Filmic Friday 17

Oh boy, oh boy! I love me some Greek Mythology! I love me some MST3K! I...

I don't usually like the Italian Hercules movies.

Somehow, though, MST3K: The Return has succeeded where the previous seasons have failed - I actually enjoy The Loves of Hercules!

That's right - it's Mickey Hargitay & Jayne Mansfield!

The basic story is this: Some guys from the kingdom of Eccalia decide to make Hercules (Mickey Hargitay) mad and murder his wife. He gets mad and goes to kill the killers, but the king who "gave the orders" (there's some pretty dumb plot twists) is already dead. His hot daughter (played by Jayne Mansfield) offers herself to appease his anger and there's an axe-throwing scene that's supposed to be the gods diverting the blows because she's innocent. Herculese begins basically stalking Deianeira (Mansfield) until he finds out she's engaged. Suddenly, her fiance is dead! Did Hercules kill him? Nope. However, this leads up to some great fighting!

Dude!

First, Hercules fights a bull (a real bull that's been tranquilized), but that one's not that interesting. Neither is watching him struggle with a giant paper mache tree trunk. But the Hydra? That's interesting. It's a huge prop - the heads move, it spits fire, it roars, its eyes glow! It's awesome. It's not as good as the dragon from The Sword & The Dragon, but this movie also didn't have the entire coffers of the USSR behind it.

After the Hydra, Hercules is wounded, so the Amazons rescue him. Unfortunately, Hippolyta, their queen, has the hots for Herc, so she seduces him by making herself look like ginger Jayne Mansfield. Then she bangs him a bunch (implied). Also unfortunate is that she tends to turn her exes into trees.

One of the Amazons rescues Hercules and helps him escape (he takes some convincing), but Hippolyta pursues them and kills the rogue Amazon. Then her exes take revenge.

Puts a whole new spin on "tree-hugging"...

The last couple fights are with legit humanoids, but the ogre Alcione is the last "monster" fight. Basically, the bad guy has kidnapped Mansfield and is dragging her around to avoid Hercules' wrath, but they wander into the ogre's cave and he strangles Evil McBadguy before Hercules can do anything. Then Alcione fights Hercules to predictable results.

I think there's a law that if there is a hairy monster in the same movie as a beautiful woman, it has to try to creep on her.

The movie ends with Hargitay and Mansfield together again. I should also mention that Hargitay is the only Hercules to dub himself. I should also mention that Hargitay is incredibly Hungarian (he's from Budapest). The movie is largely incomprehensible.

As for the riffs, it's a madhouse. Everyone's on fire, basically, but there's so much dead space to fill (it's a very dialog-heavy movie, which is not easy when you can't understand half of it). What do you do when you're a chubby, hairy guy and the movie is dragging on? You drag on too!

Some people don't like Gypsy's mannequins, but I do.
Also, any chance the bots get to dress up is fun!

I love the riffing on this. I also love how, at the end of the movie, everyone's mocking the overblown operatic score by joining in.

Max's scream at the end is especially hilarious.

So this is a great episode, and I hope you get to watch it at some point. Aside from that, my final word is this:

If Mickey Hargitay looks familiar to you, you might be a big old nerd like me and have watched ICWXP's take on Bloody Pit of Horror!

Because Hargitay is the Crimson Executioner!

If not, then go check them out! Incognito Cinema Warriors XP carried me through the dry spell of no MST3K.

Also, if you like reviews of bad movies, give this guy a look! (I might have taken a pic or two off his site... the rest are all on Google and Wikipedia)

That's all from me today!

Go Enjoy Something!
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