There are certain Wikipedia articles which, even within the limited confines of a computer screen, have the power to make their readers feel instantly, infinitesimally insignificant. Take the staggering statistical horrors of the page devoted to World War II casualties, the cataclysmic incessancy of the Lists of Natural and Accidental Disasters, or, for maximum self-minimization, the poetically titled Timeline of the Far Future. For a less macabre version of these overwhelming experiences, a good choice might be the article for the Peplum film genre, which contains a catalogue of crap whose volume is utterly confounding. Representing millions (if not billions) of man-hours expended, logic dictates that at least a few of these movies must be good, but the effort needed to gauge all of them would itself take a lifetime. Intrigued by the sheer amount of material to explore, I dared stick a toe into this oceanic expanse, dedicating 90 minutes to the sampling of 1960’s Hercules vs. The Hydra.
Rest assured that this low-budget extravaganza, known alternatively (and in particular on the title credits here, despite what Netflix claims) as The Loves of Hercules, is an assuredly crappy movie. A clunky, unrepentantly garish parade of oiled flesh, it owes its ‘love’ focus to the appearance of Jayne Mansfield, whose ample form is matched against the comparable heft of then-husband Miklós “Mickey” Hargitay, playing the mythological hero in various states of hunky undress. The two share an embattled romance, the inevitable happy outcome of which is delayed by a series of dramatic predicaments, all conveyed in the same overwrought, faux-Shakespearian tone. The first of these deals with the disposal of the hero’s doomed wife Megara, whose presence here amounts to little more than an awkwardly staged death and the final promise that “Hercules will avenge me;” not the proudest possible exit for a female character. Mansfield’s Queen Deianira fares little better, strutting around in a series of slinky garments cut to emphasize her figure, issuing strained dialogue in the breathy pout that got her labeled ‘the working man’s Monroe’ (as if Marilyn was too high-class for some filmgoers).
Having sat through all this swashbuckling nonsense, it’s easy to see why so many of these films were made. Peplums, often derogatively labeled ‘sword-and-sandal’ epics, were churned out throughout the late ‘50s and ‘60s by foreign studios, many of them Italian, as a response to 1957’s highly profitable Hercules, starring American bodybuilder Steve Reeves. Countless down and dirty bids for quick international bucks, anchored by marginally talented strongmen and their buxom female counterparts, soon followed. These brainless movies sought to make back their money by brazenly appealing to the lowest common denominator; where comparably vapid giallo pictures prized gore and Spaghetti Westerns valorized firearms proficiency, these cheese-fests focused on meat, the spectacle of throbbing bodies tangling with rubber-suited monsters amid the dubbed clang of fake weaponry. Hercules vs. The Hydra has unsurprisingly aged terribly, from the low production values to the chunky cut of Hargitay’s beefy slab muscles, but it still exudes a perceptible scent of musty sensuality. A Game of Thrones equivalent for the Atomic Age, it appealed to the same basic desires that many internationally-pitched shows and films continue to do today, presenting raw sex passed through a cleansing fantasy filter.
Yet despite its mythological setting and fantastical storyline, most of the sex and fantasy here are implied; the bulk of the movie is devoted to the confusing machinations of a sinister villain (Massimo Serato as the pointlessly cunning Licos) and various other interminable talking scenes. The titular Hydra is also a misnomer, appearing halfway through the film and getting vanquished without much fanfare, one of its heads unceremoniously lopped off. Like most of the battles here, this one is conducted without any visible fight choreography, brute strength prevailing over the mechanized beast. The monster itself, however, is one of the film’s more impressive achievements, a fully mobile, hideously lurching machine, reminiscent of the monstrous plant from Little Shop of Horrors.
This brings things back to the question of effort, particularly how much was expended to bring a film of this dubious caliber to life. A lot of hard work seems to have gone into set and prop construction, and while these materials were doubtlessly reused and recycled from one similarly-toned production to another, it’s hard not to wonder about the teams of carpenters and artisans who spent their lives constructing all this odd paraphernalia.Hercules vs. The Hydra might be a moldy piece of trash, but it’s interesting as a lingering example of an entire vanished mega-genre, a world of films that now seem doomed to be consigned to the dustbin altogether. Directed by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, who pumped out dozens of these baroque b-movies, this one often seems incompetent, although it likely achieved the meager purpose for which it was designed. Movies like this were made to be disposable, titillating with the shadow of breasts, the thump of muscles and the merest whisper of fantasy. The fact that they still linger on, haunting the edges of streaming services as so much unwanted padding, at this point seems more accidental than anything.