Movie Review – “Hercules In New York”

This movie is just all kinds of bad.

Cast, Crew, and Other Info

Arnold Schwarzenegger as the body of Hercules,
although he was billed
as Arnold Strong, and he didn’t provide the
voice.

Arnold Stang as Pretzy

Written by Aubrey Wisberg

Directed by Arthur A. Seidelman

Complete information is available from the
IMDB
.

This
DVD release

includes the original audio track, with Arnold’s
voice, the original
theatrical audio track, with someone else dubbing the
voice of
Hercules, and alternate language tracks in Spanish,
French, and
German. It also includes English, Spanish, and
French subtitles.


Past movie reviews can be found here.

Premise

Hercules gets bored and goes to New York. Hilarity
ensues, although
not in any of the ways the filmmakers intended.

High Point

The bad dubbing.

Low Point

The default audio track doesn’t have the dubbed
voice. You don’t
watch this movie if you want to watch something good,
so you’re forced
to go back and reselect the original theatrical audio
track later.

The Scores

It’s a fish out of water story that happens to
include Hercules. It’s
also a 1970s film that includes a car chase, mobsters
looking to
exploit the talents of our hero, and a number of
other elements that
were trite and common already. For
originality, I give it 2
out of 6. (It was Hercules, after all.)

The effects were really, really lousy.
There weren’t many of
them, and the ones they had looked terrible. Zeus’
thunderbolts were
bent rebar! Colored lights and smoke pots were used
for just about
everything else, and the only color of light
available was red. I
give it 1 out of 6.

The story is predictable, uninteresting, and
cliche. Well,
the introduction of Samson was unpredictable, but
only because he
doesn’t come from Greek myth. I give it 1 out of 6.

The acting is probably the worst in
Schwarzenegger’s career.
It’s certainly worse than what he did in Batman
and Robin
, to
name one example. He’s also been surrounded by
people who were almost
as bad as he was. Others were even worse. I give it
1 out of 6.

The production was terrible. Bad editing,
shoddy camera work
(including seriously out of focus close-ups,
accidental pans when the
camera wasn’t mounted firmly, and so forth), buzzing
and noisy
soundtracks, and poor lighting are all over the
place. I give it 1
out of 6.

The emotional response is the next category
for review.
Let’s face it; this movie is terrible. Every aspect
of its production
is completely incompetant. This movie transcends
bad, becoming
phenomenally entertaining in all sorts of
unintentional ways. I give
it 6 out of 6.

Overall, this is good, cheap fun to be had
at the expense of
the filmmakers. I give it 5 out of 6.

In total, Hercules In New York receives 16
out of 42.