Director: Don Moriarty, Greg Alt, Robert Higginson
Writer: Don Moriarty, Greg Alt, David Trottier
Cast: Sean Alt, Cole Moriarty
Running time: 1hr 17mins
Hercules Recycled was a 1994 comedy, in which Greg Alt and Don Moriarty collaborated with co-director Robert Higginson and co-writer David Trottier to re-dub nine sword-and-sandal movies to create a new film. Hercules Recycled 2.0 is Alt and Moriarty in their late George Lucas era – resurfacing after three decades to cram their original work with digital effects, and green-screen their teenage sons Sean and Cole into proceedings.
For those of you who didn’t see the original (I’m among them), it is unclear what might have been gained or lost in that process – though I would hazard a guess that some of the bootleg magic of the original edit might have been forfeit in the process. The idea of conjuring new and absurd meanings by splicing jittering old VHS together most probably had an analogue kind of charm, born of the knowledge that real artistry and creative thinking had to go into stitching this Frankenstein’s Monster of a film together.
Knowing that the filmmakers were piecing together a story out of 40-year-old scraps, that they wouldn’t have had everything they needed, and that they would have had to scour through nine features to come up with bizarre workarounds; even if the end product isn’t something you end up enjoying, it still feels like you saw something somebody cared about. That’s not to say that this rehash of the rehash was something those involved didn’t care about – but it just feels a little less committed. After all, what plot hole can’t you fill with a green-screen and CGI?
The action kicks off with footage from 1958’s Hercules and 1959’s Hercules Unchained – introducing us to Burt Galaxy (repurposed footage of Steve Reeves as Hercules) and Boojie Fudpuddle (Sylva Koscina), who have a deranged meet-cute where she ploughs a flaming chariot through his goat herd. Their dialogue is delightfully silly, and sets up a strange and inevitably-meandering adventure, which makes use of footage from a number of other ancient epics (including The Last Days of Pompeii, and a non-Harryhausen version of Jason and the Argonauts), and instead uses them to give us a comedic view of a potential future.
Various disasters have led to the collapse of modern civilisation – and in a move that pre-empted Fallout New Vegas quite brilliantly, the team behind Hercules Recycled use clips of old Greek and Roman epics to depict a post-apocalyptic California. Many of the old vestiges of 20th century capitalism survive, then, but in a brilliantly absurd form, where members of a pre-feudal patriarchal hierarchy bicker about which company makes the best chariots, where they might buy more convincing wigs, and whether they are doing enough to support the women’s lib movement. They even find the time (and energy) to cram in a B-plot about an on-going union dispute at General Chariots. The amount of time it must have taken to insert those totally-superfluous sequences into proceedings must have required a truly Herculean effort – but I am happy for the Pythonesque anachronisms that it yields.
It is during the sequences at General Chariots that we also see some of the benefits of revisiting all this with the benefits of digital remastering technology. There are so many wonderfully-rendered details lurking in the background, helping to layer jokes or simply to add texture to the world we are in. From the vibrant and distinctly modern graffiti adorning every available pillar of the acropolis General Chariots is based in (which Hollywood sensibilities would have inaccurately insisted should be ‘beautiful’ white marble in the original movies), to the appearance of Don’s Surf Shack over the shoulder of Hercules/Burt in the opening scene, or the deployment of a fireworks factory and neighbouring ice-cream emporium in the story’s climactic battle.
There are some things which dredging up ancient history (even ancient history as recent as 1994) always risks, though. Comedic norms have shifted dramatically enough in the last decade, let alone the last three – and punchlines that were once par for the course rightly get people’s hackles up. For example, the Looney Tunes-inspired joke where a trapdoor leads to Burt falling clean through the Earth culminates with one member of Moriarty and Alt’s voice cast to deliver an impersonation of someone from China. Perhaps that would fly 30 years ago, but now it is clearly understood as a racist – and in the revisitation of this work, it could so easily have been re-worked, or simply removed.
Other jokes have also aged poorly – though perhaps for more complex reasons. Before Burt begins his quest, he and his companions attend a Gay Liberation Day. Presumably in the original this was a sequence in which Hercules visited the Olympics of Ancient Greece – a depiction largely consisting of oiled and muscular men grappling with each other. I would imagine that this scene worked as a lowest-common-denominator back in the 90s – “haha, that looks kind of gay” was accepted as a punchline then. But now that is not only frowned upon as commodifying someone else’s sexuality as a throw-away gag – it’s kind of a missed opportunity for an updated joke. There is a certain kind of far-right keyboard warrior who fetishises Ancient Greece and Rome, but is immediately triggered by any authentic representation of sexuality from those cultures (as seen in Paris this summer). There might have been room to play with that for a set of jokes with a more interesting payoff than yielded by the original Hercules Recycled, in that case.
This is where Hercules Recycled 2.0 really falls down. It struggles to justify its resurrection in any terms beyond the cosmetic. While the digital effects are sharp, and the cut-away framing-device featuring ‘film-viewers’ Sean Alt and Cole Moriarty playing vague homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000, there hasn’t been enough to improve the intricacy of the humour, or to modernise it for a 21st century audience.
Re-dubbed comedy has come on leaps and bounds in the 30 years since the first Hercules Recycled debuted – and 2.0 needed to do more to catch up with the world. With that being said, there are still plenty of laughs, and it may well inspire others to fall in love with editing, and try and recycle comedy movies of their own. So, if you want something visual that’s not too abysmal, you might still check out this old Steve Reeves movie.
