Control Nathan Rabin 4.0 #201 Hercules in the Underworld (1994)

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Kitaen’s combination of otherworldly beauty and West Coast spunk made her a perfect fit for the Sam Raimi-Executive Produced 1990s Hercules series. Of course it did not hurt that costar Kevin Sorbo was a lot like the hair metal superstars Kitaen romanced during her Reagan-era prime: a hunk with a lion-like mane and rippling muscles who looked good shirtless in leather pants.

Sorbo and Kitaen had tremendous chemistry as well as remarkable hair. Sorbo may not be much of an actor but when his Hercules gazes adoringly as his golden-haired wife Deianeira (Kitaen) plays with their impossibly beautiful children, the love and adoration in his eyes feels effortlessly authentic and real.

Deianeira is more than worthy of the heroic son of the king of the Gods. The question is whether even a half-man, half-God like Hercules is worthy of her.

There’s a wonderful, understatedly sexy scene where Hercules returns home to his adoring and beloved wife and she lovingly runs her hands across his muscular torso as she recalls the heroic manner in which he earned each scar. Deianeira loves him for who he is and what he has done. The total, complete, soul-consuming devotion she feels towards her soulmate is evident in every adoring glance.

Hercules in the Underworld makes for a spookily perfect, weirdly prescient vehicle for Kitaen. In a related development it is an unusually sensual episode that is about beauty, sex, temptation and loss as much as it is about a half-man half-God fighting evil giants, hell hounds and his evil stepmother Hera.

A television movie that could just as accurately be titled The Horny Adventures of Hercules begins with an elaborate fake-out, a series of leering, lascivious glimpses of the body, but not the head, of a gorgeous woman.

Since this is a movie starring Tawny Kitaen, I naturally assumed that the beauty in question was the hair metal icon.

It is not. Instead we begin Hercules in the Underworld ogling the body not of Kitaen but rather a very young Marley Shelton, who was only twenty when she played Iole, a virgin seductress whose combination of innocence and ripe sensuality recalls that of a young Heather Graham.

When Iole comes to Hercules in need of help, the half-man, half-God’s bitter centaur associate Nessus (Cliff Curtis) tries to convince Deianeira that she plans to use her youth and beauty and innocence to seduce the great hero into doing her bidding.

Deianeira trusts her husband and knows that he is a good man who truly loves her but it’s hard not to be jealous of someone as ravishing as Iole. In a fit of anger and rage, Nessus tries to sexually assault Deianeira, leading Hercules to fire a single arrow into his chest that sends him directly to Hades.

Hercules ends up spending a fair amount of the film in Hades himself after an unfortunate snafu involving a cursed cloak results in him being accidentally sent to the underworld.

Iole does, in fact, attempt to seduce Hercules but she is not successful. A trio of beauties who turn into witches are similarly unsuccessful in their attempts to drive a wedge between Hercules and the love of his life.

Hercules isn’t the only member of his immediate family to end up in the afterworld. After plunging to a temporary death, Deianeira ends up in the Elysian Fields, a vision in white in a paradise of utter beauty and tranquility.

The titular hero of Hercules in the Underworld is willing to travel to hell and heaven for the woman he loves so he travels to paradise to save his wife from spending the rest of eternity in heaven without him.

All Hercules needs to do to save Deianeira and bring her back with him to earth is defeat Cerebus, the original hound from hell, something he accomplishes by treating the fearsome hell hound like a nice doggie that just needs a little affection rather than an evil monster to be destroyed.

The slightly overqualified Anthony Quinn is wonderful as Zeus. The Oscar winner plays the King of the Gods as a celebrity who gets off on his fame and power but must keep his real identity a secret from foolish mortals. It’d be easy for a legend like Quinn to phone it in with a proudly goofy project like this but he fully commits.

Even without the looming specter of Kitaen’s death haunting it, Hercules in the Underworld would nevertheless feel strangely melancholy and bittersweet, dealing as it does with death and loss and acceptance and Hercules and Deianeira’s epic love.

Hercules in the Underworld offers the ultimate romantic fantasy: that death does not have to be the end, and that if we never give up, then our love and our devotion will be enough to pull our loved ones back from the awful finality of the grave.