Hercules Returns

Hercules Returns (1993)

Funnier than Gandhi... Sexier than The Little Mermaid... Shorter than Dances with Wolves

When Brad gets fired from his job, he goes to reopen an old cinema, he enlists his frends to help him show the last film the cinema aired before it closed... Only they don't know, the film is in Italian. With everyone sitting ready they begin to dub the movie... on the fly!

Date of release
1993-09-16
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (30)
Runtime
1h 22m
Genres
Comedy
Director
David Parker

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Box office: A$318.8K

Hercules Returns is a 1993 Australian comedy film directed by David Parker, starring David Argue, Michael Carman, Bruce Spence and Mary Coustas. The film has become a cult film in Australia and other countries. It has been released in DVD format.

Background and production

Hercules Returns is a screen adaptation of the popular Australian live comedy show Double Take, conceived and performed by Des Mangan with Sally Patience. The Double Take show, which began in Sydney in 1986, is part of the "dub parody" genre, similar to What's Up, Tiger Lily?, in which ostensibly serious films are deliberately re-voiced in a satirical or spoof manner.

Mangan and Patience gained a strong following around Australia with their Double Take shows, which were performed live in a cinema. Typically seated at the back of the auditorium, using microphones plugged into the cinema's sound system, the Double Take team performed live comedic voice-overs of movies such as the 1935 American science fiction Western movie The Phantom Empire starring Gene Autry, "the Singing Cowboy", the 1953 American film noir…

The film version came about after businessman Phil Jaroslow saw a ''Double Take performance of Hercules Returns in Melbourne. He was so impressed that he purchased the rights to both the original Ercole film and Mangan's script, hired cinematographer and filmmaker David Parker to help write a story to wrap around the Double Take routine, and financed the project with his own funds.

Mark Hartley, in his first film credit, was "music video director" for the film. David Connell was cinematographer, Phil Judd composed the music, and Peter Carrodus edited the film. The film was shot in 1992.

The film was the last screen credit for veteran actor Frank Thring (who performed the voice of Zeus), and there are also cameo appearances by Australian film critics David Stratton, Margaret Pomeranz, and Ivan Hutchinson. Mangan and Patience do not appear on screen and their voice-overs are mimed by Argue, Spence, and Coustas.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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