When a co-worker told me that he'd seen Lou Ferrigno in a Hercules movie, I was ecstatic, remembering Ferrigno's classic "Sinbad of the Seven Seas." "Hercules" was made in 1983, five years before "Sinbad," by the same folks over at Cannon Studio. A Cannon/Ferrigno pedigree is to be highly prized by films seeking to appeal to bad movie lovers. Interestingly, one of the most recent reader reviews on IABBBBM was for "Hercules II," which I didn't know existed but will definitely pick up now.

If I had to choose one phrase that characterizes "Hercules" as a whole, it might well be "sparkling lights." By this I mean that all objects in the movie that can conceivably glow or sparkle, and some things that can not, are endowed with primitive-looking superimposed lighting effects. Believe me when I say that once the special effects guys learned how to do this trick, they absolutely could not get enough of it. The same is true for synthesized sound effects, which were a major feature of "Sinbad" later on.

To go through the entire plot of "Hercules" would be tedious, so let's just hit the highlights.

* "Hercules" opens with a voice-over narration of the beginning of the universe, in classic overblown fantasy-movie style with plenty of flashes, sparkles, halos, and hazy glowing against a space backdrop. This goes on and on -- it seems like ages before we see any real actors. Not that there are any "real" actors in the entire film, but you know what I mean.

* The Zeus of this film, put bluntly, is a wuss. He doesn't look or act like the chief deity of the pantheon. He doesn't issue orders or enforce his will but tries to placate Hera and exploit loopholes in what she insists that he do. Hera and Athena, for their parts, are total bleached-blonde bimbos in ridiculous outfits. Ever laid eyes on Bambi, goddess of Wisdom? Now you have.

* Hercules is created by Zeus with a body made from "the pure light of a thousand suns, practically invincible." For someone with a nearly-invincible body, it's strange how he reacts to physical threats in the same manner as your average less-than-invincible guy. Except for that one scene where he stands still and lets razor-sharp blades on chariot wheels snap off against his shins. How come he bothered to dodge them the first time?

* As an infant, Hercules, like Moses, is sent downriver in a boat to flee the wrath of the despot who kills his parents. The farmer/woodsman and his wife who discover and adopt Hercules somehow know to call him Hercules even though they have no idea whose child he is. Maybe he just *looks* like a Hercules.

* A bear kills Hercules' adopted father, and the Herc-meister then fights and kills the bear. The "bear" that Herc is fighting is obviously a guy in a bear costume, and periodically the filmmakers insert a shot of a real bear rearing up and growling. After Hercules kills the bear, he becomes so anguished over his father's death that he screams (in the classic Ferrigno style) and stoops to pick up the bear. The scene switches to a zoomed-out shot of the Earth, and we see the bear come hurtling out of the atmosphere into space, where it becomes the constellation Ursa Major.

* Three different mechanical monsters are sent by a fantasy-movie bimbo named Dedaelus (the Dedaelus of myth was male) to kill Hercules. For some reason, Dedaelus is all about Science and Reason as opposed to belief in Zeus and the pantheon of other deities. During her conversations about Science and Reason with King Minos, I kept hearing Thomas Dolby in my mind, saying "Science!!!" in that mad-scientist voice. But then, I'm a child of the 80s. Anyway, all three mecha-monsters basically just sit there and display their moving parts, which aren't very many, and make the most annoying screeching noise that the sound guys could create on their synthesizer. When the monsters are slain, their screeching dies down slowly with almost exactly the same sound that Pac-Man makes when he dies, except for the little "mwap-mwap" at the end.

* In order to clean out the thousand horse stables (which contain no horses) of King Something-or-other, Hercules decides to divert the flow of a nearby river through the stables (this is true to the myth). The river is at the bottom of a deep, deep canyon, which you'd imagine would have to be almost filled to the top to divert the water in any meaningful way. Herc, however, simply muscles a couple of big boulders down into the gorge, and that seems to do the trick. The muddy, dirty river water works better than Spick N' Span on the walls of the stable, which are white, spotless, and yes, sparkling, when the water subsides.

* An unconscious Hercules is chained and thrown into the depths of the ocean by the bad guys, then comes to and swims his way to the surface, which appears to be about fifteen feet above the ocean floor. With no land around, he then swims for seven days straight until he comes to an island, whereupon he collapses, helpless, on the sand. Two minutes later, he's back on his feet with a spring in his step.

* Hercules and the sorceress Circe travel to a distant island by flying in a chariot. Their method of propulsion is as follows: Circe conjures up a rope and ties one end to the chariot and the other end to a large rock. Hercules then picks up the rock and throws it as hard as he can, then hops in the chariot before it is jerked away. The velocity is enough to send them high into the stratosphere and over hundreds of miles of terrain, yet the passengers experience no whiplash or other ill effects. The rope doesn't break at the initial moment of tension between the rock and the chariot, but it does break later on, when the stress on it should have stabilized. Hercules and Circe, despite traveling at speeds to rival the Concorde jet, fall *straight down* into the ocean and land in the water unharmed. I *love* fantasy-movie physics.

* As was requisite in "Sinbad" and presumably other Ferrigno movies, at least two smiling female characters run their palms lightly over Lou's bulging pectoral muscles during the film.

* Ten men simultaneously spring away backwards from Lou in a scene where Hercules "throws off" an entire mob of guardsmen. The guards, as in most fantasy movies, can't fight their way out of a paper bag. Hercules eschews the use of weapons until the climactic fight with King Minos at the end of the movie, when he grabs the powerful magical sword whose purpose in the movie was never exactly clear. (In fact, the significance of most objects and events in this movie isn't terribly obvious.)

* One of the highlights of "Sinbad", namely Lou Ferrigno's spoken lines, is not as prominent or funny in "Hercules," but he still manages to get some really bad acting in there. Arriving on the shore of an island shy of their intended destination, he gesticulates with one hand and says in comical exasperation, "This does NOT look like (name of destination)! This does NOT look like the place!!" I supplied the obvious follow-up line for him: "You know, there's something about this I don't like."

* Almost everyone who dies in this movie sort of just fades away into the ground, leaving no corpse behind. But then, almost everyone in the movie is magical or superhuman, and ever since Obi-Wan did it, all the super-types want that same cool dying effect.

I'm leaving out stuff. Probably a lot of stuff. There's plenty to laugh at in this film, and I'm neglecting to mention basic things like the overly dramatic speeches of most of the characters, which should be a given in any good bad fantasy epic. But to conclude: although nowhere *near* as great as "Sinbad of the Seven Seas," Lou Ferrigno's "Hercules" is well worth the rental fee for bad movie lovers. I'd give it a good three and a half turkeys. It almost gets four turkeys just for fulfilling my wish to see another Ferrigno movie, but I shouldn't elevate "Hercules" quite that much.