Hercules in New York is a 1970 film directed by Arthur Allen Seidelman. It was the film debut of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Credited as "Arnold Strong", he plays the film's title character. The film is on the IMDb bottom 100 listing, and is widely considered to be a bad movie.
The film has also been released as Hercules Goes Bananas and simply Hercules.
The film's story begins with Hercules on Olympus, berating his father Zeus for not allowing him to leave the gods' abode to adventure among mortal men. Eventually Zeus tires of Hercules's insolence and blasts him with a lightning bolt, casting him out of Olympus - thus giving Hercules what he wanted.
After a couple of strange encounters in the air and at sea, Hercules arrives in New York, where much hilarity ensues from his interactions with various New Yorkers, who, not recognizing his divinity, regard him as a physically superior but socially awkward rustic. Hercules is taken to heart by the city, however, when he becomes a successful professional wrestler.
Zeus, watching Hercules from the heights, becomes further irritated with Hercules making a mockery of the divine, calls upon Nemesis to bring Hercules to grief. After Mercury makes an unsuccessful attempt to bring Hercules back of his own will, Zeus orders Nemesis to see to it that Hercules is consigned to the infernal regions ruled over by Pluto. However, Juno, the hero's ever-jealous stepmother, has her own plans for Zeus's wayward offspring...
The mixing of the Greek and Roman names for the divine characters in the foregoing synopsis is taken from the film: another inconsistency in the story is that, in the final apocalyptic battle, Hercules is saved by the miraculous arrival of Atlas, a Titan, and Samson, a biblical hero.
