Hercules (1983)
So many of our bad Italian sword and sandal movies require us to sit through interminable scenes of yammering kings and queens bent on destroying our hero's will to live by talking them to suicide. You've got your scenes inside battlefield tents where maps are poured over in an effort to decide just where the day's raping and pillaging will take place. Then there's the routine taunting that goes on whenever some villain captures our musclehead's girlfriend or his close, young, male companion.
And who can forget (no matter how hard they try) those moments when the hero is out on the open seas fighting off an iguana with a fin strapped to its back while the head bad guy is back in his palace rehashing how dastardly he's going to get now that Hercules/Maciste/Samson/Goliath/etc. is safely out of the picture. Verily, I beseech the Gods to grant this one mortal moviegoer a single wish - to be visited by a film bereft of all its earthly babble, a film whose sheer hunkitude is exceeded only by its hoary special effects, a film where heroes in loin clothes can pose alongside evil babes in spandex!
And it was then that the sky was shaken by a voice that sounded suspiciously like my own (since I live alone and have no friends). "You ask us a great deed, mortal! For in all the cosmos, there is none that may achieve such a feat! Alone, that is! Though we risk upsetting the very fabric of our universe by doing so, because we are bored, we grant this wish! But beware, mortal - for sometimes when we get what our hearts most desire, we are often times left with a movie starring Lou Ferrigno and Sybil Danning!"
With that chilling warning still ringing in my ears, I settled in to watch what the Gods had wrought upon my DVD player. And what was that cryptic jibber jabber about none achieving this feat alone? As with all things, that was soon revealed as I watched with a combination of giddy anticipation and mounting fear a film unlike any other (except probably its sequel and Clash of the Titans)!
When the opening credits played, I realized what the imaginary Gods in my head meant when they said such a film could not be achieved alone. Child of the most unholy union of them all, it's father being Chuck Norris 1980s action studio the Cannon Group, it's mother being Italian director Luigi Cozzi, and its costume designer being previously employed on 2019: After The Fall Of New York, Hercules stands as a monument to Italian-American cinema cooperation and proves the old adage that what the Cannon Group and Italian trash directors can do horribly on their own, they can do even worse together!
Even though Luigi Cozzi wasn't as prolific as some of his Italian counterparts (Only 16 movies directed? Bruno Mattei did that in a year! Twice!), the projects he was involved with leave no doubt as to his abilities. He directed the messy alien horror epic Contamination. He put David Hasselhoff through his paces in the Star Wars rip-off Star Crash. And to leave no doubt as to his standing in the Italian horror community of the 1980s, he, along with Sergio Martino (The Great Alligator , The Case of the Scorpion's Tale) came up with the story for Monster Shark!
Monster Shark of course was that perfect storm of Italian horror that featured direction by Lamberto Bava, assistant directing by Bruno Mattei, a screenplay co-written by Dardano Sacchetti, music by the De Angelis brothers (Yor, The Hunter From The Future, Ironmaster, The Last Shark), and starring Micheal Sopikaw (2019: After The Fall Of New York, Amazonas) and William Berger (who also starred in Hercules).
Luigi's influence on the picture was obvious what with all the bad dubbing, Italian actors (including Goliath Against The Giants star Brad Harris!), ear damaging score, and sets whose hideousness were only rivaled by the special effects. What the Cannon Group apparently brought to the movie was enough mainstream attention that Hercules was nominated for several Razzie Awards in such categories as Worst Movie, Worst Actor, and Worst Supporting Actress.
By virtue of both her roles in this movie and in Chained Heat, Sybil Danning won Worst Supporting Actress, but Lou Ferrigno lost out to Christopher Atkins for Worst Actor. Don't feel too bad for big Lou though - he still went home that night with Worst New Star beating out a couple of dolphins from Jaws 3-D, Loni Anderson (Stroker Ace), General Hospital star Finola Hughes, and the Strike Commando himself, Reb Brown! (Reb's nomination was obviously not for Strike Commando, but for Yor, The Hunter From The Future.)
There's really no question that Hercules is deserving of all that recognition because it smells like a Herculean-strength fart. Lou is without a doubt our most pumped up Hercules ever, to the point that you cringe every time he moves because you're afraid that all his muscles are going to burst through his skin and fall out all over the cheesy sets! The jugs on Lou themselves are the size of two small import cars! In fact, this is the only movie that Sybil Danning has been in where she had the second biggest chest! And sometimes, Lou would pull that stunt where he makes each boob move up and down by itself! I don't need that from my Hercules!
The story has Hercules being created by the Gods to give balance to some evil forces at work on the Earth. The Gods then watch and periodically interfere with things to see whether good or evil will triumph. Since Luigi is saving his budget for bad special effects though, we only have three Gods bickering amongst themselves over issues of whether it was fair to save baby Hercules from plunging to his death over some giant water falls. Heck, if you want to talk about fair, was it really fair to have Hercules' dad get eaten by a bear? Fair to the bear that is! Guess what happens when Herc comes running and grunting over to the bear? The bear gets chucked clean into outer space and becomes a constellation! Can the bear help it if Herc's dad smelled like a salmon? After all, the guy was out chopping wood all day!
When he's not bear-chucking and burning his own house down (don't ask), Hercules is out and about performing momentous deeds on a fairly regular basis. He's flooding some horse stables with a river. He's growing fifty feet tall and ripping Africa and Europe into two different continents (that process was a lot less involved than you would think). He's plowing fields, hefting trees, beating up soldiers, wrecking chariots, and fighting mechanical beasts that look like they were made with the insides of a clock and left over Erector set parts. You definitely are not shortchanged on feats of strength in this one!
You also won't be shortchanged of scenes that look really fake, usually in two or three different ways. The ones I like best involve Hercules flying through space on a chariot pulled by a big rock. It gets even better when his face gets superimposed over the action so we get a double dose of Hercules! You'll also enjoy the laser blasts from some of the monsters and the multicolored flame sword a bad guy uses at the end. In fact the only thing that rivals the special effects in their ineptitude is the sound effects that accompany them. All these beeps and zaps sound as if they were stolen from a Buck Rogers or Battlestar Galactica episode! You might expect that in something like Star Crash, but when you get it in an ancient world where people are still running around in togas, it's an unexpected bonus!
There really wasn't much else to the movie. Hercules just wanders from one chintzy set to another knocking stuff over while straining and grunting appropriately, before heading off to the next part of the soundstage he hadn't yet wrecked. The Incredible Lou Ferrigno (as the theatrical trailer dubs him) does his best not do anything to stink up the joint by standing around and periodically flexing, while allowing a dubbed voice to come from his moving lips. Of course, in the tradition of all great bodybuilder movie stars, he stinks up the joint just by standing around and periodically flexing. I also like my pumped up gladiator heroes to have a sense of humor. They need a jacked up laugh to go with their jacked up beard and bod! Lou was rather stoic throughout though he did adhere to tradition and appear completely ill at ease when his "girlfriend" tried to kiss him. That's something I suppose.
Time for omniscient and over-dramatic narrator to wrap up this adventure: "And so, after triumphing against the forces of darkness (The Cannon Group and Luigi Cozzi), you mortals surely have learned that sometimes it is best to let your dreams just be that - dreams! For you have now seen what happens when you seek a mid 80s Italian-American sword and sandal movie and the destruction that it wreaks (reeks?) on all who encounter it! But the Gods are not cold to the pleadings of their subjects! The Gods yet have a soft spot for those they have created! Turn your Hercules DVD over, and tremble ye mortal riff raff! For you shall find another movie! And thereby another chance! The Gods give this gift to you as reward for surviving your Hercules trial. The Gods give you...The Adventures Of Hercules! A Cannon Group-Luigi Cozzi production! Starring Lou Ferrigno! Aye, let it be said that the gods themselves are not without a wicked sense of humor!"