Pick the worst Hercules movie among the 19 the Italians made from 1957 to 1965. Hell, you can even include the Ursus, Samson, Goliath and Maciste adventures if you like. Whatever your choice, it’s better than 1969’s tiresome Hercules in New York, starring a 22-year-old Arnold Schwarzenegger, second-billed as Arnold Strong in his film debut. It’s a wonder he was asked back for another.

Not an adventure, but a family comedy with the production values of a porn, the unfunny film cast Arnie as the half-mortal Hercules, who seeks permission to leave Mount Olympus, but his dad, Zeus (soap actor Ernest Graves), won’t let him, yet throws a thunderbolt at him anyway, thus sending Herc to New York City, where he’s befriended by a waterfront pretzel salesman, Pretzi (comedian Arnold Stang, neither comic nor relief), and romanced by a professor’s daughter (Deborah Loomis, 1976’s Blood Bath).

In the Big Apple, Hercules tips over a taxi, wows collegians with his discus skills, does that bodybuilder thing where he flexes his boobies individually, throws a guy into a river, participates in a televised barbell contest, wrestles a guy in a bear suit 600-pound escaped grizzly bear and, finally, drives a chariot down through Central Park. Isn’t that just a fucking riot?

What little fun the flick offers is witnessing Schwarzenegger face his greatest foe: dialogue. He can’t properly pronounce Zeus or Athens, let alone his own character’s name, and rarely does a shot include him saying more than one line at a time. Still, some of those are unintentional gems as he:
• sees a forklift: “Fine chariot! But where are ze horses?”
• is told he better watch his mouth: “I can hear my talk, I cannot vatch it.”
• marvels at an automat: “This fine food for only a few small coins?”
• is asked whether his mother dropped him on his head as a baby: “Once I strangled two serpents in the cradle.” —Rod Lott

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In a fairer world, Will Forte would be a household name alongside fellow Saturday Night Live alum Adam Sandler. Of course, in that world, Sandler would have continued to produce Punch-Drunk Love-like films that pushed at his talents, rather than sink to the sub-Norbit depths of Jack and Jill.

But alas, the world is hardly fair, so while we drown in a morass of Sandler-related comedies so poor they make Eddie Murphy blush with shame, Forte is relegated to the sidelines. Never mind that MacGruber is funnier than anything Sandler has done — it’s the funniest movie from the SNL canon since The Blues Brothers.

A riff on the legendary mullet-and-brains TV series MacGyver, MacGruber surpasses its comedy-sketch beginnings by becoming not only an extension of the character, but a rousing and gleefully profane send-up of 1980s action films. To those who don’t know Mac, he’s the ultimate bad-ass: “former Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, Green Beret, served six tours in Desert Storm, four in Bosnia, three each in Angola, Somalia, Mozambique, Nicaragua and Sierra Leone.” Yet in the grand tradition of cinematic Homer Simpsons, MacGruber succeeds despite idiocy. And such glorious idiocy it is; watching him beg for a second chance by offering to fuck anything in the room is wondrously funny.

There are other highlights: Ryan Phillippe is a surprisingly strong straight man, Kristen Wiig is game for anything, and Val Kilmer reminds us why he needs better roles. But it’s Forte’s show: He never mugs, never winks; his commitment to being an absolute ass is heartening. MacGruber is a textbook example of the smart-stupid, the type of stupid only very smart people can create. Thank God that Sandler and Dennis Dugan never got their paws anywhere near this one. —Corey Redekop

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Sporting the tagline “The Story of Bigfoot: North America’s Greatest Lover,” Ape Canyon opens with Darcy, a Hooters waitress, reading a magazine in a tent. Bigfoot appears and starts to have sex with rape her. However, since Bigfoot is such a good lover, she falls in love with him. Her husband, Bill, a redneck who wears fake goofy teeth and sits on the toilet a lot, discovers a strange smell on her underwear and becomes suspicious. When he finds secret drawings that she has made of Bigfoot, he goes into a jealous rage and hunts down his rival, only to be sodomized by Bigfoot, Deliverance-style. As with all of Bigfoot’s “victims,” he, too, falls in love.

The rest of the movie involves Bigfoot attacking women and dry-humping them to orgasm. He also spears an effeminate runner in the butt with a stick and beats up a few guys. Some of his other victims involve a pair of environmentalists who have tied themselves to a tree. They believe that he is a nature spirit. The tied-down chick only makes the monkey love easier for our hairy friend. Bigfoot also likes to urinate on people and masturbate a lot.

A subplot involves a whiny young nerd who enjoys pleasuring himself to Britney Spears magazines. However, Bigfoot beats up the young man in order to get some masturbation material of his very own. The young man collapses into a quivering mess, crying “Why? Why?” Later, he gets another magazine and is pleasuring himself in his own room when Bigfoot reaches in through the window and steals the new magazine. “Fucking Bigfoot!” the boy cries. This is pure comic gold.

While Ape Canyon is funny at times, in the end, it is really not very good. Perhaps if it had been condensed into a short film, its poor production values could be overlooked. However, the muddy, handheld video footage gets tiresome at feature-length. Plus, the Bigfoot suit is not convincing at all — in fact, it seems to be a cheap gorilla suit picked up from a Halloween costume shop. Most importantly, for a B movie, there is a sad lack of nudity and gore. In a movie like this, I simply cannot excuse a lack of breasts. —Ed Donovan

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Remember when Eddie Murphy used to be funny and he did that routine about how Hollywood doesn’t make horror movies with black people because they’d leave a haunted house at the first sign of suspicious goings-on? Well, now that Murphy is no longer funny, they made that movie. And he must no longer be black, either, because he goes in and stays in that haunted house.

Based on the Disneyland ride, The Haunted Mansion casts Murphy as a real-estate salesman hoping to score big when the opportunity arises to put a multimillion Louisiana mansion on the market. En route to their vacation, Murphy and his clan check the place out. It’s inhabited by butler Terence Stamp and — zikes! — ghosts!

Skeletons come alive, apparitions appear everywhere, Jennifer Tilly’s disembodied head resides in a crystal ball, and yet nothing of significance happens in the entire hour and a half. Nothing but ass-numbing, migraine-inducing pain. This one makes any of the nonsensical Pirates of the Caribbean look like Best Picture material. This also makes Murphy look like the world’s biggest sellout.

Poorly written and utterly soulless, it’s not fun, not funny and not worth a single minute of your time. —Rod Lott

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Near-albino Brian Kerwin (clearly the Jeff Daniels of his day) has to join a military academy after getting expelled from high school. The year is 1967, where there’s a long-haired hitchhiker on every corner and cars have bumper stickers reading “GOD IS ALIVE … AND HE LIVES IN A SUGAR CUBE!”

Kerwin and his roomies smoke banana peels, dump manure confetti on a gym full of dancers, and meet a hippie artist with a fake parrot on his shoulder wearing a button that reads “STONED” (the parrot, not the artist). One of Kerwin’s roommates is traumatized by trains, so he tries to derail one by smearing pats of butter on the tracks.

Stephen Furst (Flounder from Animal House) sits on a toilet filled with gasoline and it explodes. While home for Christmas vacation, Kerwin throws flaming tires from a moving car with elfin pal David Caruso, and his mom cooks their family dog in her new microwave.

If you’re looking for a story arc, don’t; that requires having a story first. The soundtrack boasts actual hits from The Box Tops, Steppenwolf, The Mamas and the Papas, The Rascals and Booker T, among others. Getting Wasted is a framework rather than an actual movie, but then, most movies don’t have a grade-school drug dealer, now, do they? —Rod Lott

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