"Ok, enough playing around. You had your fun with Disney+ and The Rock last week, it's time to get back on track with the project" I said to myself as I nervously clicked the watch button beneath the title of this weeks film...: Hercules in New York, a 1970 Comedy... Comedy?... Which part? and Fantasy film staring a very young Arnold Schwarzenegger (billed as Arnold Strong!) in his very first cinema role shot entirely, as the title might suggest, in New York.
Hercules (Arnold) is bored with life on Olympus and after annoying his father, Zeus, about it, gets sent to Earth to mess around for a bit and immediately gets himself in trouble with a couple of New York dockers. This altercation introduces him to Pretzie (Arnold Stang) and the pair become friends leading Hercules to a romantic liaison... well sort of... with Miss Camden (Deborah Loomis). Agreeing to become a Wrestler to earn some money whilst wandering around the city with his new girlfriend, Herc attracts the attention of some New York gangsters and after Zeus's wife, Juno gets annoyed and takes his powers away, Herc finds himself in hot water when he loses a weight lifting contest and shenanigans ensue!
This is one of the worst films I've ever watched.
Arnold Schwarzenegger will go on to be iconic, legendary, but he is green as goose goo in this movie and there is just no hiding it. In fact, the only person to escape from this picture with any credibility left is Arnold Stang who did a good job of being Hercules' stooge but everybody else was a write-off. I'm trying to take into account that this was a very late 60's, early 70's movie and cinema was maybe less refined than it might be nowadays but some of the acting in this flick was just downright dreadful. Irredeemably dreadful.
Hercules in New York was undoubtedly a low budget movie, even if you don't know that going in. The cinematography is baffling in places; you have this astonishingly impressive figure of a man and yet not once are there any real, clear lingering shots to really drive home how impressive his physique is. And for a beginner, for somebody in their first movie, Arnold is forced to work far harder than he really ought to have been. He had far too much dialogue, that was delivered unconvincingly for the most part, and his role should have been kept to playing to his strengths; looking awesome and being really strong.
There are moments when the audio drops out and you can barely hear what the actors are saying to each other, moments when the shot is out of focus, there was this horrible car and chariot race near the end that was a cringeworthy disaster from start to finish. Arnold and Deborah had no chemistry, the only barely almost redeeming factor was Arnold Stang who tried his hardest to survive being in this movie by genuinely putting some effort in. And to round it all off nicely, there was this horrible, ear-bleedingly bad acoustic guitar soundtrack that served as a segway between scenes. Imagine something out of an Italian gangster movie, or a movie about Venice, but played out of tune and after every fucking scene. It was dreadful, illfitting and egregious to listen to. I hated it.
