hercules & masked rider/tyrants of babylon

[Torgaman]

Bought this double bill at WALMART for a buck.In HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER Herc[actually Maciste] is inexplicably cast in a medieval time period and helps a masked swordsman rescue his babe from the prerequisite noble with tight underwear.HERCULES AND THE TYRANTS OF BABYLON has Peter Lupus,here billed as Rock Stevens,travelling to Babylon to rescue his main squeeze,whose also a queen and winds up embroiled in a way too convoluted plot of three siblings ruling babylon and another king wanting herc's squeeze.Not really great films but they'll do for a sleepness night.

[Xenorama ™]

i wish i hadn't bought that tape of this movie back in the day- it was $13! what a rip!

fun movie though. still looking for SAMSON AND THE SLAVE QUEEN, where Maciste meet Zorro!

[Torgaman]

I'm curious,when we were all running around back in the long gone era known as the 1990's buying up scratchy public domain vhs tapes and multi generational boots,did any of uf ever dream we would be able to get many of these films for a dollat?!?!?!In many cases two for a dollar?!?!?!?!?!?!

[RedKing]

I know I never would have believed 10 or 15 years ago that dvds in general would be so popular or cheap or that so many films would be availible both on the dollar public domain discs and all the obscure genre stuff from bugger labels. Heck, I never even would have believed that widescreen uncut versions of Godzilla movies would be availible legally over here, and in both subbed or dubbed versions to boot!

[Xenorama ™]

not me, and i sure wish i could have the time, money and effort i put into doing all that, not to mention watching nth gen tapes and getting all bleary eyed.

it's nice to have some of these, even in PD form to watch.

[Torgaman]

I have to be careful when I go to these dollar stores and see a dollar dvd of a film I may have paid alot more to own on dvd or vhs.I once scared a few old ladies with a choice word I couldn't contain.

[RedKing]

I had picked this disc up late in the summer, but I just got around to watching it this week. The handful of movies Peter Lupus made are very hard to find, so this was a welcome disc. Both films are either rare or off beat entries in the sword and sandal series. I really liked HERCULES AND THE MASKED RIDER even with Herc/Samson/Machiste really being a supporting character. Mimmo Palarma played Don Juan and was very good i thought. Palarma is no stranger to the genre though he usually plays a villain. The swashbuckling era for this entry is certainly off beat, though they actually made a few sword and sandal/swash bucker cross over movies. Like David said, it would be awesome to finally get a copy of SAMSON AND THE SLAVE QUEEN with Zorro and Machiste! There's at least one other movie in this vein-HERCULES AND THE BLACK PIRATE. The TYRANTS OF BABYLON movie was also enjoyable, if more than a little convoluted plot wise, as Raul pointed out. It was nice to see a young Helga Line as the sexily evil co-ruler of Babylon. This role sort of fore shadowed Helga's wonderfully eville turn as Paul Naschy's undead mistress in HORROR RISES FROM THE TOMB 8 years later. I also believe Digiview used a recording from TV for this disc as you can plainly see where they cut to commercial throughout the movie. This doesn't really take anything away from the disc, as the print is decent for a PD dollar disc and the DVD quality is just fine as well. Digiview also has another Hercules double feature disc-the TV pilot HERCULES AND THE PRINCESS OF TROY and the excellent HERCULES AGAINST THE MONGOLS. There's another double feature disc with these same movies on it, but the disc says the second feature is supposed to be HERCULES,PRISONER OF EVIL and it present MONGOLS with the opening scene and credits cut off. the Digiview disc is much better as it correctly identifies the second feature and while it seems to be missing a minute or two of the opening pre credits scene, it does have the opening credits.