Horror Extreme Movie Catalog

In a magical world called Krull, a mysterious dark magic fortress from space called "The Black Fortress" lands on the planet. A powerful Beast and his minions attack the planet, Prince Colwyn (Ken Marshall) and the beautiful Princess Lyssa (Lysette Anthony) as they marry so that two rival kingdoms can be united in peace, that is until the warriors of the Beast kidnap her during the ceremony. Colwyn joins up with an unlikely band of heroes named Ynyr (Freddie Jones), Ergo the magician (David Battley), Cyclopic Rell (Bernard Bresslaw), Convict Rhun (Robbie Coltrane from "Harry Potter"), Kegan (Liam Neeson), Oswyn (Todd Carthy), blind prophet Sneer (John Welsh) and young boy Titch (Graham Mcgrath) go on a quest to find the missing princess and Colwyn is armed with a special magical five-bladed disc weapon called "The Glave" which he must use it to battle the evil alien armies and the powerful Beast.

Exciting and enjoyably campy Sci-fi fantasy romp is one of the cleverist and most stylish Sci-fi and fantasy combo movies around even in the 80's. It is basically an unusual fairy tale that plays like a cross between "Star Wars", "Flash Gordon" and even J.R.R. Tolkein, the film has became to become a cult favorite with some fantasy/Sci-fi fans and people who grew up in the 80's. James Horner's music score is quite majestic here, there's decent acting, good special effects, cool looking monsters and plenty of action. If you like a good old fashioned campy Sci-fi fantasy epic with plain fun then this could be it.

This special edition DVD has quality picture and good sound with cool extras like two audio commentaries, an interactive full length virtual comic book with soundtrack and dialog from the film, Trailers to this and other Columbia titles, featurette, and bios.

Also recommended: "Clash of the Titans", "The Dark Crystal", "Star Wars Saga", "Flash Gordon", "Willow", "The Neverending Story", "Dragonheart", "Excalibur", "Fire and Ice", "Lord of the Rings Trilogy", "The Spiderwick Chronicles", "Heavy Metal", "Wizards", "The Fifth Element", "Army of Darkness", "The Princess Bride", "Big Trouble in Little China", "Princess Mononoke", "Star Trek Series" and "Starchaser: Legend of Orin".

At one point called The Dragons of Krull until someone noticed that they'd written the dragons out in one of the early draft screenplays, this 1983 underachiever was the end result of Columbia's desire for a big fantasy film - any fantasy film - to compete in the Star Wars stakes: the story came later, and came made to measure.

The result is a pic'n'mix of several genres, from swashbuckler to sci-fi as Ken Marshall's Prince must rescue his Princess (Lysette Anthony, dubbed, although on past form this is no great hardship) from the alien Slayers who have invaded his world. The notion of a medieval society literally fighting an enemy armed with scientific weapons with swords and sorcery is intriguing, but nothing here does it justice - where Lucas established an entire credible universe for Star Wars, we know nothing about this world: it exists purely for the purposes of the story.

This is more of a Christmas panto than anything else, with dialogue to match, although at least the latter improves when Marshall teams up with Alun Armstrong's outlaw band that includes Liam Neeson, a cockney Robbie Coltrane (looking all cloned up for a night in a gaybar) and even Eastenders Todd Carty.

Stephen Grimes' production design comes into its own with the organically designed Black Fortress, although his sets always look like sets (everything is peachy clean - even the swamps), leaving the paradox of an obviously very expensive film that still manages to look a bit cheap, for which Peter Suschitzky's photography must take much of the blame. Perfect on the exteriors, he consistently proves unable to match them with the interiors. Even worse, the camera feels like it is often in the wrong place (courtesy of director Peter Yates), and the editor seems more interested in what's going on in the sidelines than in the action itself, particularly in the fight in the swamp where the last Slayers are despatched in the background with the minimum of interest.

Not all is lost, however. There is one terrific sequence when Freddie Jones' Obi-Wan substitute must venture into a giant spider web to find out the location of the Slayer's Black Fortress from his long abandoned lover, Francesca Annis' Widow of the Web. There's heart, soul and a painful sense of lost opportunity to the scene that shines through, a magical moment that defies the lack of inspiration in the surrounding scenes and Freddie Jones' unrestrained ham (elsewhere his performance is pure "Can you hear me at the back, mother?" grandstanding) to create something quite touching. Similarly, Bernard Bresslaw's Cyclops, doomed to know the moment of his death from birth, benefits from a dignified, sincere performance that makes more of his scenes than they deserve. James Horner's, too, score is one of the film's greatest strengths, but the mix tends to lose much of it - a shame, because it is possibly his best work to date.

Columbia's DVD boasts a goodwidescreen transfer and a good selection of extras.