Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang, Deborah Loomis, James Karen, Ernest Graves, Tanny McDonald, Harold Burstein, Merwin Goldsmith, George Bartenieff, Taina Elg, Michael Lipton
Directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman
Expectations: Pretty high. I’ve never seen the whole movie and I expect it to be fun.
On the general scale:
On the B-Movie scale:
OK, I’m not going to try to pull anybody’s chain here, Hercules in New York is pretty fuckin’ awful. Thanks to the presence of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and the DVD release from 2000 that restores his original audio (Arnold’s voice was dubbed out in the theatrical edition, the horror!), Hercules in New York is actually watchable, but every moment it continues makes the task harder and harder.
The first half moves fairly quickly as there isn’t a lot of plot to speak of other than Zeus and Hercules have an argument and Hercules is sent to Earth. What follows is more of an episodic structure than a traditional film, and this is easily my favorite part of the film. Here we are treated to a cavalcade of random occurrences that beset our muscled hero and I took to naming them in the style of the Hercules films of old. So in no particular order we have: Hercules vs. the Athletes, Hercules vs. the Intellectual Socialites, Hercules vs. the Hercules Poster, Hercules Sightseeing in New York, Hercules in Love, and last but certainly not least Hercules vs. the Escaped Bear. If we’re being specific it should read: Hercules vs. the Guy in the Bear Suit. That should be enough of a recommendation right there and if that didn’t get you pumped for Hercules in New York then nothing will. OK, he body slams the bear! C’mon!