Hercules in New York

1969 action comedy

Rating: 4/20

Plot: The titular demigod is bored with life in Olympus, so his father Zeus lightning-bolts him to New York City to teach him a lesson. While in the Big Apple, he becomes a successful wrestler and competitive weightlifter with the help of a nerdy streetwise guy named Pretzie and gets himself a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Zeus sends Mercury and Nemesis to retrieve him.

This is worth watching for fans of Arnold Strong as this is his first film appearance. Or Arnold Stang fans, I guess, if there are any of them out there. I liked him in The Man with the Golden Arm enough. But back to Schwarzenegger, the real star of this show. With the screen presence this guy has in this movie, I'm really surprised he didn't have more of a career in movies. Seems like he could have had a nice career as an action hero or something even though the acting he does in this is embarrassing. He's worse in Kindergarten Cop actually. Here, he doesn't have to do much acting. He just has to be big and strong, and he does a fine job of doing that. Now, the version I watched has Arnold Strong dubbed, allegedly because he was unintelligible when delivering the wonderful dialogue that was written for him. The voice used is odd since we all know what Schwarzenegger sounds like. I watched some bits and pieces of the non-dubbed version for comparison purposes, and Arnold's heavily-accented voice would have been pretty brutal for the duration of this one. Honestly, I think this is kind of a cute idea for a movie, and writer Aubrey Wisberg got a lot of the mythology right. This, by the way, was her last writing credit. The writing's bad, but it's the inept direction that really makes this one special. The poster brags about this being filmed almost entirely in New York. Well, they really should have located a more isolated location for the Olympus scenes since you can hear traffic in the background while Zeus and Juno are bickering. The pacing of the story's awkward. Even more awkward is the amount of screen time devoted to Arnold Strong just standing around flexing. The most awkward of those is when he spots a movie poster as he's walking down the street with his lady friend and starts griping that the actor doesn't even look like him. Of course, he takes off his shirt and starts flexing in order to prove it to her. But the scene that makes this movie? Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting a guy in a bear suit! I had to rewind and watch that epic battle twice just to make sure I really saw it.

Side note: I wish Arnold Schwarzenegger would have stuck with Arnold Strong. It's a lot easier to spell.