Michael_Elliott The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962) ** (out of 4)Moe, Larry and Curly Joe are drug store workers who find themselves in a mess when they mess around with their friends scientific machine. Pretty soon they're all taken back to 900 B.C. where they end up in a Roman battle going up against Hercules (Samson Burke).THE THREE STOOGES MEET HERCULES is obviously far from a classic film or even a good film for that matter. With that said, as was the case with a lot of the features from this era, they were made for kids and I think most young fans will enjoy it. It's obvious that one shouldn't be expecting the early Stooges because, well, these guys here are much older and the material isn't nearly as good either.With that said, I did think there were some excellent moments scattered throughout the picture. The highlight has to be early on after the Stooges are mistaken for Gods and taken to the King's palace where they have feast. There's some truly hilarious moments between Curly Joe and Hercules as well as an escape plan that also gets some huge laughs. The slave ship sequence was also pretty good but after these moments is when the film really fell apart and there just weren't enough laughs to make it worth sitting through.Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Joe DeRita were all in good form here and Vicki Trickett made for a great looking lead. I thought Burke was pretty good in the role of Hercules as well and I really liked some of his comic timing when he was getting beaten or having accidents happen around him.

fung0 This was one of my favorite movies when I was a kid, and I find it still holds up today. I think the important thing is to judge these latter feature films very differently than the old Curly/Shemp shorts. The old 'classic' Stooges were about all-out zaniness, at an energy level that simply isn't sustainable at feature length. It's no accident that those old shorts were never extended; they couldn't be, even in theory.The beauty of the Stooges' feature films, like Meet Hercules, In Orbit and The Outlaws is Coming, is precisely in the fact that they don't try to be 90-minute 'shorts.' Instead, they're much more about story. And Meet Hercules has a great story. The whole idea of making Hercules a 'real' person is intriguing... apart from anything else, this is a great time-travel yarn. It's also a great fantasy... I see echoes of this film in Terry Gilliam's work, especially the fight with the 'bi-cyclops.' ("Even though ya got two heads, ya only got a half a brain!") This is even a pretty good spoof of sword-and-sandal epics, that were incredibly popular at the time.Of course, the true genius of the Stooges remains their total commitment to their own weird reality. While the Marx Brothers are lampooning the real world... and even lampooning themselves lampooning the real world... the Stooges never admit that any other world exists but their own, a world where a pie-fight or a poke in the eye are the correct responses to most problems. I think it's probably a glimpse of what vaudeville must have been at its finest... the ability of some performers to transport an audience by sheer will-power to a lighter, less-serious plane of existence. (Where a conk on the cranium with a mallet DOESN'T result in concussion and life-threatening skull fractures.)The gags are more subdued, more verbal, more drawn-out in these feature films. But my faith in those three lunkheads is undiminished. These may be lesser works, but they are the works of true cinematic geniuses, who remained true to their vision... no matter how silly it might have been. I miss these guys a lot... we'll never see their like again.

ShadowJack I came to this film NOT a big fan of the stooges. Having said that I laughed myself silly at it. Unlike a typical Stooges short, it has a plot, actual jokes, and some interesting casting. Though they are long in the tooth in this film, they perform admirably. Keeping their fine physical humor (which doesn't usually send me, but it is well used here) and adding some fun word play and situational humor. The supporting cast is quite able and the production qualities are higher than I normally associate with the stooges work.I ran across this while waiting at my doctor's office for some paperwork and stayed around to see how it all worked out. I laughed out loud in public several times. I will seek it out, as I own, nor have been interested in owning anything by the Stooges. This may be among their best work. This is one I'll buy.Good stuff.

awobyob Hercules, my introduction to the "golden" Derita years. Golden perhaps, given Moe and Larry's age during this time and the fact that after 24 years toiling in Harry Cohn's salt mines, they were finally getting PAID, real money, not the peanuts tossed down to them before. As for the film, nothing golden about it(would you settle for the bronze, Moe and Larry certainly did with Curly-Joe). Maybe that's a bit strong. I hardly think this film is the worst, it's a decent outing. But much like the Besser years, decent is the best you can hope for.There's something else about these films too, I think it's the stooges themselves and how their on screen personas seem to match their actual age. Even in the worst Besser films, the stooges still seem to be beyond the constraints of old age, still runnin' wild, vandalizing, and smooching with chicks half their age. But all that seems left behind at the closed down shorts department & the boys seem content with being portrayed as the kindly old grandfather figures always in the position to guide some strapping young lad which leads to another drawback of these 60's features, the prerequisite "love story". Just more useless filler to pad the length on these features, I suppose. If only Cohn had let the boys have features during their prime, and they could've really brought all of their antics to the screen & not have to worry about angry parent groups or toning it down for the sake of the children.5/10