"Try to make it through all the nonsense of the script - then think of how good a movie it would have been if Lou Ferrigno and his wife, Carla, hadn't suddenly turned it into a kiddie film. The original screenplay, an R-rated blend of adventure and erotica, was about how the lonely Hercules wanders around until he finally meets up with a power-hungry, manipulative Queen. She sexually seduces him and tricks him into using his strength to conquer other kingdoms. It wraps up when she herself fights Hercules - to the death! The whole reason for doing HERCULES was to match the CONAN movie and that meant the blood and the guts and the nudity and the sex, but, instead we got a bad episode of FAERIE TALE THEATRE."

"Mr. Ferrigno just has a plain terrible insecurity. When he finally got two lead roles, it went to his head. Here he is Hercules - and he says that ever since he was a boy, his big dream was to do Hercules - and he says to himself that he's more beautiful, he's better, he's bigger than he dreamed. When those things go to your head and you start stepping on people around you, that's the beginning of going down."

Comments such as those, plus some others she made about Ferrigno on a talk show, got her some bad reviews from her producer, Menahem Golan. "Menahem has said, 'Just try to say nice things."' What are those nice things? "He's bigger than Steve Reeves," she offers. "He's at least as handsome." And then she falls strangely silent. "I want to make more films with Menahem," she explains with a smile.

"Oh, it's no contest. Lou's flapping pecs get caressed by no fewer than two hot, sexy women, per picture - and Sybil often has first dibs. Her mammary glands are given attention in Lou's flicks of course, but are never showcased. Ferrigno's characters seldom express actual interest in women. They are simply opportunities to feature his rescuing abilities, as well as to assure the audience, by her mere presense, that he might not be gay. So, while Sybil has the cleavage the fanboy's crave, her frontal protrusions are always treated as an intrusion in every Lou Ferrigno movie she finds herself in - proof positive that Lou's pulsing pecs are indeed, the MAIN attraction, in these films."

"I'm going to side with Sybil on this issue. Although I love the HERCULES films for what they are, cheezy Italo-tainment, I would have enjoyed seeing an 'R' equivalent to "CONAN THE BARBARIAN". There is too much potential for a raw, bloody, in-your-face peplum adventure to see the actuality come to fruition... a 'PG' family adventure. Personally, it could go either way, but I can only imagine an "EXCALIBUR"-like approach that would have been great."

"I have to argee with Sybil, it could been a much better film. I believe this is the reason why Ferrigno finds it hard to find a good film to do. When Schwarzenegger does a film he puts his all into it. I guess that's why he lost the Olympia contests to Arnold all the time. Quality always makes a difference."

"Lou is a stud. Too bad he wasn't naked in ANY movie. Sybil seems like the insecure one."

"At Least Lou's boobs are REAL! Nicer nipples too. Man, he is a STUD, wish he was naked in the movie!"

"I'd love to do ferrigno! Damn those oily, glistening pecs and dark nipples make me moist everytime! DAMN! He's even finer now that he's older!"

"Sybil Rules - Lou had very little to do with the movie as far as I'm concerned. I can't believe they didn't use Sybil more in the movie. She rules!"

"Breast may be bought and are available in great quantity, but pecs take years to build: if you don't buy them and they are rare!"

"Sybil Danning's boobs are the best highlights of all her films."

"Those jiggling boobs have everything."

"Lou Ferrigno did not like the idea to begin with that I was made a gladiator [in the Seven Magnificent Gladiators, another sword & sandal movie shot shortly before Hercules]. In his eyes, especially being a body builder as he is, he feels he's the only one to handle the whole situation and have all the fight scenes to himself. And of course, when he heard there was going to be a woman with him, he didn't have enough power to say no, but he certainly wanted to make my role and my existence there as miserable as possible."

"Almost every scene where I was supposed to fight alongside Ferrigno was all of a sudden changed because he had a talk with the director. There are a few good action scenes where I'm in there, but except for one scene, there are none where we're actually fighting alongside each other like it should be, like it was in the script."

"And there were other scenes where I found myself as the only one to wear a cloack around my shoulders. In one scene, we're going to a tavern, and I'm supposed to go through the tavern door together with Mr. Ferrigno. The men were going bare-chested and bare-armed, but he felt that I should wear a cloak around my shoulders. He was worried that when we go through the tavern door, maybe somebody wouldn't see him, as big and clutzy as he is, but would look at me instead. I don't know, maybe they'll write in the subtitles that the woman gladiator had low blood pressure and was always cold and had to wear a cloak."

According to Danning, it further shook Ferrigno's equipoise that Danning was an accomplished horsewoman, while he was a novice. "Problems arose because Mr. Ferrigno did not know how to ride a horse. It took us some time to go over and over scenes where he had to ride. Of course, he ended up riding the same way that he rode in the first take after the twelfth take. He was still kicking the horse below to make everyone think he was trying to go, and pulling it back with the reins so it couldn't go." According to Danning, Ferrigno took revenge by telling the director to make sure that she rode at least three to four feet behind him. "I'm not sure if it was because he thought that I was a woman and shouldn't be riding next to him, or maybe he thought that I rode better than he did, and he didn't want anybody to see that," she adds.

Ferrigno was apparently so insistent on not being in scenes with Danning that some action shots had to be filmed after he had left. "One thing that the director put in after his absence was a drinking scene. If I fight like a gladiator, I should also drink like one. But they didn't want Ferrigno to know they were shooting it."

By the end of work on Gladiators, Ferrigno and Danning were not on speaking terms. After a two week break, the battle immediately resumed on the set of Hercules. Danning says, "The role I was supposed to play - the love interest of Hercules - I did not end up playing. The producer asked me not to play the love interest."

Instead, Danning took on a more appropriate role, given the situation. "I play the bad princess, who wants to possess, capture, devour, seduce, and keep Hercules just for her own pleasures," she explains.