Hercules is on the road to the court of King Pelias of Iolcus to tutor Pelias' son Prince Iphitus in the use of arms. Pelias' beautiful daughter Princess Iole updates Hercules on the history of her father's rise to power and the theft of the kingdom's greatest treasure, the Golden Fleece. Some suspect—and it eventually proves true—that King Pelias has acquired the throne through fratricide. Hercules and Iole are attracted to each other and a romance eventually develops. King Pelias is warned by a seeress about a stranger wearing one sandal who will challenge his power. When his nephew Jason, the rightful King of Iolcus, arrives in town wearing one sandal, Pelias takes fright and packs him off to retrieve the Golden Fleece from the distant land of Colchis. Jason and Hercules sail aboard the Argo with their friends Ulysses and his father, Laertes, Argos, the twins Castor and Pollux, the lyre-strumming Orpheus, the physician Aesculapius and others. After weathering a tempest at sea, the Argonauts dally in a lush garden-like country with Antea, the Queen of the Amazons and her ladies. Jason falls in love with Antea, but, when the Amazons plot the deaths of the heroes, Hercules forces Jason to board the Argo and secretly set sail in the night. On the shores of Colchis, the heroes battle hairy ape-men while Jason slays a dragon and retrieves the Golden Fleece. The Argonauts embark for home with their prize. In Iolcus, the populace greet the returning heroes but Pelias and his henchman Eurysteus steal the Golden Fleece, deny Jason's claim, and plot his destruction. A tense battle between Pelias' forces and the heroes follows. Hercules halts Pelias' cavalry dead in its tracks by toppling the portico of the palace upon them. The defeated Pelias drinks poison. Jason ascends the throne while Hercules and Iole set sail for new adventures. Subplots involve the death of Pelias' headstrong son Prince Iphitus, and exploits for Hercules resembling the Labors of the Nemean Lion and the Cretan Bull.
Hercules was released in Italy on 20 February 1958. American producer Joseph E. Levine acquired the U.S. distribution rights to the film and Warners advanced Levine $300,000 for the privilege of distributing the film in the US. The film opened at the Hippodrome Theatre in Baltimore on 26 June 1959 where it set a house record with $30,000 in its first week. With an intensive promotional campaign costing $1.25 million and a then-wide release of 550 theatres, Hercules became a major box-office hit. It premiered in England on 18 May 1959 and in Spain on 23 November 1959.
Merchandise
In America, the film generated a Dell comic book adaptation with illustrations by John Buscema and a 33 RPM long-playing RCA Victor recording of the film's soundtrack.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of the movie, episode #502, was first aired on 18 December 1993, on Comedy Central. The MST3K presentation edited the original movie to fit the TV show's time constraints, which causes Hercules's characters to go from "the midst of one plot development before the commercial... somewhere else entirely" afterwards. Although two other MST3K episodes featuring Hercules movies were ranked in the Top 100 list of episodes as voted upon by MST3K Season 11 Kickstarter backers, Hercules did not make the cut. In his rankings of all 191 MST3K episodes, however, writer Jim Vorel ranked the episode #78, the highest of the four Hercules movies that aired on Comedy Central. "It’s a mish-mash of Greek myth," Vogel writes, that is "the most purely entertaining film in the series.... The total abject devotion of all the other men toward Hercules is naturally hilarious." The MST3K version of Hercules was included as part of the Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume XXXII DVD collection, released by Shout! Factory in 24 March 2015. The other episodes in the four-disc set include Space Travelers, Radar Secret Service, and San Francisco International.
