Hercules (Steve Reeves) and Ulysses (Gabriele Antonini) watch Iphitus (Mimmo Palmara) compete in a round of discus in HERCULES (1958)
Someone posted a message at my other blog, BY THE GODS!, on the condition of the HERCULES film. Artus Films, of France, recently tried to release this movie and HERCULES UNCHAINED (1959) to Blu-ray but the state of the prints they got were so bad that they had to suspend the project. I hope this is not true. This might mean the movies will never get a proper HD release. I hope there are better prints out there.
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I've seen at least one full-length print on YouTube that has a quality equal to the screen capture here, but I don't know where it was from or who owns it. Whether it is of a format that would transfer well to Blu-ray is something I don't know, but it does look good.
Regarding the discus scene: I've often wondered if Steve and Mimmo had a friendly contest off camera to see who could throw the discus the farthest. If so, I wonder who won? Mimmo strikes me as being very athletic and his throw on-camera seems to be very strong. Steve's throw seems almost effortless as was probably intended. It's odd that out of all the Hercules clips on YouTube the shot of his discus flying off into the distance does not show the discus, even though I distinctly remember seeing it sailing away in the theater back in 1959. I remember the audience's laughter at that scene. I guess the resolution of the computer screen is not good enough to capture the discus in flight.
Steve and Mimmo starred in several peplums together and I've also wondered if they struck up a friendship along the way. Anybody know?
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