FanFare

This rewatch is dedicated to Uranus! Hercules (actually Maciste) tries to save the land from space owls. Source of the infamous "DEEP HURTING" and "Saaaandstorm" bits. Previously.
posted by JHarris on Oct 4, 2018 - 4 comments

aka Hercules Vs. The Hydra, Gli Amori de Ercole. Hercules' wife is murdered, but it's okay, he finds a new love days later. Then an Amazon queen decides to pursue him as well. It's a collision course with wackiness! Or maybe more murder! Given the number of girlfriends and wives Herc has had throughout these interminable movies, why would any woman stick around with him? It's a death sentence! We're now halfway into Season 11, the Kickstarter-funded revival of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Pepla (singular peplum) provide for some of the most beloved classic episodes of MST (such as 408 HERCULES UNCHAINED and 410 HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN), but there are also some relatively boring ones. Fan reaction to this episode, at least, seems divided. Episode 1108 can be viewed on Netflix. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jun 1, 2017 - 14 comments

aka Maciste Vs. The Headhunters. "In a Time of Titans, Colossus Towered Above All!!!" Overexposed Italian muscleman everybeef Maciste fights... (spins the wheel of antagonists) ...evil island tribesmen. Whoever the heck Colossus is, he's not in the movie. It's probably only an inability to shoehorn this into Greek myth that's the reason translators didn't try to turn this into another Hercules movie. This is the episode with Nummy Muffin Coocol Butter. Promos (1m) YouTube (1h32m) Premiered August 20, 1994. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Nov 10, 2016 - 5 comments

aka Le fatiche di Ercole "SEE the heroic Hercules rip down the Age of Orgy's lavish palace of lustful pleasure! SEE the Mightiest of Men fight the Mightiest of Beasts, the killer Cretan Bull! SEE Hercules fight off the savage love-starved Amazon women!" Joseph E. Levine brings us Hercules, big buttery Hercules, who engages in various adventures in antiquity. Don't come here looking for fidelity to myth. While based loosely on Argonautica, Herc plays a much larger role in this movie. The Brains cut up the movie to fit it in the run time unfortunately, so the story is pretty hard to follow. This is the episode with the wonderful "Hamilton, Joe, Frank, and Reynolds" and Match Game sketches, and has the first on-screen appearance of Mary Jo Pehl as a Minnesota Amazon. YouTube (1h32m) - Unriffed (1h44m) Premiered July 7, 1993. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Apr 20, 2016 - 2 comments

"The weirdest! The wildest! Half woman! Half stone!" Hercules is so sleepy he can barely keep his eyes open, but there's rescuin' to do. The loaf-of-demigod travels there, rescues the titular women, defeats the evil queen, and... well, it takes place in Atlantis. You figure out what happens at the end. THIS MOVIE IS DEDICATED TO URANUS. There, it's out of my system for good I think. This is the last Hercules movie of the season. This episode gives us a short bit at the start where Gypsy is in the theater, and the host segment with the Hercules Inaction Figure. YouTube (1h33m) Premiered September 12, 1992. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Jan 14, 2016 - 1 comment

AKA Ercole e la regina di Lidia. "Spectacles of Massive Might Beyond Any Ever Known Before!" "SEE The War of the Chariots! SEE Lydia the Temptress! SEE the Contest of Giants!" Hercules and his friend Ulysses (wait what?) get waylaid from an important mission by a sultry evil queen, who takes advantage of his drinking of the "waters of forgetfulness" to advance her romantic plans on the Hercster. This one marks the beginning of a new category for Mystery Science Theater movies, the sword-and-sandal epic. Most of these are fine episodes. Common to most: the meeting of the manly macho man-friends of Hercules, the customary Display of Strength, the evil trap that Herc falls into, the evil queen with designs on the Herc-meister, the Prance of the Courtly Nymphs, and of course the rampant muddling and conflating of ancient Greek works. YouTube (1h32m) [more inside]
posted by JHarris on Dec 2, 2015 - 7 comments