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Hercules
Against the
Moon Men
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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3
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10
= Highest Rating |
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"Your
power will be equal to ours. You will possess all
the riches of the world. But remember that there
is still one task you must carry out... Kill Hercules."
Actually,
a tougher mission would be sitting all the way through
this movie. Hercules Against
the Moon Men is easily one of the mythical
strongman's more forgettable cinematic exploits.
Curiously enough, the movie's hero isn't really
Hercules at all — he's called Maciste (Ma-CHEE-stay)
in the the European and British versions. Maciste,
a character from Italian folk legend, was the protagonist
in a host of fantasy-adventure films set in various
time periods ranging from the Ancient World to the
days of high seas buccaneers. These flicks occasionally
tossed in the odd sci-fi element, pitting Maciste
against Atlantean warlords or, as in this case,
Moon Men. When released in the U.S. the dubbed dialog
supplanted "Maciste" with "Hercules";
distributors decided Americans wouldn't know (or
care) who the hell Maciste was. (My cheesesteak?)
Using the internationally known name of Hercules
made the films much easier to market in the States.
"Alan
Steel" (real name: Sergio Ciani) stars as Maciste/Hercules
in this one. He's not as physically imposing as
Steve Reeves — the original movie Herc who started
the pepla craze — or Reg Park (Hercules
in the Haunted World), nor is he the dashing
and debonair type like Gordon Scott (Goliath
and the Vampires). Though serviceable
enough in the role, he's coated with so much skin
bronzer he looks like a holiday turkey fresh from
the oven. In Moon Men
Herc is summoned to the troubled land of Samar by
Claudius, wizened councilor to the kingdom's ruler,
Queen Samara. Periodically Samara's soldiers forcibly
round up young men and women among the citizenry
and cart them off to the Mountain of Death, where
they're sacrificed to dreaded monsters whom legend
says live within. Claudius has implored his queen
to resist the monsters of the mountain; she insists
that the sacrifices are the only way to keep Samar
from being destroyed by them. Not suspecting that
Samara may in fact be a willing partner of the monsters,
Claudius brings in Hercules to fight them.
Herc apparently has nothing better to do and besides,
he tells Claudius that his father spoke very highly
of him. (Wasn't Hercules' father Zeus, the King
of the Gods? Ol' Claudius is a well-connected pol!)
Our hero survives various ambushes and traps, beats
up a creature kept in Samara's dungeon (a gorilla
with boar tusks), and rouses the people of Samar
into revolt. He also scams the evil queen into thinking
he's fallen for her before penetrating the Mountain
of Death to face the evil there. It turns out the
bad guy behind it all is an alien wizard from the
moon, who wears a silver owl mask, is really into
astrology, and controls a horde of lumbering Rock
Men. Herc naturally kicks all their asses then rides
off into the sunset with his latest galpal. It's
pretty much par for the pepla course.
Dumb and clichéd, Hercules
Against the Moon Men nevertheless
clips along briskly enough until the final act,
when the movie suddenly grinds to a complete halt.
This is due to the infamous sandstorm sequence,
made legendary by Mystery Science Theater 3000's
classic "DEEP HURTING!" sketch. It's an
excrutiating, agonizingly long instance of padding
that adds absolutely nothing to the movie except
running time. Her palace overrun by revolting peasantry,
Samara treks through a blinding sandstorm to appeal
to her masters at the Mountain of Death. Then Herc
follows her. Then some of the courageous Samarians
go after Hercules to help him rescue a kidnapped
princess there. Then Herc's girlfriend, Agar (Jany
Clair), gets separated from her countrymen and wanders
blindly about for awhile. This just goes on and
on and on...
The sheer tedium of it effectively torpedoes any
moments of unintentional humor that came before.
It's like discovering a turd while sampling a cheese
platter — after that, one isn't too keen on going
back for more... and is left feeling uncomfortable
about what's already been consumed.
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While
I've seen some great product from Retromedia (The
Deathmaster), its DVD version of Hercules
Against the Moon Men looks like crap. Colors
are washed out, there's all sorts of print damage
and frames are missing; it's grainy as hell and overly
dark, too. Making matters worse, the transfer is fullframe...
The absolute worst way to see pepla. No two
ways about it, y'all — the movie just looks terrible
here. (This appears to be exactly the same beat-up
print run on MST3K back in 1993.) At least
the mono audio track is acceptable, without any major
distortion or static to report. The main feature is
divided into a paltry 6 chapters.
A
handful of extra features are tossed in but they're
no consolation for Moon Men's
lousy print. You get the original U.S. theatrical
trailer, which is in even worse shape than the movie,
and a fairly decent image gallery of production stills
and lobby cards set to some spiffy music. As a gag,
there's also a reproduction of an exercise booklet
handed out as a freebie to American ticket buyers
called How To Be A Hercules. (Not counting
the front and back covers, it's all of two pages).
12/15/02 |
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