Ettore Manni, Mimmo Palmara and Fay Spain in HERCULES IN THE CAPTIVE WOMEN (1961)
The story for this film starts off with Hercules and friends witnessing some mysterious message/vision while they're in Greece. Androcles (Ettore Manni) decides to go on a quest to find what's causing the Gods to worry with this ominous warning. Once the story is set in Atlantis, it shifts again to become the one of Hercules searching for Androcles, who's a 'captured' man here. Though the story shifts again throughout the movie, the main quest, of Hercules searching for Androcles, remains. The title refers to the captive women in the movie but there as many captive men in it as well. An unrecognizable Mimmo Palmara plays the 'clone' soldiers of Queen Antinea (Spain). Like the shapeshifter Proteus who's featured in the movie, the focus of the story shifts quite a lot.
This was a big movie in Italy, filmed in Technirama 70. The European cut is so much better, particularly with the original score and not with music cribbed from a film library. It's disconcerting to hear music from Creature from the Black Lagoon in the U.S. version. And the Italian title Hercules Conquers Atlantis is a much better one.
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