The Problem with Lembas

Lembas, or elf bread or way bread, or any other number of names you might have for it, is a real problem in Lord of the Rings. The elves are not mechanical, they live in the forest, and as such don’t seem to have any actual agricultural class in their society. So how do they get the bread for grain? Who grinds the corn? Who bakes the bread? They’re strict isolationists, so they can’t be trading with the hobbits, who at least have farmers. And how can a person live off it for days with a single mouthful? What’s the caloric intake? How many carbs? How can it last nearly indefinitely? Is it a twinkie? It’s a twinkie, isn’t it? How do they get the cream in when they eschew machines then? This is one of those places where “It’s magic bitch” isn’t a good enough answer. They need to get the raw ingredients from somewhere. They need to process those ingredients, they need to combine them and put in a lot of extra ingredients in to make it last as long as it does. There is a lot that goes into that wafer of bread. There are a lot of steps to do anything truly from scratch.

This is a major problem I end up having with fantasy, over and over again. The writers stress that it’s a pre-mechanical medieval style society, forgetting that even medieval people have machines. Water wheels are parts of machines, they’re the power source, and they weren’t just used by millers to run grindstones for corn. They could be hooks to other machines to power blast furnaces, or sawmills, or even stamping machines. If you disallow all kinds of machines (as in Tolkien) there start to be things you can’t really have.

Brass buttons for one, you need a lot of technology to get brass buttons. Yes, they can be stamped by hand, but since Bilbo uses brass instead of gold, because wasn’t rich enough, there has to be some kind of middle class here. If there is a brass level, there has to be some kind of manufacturing system in place to make those people brass buttons. Even if we accept a simple hand powered stamp like a coin stamp, how do they get brass for the buttons? Okay, maybe there are miners because hobbits are hole dwellers and digging should get raw metals sometimes, but processing ore into brass requires smelting, and blast furnaces are “teh debil” in Tolkien’s world. He said several times that he mistrusted anything more complicated than a wheelbarrow, and a water wheel is more complicated. The point is, there is a lot of work that goes into a simple brass button. Anyone who has tried to make things for an authentic SCA costume can tell you the trouble that goes into making an outfit with no modern shortcuts. There is a large and complex society, once which Tolkien says doesn’t really exist, that is needed to produce brass buttons. Never mind the woven and brocaded waistcoats and the mechanical looms needed for those complicated designs for anyone but the royalty level rich.

This always becomes my problems, we’re told that these fantasy realms don’t have machines, but they’ll often have styles of armor that have leather bits connected to their metal bits with small screws. Metal screw are pretty much only machine made, you have to own a lathe to do them properly. Yes, you can make them by hand, but even then the expert making them is going to charge you up the ass. Lathes have been around for about three and a half thousand years, but they never seem to turn up in fantasy. Many a technological device is denied the fantasy world. In fact it’s often explicitly stated that they don’t have these things. It’s this blind spot that always annoys be, because they want to have the things that said technology will bring, but not the society or technology that demands it’s invention.

Clothes are much the same. I’m wearing a t-shirt that, as far as I know, can only exists form the 20th century on. It has no seams along it, except where the sleeves meet the body, because the main of the shirt was woven as a tube of fabric. Even if the sock with sleeves method has come before, there is also silk screening, the cut and the fact that it’s a t-shirt to peg me at the late 20th, early 21st century. There are social and environmental reasons that the clothes I’m wearing can only fit the time I’m in. Like wise, it’s just as bad when someone wears an Elizabethan style doublet during what is clearly supposed to be a society gripped in the tenth century. And no, I’m not talking about someone wearing a gambeson, or an armored jack, but what is clearly a warm weather doublet in what is clearly a cold weather climate and about 300 years too early when compared to other clothing in the story. Not tunics or jerkins either, but highly complex doublets with removable sleeves and short fringe like skirts. This, quite often, from a society that hasn’t yet moved past the “big lumps of fur” coat design for winter and summer wear. You basically end up with everything thrown together, from roman shirts to colonial era jackets, without any understanding of how each outfit had come about and what need it filled.

This extends to weapons, which are not interchangeable with each other and have their own niches and societal influences. You can’t just carry a 45 inch bladed sword on your hip with you wherever you go, that’s a war sword, not a local fracas sword. And if I may digress for a moment, a hollow pommel is just stupid. Even the Irish, who are dumb enough to make a hollow pommeled sword, still stuck the end of the tang through it to secure it, because they understood having your sword break because of a weakened tang was an embarrassment that could kill you. It’s just too darn big and unwieldy for a foot level entanglement. Even granting that someone might carry such a large blade, those are heavy things to always have on you, and they make moving awkward as hell. Swords have specific purposes in both fighting and in societies that make them important, and they need to fit in those societies. You should be able to simply look at a sword or knife and tell exactly who uses it and what purpose it serves, and in fact I can. Once in a while I get one wrong, but I’m not an expert, I just play one on the internet. Rapiers cannot exist with two-handed broadswords because one is a civilian weapon devised after the middle class started putting on airs and the other is a weapon for the battle field devised after noticing that things die when you hit them with five pounds of sharpened metal.

And guns, don’t get me started on guns. Cannons started turning up in the mid 1300s or so, hand guns soon followed, but never in a fantasy story, not even one that uses weapons, clothing and armor developed after the firearm and some that were developed as a reaction to firearms. Oh no, we don’t never have no guns, even if we are basically retelling the Wars of the Roses in all but name. We don’t need no stinking guns, we got dragons and shit. Besides, guns aren’t romantic and we’re being all romantic with our fantasy story and why do you have to be so damn pedantic all the time?

I just have problems with lazy writing, and I’ve learned enough about the history of technology to know that you can’t have this unless you have that. And if you have that, then there’s this other thing over here that you can also have.

So, yeah, where do the elves get the grain to make lembas?

Freak Identification Chart

Syd and I were having a talk at dinner about how people tend to think she’s just a normal mundane and when she meets Con people or other such freaks she always feels like they think she’s not one of them. Her little ordinary brown mouse routine tends to belie her full and paid up membership in the Freaky People Society. As a result, freaky people tend to try her boundaries to see what will freak the mundane, only you’ve got to go quite far to freak her out. I suggested it would be a great deal easier if there were a color-coded set of badges or grade that a person could announce if the conversation came that way. Sort of like the Homeland Insecurity Department’s “Panic Now” color chart. I changed the colors around a little because I actually know how a color spectrum works.

See if you approve.

It should be more of a spectrum with colors mixing into each other, because while I’m not a pure red, I’ve been more red than orange. However, I’ve got better things to do today than make this a pure spectrum with colors melding into each other and placing a little tab to signify where I sit.

You see? If we had a system like this, a person could just say “I’m yellow, don’t worry about it.” when someone glances at them as if to ask how freaky they are. When someone starts showing off and trying to see if they can freak the person they’ve just met out, that person can just say “Look sweetie, I’m a red, I just don’t throw it in people’s faces, okay? You’re barely out of being a green, chill out.” Or just buttons with color grades on them. An orange button that reads “I’m an Orange” should do the trick. If you know the code, you’ll know what that means.

Now, I’ve put this on a kinky basis, but it could work in any medium. I’m sort of yellowy-green when it comes to Sci-Fi & Fantasy. You could adapt it to many things and then people wouldn’t be confused as to how mundane or not you are.

Movie Review: Hercules and the Captive Women

Hercules and the Captive Women (1961 Dir. Vittorio Cottafavi) Episode 12 of Season 4 which was shown on September 12th, 1992

Now squeal for me piggy! (yup, a sodomy joke right out the gate)

Flaming Crab Cakes! It was hard finding any information about this. The name of the movie is actually “Ercole alla conquista di Atlantide” and that is not the same thing as is written on the side of the box, let me tell you! I got an Italian Language Wikipedia page when I put it in and only someone who speaks Italian could tell me if it’s even about Hercules or this other cat Ercole. Is that an Italian name for Hercules? Who can tell? As Hercules Unchained is called Ercole e la regina di Lidia in Italian I’m going to guess that Ercole is Herc. I did find one page, but I didn’t really bother reading it because I’m in enough pain already and the movie hasn’t even actually started yet.

Did we really have to meet in this parking structure?

We start with as short historical narration about who ruled Thebes and how Herc and his son lived there. Now this isn’t Steve Reeves as Herc, this is Reg Park. A big red filter goes over the screen, while someone tries to start the plot, but I can only see a screen of red and I worry I’m probably missing something. The sound and color are horribly washed out and it’s hard to hear what’s supposed to be going on. It doesn’t help that we’re five minutes in and the only scene of dialogue is a bunch of people asking each other what the hell is going on. I think they’re being threatened, but it could be that the gods are giving life, so maybe they’re being threatened with life giving goodness? Seriously, I have no idea what the hell is supposed to be going on.

And here he is napping

Okay! A fairly clear dialogue scene has told me that a great evil is approaching to attack the Greeks. Sort of en mass I guess, but the Greeks can’t decide if they should unite against evil or just have a sammich. Androcles decides to go alone, worrying that someone will take over his kingdom. So Herc, being the helpful guy he is, announces no one will sit on his throne. He then proceeds to lift it up and hurl it to the ground, breaking it into pieces. He says they’ll rebuild it, but they can’t exactly go to Ikea to get another one. So the king decides that Herc is gonna go with him, and of course he doesn’t take no for an answer.

Napping

I think Herc’s son put a sleeping powder into his drink and shanghai’d his dad, but again, the audio is so bad it could be anything. Had they left in the original Italian, or possibly used a Portuguese dub, the sound might be worse, but I doubt it. Herc isn’t ticked though, he sort of finds it amusing that the king has just him and his son for an army against the enemy they know nothing about. No really, they even mention they know nothing about and have never even seen the enemy. No one knows who he is, what he wants, if he exists. Yeah, I said it. Maybe there is no enemy and this was all just a trick. If it turns out I was right, I want to say I called it right now. Umm, yeah, I’m watching as I type. I can’t take watching this and then watching it again to write the review so I’m reviewing as it plays. You’re getting it realtime baby! WOOOO! It’s the future! Well, actually it’s the past because I’m reviewing this in July.

Still napping. There is a lot of him sleeping in this movie.

So Herc sleeps while someone cuts the water pouches. Actually, there’s a lot of that. War starts, Herc Sleeps, they drug his wine, he sleeps, they travel the high seas, Herc sleeps, they cut the water skins, Herc sleeps, they kidnap the king, Herc sleeps. Herc only wakes up when it’s clear the guys are stealing the boat, and then he gets up and drags the boat back into shore via the anchor chain. As Herc’s name is in the title though, he wins and takes the boat back. AND THEN… Herc goes back to sleep. What a surprise. Waaaah. I just noticed that we’re only 22 minutes ion and have 72 left. Whimper. Why do I do this to myself? How many people are really going to read this?

Oh look! He’s standing now!

Okay, so a storm kicks up, but I can’t understand anything that anyone says because the storm noise kills all the voice work. Herc’s son gets swept off the boat though. Then the boat gets wrecked, and if you’re ready for a shock, Herc goes back to sleep. YUP! He goes to sleep on a bit of driftwood. I have no idea how he got to be such a big deal, since all he does is sleep. He has a dream about the king, begs Zeus for help, has a nap and then swims to an island, presumably because he thinks there will be better naps there.

Scrooge looked in amazement at how bad this movie was.

Huh? What’s he doing here? Weird. Anyway! On the island we have the eponymous captive women, or woman. It’s one girl in a fake looking bit of plastic rock that has bits cut out so you can see her face and hands. The girl tells him to run away, after asking him to kill her and end her torment. I know how she feels. An old man also tells him to leave and turns into the fakey-est looking fake iguana monster I’ve ever seen and then a wall of flame. There is also some talking, but I can’t understand much more than every third word. I hate complaining about the audio so much, since I’m sure most of what’s being said isn’t worth listening to anyway, but it’s really a problem here and I’d like to be the one to decide.

Are you guys even trying?

Herc kills he monster, saves the girl and… is there a plot to this? I mean I know Herc Unchained had problems but really! I can’t even tell if there is a plot, much less the seven or eight unchained had. Anyway, Herc walks to Atlantis, without even taking a break for a nap and surprise, surprise, the Queen of Atlantis is wearing a cocktail dress and has a beehive hairdo. She’s less thrilled than you’d think to have the girl, who turns out to be her daughter, returned to her. It seems if the daughter of the queen lives then Atlantis shall be destroyed. She let the daughter get this far because this is Herc’s world and we’re just livin’ in it. See, if there weren’t a full-grown girl for Herc to get interested in, then he wouldn’t save the day. Pretty much all of Herc’s motivations are sleep and tits.

Seven days after watching a video with her in it, you die!

Herc’s Son turns up with his midget, oh yeah, there’s a midget, and they fight the soldiers that are supposed to kill the daughter. Mostly they do this by hitting their shields with rocks and knocking them out. NOT KIDDING! They save the girl, and talk to her, but I can’t understand anything they say because of the lousy audio. I could claim the audio got really bad and had to turn on the MST3K episode, which has better audio and video to boot. BUT NO! I’m going to keep up this pretense of professionalism and watch this bitch. Even if there is only really audio on the left channel, even if the colors only come in the palette of “Washed out” and even if what little of the movie I can understand makes me long for the moments I can’t. I will do it, because I’m the baddest mofo ever to review a crappy movie. Eye of the Tiger baby!

Herc is actually very short.

So anyway, someone tires to kill Herc in his sleep. Big surprise there, him being asleep and all. Oh yeah, it’s the king that wanted to kill him except it’s not really the king, just some guy who looks like him. Or maybe it’s really him. Who knows? I don’t. The queen tries to mack on Herc’s hot bod and gives him some wine. When he falls down asleep, I want everyone to know that I called it. Of course it’ll be hard to know if he was drugged by the wine or just laid down for another nap! BUT WAIT! For once it wasn’t a nap. Ahh, bet you didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Sleeping AGAIN! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a movie were one character sleeps so much.

Oh yeah, the son and the girl and the midget all walk along together while son and girl fall in love. No love for the little guy though, they never let the short guys fall in love. They run around in the desert, trying to avoid soldiers… for some reason that I haven’t quite worked out yet, and fall in love. I’m not just being contrary, the audio is so bad that I honestly am having trouble following the story of this movie. Assuming the movie has a story you understand, which is something I’m not willing to concede just yet. Another problem is that there are actual breaks in the film which were just spliced together. So there are missing bits of movie here, along with everything else. I should have just watched the MST3K version, that at least had clear sound and video.

Make your own Creepy Crawlers with the Creepy Crawler Playset.

So it turns out that the Alantians are trying to form a master race abusing the men of the valley while doing it. I’m pretty sure the men of the valley only just turned up in this movie, though I could be wrong. Herc agrees to help stop the people of Atlantis and save the men of the valley while his son stays behind to mack on the chick. The problem is that the men of the valley have decided that today is a good day for someone else to die and decide to attack the city. Herc’s son thinks this is bad because they need to wait for his father. Not to beat an already dead and decaying horse, but because of cuts and bad audio, I have no idea what the problem is. I still have half an hour of movie to watch and I’ve yet to work out the plot.

Frankly our colors are so washed out, I don’t know what side we’re supposed to be on anymore.

There is a magic rock, made of the blood of Uranus, which kills people. Herc wants to destroy the rock, but some old guy will only let him if he proves to be a man of great power. The old man then tells Herc that sunshine is the best disinfectant and that if he can shine the light of the sun on the stone then its power will be destroyed and so shall Atlantis. I wish you were here, partly so I could prove this insanity but mostly because watching these things alone can’t be good for me. After the old guy tells Herc about the Sun, there is a battle we don’t see. No, really. They actually fade out, as if there was a commercial, and when we come back, all the men of the valley have been slaughtered. The only reasons for these old Sword and Sandal movies is to have the big battles at the end and they skipped it! Maybe it’s because there is still 20 minutes left. 20 minutes? I was sure this movie should have ended an hour ago!

This man no longer believes in the movie he’s starring in. I don’t even know why he bothered being awake for this scene.

It would be so easy to just walk away. You could just fake the rest. Just pretend like you watched it, just pretend. Who is ever going to watch this to make sure your review is accurate? They’ll never know, just throw in the last twenty minutes of Seven Samurai. Fake some screen caps, put some suggestive comments. No one will ever know, I’ll keep the secret, you can trust me. Not only will it be easier, but everyone will thank you in the end. C’mon, it’ll be so easy, just walk away. Think of it, you could be watching The Evil Dead right now! Huh? Huh? Maybe even the Seventh Seal, or The Rocketeer. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Hmmm?

You could be watching a movie that doesn’t suck right now…

Ma-Movie that doesn’t suck? Are there such things? Are there movies that don’t suck? I can has non-crappy movies?

Are you going to let this crappy movie win? Is this all there is to you?

I… but it sucks so much.

I thought you were made of sterner stuff. I thought we could depend on you.

It just… I hurt so bad.

… No! Weirdo! Please, you can’t quit now. Think of Camo-Ninja! What would Camo-Ninja say? Would he give up? Would he quit?

Huh?

You can do it Sailor Moon!

Camo-Ninja? Is that you?

C’mon! You can beat this movie! THINK! What would Marlowe do?

Can I? He’d… what would he do?

He’d do it for God, for England, and St. George!

Wha? Would he?

Do it for Tiny Tim!

But surely, Mike, Joel, Crow and Tom could…

They are not standing on the square sir! You are.

But.

Will no one help the widow’s son?

Now wait! I’m not even a Mason.

Will you let this evil movie have it’s way with this cute little hottie?

I…

WILL YOU?

I don’t want to, but what can I do? It sucks so bad.

We’re going to enjoy her, just step away and we’ll end this now.

…Don’t worry. It’ll all be over soon. Don’t worry about this riff-raff, we’ll just pretend like they didn’t even exist after this.

Don’t look baby, you don’t want to see this.

Look! I’m sorry, okay? I’m just a small time writer with ADD and a tiny readership. Even if I did somehow wrestle this movie to the ground, what could I do? Warn fourteen people of the danger? I’m not Stephen Fry you know. This isn’t even really what I do, this is an off-shoot, a side project. I only post here maybe four times a year normally. I’m sorry if evil seems to have seeped out and is currently destroying the world, but I can’t do anything about it. It’s not as easy as you seem to think. I’m sorry. I’m not as strong as you thought. I’m sorry everyone, I just don’t think I can keep going on. This is the sort of movie that just rips your soul out. Even if the color wasn’t screwed, and the sound wasn’t some of the worst I’ve ever heard, and it wasn’t re-edited to within an inch of it’s life, it would still be just a crappy cash in.

Confound it sir! Will you simply sit there idle while evil deeds are afoot? If you do, then you shall receive NO SANDWICHES!

NOOOOOOO!

I!

CAN’T!

STOP!

NOW!

TINY LITTLE CAPSLOCK OF RAGE!

Must… go… ON! Must… finish… crappy… movie! How the hell… does Shatner… do this? I guess that’s why he’s The Shat and I’m not. Never… mind that, must… not… quit! This movie must be watched, no matter the cost. If I can just open this Autobot Matrix of Leadership, it’ll unleash the power of Stan Bush. If only there was a mystical token, a bright shining emblem that could help me. If only I had a metallic fish backed up by a funk fiber optic reflection superimposed under it. I need a golden fish. Must reach for a golden fish. Help me Obi-Wan Ken-Sadko, you’re my only hope.

If I can just get a golden fish…

Did he say a golden fish?

….

YOU GOT THE TOUCH! YOU GOT THE POWAH!
YEAH!

Oh yeah, that’s the stuff. I feel cleansed now. To be perfectly honest, that’s actually a recreation of how I felt while actually watching this mindless pile of dreck. I really did have a crisis of conscience where I contemplated just turning on the MST3K episode and following along from there. I even considered saying to hell with it filling in the rest of this review with bullshit and pretending like I watched it. But I knew that you, my audience, would want to know you could trust me. I needed to finish this, not for you but for me. And besides, I know you depend on me to tell you what movies you should see. You rely on my interpretations to tell your friends what things to watch and what to avoid. Besides, what would Peter Cushing say?

Let’s finish this.

Word up Pete!

Now, where was I? Oh yeah, the queen of Atlantis tells Herc that her soldiers are all Super Soldiers ala Captain America and that all of them have his strength. I wonder if they also has his weakness, that being the constant need to nap. It doesn’t matter because the fight is now officially on! Or maybe it isn’t because Herc jumps through a trap door, finds his son and then you think the fight must really be on right? You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. The movie never really gets going unfortunately. What we do get is Herc and son trapped in a room full of magic gas and a progressively lowering ceiling. Yeah, they went there, they went for the crushing ceiling. Pity there aren’t any spikes.

Wait? So the Master Race is Amish?

It doesn’t matter of course because Herc and son easily push the ceiling back and crawl away from the evil magic mist. Then they travel through some caves before finally Herc Announces that he has had it with these melon farming snakes on this melon farming plane and goes all out balls to the wall… no, actually he doesn’t. He just steals a chariot and goes joy riding. *Sigh* Steve Revees, where are you? Hell, I’d take Bruce Li at this point. Herc gets to the chamber where the stone made of blood is and starts breaking through the ceiling to let the sun shine in. Meanwhile the midget tells the son that the girl and the king have been kidnapped so they go to try and pretend that they’re going to wrap up the B-Plot even though this movie doesn’t really have an A-Plot to deal with so there can’t very well be a B-Plot to sort out.

So close, and yet so far.

Herc breaks open the ceiling and sort of sets a time bomb since the sun shines down about two feet away from the spot where the stone is. The old man tells him that the sun will move and destroy the stone, even though, really, why should Herc believe that? Let’s think about this for a moment, who has been trustworthy in this whole movie? No one that I’ve seen. So why believe the old man? I guess because the plot says so. Also, the light does shine down, the island explodes, everyone on Atlantis dies, the joint sinks and only Herc and company escape. The island takes about nine hours to be destroyed though, which is strange because there’s only five minutes left to the movie’s runtime. HOWEVER! The girl is among the company so the son does get the girl. So that’s nice. The King remembers Herc, the Son gets the Girl, The Midget gets nothing. And I get deep psychological scarring that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Ah well, it’s not like I’m able to sleep at night anyway.

Is it me, or does that guy on the right seem about to scream that this is Sparta?

I need to say, this really was a tough movie to watch. Strange as it may seem, I actually like these movies. For all the teasing I gave them, I liked The Atomic Brain and The Transparent Man. They’re sort of cheep, but they’re still entertaining. It’s fun to watch that stuff and take the piss out of it. You can like something while admitting all the flaws that dog it at every step. A lot of time, you need these crappy bits of garbage, just to give the truly great movies a place for comparison. This however, this wasn’t fun. This was really hard and painful to watch. Also, I can’t really watch something for a review with friends. They get resentful when I pause the movie to write a paragraph. So watching it alone, my reviewing space became a very lonely place indeed. When the movie is this bad, and you’re alone, it hurts you and that hurt is a lonely hurt and this here truck is alone in the world. Yeah, a real live, genuine literary references in your Hercules review. Suck on that! It hurt bad and there was no help for it. This movie derailed plans I had to do a whole month of MST3K movies without the bots. Instead, I ended up with what you got, which wasn’t perfect in my mind. Still, there is tomorrow, and I’ve got something sort a treat planned. A treat to me anyway. Although at this point you must feel like you’re opening one of those puzzle boxes every time I post now.

What’s your pleasure sir?

PS- I do hope you noticed the voice of evil is Comic Sans MS. I thought it a particularly nice touch myself.

Movie Review: Hercules Unchained

Hercules Unchained (1959 Dir. Pietro Francisci) MST3K Episode 7 Season 4, August 1st, 1992.

Hurts so good, come on baby make it hurt so good!

Oh Steve Reeves, why did you have to leave us so soon? You had so much work to do. This movie opens slightly differently than the riffed episode does, starting with a group of soldiers carrying their dead leader to a woman who really isn’t dressed in the fashion one would suppose a woman in ancient Greece might affect. Not so much a toga as a mid-50s cocktail dress. Oh, my mistake the guy isn’t dead, she wakes him up and then the soldiers kill some guy who, I don’t know who he is and it doesn’t seem important as he’s dead and we’re only 2 minutes and 22 seconds into the movie. Then the credits begin, this is where the episode starts. Well, that’s where the movie part of the episode starts anyway. Interestingly, it seems to be a different version of the movie since the opening credits are in a different order and use a different font.

Easy come easy go,will you let me go?

This is a sequel to the original Steve Reeves Hercules movie, so his wife Iole is in here with them and a young Ulysses. Now I can’t help but think that Iole was a young woman Herc was smitten with and that caused his actual wife to shoot him and be dragged away by police crying that she killed him because she loved him so much. Now I don’t seem to remember Herc being a teacher of Ulysses, but this clearly isn’t a documentary. And does it really matter since the chick playing Iole is such a little cutie? That’s actually one of the problems these movies have. They claim to be based on all these myths of ancient Greece and even mention specific books, but when it comes down to it, they’re a mish-mash at best. What I’m saying is that you can’t use this movie to crib the fact that you didn’t read the book and expect to pass high school English. Shocking, I know.

Bismillah! No! We will not let you go!

It takes forever for this movie to get going, for a while it just meanders as they travel from the shore to Thebes where they want to get to. They muck around, Iole sings a song, Herc fights Antaeus, and this movie seems to be taking forever. I don’t want to dwell on the fight between Antaeus and Herc, because there isn’t much to say about it unless you want to see a big muscled guy roll around and wrestle with a guy who is big, but nowhere near as fit. Even if you’re totally into slashy style yaoi, it’s not anywhere near sexy.

LET HIM GO! (yeah, I’m done with that joke now)

They get half way to Thebes and find King Oedipus hiding in a cave because his sons… Huey and Duey have ousted him. Those aren’t really their names, but I think you’ll find that they’re not really important to the story anyway. I’ve seen this movie three times now, and I still can’t keep straight who is who and which one is what. Huey and Duey were supposed to swap the throne of Kingship every year, only now that his year is up Huey won’t give up the throne and Duey is kinda ticked about it. Oedipus gets Herc to go ask Huey to give up the throne and Duey gives him six days to get him to give it up or he’ll march on the city and presumably destroy it. I would like to point out that we’re 20 minutes into this movie, which is only 96 minutes to begin with, and the plot has only just now been described. No, I’m really not kidding. 20 minutes and what has come before is the equivalent of a pre-credit sequence in a Bond movie.

Don’t let those suckas fool you none bro. Pimpin’ is as easy as you let it be.

The problem is, what follows is about as relevant to the plot as what has come before. A longish scene with a big cat trainer playing with some tigers fills some time to show that Huey is a bad king. Once Herc tells him to leave, Huey agrees, but no one believes him because he talks sinister and throws his head back to laugh a lot. At least, I think that’s what’s going on, it’s sort of hard to tell because things just happen here. I doubt the dub can be to blame, because I’ve seen one of these in their original form and it was pretty bad then too. I think Herc and Ulysses leave Thebes to go tell Duey that the city is all his, and deliver a note proving all is groovy. Soooo, 8 minutes after the plot is described, it’s pretty much all cleared up. Good, good. What do I do for the next 70 minutes now?

Aww guys, did you put vodka in my water of forgetfulness again?

Oh come on, you know it can’t be that simple right? You know something is going to pop up, yeah? Like Herc will come to a fountain shaped like a face that spews “The Water of Forgetfulness” and won’t remember to do any of the things he promised and we’ll start yet another plot almost a third of the way through the movie or something. Why are you looking at me like that? What? Do I have something on my face? Oh crap, he does, doesn’t he? Herc drinks the waters, forgets all and the movie is extended an hour isn’t it? Oh crab cakes. Yeah, Herc forgets who he is, what he’s doing, why he left, anything written in the script. Everything.

The problem is, she’s not even that hot.

Well, it seems that the reason for the soldiers at the beginning of the movie was to gather up who ever drank from the fountain because Herc passes out and the guys from the beginning of the movie show up and put him on a stretcher. Ulysses pretends to be deaf and mute, because… you know, I have no idea why. I really have no clue as to why he pretends to be deaf and mute. I don’t know the reason for a lot of this. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. Why do I have to do these reviews sober? You’ve probably had a few drinks, why can’t I? It’s not fair, having to watch these movies without the buffering power of booze to cushion the blow. It physically hurts sometimes to watch these things. It hurts here, right at the temple. Add to my pain the fact that there is a sudden shift in my copy and it becomes like when they’d stretch a film during the credits. You remember that? When a wide screen movie would be squished and stretched so the credits could all be shown on the TV screen? I wouldn’t complain, but it’s pretty noticeable. Fortunately it doesn’t last very long, but still.

Oh baby, don’t be that way. I love your new sculpture. It’s great. No, really.

Well it turns out this is Queen Omphale, whom we’ve heard so much about. Oh wait, this is only the second time she’s been on screen and the first time we’ve heard her name uttered. My mistake! She’s the queen of Lydia, which is in Asia Minor, and as far as I can tell… nowhere near Thebes. They have to take Herc on a boat to get to Lydia though, so I guess they were just wandering around other people’s kingdoms with an army and no one bothered to ask them what the hell they thought they were doing being all armed and stuff during a time of political unrest when invasion seemed imminent.

You know something? It just occurred to me that while there might be screen caps of this movie that don’t involve young women who clearly aren’t wearing any bras running around in outfits made of very thin material stretched across their firm young bosoms… those caps don’t interest me.

Well, now that a hunky new piece of beef has shown up Omphale’s old flame is being like Prince in Thieves in the Temple and he’s all like “You said you loved me, you said I was your friend, you were supposed to take care of me, you lie, lie LIE!” and then the soldiers kill him. Why they do this is a question I leave to the reader. It could be she’s just a one man woman, or it could be she’s bunny boiling crazy, or possibly she’s supposed to be some kind of evil temptress. Whatever the reason, she trades up and gets Herc all to her slutty self. She tells him he’s her husband, king of the land, and then a dance number starts. Not kidding. A three minute dance number starts, just a bunch of girls dancing around in tights for three minutes.

Nope. This movie was terrible and I deserve some eye candy.

Can I go on a bit of a tangent for a moment? Why is her hair, make-up and costume all out of the 1950s while everyone else is done up in togas and not much else? Everyone other girl is in a bouncy toga, running in such a way as to make bouncy the only word you could use to describe what’s going on. Yet the dastardly lead looks like she could be the temptress in, say a movie about New York. She’s the girls who would try to seduce the ad executive away from his wife or something. This isn’t an isolated incident either. The evil seductress is always dressed in the latest fashions from Milan while everyone else has to do with two meters of colored cloth and a leather belt. I’ve never understood this, but it is a fact.

What? Did you think I was kidding?

Meanwhile, back on the ranch Iole is nervous because she hasn’t heard from Herc in sooo long. How long? Three days. Yeah. She gets so anxious when she doesn’t hear from him. Someone needs to explain to her that this is like 800 BC, where you can go years without hearing from your husband. Odysseus went 20 years and had a pile of junk mail taller than himself to deal with when he got back. If she’s anxious after three days, she must be a real handful to deal with. I only mention this because it always bugs me when they do things like this.

It’s just suggestive shots of women from here on out.

Ulysses manages to talk Herc down to earth, but he just babbles incomprehensible gibberish at Herc instead of talking any kind of sense. So instead of trying to actually convince him, he grabs a brazier from the door and brings it over to Herc, telling him to bend it, which Herc fails to do. Later, when the waters of the fountain starts to wear off… or something, Herc does manage to bend the bar of the brazier and remembers he is Hercules.

The more suggestive, the better.

While that’s going on, Ulysses’ dad gathers up half a dozen people, putting them all in one chariot, and takes them to go find Herc. They show up in Lydia, present their credentials, and are accepted into the palace by the queen. Now, when the queen gets a glimpse of one of the guys they brought with them she gets all interested in him. That’s when we discover that the queen has an interesting kink. She liked to preserve men in wax, or maybe they’re dipped in silver or something. Point is, she turns hot men into statues and we’re supposed to believe that Herc is in danger, but he isn’t really. Her is never really in danger.

Little known fact: In the unaired pilot for Captain Planet, there were going to be 10 scouts and the last power that would summon the hero would be “skank”

Herc eventually wakes up (It feels like it takes about nine months of real time viewing) and decides to leave the island. The queen, she just sort of lets them leave. The chief of the queen’s guards puts up a token resistance, but they’re shoved out of the way by Herc’s great might and his ability to throw around fairly light props that are made to look heavy. They get away and the queen cries to see Herc leaving. Then, for reasons that aren’t really clear to me, she jumps into the pool of stuff that she was going to dip Herc in. All I can think is that they wanted to punish her for being bad.

I’m just keeping up the captions as a pre-text incase my mother is looking in but not really reading.

Now, you might remember that there was a plot to this movie once upon a time. Huey and Duey get ready to duke it out on the front door of Thebes when Herc shows up. Huey, decides to throw Herc’s friends and family to their deaths while holding Iole to throw her to the tigers. Duey runs away and they agree to have a duel the next day. Herc sneaks into the city to save his wife and the two brothers duel to the death. It’s a really terrible fight too, I mean tremendously bad. You might be wondering who wins the duel, but really, does anyone win? I certainly don’t, I have to suffer through this movie. It occurs to me now I should have called them Heckle and Jeckle, or Frick and Frack. Since there is no Louie in this movie, I should have gone with a double instead of a trio.

Mmmm delicious cheesecake!

Actually the two brothers manage to kill each other and the only real winner is the guy who gets money for selling me this, the evil clever bastard. There is a token attempt to have a battle scene, right at the end, but no one cares by this point. Everyone knows the movie ended six minutes ago and this is just a last dash effort at some padding and fighting. It’s all over pretty quickly though and we’re freed from this film. I can’t believe this movie had so many plots, and that it felt like it took so long, and that so little seems to have been said or done. If it weren’t for the young un-bra’d women in the very thin material, I don’t think we could have made it.

Yeah, I know. I don’t care. This movie was awful and I refuse to treat it with any dignity.

It took me way longer to watch this movie and write this review than I should have. I can only explain myself by saying that I kept finding other things to do instead of watching the movie. I mean, the shower wasn’t going to re-grout itself, was it? The main problem of course is that this movie is just all over the place, we don’t even get to the main plot until the movie is nearly a third over and then that plot just sort of goes away for half the remaining run time. It’s such a hard movie to watch on your own, that I felt compelled to walk away. It should come with a warning or something, stating the dangers of trying to watch this without friend can lead to suicidal thoughts. With Joel and the bots, you’re fine. Watch with pals and you’ll be okay. Watching it alone is something you do at your own peril though. In conclusion, I shouldn’t have to do this sober, it’s not fair.

Okay, look. The movie didn’t treat the women any better than I did. It was horrible to me, the women, everyone. Look at that? A balding man threatening a barely dressed girl! If they don’t feel bad about what they’ve done, why should I?