Beastmaster III - The Eye Of Braxus (1996)

The beastmaster Dar (V's Marc Singer) is reunited with his young half- brother Tal (Starship Trooper's Casper Van Dien, sporting a most unconvincing wig) now ruler of the small barbarian kingdom of Aruk, and the warrior Seth (horror legend Tony Todd), both characters from the original movie, but now recast.

Tal was bequeathed a mysterious amulet by their late father, and this is - of course - the MacGuffin (the titular Eye of Braxus) sought by the warlord-wizard Agon (the ever-excellent David Warner).

After Dar leaves Tal's encampment, it is set upon by Agon's Crimson Warriors (so-called because of their red-coloured sword blades) who kidnap the king and take him back to their master.

You can't go wrong with David Warner

Agon is pissed though because Tal no longer has all of the Eye of Braxus, which is required to open a doorway beyond which lies the imprisoned Lord of The Pit, the evil old god Braxus, and "ultimate power" to any who release him.

Canny Tal had given half of the medallion to his wandering, nomadic brother for safe-keeping.

Driven to rescue his brother, Dar teams up with Seth, who had been acting as Tal's advisor, and roguish-swordswoman Shada (Sandra Hess, who played Andrea Von Strucker in The Hoff's Marvel movie, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, and who has surprisingly coiffured hair for someone in her line of work).

Shada's loyalties tend to flip-flop, as she - rather successfully - plays both sides, and eventually picks the winning one.

As a love-interest for Dar, Shada was never going to measure up to Kiri (the late, lamented Tanya Roberts of Charlie's Angels fame) from the original Beastmaster, but she grew on me as her character developed.

Near-naked and constantly oiled-up Dar is never without his small coterie of telepathically-linked animal companions, a pair of ferrets (representing his cunning), a hawk (as his eyes), and a lion (for strength).

Oddly the lion has the same name - Ruh - as Dar's panther from the first film, but I suspect this is a similar naming convention to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia always calling his horse Roach.

By the way, these aren't CGI creatures, but flesh-and-blood animals on the set, which does make a scene of the lion's capture slightly uncomfortable viewing, but I like to think the noble beast's handlers took good care of it.

After a run-in with some savage hill people, Seth, Dar, and Shada get to Agon's city, and decide to join a circus camped outside the walls, as a cover to smuggle themselves in.

Only the circus (which seems to have just two performers and a stable boy on staff) turns out to be run by an ex-lover of Seth's, Morgana (soap opera stalwart Lesley-Anne Down), who possesses a magical gem in her headband that can turn living things into animals.

Morgana, Dar, and Shada

This all gets a bit awkward, and leads to an another apparent betrayal of Dar, but Morgana actually has a plan and Dar being imprisoned in Agon's fortress is part of it.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus, like the previous films in the franchise it neither takes itself too seriously nor sends-up its subject matter.

The low, made-for-TV, budget, and the steady hand of established television director Gabrielle Beaumont (who lists multiple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, to name-check just a few, on her CV)  lends an air of Xena: Warrior Princess and Legendary Journeys of Hercules to proceedings that prepares us mentally for the "man-in-a-rubber-suit" final Big Bad.

While David Wise's script has its plot wobbles on occasion and isn't going to win an Oscar, there's great evidence of world-building here. More places and people get actual names in Beastmaster III than most B-movie sword-and-sorcery flicks.

The cast may be small - and this makes for some comically empty backdrops to some scenes - but most of the named characters we meet are interesting and quirky.

So much of the story also has a very Conan feel to it, but it's just the budgetary limitations once again that prevent it from going full wide-screen barbarian, instead recasting Dar's band of brothers as a mismatched party of Dungeons & Dragons adventurers instead.

It's all a question of managing your expectations, if you go in expecting another chapter of Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings, you're going to be disappointed, but if you're looking for something more akin to Hercules or Xena then you can have a great time with this hour-and-a-half movie.

Yes, of course, it could have been so much better, but there's actually so much to enjoy that did make it onto the screen that I must confess I was pleasantly entertained by The Eye of Braxus.

The Adventures Of Hercules II (1985)

Lou Ferrigno (aka The Incredible Hulk) returns as Hercules in this kinda-sequel to 1983's Hercules.

In this rather Xena: Warrior Princess-meets-2001: A Space Odyssey rambling affair, the Earth and Universe is given a fresh origin story for no readily apparent reason, then we learn that a quartet of rebellious gods have stolen the Seven Thunderbolts of Zeus, which give the top god dominion over all.

This disruption in the eternal balance causes the Moon to - very slowly - fall out of its orbit and threaten the existence of Earth.

Sonia Viviani

To recover his thunderbolts, Zeus calls Hercules back from the stars, however, to thwart this plan, the rebel gods resurrect mad scientist King Minos (William Berger)... who promptly rushes off to do his own thing.

The thunderbolts, it turns out, have been hidden inside monsters, which Hercules must track down and defeat (or simply bump into as random encounters).

It just so happens that he is also drawn into a side-adventure by the lovely Gabrielle-like Urania (Milly Carlucci) to save her sister, Glaucia (Sonia Viviani), and village from the fire demon Antaeus (which bears more than a passing resemblance to the Id monster from Forbidden Planet).

This entails finding a balm that will protect Hercules from "the fire monster's radiant heat", that's another side-quest, but all, eventually, somehow, ties back into the main plot.

Urania has some kind of prophetic ability, which involves communing "with the Little People" (a pair of identical spirits) at random shrines around the country, who put her in touch with the gods and warn of her fate.

Meanwhile, Minos teams up with his old pal, Dedalos (Eva Robin), who gives him a very unscientific magic sword of ice, with the power to slay gods, before granting him superpowers.

Milly Carlucci

After a series of monster battles, bizarre set-pieces full of psychedelic light shows, gorgeous stage sets and cheesy costumes, events culminate in an astral battle between Hercules and Minos (that doesn't actually feature the actors... but does feature an appearance by Space Kong and Space T Rex!), before moving on to Hercules' mythological method of preventing the Moon destroying the Earth.

On a positive note, at least the rubbish bargain-basement robot monsters from the first film have been replaced by "men in rubber suits" and slightly more mythologically accurate models (although neither are exactly top quality).

The story rambles all over the place, managing to add an intriguing level of surreality and deviousness to events that this low-budget swords-and-sandals fantasy/sci-fi mash-up probably doesn't truly deserve.

Ferrigno is great as Hercules (when he's actually onscreen), but I've read that he didn't even know he was filming this sequel.

Writer/director Luigi Cozzi had actually been tasked by producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus to film extra scenes for Ferrigno's The Seven Magnificent Gladiators, but then they decided to use this material as the basis of a new film (Hercules II) instead... without telling their lead actor!

Which would explain his physical absence from so much of the movie.

And the patchy nature of the bonkers plot.

Hercules (1983)

In a nutshell, the Lou Ferrigno-fronted 1980's Hercules does for Greek mythology what Battle Beyond The Stars did for space opera.

It is similarly cheap, cheerful, camp, and cheesy, with gloriously wonky special effects - as you would hope for from sci-fi fantasy of the era.

Ingrid Anderson

The 104-minute romp opens with a bizarre and jumbled retelling of a creation myth, that cherry picks various mythological elements (as does the entire story) and mixes them in as it sees fit.

This then segues into Hercules backstory - which borrows heavily from Superman's origin - with baby Herc being smuggled away from a palace coup that saw his parents murdered, then cast adrift in a spaceship small boat, before washing up on a riverbank in Kansas and immediately adopted by a friendly pair of childless farming folk The Kents.

Time wibble-wobbles forward and Hercules has grown into oiled-up beefcake Lou Ferrigno, just in time for his adopted parents to be killed off and for him to seek his destiny in the big city.

Having competed in a series of tasks, he is supposed to serve as a bodyguard to the stunningly gorgeous Cassiopea (Ingrid Anderson), but before Hercules can begin, Cassiopea gets kidnapped by the wicked King Minos of Thera (William Berger) and his daughter, Adriana, played with bosom-heaving brilliance by the ever-reliable Queen of Scream Queens Sybil Danning.

Sybil Danning

Hercules is dropped in the ocean, but manages to swim for a week to the shore of the island home of the witch Circe (Mirella D'Angelo), yet another breathtakingly appealing woman falling into Hercules' lap.

Teaming up with Circe, our hero has to descend into Hell to retrieve her stolen amulet, which will supposedly help them get to The Green Island of Thera, where Minos is holding Cassiopea captive, under the spell of the dreaded black lotus.

I think this take on Hercules is possibly a meditation on the battle between science and faith, with Hercules being helped (and hindered) by the gods and their agents, while Minos, with the aid of a funky (possibly alien) entity called Dedalos (Eva Robins), represents the advancement of technology and science.

But it's a very weird science - that, at times, relies on the power of human sacrifice as well as other clearly magical shortcuts.

Yes, I know, the general take on Arthur C Clarke's third law, but I suspect writer/director Luigi Cozzi was more influenced by Erich von Däniken's Chariots Of The Gods pseudoscience than Clarke's hard sci-fi.

Mirella D'Angelo

There's definitely a strong whiff of Ancient Aliens madness at work in the mythology of Hercules.

And a large part of the film's appeal to me (along with its central trinity of beautiful actresses) is that it takes this quirky spin on Greek myths, while still employing a very fantastical over-the-top approach that doesn't bother too much with rules and structure.

The movie certainly plays fast-and-loose with the idea of verisimilitude, refusing to let this hero's journey be grounded in any shape or form.

It's one of those films where ideas were obviously thrown at the screen, then forgotten as the production team moved on - for instance, in some of his early fights, Hercules (who we've learned was originally created as a being of light by Zeus, to be mankind's protector) gives off flashes of light when he hits people.

But then later on, you realise this just isn't happening any more.

Which is a shame, because it was an oddly comic book-like effect.

There's a lot of model use in the film, again as you would expect, and while the creatures (mainly mechanical robots of various shapes and designs) are quite raw and basic (and ultimately ineffectual), the set designs - although obviously models - are interesting and evocative of the strange world Cozzi is creating for his characters to exist in.