Hercules vs Karate: Movie Review

In my late night viewing I stumbled across a movie I had never seen let alone heard about. I have to admit it didn’t really appeal to me at first by title and you know the old saying you can’t judge a book by its cover has apparently never seen this film because from the title alone you can guess it’s not going to be a film land classic in most cases. I scrolled through some more movies, but this one kept popping into my mind as whether or not to watch it or not to watch in some Shakespearean type of self-convincement. So I went back looked at the info box and still was undeterred and clicked the play button, what followed next was a movie that defiantly could be judge just by its cover…thanks Netflix for proving the classic words of wisdom wrong.

This movie is considered a slapstick kng fu film and should be more referenced as a slapped together wanna be kung fu film. The lead, Hercules and his friend Danny…who is the only one who apparently knows he is in fact Hercules, are construction workers and are good friends. Now they get into a bar fight at a deli run by a Japanese man and the bar looks like it is in Germany so yeah no clue as to the rhyme or reason on that one. Hercules and Danny get into a bar fight and in the ever popular Hulk Smash style of fighting Hercules just throws guys around as is impervious to pain. The Japanese man hires them to rescue his son form his evil ex-wife…I’m sure a lot of guys have one of these.

They go to Japan they meet some attractive Japanese women who instantly love them, fight the evil kung fu man who kidnapped the baby with the ex-wife and take on his two top fighters, who one is a sumo and the other a samurai. Which is weird because there were two samurai in the beginning, but now only one and we add a sumo wrestler, no clue. They all fight and Danny gets beat up a bit but Hercules has zero trouble and beats everyone and in fact later on hold s plane while its trying to take off…how these people haven’t figured out he is Hercules is a classic as people not knowing Clark Kent is Superman just because he wears glasses. Then somehow special cherries come into the mix, which came out of nowhere and was never mentioned, but Hercules ad the little boy eat them only to find out they had pearls in them…so the swallowed the cherries whole? Whole swallows cherries whole and doesn’t check for pits…so do not understand this movie.

Now Hercules is a man who looks a lot like Grizzly Adams and has the mentality of a middle school student. He is very kind hearted and nonchalant and is willing to be helpful…his only weakness is alcohol…there is a shocker for most people of this world that alcohol can impede a person’s perspective and ability.

Ill be honest I don’t even remember the end of the film because I started to carve a pumpkin and this was one of those background noise movies. From what I saw if you wanted something to just completely numb you and just watch for the sake of watching like Santa Conqueors the Martians then watch this film because it will not disappoint on that level.

This falls right in line with the multitude of cheesy kung fu films out there again even through Hercules never did any kung fu. The one thing is that the English voices match nicely with the Asian actors yet the English voices do not match Danny or Hercules…I really don’t get what happened with that one. I say watch and be prepared to laugh and be a bit confused, because it is one of those films to do just that.

Be safe and I guess Hercules is immortal,

Jon Bolton

 PS...I tried putting a trailer at the end of this review and YouTube doesnt have one, they have dogs farting silent night, btu not a trailer for this movie...go figure, lol