Written by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Alan Schneider for "Play of the Week." Starring Zero Mostel and Burgess Meredith. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Immediately following the success of Black Sunday, Mario Bava was recruited to direct (and photograph) the second of Reg Park's Hercules films for producer Achille Piazzi. Freely departing from Roman mythology, the film gave Bava the opportunity to reimagine the sword-and-sandal genre. On its surface a jovial comedy adventure, Hercules in the Haunted World features a striking use of color, which would become one of Bava's directorial hallmarks. But this playful peplum is tinged with a sense of genuine foreboding, voiced by a masked oracle Medea (Gaia Germani) in one of the film's most stunning sequences. When Hercules descends into the depths of hell and confronts Lico (Christopher Lee), who has the power to call forth corpses from their tombs, the film plunges into the eye-popping, bone-chilling horror for which Bava had recently become famous.

In a deserted newsroom Peter Stenning writes the biggest news story the world has ever known: 'Within the next few hours the world will know whether this is the end or another beginning'. The combined jolt of nuclear test explosions carried out by the Americans and the Russians has shifted the Earth's orbit and it is now racing towards the sun. Chaos mounts. But four super bombs exploded simultaneously might halt the catastrophic progress. Will the world be doomed or saved?