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Some reviewers have been decidedly unkind to this minor sword-and-sandal effort but those willing to indulge the sloppy dubbing, chopping editing, and murky prints may find a certain likable quality here. Think of it as an amateurish but enthusiastic high school play, or a big mutt who climbs in your lap and licks your face. Most of the faults cited by other reviewers can't be denied but the main problem here is Hercules' curious absence from the plot (due to injuries) for a 25-minute stretch in the middle of the movie. That's a real momentum killer. Did Reg Park become ill or otherwise unavailable during the filming and thus they had to film around him? (One fight sequence uses an obvious stand-in for Park, lending some support for this theory.) Yes, the monster is more laughable than frightening with a squawk like Rodan's, and disappointingly little is made of Hercules' superhuman strength. (He isn't even bare-chested very often.) Also note the puzzling Oriental decor in some of the palace interiors. However, if you're kind, all of these things might be viewed as part of the fun.

I wish that I, like reviewer Marek, had seen this at the age of 9. I would probably have been delighted by its many bursts of action, its muscular cast, its exotic locations, its handsomely-mounted look. However, while still admiring these virtues, as a grown-up I must point out the serious flaw which handicaps this movie. Call this the "divided hero" flaw. A pre-title sequence introduces us to Gordon Mitchell, a farmer whose refusal to give up his horses to the Romans condemns him to slave-labor on an aqueduct project. Then we meet Roger Browne, a Roman Tribune who seeks to treat slave-laborers in a fair and humane manner. Both these actors get star billing above the title and the script can't decide which one on which to concentrate. Is the movie about Gordon Mitchell's efforts to free himself from Roman bondage so he can return in peace to his farm? Or is the movie about Roger Browne's efforts to clear his name from false charges made by the villainous Gaius, (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart), so he can hold his head high when he marries his Roman fiancée? The movie's confusion about its central purpose is never fully resolved. And then there's that annoying midget. At least there's a lot of beefcake to look at while pondering these matters, though it takes quite awhile before Mitchell and Browne bare their nipples, and Browne's big bare-chest scene, when he sword-fights Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, is, alas, dimly lit.

A shirtless Robert Mitchum felt the sting of a lash across his bare back in the 1951 "His Kind of Woman." Now son Chris feels the sting of at least seven lashes across his bare back in this sloppy but lively made-in-Indonesia actioner. Thus the Mitchums qualify as one of filmdom's father-son victims-of-whipping combinations on the silver screen. (John Wayne was whipped in "The Conqueror" and son Ethan felt the lash in "Man Hunt." Errol Flynn was whipped in "Against All Flags" and son Sean received similar treatment in "Son of Captain Blood.") After his whipping, the shirtless Chris Mitchum then suffers electric shocks administered through a metal collar around his neck, but Chuck Norris underwent a similar torture in "Braddock: Missing in Action 3" some two years previously and Norris's torture scene was much superior. The rest of "American Hunter" is the usual mish-mash of action scenes which divert for the moment but which, like the lashes given to Chris Mitchum's back, don't leave any mark.

This is the first episode in which Daniel Goddard, playing Dar, the heroic title character, falls victim to one of those beefcake-bondage tortures so dear to the creators of these costume-adventures. Held tight by a quartet of beefy guards, he's laid face-up on the ground in a spreadeagle position with his hands and feet tied to wooden poles. These poles are attached to two teams of oxen which, urged in opposite directions by shouting, whip-wielding guards, begin to stretch their victim like a prisoner on a medieval rack. (The head guard tells Dar he wants to watch him die "in several different pieces.") Rather than having his arms and legs ripped out of their sockets, however, Dar mentally communicates with the oxen who stop their pulling and even take steps backward. This allows Dar to slip out of his bounds and break free.

As torture scenes go, this one isn't particularly effective. Dar never seems to suffer any real pain, just some brief discomfort, and his ability to put an end to the torture takes away any real sense of danger or jeopardy. However, Daniel Goddard's physique is put on effective display, even his unshaved armpits, though one wishes his body could have been given more of a glistening sheen of sweat.

MGM had once used ad-lines which proclaimed "Garbo talks!" and "Garbo laughs!" For this movie they might have used "Robert Taylor strips!" Female fans had always swooned over the romantically handsome Taylor but men supposedly found him too much of a "pretty boy" who too often appeared in soapy costume dramas. Anxious to increase his appeal, and with Taylor's enthusiastic consent, MGM decided to toughen up their rising star's image by casting him as a prizefighter with a dark edge in a gritty (by MGM standards) boxing movie. First, the movie teases its audience by an opening twelve-and-a-half minute sequence detailing the childhood of its protagonist. (Gene Reynolds plays the young Robert Taylor). Then, ta-dah!, we see the adult protagonist, introduced with a shot of his bare, sweaty back as he works out in a boxing gym. Wait, there's more! The camera moves position and we now see Taylor's bare chest, also sweaty, complete with an inverted triangle of chest hair beginning at the collarbones and extending down to the sternum. (One imagines a make-up team carefully trimming and combing this hair to give it just the right effect.) For the next seven minutes Taylor appears bare-chested -- working out at a punching bag, retiring to a dressing room, taking a shower, appearing with a towel tied around his waist. Later in the movie he's shown soaking in a bathtub, (while reading "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire"), and then there are various boxing matches full of sweaty, face-punching action. All this "beefcake," showcased in a slick, satisfying, well-cast package, apparently did the trick because Taylor soon emerged as one of MGM's brightest and most durable stars. Curiously, Taylor rarely again took off his shirt, so if you want to see his nipples showcased in all their Hollywood glory, you better watch "The Crowd Roars."

One of the standard plots found in TV westerns had the leading man arrested on trumped-up charges and then sentenced to perform slave-labor on some sort of chain-gang project, usually a mine. Since there'd obviously be no release from this servitude, our hero had to plan an escape for himself and his fellow prisoners. Two of the prime examples for this plot could be found in a "Cheyenne" episode featuring Clint Walker titled "The Trap" (12-18-56) and a "Cimarron City" episode featuring George Montgomery titled "Terror Town" (10-18-58).

One advantage of this plot involved the "beefcake" factor. While laboring in that mine, the leading man could appear in all his sweaty, bare-chested glory, with the adding "bondage" factor of often having to work in chains.

Robert Horton had his chance to go this route in "The Amos Gibbon Story" in which, after being given a drugged drink by a saloon girl, he wakes up inside a tunnel where guards armed with guns and a whip intend to put him to work with other prisoners finishing the tunnel for a future railroad extension. Curiously, though, despite Horton's flair for bare-chested scenes, particularly those involving bondage, he keeps his shirt on throughout this episode, and that guard with a whip never gets around to using it on Horton's back. (Horton's bare back finally tasted the lash in an episode from December of 1961 called "The Traitor.") This reluctance to show off Horton's photogenic torso makes the whole episode seem a bit of a tease and the predictability of its plot and its lack of a memorable villain offer little in the way of other compensations.

Disney has long prided itself as being a bastion of family entertainment and this was especially true during the Eisenhower Era. Violence, particularly of the torture variety, and especially when directed against the young, was all but forbidden, and displays of skin were almost unheard of. Yet in "Tory Vengeance" the rules are bent so that we see Tim Considine -- 18 years old but so virginal, he could easily pass as several years younger -- being forcibly stripped of his shirt, placed against a column, and lashed across his smooth, almost alabaster back. Great care was obviously taken so that this scene could pass muster. The ripping off of the shirt occurs so quickly that we get only a microsecond glimpse of Considine's boyish chest. During the whipping, he's only shown from the shoulders up so that you never see the whip hitting his flesh, only hear it. And when the whipping's over and the camera pulls back, you glimpse no more than a few discreet welts drawn across his back. Although his captors were trying to force information from him, they obviously didn't put much time or muscle in their actions, despite an earlier comment about how a whip can rip the flesh. Thanks to Disney's strictures, the Considine character gets off way too easy.

If you want to approach the movie or the novel with virgin eyes, please be advised the following discussion may contain SPOILERS. Despite a number of changes, (some minor, some major), the movie represents a worthy effort to get the book onto film. However, commercial considerations posed obvious problems. The Blanche of the book is cold, tough, and not very likable. If her adversaries were the same or even more so, one might still root for her, but the people she regards as enemies or obstacles are simply dull and drab rather than evil. Since the movie wants to have box office appeal, and since it stars as Blanche the popular actress Valerie Hobson, the screenplay tries to soften Blanche's image, which takes some of the starch from the story. In the book, for example, the Stewart Granger character is married to an ailing wife. Since having Valerie Hobson engage in an affair with this married man would make her look bad, the movie simply eliminates the ailing wife. In the book Blanche's cousin (Michael Gough) is married to the meek, inoffensive Olivia. Blanche regards Olivia with casual contempt but since, once again, this makes Blanche look bad, Olivia is also eliminated from the script. (Michael Gough is now introduced as a widower with a young daughter.) With Olivia disposed of, the screenplay is now free to marry Blanche off to her widowed cousin but since Blanche wants the cousin out of the way so she can inherit his estate, the screenplay tries to "justify" Blanche's desire by turning this harmless drudge of a cousin into a rather mean and nasty character whose death is unlamented. A further effort is made to soften Blanche's image by having her desperately try to save little stepdaughter Lavinia from a horse-riding accident. In the book, little Lavinia is actually shot in the same "gypsy" attack which killed her father and grandfather. Finally, a pregnancy is added to the screenplay so that Blanche can be seen as somehow atoning for her sins by giving birth to a boy who will, presumably, restore his inheritance to a state of pride and purity. This continual softening of Blanche's character gives the movie a vaguely uncertain tone. One wishes it had been a bit tougher, leaving Blanche alone at the end with "the bitter fruits of self-reliance," but the screenwriters' desire to make their heroine more palatable is understandable and, despite its flaws, their movie still holds interest throughout and is, in its mounting and photography, a glory to behold.

A jetliner with 130 souls on board crashes in the jungles of Venezuela, so far off its flight plan that no one is ever likely to find the survivors. They must shift for themselves. It's an old premise that can still work given the proper treatment but this made-for-TV movie -- originally a pilot for a projected series -- is so tired and lifeless that it can't even qualify as "fun." Those with nothing better to do can watch a cast of left-overs and washed-ups and might-have-beens traipse around an utterly unconvincing jungle, engaging in the hokiest of subplots and back-stories, but even this barely-better-than-nothing activity quickly wears thin. Richard Egan plays the flight's captain but if you're hoping to see him take his shirt off, you will be disappointed. Even in the jungle, his uniform shirt remains white, crisp, tidy, and buttoned up.

This lushly-mounted mini-series -- shown over three nights back in November of 1977 -- is based on two separate and unrelated novels: Bart Spicer's "The Adversary" and Burt Hirschfeld's "Aspen." These origins may explain why the mini-series persists in telling two stories which never quite come together and do little to support or illuminate each other. There's the story of a powerful land developer who uses heavy- handed methods to force his plans onto the fabric of a small town, and then there's the story of a headline-grabbing rape-and-murder trial. The former story is trite and obvious; the latter tempts and teases but never satisfies, even after its solution is finally revealed. The resulting product can be labeled a "time-killer" but it lacks the necessary flair which might have pushed it into the "guilty pleasure" category. Star-watchers will see plenty of largely second-string names paraded in front of them, but none of these actors make much of an impression and all of them are clearly in this just for a paycheck. Fans of "cheesecake" won't find much to savor but there's plenty of bare chests for the "beefcake" crowd. Sam Elliott, Perry King, Tony Franciosa, Bo Hopkins, and Doug Heyes jr. all find opportunities to take off their shirts and display their pecs. Elliott (hairy) and Heyes (smooth) look especially good.