The tyrants of Babylon are engaged in a big municipal building project. And in the ancient world, a big building project means you need lots of slaves, machinery not having been invented yet, and free persons being understandably reluctant to take on jobs that involved being worked to death.

The Babylonians obtain slaves by going out and raiding nearby peaceful villages and cities and even some fairly distant and violent villages and cities, in the tradition of the times. These villages and cities didn’t care for that at all, but there wasn’t much they could do about it, being mostly enslaved and all.

Then the Babylonian slavers run into a buzz saw in the form of a powerful giant armed with a huge club who keeps pimp-smacking their raiding parties around until the survivors run away sobbing and crying and threatening to tell their mommies on him.

Meanwhiile, back in Babylon, Phaleg, the king of Assyria, played by Mario Petri, drops by for a visit. He brings gifts for all three tyrants and makes major goo-goo eyes at Taneal.. (The three tyrants of Babylon, brothers Salman Osar, played by Livio Lorenzon and Azzur, played by Tulio Altamura, and their sister Taneal, played by the gorgeous Helga Line, each rule a portion of Babylon, as decreed by their father before his death.)

Phaleg also has a deal for the tyrants -- he offers to trade a hell of a lot of gold for all the slaves in Babylon, since his country has become dangerously underpopulated due to all the wars he keeps getting into.

The tyrants say they will consider Phaleg’s offer and meantime he can stick around and party hearty with them for a while.

Phaleg’s agreeable and the tyrants retire to talk things over. The tyrants are suspicious -- all the plotting they’ve done against one another has left them all really sharp, and they figure King Phaleg is Up To Something.

Taneal, the recipient of all the goo-goo eyes, is tagged to be the one who finds out what Phaleg is up to. Brothers Azzur and Osar don’t exactly tell their sister to go fuck the answer out of Phaleg, but it’s strongly implied when Azzur says, “There is only one way to find out,” and gives Taneal a Significant Look. It’s the sixties family film equivalent of, “Go suck Phaleg’s cock like a 20 sesterce temple prostitute, baby!” (See image at top of page.)

So the next time Taneal and Phaleg meet in the hall, they both put the Old Magoo on one another, and they’re in a lip lock in seconds. Taneal then invites Phaleg move to her room for a drinkie-poo. While there, Phaleg proposes an alliance in the form of marriage with Taneal. Unfortunately for Phaleg, Taneal isn’t swept off her feet by this proprosal (see: intelligent) and she sees to it that Phaleg’s drink is laced with a truth serum which puts him in a kind of trance.

As soon as Phaleg’s all comfy and entranced, Taneal gives the high sign and her brothers come out of the woodwork to listen in while Taneal gives Phaleg the third degree.

Drugged-out Phaleg tells Taneal that he has come to Babylon to marry Asparia, the queen of the Hellenes (played by Anna Maria Polani). King Phaleg has learned that Asparia was captured in a Babylonian slave raid, and he plans to marry her. Phaleg offered to buy ALL of their slaves because he doesn’t know which one is the queen. He figures he can sort her out at leisure once he has the lot of them in hand.

While Phaleg lies in a drugged stupor (the very BEST kind of stupor!) the tyrants debate their next move.

Osar, being cruel and not too bright, immediately calls for finding and killing the queen of the Hellenes. Azzur, being a tad smarter, calls for finding and CONTROLLING the queen of the Hellenes for their own benefit.

ALSO FROM PAT POWERS

This is a much smarter move than killing the queen, because of course if you should marry her,as Phaleg intends, you become KING of the Hellenes, and thus extend your domain over the Hellenes without the necessity of all that nasty fighting and bloodshed, and apparently, the Hellenes are pretty damned good at fighting and shedding blood -- their opponent‘s blood, mostly. This is exactly what Phaleg confessed he had in mind for her, and it’s undoubtedly what Azzur has in mind for her. It’s a measure of Osar’s stupidity that it didn’t immediately occur to HIM.

Taneal, being a queen, can’t extend her domain by marrying the queen of the Hellenes. Many ancient cultures were completely cool with homosexuality in many respects, but there’s that whole dynasty thing when it comes to royal marriages. A marital alliance with Phaleg is certainly possible for Taneal, but she is clearly a strong, independent woman who has something else entirely in mind, something having to do with the stupidest civil engineering project in the history of civilization.

OK, get this: Daedelus, the inventor who gave Icarus those nifty wings that didn’t work out so well, has built a subterranean room in Babylons where a huge wheel festooned with chains lies. It has spokes on it so that slaves may turn the wheel and tighten the chains. The chains are attached to the foundation stones of all the buildings in Babylon (which being in the desert, is built on sand). It would take a hundred slaves pushing the wheel to do it, but they could conceivably pull down every building in Babylon by turning that wheel, if they were whipped hard enough.

You have to goggle at the sheer wrongness of the whole project. Most cities built on unstable foundations like sand do everything they can to shore their buildings up and keep them from collapsing in violent storms, earthquakes, wildebeest stampedes and what-have-you. But the Babylonians have actually built a machine in the depths of their city that’s designed to destroy it via artificial earthquake if no natural ones happen along.

Brilliant. Just fucking brilliant. It’s like purposefully inviting Godzilla and Megalon over to your city for a battle royal -- surely no harm in that!

To put the final piece of the puzzle together, the giant who’s been kicking slave raiding parties senseless is Hercules. Hercules is in the vicinity and smashing up slave raiding parties because HE’S looking for the queen of the Hellenes (who is his queen) and unlike everybody else, he knows what she looks like because she‘s his ... girlfriend.

What’s more, Hercules isn’t the lunkheaded muscleman that tend to be the heroes of peplum. He’s actually fairly sharp. The tyrants and King Phaleg of Assyria all take a shot at using and then betraying and killing Hercules, but he’s on to them from day one.

Hercules is more authentic in this movie than in most movies about Hercules -- his weapon is a giant club, as portrayed in mythology. Hercules is also portrayed by Peter Lupus, best known to US audiences as that really strong guy in the original Mission Impossible TV series. ((Lupus is billed as Rock Stevens in the movie, because -- get this -- the producers though Lupus’ real name was “too Italian!“. They paid for an American muscleman, they want an American-sounding muscleman!) Lupus is convincingly tall and muscular, and he also has a certain sharpness to the way he carries himself and delivers his lines that lends credence to the notion that Hercules is someone who’s capable of mentally holding his own against the scheming royals in Babylon.

For example, in one scene, Hercules in welcomed into Babylon by the tyrants and offered their hospitality.

“Must we accept their hospitality?” asks a companion. “Surely they will be watching us if we do.”

“And we will be watching them,” Hercules reassures his companion, indicating a certain confidence in his ability to deal with the tyrants.

The only dummy among the royals is Asparia, the queen of the Hellenes. She mostly stands around and looks aghast at the various proceedings -- you can kinda see why everyone thinks she‘s a slave. It is thus fitting that she serves as a damsel in distress in all of the frequent bondage scenes in the movie, except the first one.

In the first bondage scene, a group of villagers is captured by the Babylonian raiders to be enslaved, secured to the horses of the raiders by ropes tied to their wrists. It’s not very convincing bondage, but it’s there. These are the raiders Hercules opens a can of whupass on, so the scene isn’t lengthy.

The slaves are always seen wearing a cuff with a link for chaining, even when they are working and not chained. There are several scenes in which the female enslaved Hellenes are seen chained at the wrists. There’s even a scene of them chained together while locked in their holding cell. (They’re not in individual cells, that’s for your fancy-schmancy prisons, they’re in a group cell.) It’s very nice and sadly, refreshing to see slaves in actual bondage -- makes you feel as if the director had a clue. Unfortunately, the dresses worn by the Hellenes rate somewhere near 0 on the hottitude index, which is a shame, because even a family film offers a lot more leeway in the hottitude department than they were using. At least they don‘t wear bra‘s giving us a little jiggle on occasion, but the dresses are too baggy to offer much in that area, either.

In another bondage scene, the tyrants of Babylon are trying to figure out which of their Hellenic slaves is the queen. Being tyrants, their minds naturally turn to torture. So they have all the female Hellenic slaves tied arms behind to posts set in a field near Babylon. This leads to one of the funniest lines in the movie. Osar, the tyrant who’s having the girls staked out (figures) says to his minion, “No food or water for them!” He then adds, “But be careful and don’t kill any of them!” The minion responds, “Hellooooo, Mr. Tyyyrant! No food and no water KILLLLLL people! Oh, I’ll get right on THAT!”

Well, the minion doesn’t say that, but I was thinking it. Of course, the line makes more sense than it seems to: Osar doesn’t want any of the Hellenic women killed because one of them might be the queen, and if she dies she won’t be a piece in those mad power gamez the royals like to play.

There’s one more bondage scene. Azzur, the smart one, has finally twigged to who the queen of the Hellenes is, and they’ve got her tied up in a pecularly complex yet not all that effective-looking bit of rope bondage that has her standing with her arms tied behind her back, secured by a long rope to a pillar. Histrionics occur. Interestingly, Hercules does NOT rescue her from her predicament -- Osar does, but not for good purposes, of course. It’s not a great bondage scene, but it’s an interesting tie nonetheless.

Altogether, I’d have to say that Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon is a fine movie on its own merits and would be a good watch even without all the bondage scenes. There’s a great plot with plenty of scheming and intrigue as the royals chase after the queen of the Hellenes. You may think I’ve given away the whole plot, but all I’ve really done is provide you with the setup as the royals struggle to control Asparia (granted, the setup takes up half of the movie). Asparia is a real MacGuffin in this film -- she’s captured by each of the bad guys and the bad gal. She runs away a lot, but it doesn’t’ seem to to do her much good, since she has a way of running from bad guy to bad guy.

Hercules kicks ass on several occasions, there’s even a full on cavalry charge (with scenes clearly lifted from another film so as to make it more impressive) a slave revolt and general chaos. Plus, there’s the stupidest municipal building project in the history of Western civilization. It’s an entertaining film in its own right. Like most of the sword and sandal movies I’ve reviewed, it’s more entertaining than what’s on network and cable television on any given night. Not worth the prices of the Mill Creek collection on its own, but a great reason not to be disappointed in it.

Like Thor and the Amazon Women, Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon is in the public domain, and can easily be found for free on the Web by Googling its name. It’s also on Youtube in eight parts. I highly recommend it to fans of sword and sandal flicks.

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