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There aren't many possible candidates for that episode, but I'm not entirely positive this is the one I caught the tail end of. On the other hand, the girl in this one is kinda cute....
And I'll say this for Quinn, as well. He has a long impressive track record. I don't want to seem negative about him. But he probably earned more respect from me as an actor during a recently produced documentary on the old Western movies. It seems that every time you hear an Indian speak his "native tongue" in those old movies it's just gibberish. The writers made it up.
One of the criticisms often levelled at the old westerns is that they didn't use Native Americans in the leading roles. But it may not be so well known that many Native Americans still performed in those movies as extras -- so the braves attacking the wagon train and the US Cavalry in their fort were often really Indians.
Anyway, when Anthony ("Tony") Quinn auditioned for the part of an Indian chief, he was asked if he spoke Cherokee. He wanted the part so he said, "Fluently!" They asked him to say something, so he started speaking to them. The producers were satisfied and Quinn got the role.
Of course, he didn't know one word of the Cherokee language, but one of the other actors who worked with Quinn said that as soon as he started speaking in "Indian", all the REAL Indians on the set looked around as if they'd missed something. Quinn's gibberish sounded almost like the real thing even to the real Native Americans!
Now that is what acting all about....
Return to discussion of the Hercules movies.
It occasionally becomes difficult to suspend disbelief and think these stories are set in ancient Greece (or anywhere outside the south Pacific). The bamboo scaffold is one of the reasons why. Bamboo is about as far removed from Greece as any plant-life gets. It is found in Asia and other parts of the world, being a member of the grass family (or so I'm told), but it just doesn't belong in a Hercules (or Xena) movie or episode. The scaffold has been reused in several Hercules and Xena stories (including "Sins of the Past", the first X:WP episode, where Xena and the warlord Draco fought for control of her home village of Amphipolis).
Return to discussion of the Hercules movies.