Fright Night (1985)

These days, movies like The Wicker Man (remake) come out where they get famous based solely on a few minutes of schlocky fun, when really the rest of the movie isn't like that and is, for the most part, a sizable step down in quality from said schlocky fun. But the film gets “so bad it's good” praise from people anyway despite the fact that they're really just praising that short few minutes of schlocky fun.

Well...everything has to start somewhere!

Director: Tom Holland

Starring: William Ragsdale, Chris Sarandon

IMDb

Fright Night is a 1985 horror comedy that got a lot of lip service back in the day, which I'm pretty sure was for the bangin' 80s music and visuals. Yeah! Shake those hips.

The 80s was the only time you could get your party on and get a relaxing back massage at the same place.

But the movie doesn't start off with such extravagant extremes, no; instead we get a much humbler opening of main character Charley Brewster almost having sex with his girlfriend Amy, but she pulls back at the last second, feeling nervous I guess. Then she changes her mind again and wants to do it, but by that time, Charley's goldfish-sized attention span has gone to the next logical place – the weird stuff happening across the street, like new neighbors moving in.

You know, the common hierarchy: New neighbors are more important than sex. Just how it goes, guys.

"Honey, your total willingness to have sex with me is less important than two guys carrying a box around outside. We have a good relationship!"

Downstairs, they get into a fight because he didn't want to have sex when she was ready. Uh excuse ME young lady, but weren't YOU the one refusing HIM sex like five minutes ago? You guys have as much synchonicity as two parallel lines running for miles without intersecting. People on other sides of the planet have better chemistry. A blind guy and a deaf girl could connect better.

The mother, even despite hearing this conversation, continues planning her son's marriage to this girl. Are you just really desperate? I guess the fact that Charley, given the rest of the movie, was able to land a girlfriend at all was so mind-fuckingly, rainbow-burstingly amazing to her that she now insists he marry the chick before he screws it all up as she knows he will.

But it's okay – there's a vampire moved in across the street! Charley knows this because he's apparently related to that jackass from From Dusk Til Dawn 2 – think about it; the same vacant stares, the same lack of any likability AND the same paranoid delusions about vampires validated in implausible ways! Plus they both get distracted from sex by what's on TV. Long lost brothers, you have finally found each other.

You can tell by the identical vacant, wide-eyed stares of dumbfounded idiocy on their faces.

Although overall, Fright Night is the better movie. Why? Because the main character in From Dusk Til Dawn 2 never got the hamburger in the face he deserved:

*slow clap*

So apparently the story here is that Charley saw some really hot prostitute going over to the house next door and then saw her later get killed by the guy next door, who is a vampire. He knows he's a vampire because he was spying on the hot naked chick and then saw...well, vampire shenanigans, I guess is the best way to put it!

"I could have had actual sex with a willing girlfriend if I hadn't been such a dick-cheese and spent more time looking out the window! BUT BOOBS! OOOOHHH!"

That's another thing - a big plot point throughout the first act is Jerry the vampire mad at Charley for exposing him. But Jerry has no fucking problem leaving a window open while he's showing off his vamp powers? C'mon, man - get with the program.

The next day he sees a news report that says a “known prostitute” was killed last night – i.e. the same chick Charley saw in the window. But, uh, how does one become a known prostitute to the level of being mentioned as such on the news? How did she get such a reputation? Maybe she has a Facebook page. Yes, I know it's 1985. Shut up.

Charley calls the only black guy in this movie's world, a cop who comes over and investigates with the panache and professionalism I expect from dumb 80s horror movies – he basically acts like a debate moderator. He lets Charley hurl wild accusations and then turns to the guy at the house and goes, “Well, what do you have to say about that?” Dude, nobody's getting points for the strengths of their argument here. Fucking do your job, or go home.

He's my third favorite movie cop. Right behind the guy from Dead Silence and Danny Glover in Predator 2.

After the vampire dude's helper convinces the detective nothing's going on, Charley storms out after the detective screaming like an insane person that VAMPIRES EXIST! Because that's sure to win him over, ya know, like it does most good cops. I love the way the detective screams at him before he gets in the car – he says if Charley bothers him again, he'll lock him up FOREVER!

"I regularly kidnap law abiding citizens who annoy me and lock them up in grimy dungeons with no hope of escape! SO DON'T CROSS ME, BOY!"

Well, I do agree Charley needs to be locked up. But I don't know if you have enough evidence yet. Give me a call sometime, man; I'll help you plant drugs in his room so you have probable cause.

Then Charley goes to find his TV hero, Peter Vincent, who makes a living as a character even less credible than the Crypt Keeper. But for some reason, Charley seems to think this guy is the answer – a fucking TV actor is apparently the most credible expert in this world.

The common expression anyone who interacts with Charley gets within thirty seconds of speaking to him.

Are you going to call Christopher Lloyd next time you need help on your science project that involves traveling back in time? Maybe call Bill Murray next time you need help fighting a ghost?

I guess it's a funny enough scenario for a comedy, but I just have to wonder about Charley's sanity at this point. Maybe the kid who starts believing in vampires in the span of two seconds looking out his window, to the point where he decorates his room with some rather questionable feng shui:

He's a born again idiot.

...maybe it's time to start asking around about which mental hospital has the best security, hmm?

Either way, we can all agree on one thing – the kid playing Evil Ed was clearly directed to act like he was on a manic drug trip with no clear stopping point.

"I'M GONNA NEED DENTAL WORK AFTER ALL THIS TEETH-GRINDING!"

I just don't know what to say about this except that I really want to go back in time myself now and see what exactly director Tom Holland was telling this guy: “Okay, act like you're strung out on heroin, haven't slept in four days and just took a triple shot of Espresso to compensate! And like you were also raised in a den of insane clowns in a traveling circus. Yeah! Now we got this horror movie performance down.” Oh 1985 – never go away.

Also, what's up with Amy's clothing choices? Is she just wearing the entire GoodWill catalog's fall edition? I mean fuck, it's not that cold, woman – you can take off a sweater or two!

But this is all just window dressing for the main plot of Charley, Ed and Amy getting Vincent to come with them and prove the neighbor, Jerry Dandridge (you know, a name I would expect any fearsome vampire to have) is a vampire. They do this by making him drink some fake holy water. When Charley tries to point a cross at Dandridge, which actually makes him flinch and recoil, the rest of the gang tells him don't be silly, etc.

"My, what big fangs you have."

You idiots, all he has to have now is a fucking neon flashing sign saying I'M A VAMPIRE to be any more obvious! How do you not see it?!?

But I'm not one to just bash ONE side of stupidity – I also think it's pretty lame how douchey Charley acts when they're all walking home later, just screaming hysterically about vampires and insulting his supposed “friend” Ed. As much as I think the Ed character was probably a product of drug-induced insanity, at least he's funny. Charley right now is about as likable as pond scum. Yeah man - you insult your friends and sulk like a big crybaby. You won this argument.

So after a dumb joke where Ed pretends to be attacked, screams and worries his two friends, they part ways and then hear him scream again. Even though it's been several minutes and he has no reason to do another joke exactly like the one from before – it's a horror movie convention that they do the whole “boy cries wolf” routine and ignore him. Even though THIS time he really is in trouble!

"It is I, Fabio's obscure vampire cousin, here to put you out of your misery!"

Yes, now he's a vampire. And also the thing everyone remembers about this movie – nobody really cares about the rest of it; just Evil Ed the vampire. He pretty much acts the same as he did before this, which is to say he acts like a man in the throes of a psychotic breakdown. But now he has a voice that sounds like your grandmother after someone dropped a piano on her pinky toe. So there is that...

He just wants a hug. Though I understand if his scenery-chewing abilities frighten you. He could devour you whole, and not just because he's a vampire.

In addition to that wonderful addition to cinema canon, we get a scene where he has a cross burned into his head. I'm sure he'll have fun attending Westboro Baptist Church meetings from now on.

Meanwhile, at a dance club, Jerry Dandridge (they really couldn't give him a cooler name? Even something generic like Lord Darkness or something?) seduces Amy and takes her away – because I guess 1980s glitter and neon lights just make anyone look more appealing. He takes her back to his house and plays Dress Up like a Toga Frat Party:

Only I'm not sure those parties usually had biting involved. Eh, maybe they did.

So I guess Charley and Vincent team up to go to the house and fight Dandridge. Dandridge's henchman shows up and Vincent ends up shooting him in the face – it would have been funny if that was just the end of it, but alas, he's been turned into a vampire now. So like most of the time when you kill a vampire, he melts into Nickelodeon slime. 

Iiiiiiiiiit's slime time!

We get some more really drawn out scenes, with one really memorable one in the mix somewhere – it's when Peter Vincent goes over to Charley's house and finds Evil Ed under the covers of Charley's mom's bed. After some truly silly and hammy lines where he somehow makes the simple explanation of Charley's mom leaving dinner in the oven for him sound like a goddamn theatrical production. Gee. Really reaching for the bottom of the barrel there, huh? Really no better jokes you could have used than “Dinner's in the oven”?



Then Ed turns into a wolfman and fights Vincent that way. Unfortunately, every hammy over the top 80s performance must come to an end.

"Dammit, another incident where I end up alone in a stranger's house with a naked teenage boy."

Good thing, too; if he had kept going, he probably could have created a black hole and sucked up reality into an alternate dimension where this kind of acting is considered Shakespearean. And that world, my friends, is one I tremble to imagine.

When Vincent gets back over to the other house, they have an extremely long fight scene during which time I'm positive the casting crew, makeup artists and others had time to do their nails, read the rest of Moby Dick, work out real estate deals for new houses, write shitty scripts for unmade Fright Night sequels and work on their memoirs for appearing in a film that somehow drags out this story to two hours.

"I will not be killed by Ray Harryhausen scraps!"

I'm sorry, I was dozing off a bit there.

Anyway, they kill him by punching holes in the wall until he explodes and then driving a stake through his heart, which somehow makes him stand up as if he were a yard rake and you stepped on its teeth.

And he also makes squeaky noises if you punch him in the face.

Either way he's dead and the whole thing is finally over. Amy even turns back into a human, which I didn't know could happen – but hey, vampires. They're wacky! I think mostly they just wanted to spare the world more of this "vagina face" style makeup job:

Eugh. Did somebody just fall asleep when they were doing her face?

So then the movie ends with Charley and Amy back in his room having sex again. Because she's such a good catch, he of course gets distracted by the TV again, proving that he has learned nothing and that they are truly made for each other.

Oh ho ho. In their future I see plenty of nights where the deep hatred stewing between them reaches a near-boiling point as she tries to give him a handjob after making dinner and cleaning the house and he shrugs her off without looking at her because hey, Sons of Anarchy is on and he wants to see what happens next. After months of turgid arguments where she cries how he just doesn't understand her and he says what do you want from me, and she says I just want you to listen to me for once, and then he just shrugs her off and goes down to the bar for a drink and to watch the game in the peace of all the other tired, frustrated old men, and he comes back to find that she's trashed the place in a rage, spray painted FUCK YOU on the walls in bright purple, and gone to live at a lesbian nudist retreat for the rest of her life.

At least I think that's how it goes. You can change up a few details if you want. Never let it be said I don't make this blog interactive – you can give 'em a happy ending if you like.

This movie is just silly. It's got a funny premise and the story moves along okay for the most part, but it's too long and the main character is just a douchebag through and through, with no redeeming qualities as a character. I mean, he's just so lame. I really thought this movie could have been way better if it focused on another character entirely - maybe the story from Ed's point of view would have been good, as he's actually a likable character and elicits a little bit of sympathy. Or from Peter Vincent's point of view, as he seems like he has more invested in all of this.

Charley is just a boring, awful little douche, and really just shows the limitations of so many of these kinds of films - focusing on the most boring cardboard cutout of a suburban white kid just to make it "relatable." We could have had a potentially interesting, funny flick, but what do we get?

Eugh. I get it, the point of the story is a kid who thinks his new neighbor is a vampire. Keep him in the story, sure; but at least do us the courtesy of having a better character be the main focus!

The Evil Ed stuff is funny, and there are some other clever bits, but it really does start to drag as it goes on and it should have been trimmed by at least twenty minutes if not more. It's obviously better than The Wicker Man remake which I mentioned earlier, but I really do think most of the fame tends to stem from the Evil Ed performance - it was the most memorable part of the movie. It's a fairly well made film though and I can see how it was popular back in the day. But I'll stick to Re-Animator for my gory laughs.

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Predator 2 (1990)

You'd think it would be really easy to make a Predator sequel. I mean, the first one wasn't exactly the stuff of geniuses – you take a bunch of musclebound meatheads, stick 'em in the jungle and watch them get killed off by a sometimes-invisible alien. I had never seen this one, so I was like, oh, it'll probably be more or less the same, right? Right?

RIGHT?!

Nooooooo.

Director: Stephen Hopkins

Starring: Danny Glover, Gary Busey

IMDb

We start this one off with some news reports detailing the dystopian future we all have to look forward to: in 1997, apparently voodoo gang members rule Los Angeles and the police are helpless to stop the constant gunfire and gang warring going on. You read that right, yes – voodoo gang members.

I...just can't even comprehend what kind of bungled thought process went into THAT one – hey, let's make a predator sequel! Cool, what ideas do you have? Well, I thought I'd add in some voodoo gang members in a dystopian future landscape to really exemplify what the Predator is all about and...hey, why are you running for the door? Come back!

Well that's what should've happened. Also, yes, 1997. I do remember the violent gang wars that ruined LA at that time – what a fiasco. And to think all we have to worry about these days are lesser issues like ISIS and the economy and shit. We have it easy!

So apparently our main character is Danny Glover, playing a horrible actor. Or is that not a role at all? There isn't a lot to say about the first twenty minutes or so, as much of it is just a haphazard dive into gratuitous shooting and violence. This isn't necessarily bad, but it's tough to get invested in a film that doesn't seem to give two shits about actually introducing you to any of its characters in the least – instead it's just “Hey! Look at how much violent shit we can put in!”

The gunfire and the cars getting blown up have more character development than the actual characters.

Although there is one guy who we'll rememeber, though mostly for cocaine induced reasons:

Well that's how everyone on set got through making this thing, anyway.

This whole thing goes to shit when the Predator shows up and slaughters most of the gang members. The last guy, Mr. Cocaine over there, is left to jump off a building when he sees the Predator coming for him. This surprises exactly nobody until they notice the little detail of the one other guy in the building who was randomly chosen to be strung up like cattle with his heart cut out.

One of Glover's guys, Danny, goes off by himself and ends up getting killed. Glover gets shit for messing up the operation back at the base, because they weren't supposed to go in the building at all, and apparently he has a history of not obeying orders.

Astonishing; a movie cop that doesn't obey orders? What's next, a hot chick that needs to be saved from a villain twirling a mustache? Whatever will you do next to buck the system and fight against cliché, movie? I'm just on the edge of my seat.

We also get introduced to some other characters, like Gary Busey playing some hard ass special ops guy trying to take over this whole thing as his own. But really his job just seems to be showing off that gap between his front teeth.

Then there's Bill Paxton, who loves to tell wacky stories at crime scenes, because that's how a good cop acts, you know. This character is a constant annoyance on screen and there's really nothing about him that I enjoy.

While that's going on, the Predator is busy killing off a bunch of the Voodoo gang members in some condominium. The cops come and investigate, finding a little spearhead thingy, which Glover and his sidekicks take to some white-haired scientist lady who I think has been locked in a room for seven years with no way out:

Hi, character invented for no purpose but to dole out exposition like a Blackjack dealer!

The lady looks at the spearhead, proclaims she's completely baffled by it because it has no metals known to the periodic table, then just shrugs and lets the cops take it out with them again. You know, no point in actually researching that shit; just let them take it out with them and never bring it up again, like any good scientist is wont to do. Brilliant work, lady.

Then we get more action when a bunch of guys on some train are harassing some women when the entire train whips out guns, because this whole thing is really just the NRA's wet dream fantasy:

The Predator was apparently just waiting for this opportunity, as he comes down and slaughters most of the people on the train. The cops get there, and we see the movie's fetish for scenes where people wander around in the dark for a while before something jumps out and scares them, which is NEVER something overdone in these kinds of movies!

Run! The Invisible Man has gone INSANE!

Fortunately Paxton gets killed off in this scene, which raises the movie up a notch for me personally, as I was about to claw out my own ear drums if I had to listen to another scene of him telling jokes in the middle of a crime scene.

DIE!!!

Like clockwork, Glover gets chewed out back at the station and it's revealed he has a history of being psychologically unstable and violent, yet has been on the force for a jawdropping 18 YEARS. Are you shitting me? In the real world he would have been fired and then gone through rehab twice in that time! 18 years? Were they really that short on people? What did their other options look like?

Oh. Oh, I see. Well THAT I understand - carry on, then.

Anyway, Glover then immediately goes out and violently confronts Busey, which I'm sure will really change the higher-ups' outlook that you're some violent, crazy madman...oh wait, no, it really won't.

Oh, the guy with a history of psychotic angry breakdowns in public just did the same thing again after an 18-year career of the same shit over and over? OK, you can stay on the force.

While Glover is visiting his buddy's grave, the Predator stalks him because he has that arrowhead thing, or something like that – this scene is just an excuse for the Predator to have a scene where he runs into a little boy with a gun. C'mon; are we really that bereft for ideas that we're putting a “monster runs into little kid” scene in this shit? Is that the level we've stooped to?

Be careful, kid; you could get expelled from school for having a toy gun these days. Gotta appease the overreaction culture!

Then we get an interminable number of fight scenes which pretty much go like this: people wander around in the dark, then the Predator reveals itself, and we get a decent splurt of actual action. These scenes aren't bad, but they certainly aren't good enough to rival the intensity of the first film. I guess the most pressing thing going on is that Busey and his Special Ops idiots have figured out how to detect the Predator with some kind of thermonuclear detector or something.

Great! How will that wo---oh, I forgot, having any characters be competent would just be silly. Instead the losers and fuckups are the only ones who can survive in a movie like this!

He died as he lived, with his mouth open.

Glover and the Predator have a showdown where Glover takes off his mask and the Predator does his whole "repeat a line from earlier in the movie" thing like in the first one. Only unlike that movie, this time it's a really dumb, lame line that mostly embarrasses me for the makers of this movie. Are you ready for this? The Predator, this ultra badass alien super-warrior, utters this line: "Shit happens!"

Fuckin' seriously? THAT was the best you could come up with, writers? "Shit happens" was the summation of your creative wit? On the one hand, it doesn't even make sense; how does that have anything to do with the situation at hand? On the other, at least it kinda sums up the making of this movie. Shit does happen. As is quite evident here.

You'd think THIS would be the end of the movie, but no, there's still 30 minutes left. 30 minutes? How? What more do you really have to do with this story? Are we going to have the all-important scene where the Predator talks to his therapist about how his mother never loved him and that's why he turns invisible and kills people on other planets?

What about the scene where the Predator helps his best buddy set up a wedding reception? Is that one included?

I'm just asking out of curiosity, as really, this thing is dragging on like a party thrown by your great aunt where she tries to get you to play Parcheesi with your redneck hick cousins who you haven't seen since you were in diapers because oh, it'll be like the old days, except she ignores the crushing reality that the reason you haven't come over in a decade and a half is exactly because of this, and because she also sneaks in snide racist comments she doesn't realize are outdated and kind of offensive and you just don't want to get mixed up in that kind of thing anymore, so you just stick to calling her twice a year on Christmas and birthdays from now on.

What? Oh, where was I? Oh yeah. 30 minutes left after all this? Nobody was around in the editing room nodding off to sleep going “hey, maybe we need to cut this thing down by at least 20 minutes”? I mean that's really all you're doing at this point – creating a cure for insomnia.

But hey, it's not all a loss...we do get the scene where he scares an old lady in the bathroom.

The Predator tries heroin...his experimental days...

In the alternate ending, the Predator is killed by an old lady with a broom. This ending was eventually rejected after test audiences thought it was too realistic.

Because yes, this movie was so desperate it needed to include both the 'little kid' cliché AND the 'old lady' cliché just to show how lighthearted and goofy it really is with its monster movie concept. That's fuckin' astonishing, the level of pandering here.

Then somehow Glover slides down an elevator cable and finds a spaceship with an inside that I think was decorated by the crew from Big Trouble in Little China.

Except Kurt Russell could have made this movie awesome. Seriously; who thought replacing Arnold Schwarzennegger with Danny Glover and Gary Busey was a good idea anyway?

Glover fights the Predator and somehow beats it down, but then a bunch of its buddies pop out of thin air and carry him away. But not before tossing Glover a gun from the 1700s for no reason whatsoever!

What the hell was that about? I have no clue. I guess they intended to have a sequel to this thing, but obviously after 24 years that isn't happening.

And why should it? This thing is just a mess. There are some goofy fun moments, and not all of it is bad, but for the most part it's too long, the characters are annoying, there are a bunch of cliches and the story is just kind of a mess – the Predator mostly just seems like he's stumbling around aimlessly, and what is he even doing in this setting? I get wanting to change things up from the first film, but this just seems like some entirely different movie, some sort of dystopian gang-war thing like a discount The Warriors, with the Predator thrown haphazardly into the middle. Half the time he just seems like he's confused, as he doesn't have much purpose or direction in this movie and just pops up wherever.

There's no consistency to this thing and with a near two-hour runtime, it gets tiresome by the end, real fast. I guess I can see why some people like it, but really to me it is just an overly long, ridiculous bore for the most part. I guess you could do worse though. You know, the best thing you can say about any movie!

Images copyright of their original owners; I own none of them.

Review: Hercules in New York (1970)

Director: Arthur Allan Seidelman

Starring: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Arnold Stang

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065832/

Everybody’s got to start somewhere, even the great Arnold Schwarzenegger. Starting from humble beginnings in rural Austria, he eventually came over here and started doing body building and winning Mr. Universe contests with his incredibly muscular physique. He also started acting with a little movie called Hercules in New York. And…it’s pretty much no different from the body building stuff, as clearly there’s no attention to good acting, cinematography or storytelling here! What’s the deal with this misguided, softheaded little movie from 1970? Well, let’s find out. Put on your sunglasses, because his shiny steel biceps might just blind you.

The movie begins with an introduction that takes us around the Earth from outer space, while a voice tells us that before myth and history became mystery (…that’s a weird pun…), there were the Gods and Goddesses of Athens, Greece, who ruled over the land. Then it…just decides to show us these Gods and Goddesses, who are still doing their dealings today. Right off the bat we see Schwarzenegger, uh, showing off his huge muscles while talking rather woodenly (because you can’t really call that acting) to a goat-like old man with a beard that looks like he probably bought it from some tourist stand in Florida.

This is supposed to be Zeus, and I guess what’s going on is that Arnol---I mean Hercules, is tired of seeing the same people and things all the time, and wants to go explore the Earth. Or that’s what it says on his cue card, at least. He and Zeus argue and shout at each other for a few minutes in very dull conversation. I mean seriously, can’t you move on with it? We get it! Hercules wants to leave Olympus and Zeus thinks he’s not ready yet. Why? Well, just watch any of Arnold’s social interactions with literally anybody else in this damn movie and you’ll see exactly why. It’s not like you have to be a fucking detective for that one, folks.

Hey, somebody tell them to get their crappy renaissance fair out of here...oh, wait, that's the real set, isn't it?

So Zeus finally gets tired of Hercules’ bitching, too, and zaps him out of Olympus, sending him to Earth like he wants. An old lady sees him falling from the sky naked and freaks out. Then he’s found in the water swimming by a ship of sailors, who give him some clothes. He basically just kind of wanders around and talks about how great he is…while having absurdly large muscles. That basically boils down to a lot of this movie, really. Him saying “Hercules bows to no man” or some other such phrase while the camera accents his muscles.

Sigh. Just go with it; the movie will be over faster that way. Probably.

For some weird reason, he tries to get off the ship when they dock in New York, and they won’t let him. Why? Did he unknowingly sign some kind of contract to stay on as a crew member? Did they just want him to stay for their daily afternoon gay orgy in the back of the ship? What, movie? What?!

They all chase him off the ship as he leaves and start attacking him as a team, resulting in some truly ridiculous fight scenes and camera angles. Like I love the part where they’re all just pushing on this big wooden plank and trying to shove each other down. I think I played that game in elementary school! I mean, seriously…how would you even do that? In what kind of warped-ass fight scene would this kind of thing happen? It boggles the mind.

And another thing; you know what? This whole thing is starting to look like it could have just been Arnold’s real story of how he got to this country! They just added in some bullshit story about Greek gods and bam! Hercules in New York. Couldn’t you just picture that? It’s exactly the kind of badass way of arriving that only Schwarzenegger would inspire.

So after that scene, he gets picked up by this dweeby guy who is worried for his safety. I’m sorry, what? Worried for his safety after HE just kicked the asses of like five or six guys all by himself? Something doesn’t add up here. The guy’s name is Pretzie, because he sells pretzels by the ocean – I’m glad apt character naming was a priority for the filmmakers. Pretzie and Arnold take a cab that Pretzie says can drop them off on the side of the road at a random intersection by some trees. So he just wants to be dropped off at some arbitrary location on the side of the road? Oh yeah, just the finest of New York culture for these guys! The side of the road; it’s a classic tourist spot!

…oh, wait, no it’s not.

Hey, kids, did you ever wonder what would happen if you put an Austrian that barely knows English with two guys from New York who speak in nothing but slang, talking about money? Well, for the 0.0002% of you that did, that’s exactly what happens next. I mean seriously, these bozos stand there for like a full three or four minutes going back and forth with the cab driver about paying the money, which Schwarzenegger is appalled he has to pay for simply riding in a “chariot”! I’ve been refraining from any jokes about Schwarzenegger’s political career throughout this review for the sake of length, but how do you think it would fly if he tried to reinstate these political ideals in the modern day?

Somehow I don’t think it would go too well. But I promise that’s the last joke about his governor career that I’ll make in this review.

So then they go to the closest baseball field to the middle of nowhere and Schwarzenegger finds that he can do so much better than any of the guys warming up on the field. He throws a discus in the most wobbly and off-kilter way possible, and this amazes the token rich guy and his token hot daughter Helen in the crowd so much that they invite Schwarzenegger and Pretzie to lunch at their house the very same day. Don’t look at me; I didn’t write this movie.

At the rich peoples’ home, Schwarzenegger kisses Helen’s hand, and when she leaves, this prompts Pretzie to jump into a lecture about how you shouldn’t treat ‘dames’ that way. Yeah. Just because he kissed her on the hand politely, Pretzie thinks he’s being out of line. But then, this is also the guy who thought they were talking about drugs when they invited him for tea time, so I guess we can’t really expect groundbreaking logistical circles from him. Can we even expect the most basic of consistent manners with him? No. Hell no! This is Hercules in New York, bitches!

Ahem. So after that, Schwarzenegger meets the other guest that Helen has brought over, a handsome guy who he assumes is her ‘mate.’ When they rightfully express confusion at this outdated terminology and rash assumption, Schwarzenegger does the obvious thing and…picks him up and starts spinning him around over his head. This is starting to look like something that would appear on Jerry Springer.

This botched escapade for some reason attracts Helen, who I guess always likes large, socially awkward men who have muscles the size of ocean liners and speak in absurd ways and hurt the people she cares about. They just turn her on like no tomorrow! So the two of them go out again, this time alone, and find that they’re quickly attracted to each other by way of a lazily written script. They ride a carriage through the park when they’re attacked by…an actor in a very, very, very, very, very fake looking bear suit. He hobbles around like some weird goblin out of middle Earth. And Arnold has to fight it to get it away from the carriage.

Ugh…you know what, I’m not even surprised anymore. There is no point in acting like I’m surprised at a movie like this after some point. I’m just going to roll with the punches.

"This will sell the movie, my dearest, and someday we will rule this land!"

So because Arnold is gaining notoriety for being a crazy motherfucker who fights bears and stuff, he and Pretzie are in business as a pro-wrestling/weight lifting team. The mob cracks down on them and makes Pretzie sign over the rights to Arnold’s career – which he does with very little persuasion; what a great friend, right? Up in Olympus Zeus wants Hercules back, so he sends Mercury to go get him. When Hercules still doesn’t come back, Zeus then sends Nemesis after him, but Nemesis is stopped by Zeus’ wife Juno, who has a vendetta on Hercules and tells Nemesis to poison him and take away his godlike strength. Nemesis does this by slipping a drug into his drink at a restaurant.

…Really? That’s the best this Greek goddess could do? The equivalent of slipping him a roofie? What’s next, are they going to distract people by tapping them on the shoulder from the other side of them? I just can’t wait to see what’s next for these oh-so-divine gods and goddesses!

Okay, so the movie slips into a very boring spot here – yes, a movie called Hercules in New York becomes dull; I can’t believe it either. A lot of stuff involving Pluto the God of the underworld happens, and we see Pluto decked out in a suave black suit that makes him look more like he belongs in a night club rather than the eternal night. Arnold suits up for a big weight lifting contest, which of course he’ll have more trouble with seeing as his strength is going away! And…look at this. Isn’t it just about the gayest thing you’ve seen all week? C’mon, guys, can’t you put on some pants at least? Would it kill you? Oh. It would, then. I see.

So after Hercules loses, the mob starts chasing them, and Helen and her father split up with them and get into a car, fooling the mob into chasing them instead. Hercules and Pretzie steal a carriage with horses and everything and start THE BEST CHASE SCENE YOU’LL EVER SEE IN THE HISTORY OF SCHWARZENEGGER FILMS! Seriously, Terminator and Terminator 2 got NOTHING on this shit!

Just every day life for Mr. Schwarzenegger circa 1970...

When they start fighting in the warehouse Hercules starts to lose real quickly, and off to the side in Olympus, another goddess secretly calls for Atlas and Samson to go help beat the bad guys, even though Samson has nothing to do with Greek mythology. Isn’t having a biblical figure in a movie about Greek myths kind of a slap in the face? It’s like having a WalMart built over your house only for salespeople to come and try and pitch you various items from the WalMart! That’s just insensitive, in the funniest way possible.

And I also love how Zeus reacts to Atlas and Samson coming in. Does this guy have like, no control at all over anything in his empire? First he didn’t know that Juno went behind his back to trick Hercules, and now this. He’s completely clueless!

Okay, this has gone on for long enough. Hercules and Pretzie beat the bad guys, and then Hercules decides to leave. In a strangely reflective twist, we see Pretzie going back to his lonely apartment and thinking sadly about all the good times he had with Hercules, saying that he will never forget him as long as he lives. Which is…touching in a creepy way, I guess, except for one little detail. In all of the little flashback scenes shown here, it’s not stuff the two of them did together. It’s stuff Hercules did while Pretzie just stood around and watched! Yeah, real deep friendship there, right?

Maybe we’ve all been misjudging this movie. It’s not just a campy and poorly made 70s movie. It’s a veiled character study on a lonely and depressed man named Pretzie, who had no friends at all and had to cling to the only person he could find who would ever waste his time with him…a socially awkward, Austrian-accented Greek god who had no idea of any kind of human culture.

Well, after putting it like that it just sounds dumb. This movie is just…I don’t even know what to say. The title pretty much sums up the entirety of the plot, since most of the movie is nothing but a showboat for Arnold’s gigantic muscles. There’s really nothing else to it. But I can’t help but think the film does have a certain innocent charm to it, a magical, transcendent quality to its stupidity…let’s just call it moldy 70s shlock.

All images Copyright (c) their original owners. Except for the Enquirer picture, I used Paint to make that in like 2 minutes.