The success of Ben Hur led to a whole cycle of Italo knock-offs over the next few years. Reg Park has now taken over from Steve Reeves, but he comes from the same acting school. Wooden. Christopher Lee provided the villainy and most of the acting chops, and handled the expository dialogue for the audience' benefit, as Reg mostly stood around looking impressively pumped up. To be fair, he certainly looked Herculean, and despite his acting inexperience, Reg handled the sword action scenes with a certain panache, while projecting a certain heroic grit. Then first time director Mario Bava pulled out the stops to give the thing as lurid a look as possible - out-Hammering Hammer House in this regard, no small feat. Some of the dark fantasy imagery takes on a nightmarish quality and proves quite effective, setting Bava clearly on his long career path. However, once again, most of the entertainment value of the item comes from its cheese factor. The interiors look cheap and stagebound, and some of the 'epic' battles appeared to have no more than about six people in the scene. The wooden dialogue had a rubbery English-dubbed-into-English look as most supporting actors did their lines in Italian and these were over-dubbed into English, while Par k and Lee worked in English but without synched sound. The result is a D- list action fantasy with some decent stuntwork amidst the sweating and flexing.
Review of Hercules in the Haunted World
