.

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Commentary

Hercules the Invincible has a number of things going for it – Bears, lions, dragons, sorcerers, mad royalty, elephants, volcanoes and Dan Vadis as a play-it-straight Hercules. It all goes to make this swords and sandals outing one of the more watchable of this movie genre. And once again Alameda TV's Professor Edison J. Nello has used his cinematic reforestation editing prowess to bring the mytho-poetic essence of the film to the forefront.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

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Facts and Fancies from the Notebooks of Edison J. Nello

"Dan Vadis portrayed the savior hero in film after film of sword and sandal epics before the genre died an unnatural death at the box office. His rippled form, however, reappeared once again on movie screens throughout the world in the old west of Italian Spaghetti Westerns and their mutated existential American desert descendent counterparts.

"Sadly, Dan Vadis confronted his own barren landscape of the body, dying alone of a massive accidental drug overdose in an automobile in the Mojave Desert in 1987."

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Cast & Production Credits

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For information on Hercules...

Watch Ingmar Ozu-Bresson's experimental film meditation on Hercules - Herculin/Feminin (only on Alameda TV Ch. 31).