Campy Spoof Of Muscleman Movies Lacks Much Porpoise

Movie review

XX "Hercules Returns," with David Argue, Bruce Spence, Mary Coustas. Directed by David Parker, from a script by Des Mangan. Metro Cinemas. No rating; includes rough language, tasteless jokes. American premiere engagement. -------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting back at lousy movies has become a '90s spectator sport.

The armchair hecklers of Comedy Central's "Mystery Science Theater" go on a turkey shoot every weekend. TNT's "Bad Movies We Love" mixes mockery and adoration monthly. Starting today, this Australian send-up of muscleman epics moves from festivals into its first American theatrical engagement at the Metro Cinemas.

The framing device couldn't be simpler, or cruder. A couple of frustrated film buffs (Bruce Spence, David Argue), fed up with the union-busting crassness of gargantuan movie chains, decide to reopen a rundown cinema palace with the Italian epic that closed it years before.

On opening night, the print arrives in Italian, without subtitles. They spend the rest of the evening, along with screechy-voiced publicist Mary Coustas, improvising an English-language soundtrack in the projection booth. Not to mention a new plot that makes mincemeat of "Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus Are Invincible."

In their version of this 1964 epic, Hercules, a cabaret singer "of dubious sexuality," is rejected by Labia, a nightclub owner's daughter who loves Testiculi. Samson is a nonviolent iron pumper, Ursus is a Scottish bouncer, the place is populated by "bloody yuppies," and women participate in synchronized swimming contests.

The new dialogue consists of one-liners like "I haven't got enough baby oil on my muscles" and "I'll fight you on one condition: that you lower your nipples" and "What's this man think he's doing with his hands on my Labia?"

A psychic is referred to as "an above-average medium." The difference between Cretans and cretins is forgotten. Purpose gets confused with porpoise. There's a reworking of an old Groucho Marx joke about Samson movies, plus a pretty lively "Hercules Rap" that runs under the credits.

There is no attempt to make the improvisations credible. The performers would have to be psychic to keep up with and anticipate the on-screen action. Music comes from nowhere, while a pig fit for roasting (and sound effects) suddenly appears on a spit in the projection booth.

None of this is as inspired as "Mad Movies With the L.A. Connection," the cable series that perfected this technique in the mid-1980s, or Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lily?," a redubbed Japanese thriller that could be accused of starting it all in the mid-1960s.

But if you have a fondness for puns (especially bad ones), or you find yourself wondering just what kind of epic the original "Hercules, Samson, Maciste and Ursus" was trying to be (the genre was already spoofing itself by the time this installment was released), the 80 minutes pass quickly.