(Originally posted on
In the ancient days of yore (1983) I viewed a movie called Krull. It is a strange tale. Neither science fiction nor fantasy. Not great, but not terrible. I weep for the movie it could have been.
This chimera of a movie is the tale of an alien invasion of a fantasy world. Sort of. Details are a little fuzzy.
Essentially, a big bad called “The Beast” invades the planet Krull with an interplanetary castle called The Black Fortress. The fortress disgorges a bunch of (literally) faceless bad guys called “slayers” (no, not the band,) armed with one-shot blasters called “neon spears”. The slayers run around conquering Krull for The Beast apparently has a bit of a hard-on for Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony). I can almost see his point, as she’s a fine-looking woman, but planetary invasion seems like overkill. The Beast apparently thinks that the way to woo her affections is by kidnapping her and slaughtering her family. Not exactly progressive.
Standing in the way of The Beast’s incredibly violent nuptial plans is Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall). Slayers interrupt their wedding ceremony when they nab Lyssa. Their wedding is meant to unify their two kingdoms against The Beast. Instead, we get to see pretty much every soldier they have die in one night. Anyway, in what would be an important plot point in a better movie, the wedding ceremony involves a ceremony where Lyssa hands Colwyn a magical flame. Or rather, she tries to before the slayer wedding crashers arrive.
Lyssa gets abducted, Colwyn gets injured and everyone else in the castle dies. Along comes Ynyr, the Old One (no, not Cthulhu.) Ynyr (Freddie Jones) is a kind of Obi-Wan mentor to Colwyn, and leads him to find a magical weapon called The Glaive. Colwyn finds this magical, edged Death Frisbee after a very boring climbing sequence which ends with him pulling The Glaive out of lava. I think it’s meant as a “test of faith”, but I’m not sure.
Armed with the Death Frisbee, Colwyn and Ynyr set out to find The Black Fortress. The snag is that the fortress teleports every morning to another place on the planet. Now, how The Beast maintains any logistics with that setup, I don’t know. I do know it makes it pretty hard to storm the evil headquarters. Probably pretty hard to receive any mail, too.
Along the way, Colwyn and Ynyr pick up a gang of followers. Ergo the Magnificent (David Battley) is a magical faerie-type fellow, who has a running joke of trying to transform others into animals, only to become the animal himself. Rell the Cyclops (Bernard Bresslaw) tags along with the backstory of how The Beast cheated his people of an eye to see the future–but the only thing they can see is their own deaths. Finally, a group of outlaws led by Torquil (Alun Armstrong) joins up. Liam Neeson, in one of his early roles, plays an outlaw named Kegan.
This motley band sets out to find the Black Fortress in a series of encounters with a body count akin to a Friday the Thirteenth movie. Torquil’s outlaws serve admirably as redshirts and have worse life expectancy than V.A. patients. There are a couple of decent fight sequences and a memorable stop-motion giant spider with the “Widow in the Web”. Unfortunately, slow pacing and ponderous editing neutralize a lot of the good stuff.
The actors are all very British–with the exception of Ken Marshall. The actors are all very competent–with the exception of Ken Marshall. Seriously, Ken isn’t strong enough to carry a movie. The guy’s a block of wood, made worse by the solid actors around him.
My biggest complaint is probably the ending. The Glaive/Death Frisbee finally gets used against The Beast (and why he didn’t use it in previous fights isn’t explained) only to be useless. Then suddenly Lysette hands Colwyn that marriage flame and now Colwyn can shoot friggin’ Godzilla-sized flames! Apparently nobody at the wedding party mentioned “Oh, by the way, you can use that marriage flame like a super-flamethrower. I mean, if you wanted.”
(beats head into wall)
I can’t help but wonder who decided this ending made sense. It could have been fixed to make sense. I can think of a half-dozen ways off the top of my head. But no, they decided “Nah, this is good enough.”
That’s what irks me the most about this movie. There are several moments throughout where it starts to work, only to slam into a wall. The production values are excellent. The acting (with one glaring exception) is solid. The musical score by James Horner is outstanding. With a rewrite and somebody other than Ken Marshall, this movie had a lot of potential. Hell, even with Ken Marshall they could have muddled through.
I can still enjoy parts of this movie. The points which rise above. Mostly, I just mourn for the movie it could have been. It might be why I’m an aficionado of Spelljammer and similar fanboy nonsense.
It’s worth watching once for the oddball nature of it and those moments I mentioned. Check it out.
