Hercules In New York!

Arnold Schwarzenegger. The name is big in the news right now. No, not for being the governor of California, or for his years in movies. Nope, his name is big right now for having a secret love child kept hidden for the past 10 years. Is anyone actually surprised by this? I'm pretty sure that aside from being famous, everyone thought of Arnold as a raging asshole. I know I did, and I was a fan!

Right, the point of this blog isn't to discuss the man, his infidelities or his raging asshole personality. It's to discuss his work. I have fallen out of grace with Arnold, he made too many kids films and lost me. That said, I was a HUGE Schwarzenegger fan growing up. I discovered him via a super channel viewing of "Conan The Barbarian" around 1983 and was hooked. Everyone I knew was. If you were a boy in North America in the 80's you were an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan, and you loved his movies. LOVED THEM. Or you were beaten up for not liking him. The 80's was the era of bullies people, and sissies who didn't like Arnold got beat down at recess. It's a tough world, be thankful we are more enlightened now.

Since it's been years since I remember sincerely liking an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, and since the man is talking about a come back provided he isn't killed for spawning a secret army of Arnolds, I've decided to re-watch all of his films. All the ones I can get my hands on anyways, and probably in mostly chronological order. I anticipate this taking awhile since frankly, this could become a bit of a tough slog and there's thousands of other things I'd like to be doing. For the sake of my ego, I'm going to keep track of the films here. So here's the first review!

HERCULES IN NEW YORK (1969)

Look at that poster! how could anyone resist this movie? Resist it they did, in droves...

Hercules is bored of Mount Olympus, so he goes to New York to have a vacation. In New York he fights numerous guys on the Bowery, befriends a nerd named Pretz (short for “Pretzel”, he’s a pretzel salesman at the docks), and wrestles a bear in central park! The lesson to be learned is something about humility, and it’s supposed to be a comedy. I think.

What is there to say about Arnold’s film debut? It’s terrible. Not as terrible as it used to be, originally Arnold’s voice was dubbed since his thick accent made the already poor dialog all that much harder understand. Now, thanks to DVD, you can watch it with Arnold’s original dialog all in tack. It’s not much of an improvement, but it helps. The main problem with this film is that it’s super cheap and a comedy. This is 1969, it should be a sexploitation. Comedies are really hard to make. Hell, Hollywood rarely get them right, there’s little chance for someone with a shoe string budget and a unknown body builder to make a good film. So this one really misses the mark. If it went the sexploitation rout it might of been interesting. It's not like Arnold was a prude, he used to pose for gay magazines* for Christs sake! A gay sexploitation angle could of really helped this! Arnold is young and handsome- and billed as "Arnold Strong" since his last name is hard to spell and makes your spell check go crazy, but displays none of the screen presence that will make him the biggest movie star in the world. It’s must of been through force of will that he was able to get future rolls in the movies since this was hardly a calling card. Co-star Arnold Stang who plays the roll of “Pretz” doesn’t fair any better and you would never know that he had years of TV and film credits prior to this. He too will continue on in films, mostly doing voice work until passing away in 2009. No one else worth mentioning, this movie is unexceptional. It also feels about 5 hours long.

out of 5 Arnolds




So there it is, Arnold will move on from this film- a film he regrets doing, and become the biggest movie star in the world. From humble beginnings rises greatness!

*That link is NSFW by the way...