The Peplum-Plot-O-Matic 2000 produced one of its most generic scripts when activated to write SoH: ITLoD.
To make a short story shorter and less boring, Hercules (Dan Vadis) just happens to be around when Telca (Spela Rozin), daughter of "King" Tedaeo (Ugo Sasso) is attacked by a lion, whose incredible dangerousness is more than proven by the necessity of being played by two different lions, one male, the other female. After a short round of wrestling and rock-throwing, the lion is dead and Hercules falls into unconsciousness(!). When he awakes, he is greeted by the people of the kingdom known as Whatever-its-name-may-be, all twenty of them.
Herc is of course absolutely delighted to hear that the local way of rewarding the rescuer of an unmarried woman is marriage (the Greek shotgun wedding). To Herc's and Telca's regret, this rule does not apply to the King's daughter, probably because it's a prince's duty to count all eight of the village's huts, and you never know if your prospective son-in-law is clever enough to count at all. But, since Hercules is soo heroic and soo strong, there might be a way for him to marry the woman he doesn't know at all - he just has to kill one little dragon.
So off the hero goes, meets an oracle, kills a dinosaur, returns to the village only to find it burned to the ground by the Demulus, a race of at least thirty people who live in an underground city and lighten up their diets by eating the flesh of their slain enemies. The only living soul he finds is Babar (John Simons), an odious comic relief so unfunny, even the Demulus didn't dare killing him.
With his new friend Hercules ventures into the land of the Demulus, wrestles a bear, fights some soldiers, gets caught, is nearly quartered by elephants (the thing that saves him is not his brawn or his brains, but an appeal to "the Lord of the Sun" to break his chain), saves the evil queen of the Demulus from her own elephants and blah-dee-blah.
Later on we see treachery, a slave revolt, the underground city destroyed by lava and a happy end.
Nothing of this is the least bit entertaining.
There are many puzzling things about this movie, but the most puzzling of them all may well be the decision of its American distributors to change its original hero from Hercules into a certain Argoles, Son of Hercules. Although, the longer I think about it, the less puzzling it gets: Do we really want the glorious epitome of manliest manliness we know as Hercules to be presented as a wimp, someone who wins his battles by whining to the Gods?
But the doubtful character of its hero is just one of the movies problems. I have seldom seen a peplum featuring a less charismatic or appealing cast. I don't expect all that much from actors in these films but Dan Vadis is a charisma-free zone and only comes to life in the melee combat scenes against human enemies, his love interest is utterly forgettable, the comedic relief someone I try very hard to forget and the villains much too laid back to be of any interest.
The special effects are as dire as usual and filmed with real talent for showing off all their shortcomings.
The direction is especially disappointing anyway - where most peplums get their energy from creatively designed sets and strangely colored lighting as well as from absurd feats of strength, this movie just sits there not even trying do something, anything interesting or strange or entertaining.
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