Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur: The Redundant Clip Show Journey - Episode 49

Wes and Nick finish up the final Hercules Tv Film. Is "Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur" the most lazy Hercules film ever made? Join us as we unravel this perplexing movie that spends 70% of its time on long flashbacks before finally delivering a showdown with the Minotaur in the last 30 minutes. We break down the redundant clip-show format that dominates the narrative and examine why the film feels more like a nostalgic family gathering than an epic adventure.

From inexplicable bar fights to villagers trapped in goo and clay pods, this movie leaves us with more questions than answers. Why does Zeus have such a strange relationship with the Minotaur? What was the grand plan behind the Minotaur's actions? And what in the world happened to Eolus's wife? Tune in as we try to piece together the chaotic puzzle that is "Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur" and share our thoughts on its numerous shortcomings.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

dumb cool, weird podcast. All right, welcome to the dumb cool, weird podcast. And now we are doing hercules in the maze of the minotaur. Yeah and uh, let me tell you this was a bad one. This is a bad one. This is a pretty easy review, by the way. Pretty much 70 something, percent, percent, I'd say 70% of the movie.

Speaker 1: 0:24

We went to minute 40, minute 50, and we were just constantly being bombarded by random-ass flashbacks from the other movies, not like a shortcut. Hey, folks, you know back in the day when you'd have a sitcom and you'd have an episode that was basically just a clip show, that would just show clips from other episodes. That's basically what this was. Most of this movie was literally just Eolus. No, it was Hercules talking with his family, talking with his kids. Oh, remember that time, remember this time, remember that time. And then Zeus doing, hey, remember that time, remember that time. And Eolus being like, yeah, I remember this time and I remember that other time. And then finally, after all that bullshit, we get to like the last 30 minutes of the movie and then there's the battle with the minotaur. The battle with the minotaur, but not before the bar, fight with the random thugs who, for some reason, we're like we don't believe you're a hero, yep, and then try to kill eolus and, uh, hercules, for some reason yeah, I'm starting, you know, I really believe like what was going on with this is they just didn't have the budget for a lot of this stuff, so they just kind of had to improvise with this movie. They were like hey, we're putting a lot of our budget into the Minotaur makeup effects, so we kind of need to spread this out. So that's where they came up with the idea to have clips from the other movies.

Speaker 1: 1:46

But, basically, what ends up happening, though, is these town of idiots, like they're all, they're all stupid, stupid. These two bumbling idiots like go into this minotaur cave and unleash his cage, yep, and then, um, one of them gets captured and the other one runs away. He's the one that tells hercules to come help, and that's what leads to all the fucking clip show stuff, which we're not covering that again, because, good, god, almighty, um, yeah, and eolus shows up again, finally, yep, eolus finally shows up again, and it's it's been like tons years, yeah, years. Eolus's wife dies, apparently, but we never get any backstory. How, no, we don't get a. We don't get it. We don't hear a damn thing about that.

Speaker 1: 2:21

And so then we cut to them in the town. They get to fight with the, with these different guys, and then we get to see the minotaur in action and he captures a bunch of the town villagers and he puts a green poo like slime over their face and then puts them in a mud pod yeah, mud pod like cocoon. And then he, he's like, he's like, he's like, he's like I'll show them, you'll be useful later. And it's like what was the plan them You'll be useful later. And it's like what was the plan? Yeah, because we never really got an understanding of that. We never understood what the goo-like substance was. We never understood why he was storing them in the clay pots. It's just never explained. It's never explained at all.

Speaker 1: 2:57

No, so then we catch a scene with the Minotaur and Zeus talking to each other and they're arguing. We can tell they have a backstory. It's not really explained quite yet. And then Zeus says oh, I wouldn't go to that place, that's the worst sort of place. And then he's like oh, but I gotta tell you something, son, you gotta fight the Minotaur, you gotta kill him. I love how he said I never asked you to do anything for me. But in all the other movies he just he had to do anything for me. Yeah, but in all the other movies he just he had to do it because Zeus was never going to do it. Yeah, pretty much. So basically, hercules goes, fights these people in the town, then they try to go to sleep, and then these three guys that got beat up are like we're going to go kill them. And then the fucking Minotaur just comes and slashes them to pieces. Yeah, very easily, very easily. Pieces yeah, very easily, very easily. You know what the Minotaur was menacing in this movie, though. I will say yeah, it really was.

Speaker 1: 3:48

And then the townspeople come out. They think Hercules and Aeolus did it. They try to run away. Well, aeolus is knocked out cold upstairs. Yeah, he got hit in the head with a chair, yeah, so he tries to. They chase him into the end, they grab, and to the end he grabs Iolos. He's like, oh, we got to go. Then Iolos gets eaten by the ground. And then another townsperson gets eaten by the ground Because the Minotaur is a graboid, a graboid from Tremors, yeah. And so the townspeople feel bad. The fat guy and the skinny guy yeah, the fat bartender and the skinny rich guy decide yeah, we're going to help, yep. So they go to the Minotaur maze and they're you know which. By the way, you know, when they set up a Minotaur maze, you'd think there'd be more maze.

Speaker 1: 4:28

No, it's really not that big a part of the movie. It's like a very small portion of the movie. Well, we had about 40 to 50 minutes of a hour and a half long movie being used to give us flashbacks. Yeah, that's true. So then we cut to them trying to go through the maze, and basically what ends up happening is the skinny ones, the coward tries to run away, the Minotaur kills him, gores him, like Frieza did to Krillin in Dragon Ball Z. Yeah, he gets Krillin'd. Yeah, he gets crammed, and then, basically, he somehow makes it all the way back and he's not dead right away. You know, big gash in his fucking chest. He also found his way back, completely fine, though, yeah, right before he dies.

Speaker 1: 5:12

So then they run and they're trying, like him, and Hercules are trying to find him, and the fat bartender are trying to find a way to go. So, hercules, as he's cutting through this really narrow path, I look at Nick and I go dude, that fat guy is not going to fit to that path, not at all. And then he tries to do it and he gets stuck. Oh, hercules, I'm a little stuck and he's like Hercules, the Minotaur is behind me. Minotaur pulls out his claw and slits his throat.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Like I said, the Minotaur is actually kind of a creepy character. Yeah, it's pretty menacing. And then he basically calls him a coward and then he gets sucked into a graboid-like thing and gets sucked down a fucking slide. Yeah, would have been a really good theme park, right, you would have expected them to have to fight the Rancor the way he slid down there. No, rancor, just a Minotaur, just a minotaur.

Speaker 1: 6:05

So then he's down there and, um, he's talking to the minotaur and the minotaur and him are fighting and, um, the minotaur is getting his at, gets like gets the upper hand a little bit. Then hercules gets the upper hand and then hercules beats the shit out of him with a stalagmite yeah, with a stalagmite. And then he's about to kill him. This is before he threatens to kill eolus, and that's what makes hercules go all out. Yeah, basically, um, as the minotaur is about to get like wasted, he goes. He'll stop, hercules, you wouldn't kill your brother, would you?

Speaker 1: 6:36

Which goes back to the first part of the movie where he's like brothers don't fight each other, yep. When he's talking to his kids, yep, ironic. And then Hercules gets like, all oh, you're right, I'm not supposed to fight you, yep. And then he gets a fucking cheap shot on him and then we cut to them fighting again and basically after and after he like hits him a couple of times, he knocks him over and he gets impaled on a fucking spike, yeah. And then Zeus comes and tells him everything. He's like oh, he was your brother and he was a bear. He was so handsome, so handsome and beautiful and I really loved him and I made him as disgusting as his heart, yep. And then we got to see what he looked like before he was a Minotaur and he was pretty handsome, yep. But he's dead, yeah, but he's dead, yeah. So, yep, and everybody's saved. Everybody goes back to their mundane little lives and that's pretty much the fucking movie. Yeah, bada, bing, bada, boom, gabagoo, yeah.

Speaker 1: 7:43

What was dumb about this movie? The flashbacks, yeah, the flashbacks were annoying because it wasn't like a short, quick flashback. They really took the shit out of it, like you know. They really made you watch those flashback episodes. It was like 10, 15 minutes apiece, yep, the flashback episodes.

Speaker 1: 8:06

And then I also think Majority of the movie, yeah, it's pretty dumb. And then, you know, I think, in my opinion, bro, kind of shoehorning, a fucking like story about a brother, it's Kind of weird. Well, it was very it's too rushed, you know. I mean they could have spent a little bit more time on that. I think that's kind of dumb too. Well, that's what I'm saying. They wasted so much time giving us all these flashbacks. They could have built up the story a lot better. Yeah, this is definitely the weakest side of all the movies. Maybe it was because they already knew the TV show was greenlit. So they're like, all right, let's hurry up and finish this fucking movie so we can get on to the TV show. Yeah it, it definitely had a lot of those elements that are really dumb.

Speaker 1: 8:47

You know, what was really cool about this movie to me is it was a fucking minotaur. The minotaur was cool, like makeup was really good. I could tell that's where they spent most of the budget, because when the mouth was moving it was actually really fluid. Yeah, you know, for the 90s, and also that, just the character of the minotaur being so menacing and cruel. Yeah, was amazing. Like he really was like a. He was like a real bad guy, like a real menacing villain. He really scared people, yep. And then, weird, the fucking green goo and the fucking pods. They never explained it. They were just like I'm gonna wipe this green goo on your face and trap you in a pod. And nick had a theory that it was just minotaur diarrhea. Yeah, that that's all I could think of.

Speaker 1: 9:28

Minotaur diarrhea on the face, mud cocoon thing. It's like a jankum, like a jankum, a jankum coma. Yeah, it really. Honestly, I it was just like I just told nick I was like that better. I was like that better not be what I think it is. He's wiping on his face just the green jizz. Yeah, I was like it's either green jizz and he was like maybe it better not be what I think it is. He's wiping on his face Just the green jizz. Yeah, I was like it's either green jizz and he was like maybe it's diarrhea, I don't know, it's bad either way. Yeah, it's disgusting Because when they put it on the guy's face the guy was like ugh. He's like what is this? I bet the actor was like the up.

Speaker 1: 10:09

We got this from Nickelodeon Studios. They had too much. We're going to use it. But that was Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur. We find out that Hercules actually has a brother, and we also rewatched a bunch of clips from movies that we already have seen. Yeah. So, nick, you want to sign us out? Yeah, stay sexy Atlanta. Oh, don't watch this movie, don't watch this movie. And one more thing before we go the rest of the Hercules TV show reviews. Those are going to be sporadically done on the way back Wednesdays yeah, way back Wednesdays, because it's a TV show and it's more short form and we figured it would be better over there. So hope you guys have a good one. Stay sexy. Thanks for more short form form, and we figured it would be better over there. So hope you guys have a good one. Stay sexy. Thanks for checking out the dumb, cool, weird podcast. We're a movie podcast now, so movie monday is every monday about crappy movies from the 20th century. It's gonna be great, folks. I can't wait to show y'all.