By Steven Boone, Justine Elias, Annie Frisbie, and John Lichman
[Editor's Note: The House Next Door is hooking up with Movie Geeks United! for a look back at films from the Summer of 1983. We'll be publishing entries on this topic through Wednesday, June 18th, culminating in the premiere of the Movie Geeks' "Summer of '83" tribute show, featuring guests Dee Wallace and John Badham, among others. Special thanks to Aaron "Nick Fury" Aradillas for arranging this tag-team.]
ANNIE FRISBIE: I'm not sure if I'm up to the monumental task of discussing Krull, mainly because I have like ZERO objectivity when it comes to this movie. I've seen it a zillion times and have it practically memorized.
STEVEN BOONE: I have seen Krull 12,118 times. I have to agree that it wipes out any objectivity on my part. It is a perfect gem. I blame the music. James Horner was on some kind of fire in the 1980's. The scores to Krull and Star Trek II make me wanna swashbuckle just as badly as Wu Tang's "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" makes me want to pull a heist in a ninja suit.
JUSTINE ELIAS: Some topics for inquiry:
1. How This Film Ever Got Made
2. The post-Star Wars, post Excalibur explosion of lame-o sword-n-sorcery epic
3. That Dainty Fey Hero: Who Was That Guy? Whatever Happened to Him?
4. Lysette Anthony, The Cleavage, The Inexplicable Enduring Love For said Dainty Fey Hero. That thing she was running around in—what was that?
5. Is Tim Curry In This Movie, or That Other Fantasy Movie With the Same Plot?
6. Random hot men.
7. Horses: Not Enough?
JOHN LICHMAN: Also, can we also have a sub-section on "the hero's weapon" and how this made something like the glaive incredibly awesome?SB: The glaive is responsible for the most damaged furniture in my parents' home circa 1984-86. Every Cinemax screening of Krull provoked a leap from dresser to couch to carpet, fighting off invisible Slayers with my weapon (plastic Hot Wheels racetrack).
AF: I just had a visceral reaction of sheer jealousy to the visual of the Hot Wheels racetrack glaive. I can't believe my brother and I didn't think of that.
SB: In my parents' basement, Krull screened 70 times a day, almost as much as that other Errol Flynn-inflected wonder, Nate and Hayes (Tommy Lee Jones' signature comic role—funny-ass pirate movie). A perfect summer day for me was lucking out with some kind of outrageous combo cobbled from Showtime, HBO and Cinemax, where you'd get to see Krull, Nate and Hayes, The Dark Crystal, Dragonslayer, Beastmaster, Conan the Destroyer, Clash of the Titans and, I dunno, Enemy Mine back to back. Or overlapping as you surfed.
JL: Well, as the resident youngster, that's how I got introduced to Krull: midway through a rainy Saturday on Channel 17 in Philadelphia. I was over at my grandparents' place and bemoaning a lack of electronic entertainment. Flipped through the channels desperate for something to watch while I put my action figures through the ringer and there it was. I got to admit, the glaive was the first thing that caught my eye and it was just at the very end—the dome explodes and Colwyn is battling The Beast.
Of course, that way also introduced me to Bloodsport.
AF: Krull was one of a handful of movies my brother and I seemed to always end up watching, along with Making the Grade, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Poltergeist, Conan the Destroyer and an Australian movie called Fortress with Rachel Ward.
JE: One confession: I'd never seen this movie all the way through before last week. It took four attempts to get to the Krull-clusion. and it was hard going. For me, this movie is the fantasy-epic equivalent of C.H.U.D., Eddie and the Cruisers, or Hot Dog... The Movie. If you had cable TV in the 1980s, you absorbed some Krull. Like a cheesy summer song.
JL: So is Krull one of the last great "cheesy" fantasy epics? Compare it a live-action fantasy like Lord of the Rings these days and it seems like it would be. Or am I merely spoiled in how I see these films?JE: Horses with fiery hooves. Never enough flying Clydesdales in an epic movie.
AF: It seems like epic fantasy is either vaguely Arthurian or vaguely Babylonian (with George RR Martin using both in his series A Song of Ice and Fire).
SB: Anglo-Saxon = epic.
AF: Come to think of it, I find it curious that there are no dragons in Krull.
SB: A dragon in Krull would have been too much for the soul to bear. Some kind of tricked-out space dragon who spit phosphorus. I would have went on up to heaven.
AF: Could you imagine if the Beast actually RODE on a dragon? And then Colwyn would have to kill the dragon with the glaive and then do hand-to-appendage combat with the Beast. I feel like that's the best movie ever made.
SB: If George Lucas owned the copyright, he would now pixel in the glaive-Beast-dragon action, and it would be SO wack. (Okay, this is the last time I will hijack this discussion to trash neo-Lucas.)
JL: So when we're dealing with so much fantasy—and thanks for bringing up the inevitable George Lucas—why did this genre drop so quickly into the straight-to-video hell reserved for things like The Barbarians and other such fantasy fare?
AF: In terms of why fantasy isn't a viable genre, despite the success of LOTR, well, what I hear a lot is that a fantasy story needs to have "pre-awareness" to compete at the box office. Yet some disproportionate number of the top-grossing films of all time have been in the fantasy genre. On the one hand, America loves these movies, but on the other hand, America won't go see them. And you see the same genre bias in literature. Speculative fiction is only acceptable if someone like Michael Chabon or Philip Roth is taking the piss out of the genre, where superlative storytellers like George RR Martin and Robin Hobb are sent packing to the mass market aisles. It's like we need a stamp of approval from the cool kids.
SB: Krull stands out because it has some of the clunkiness and uncertain production design of a cheapie like Beastmaster, but its visuals fairly pulse like something from the Spielberg-Lucas realm. IMDb says the guy that shot The Empire Strikes Back [ed. note: Cronenberg second Peter Suschitsky] was the cinematographer. Too much geekness even for this conversation: Brian Johnson and other Industrial Light and Magic defectors worked on the f/x. The opticals do have that luminous ILM quality, discernible in flicks like Dragonslayer. Vic "Raiders of the Lost Ark" Armstrong was the stunt coordinator. So, no wonder the film felt so familiar and comfortable, like a flame broiled burger from some random joint other than Burger King.
JE: No way. Unspecial FX. Except for the giant spider. That scared me. The Renaissance Faire reject who kept transforming himself into animals: awful. Even the dullest child would find this unfunny. I pitied Ken Marshall when he was forced to react with hearty ha-ha-has to every crap magic trick. Even Errol Flynn couldn't dignify this kind of Christmas pantomime gone wrong.AF: I think that across the board, Krull has every element of a great fantasy film—and yet it's hollow at the center. It doesn't make me cry the way I do when I watch The Empire Strikes Back, or the Lord of the Rings films. I attribute this to two things. One, the Beast isn't anthropomorphized enough/He's too distant a villain. At least Sauron had Saruman. Second, I think that the script stays way too vague in setting up the central relationship. The dialogue between Colwyn and Lyssa is so generic that it doesn't come close to achieving that odd blend of universality and intimacy that makes love stories sing.
JE: On the other hand, it’s got James Horner's score: fabulous, done with a full orchestral arrangement. And the producers obviously spent a mint on locations and huge soundstages (check out the transition from real forests—Wales?—to the "Widow's Web" and misty marshes that the hero and robbers get sucked into.
JL: The "hollow center" of Krull makes me think of another thing: I can't remember a fantasy semi-kid's film that has so many of its main characters dying off or being left for dead. The final raid on the Black Fortress is probably one of the bleakest things I've ever seen, and almost made me think that the hero's journey was going to fail.
So in a sense, that's perfect. And I'm questioning whether this wasn't deliberate when [director Peter] Yates and [writer Stanford] Sherman were putting this together. Because by this point, we were used to seeing Han frozen in carbonite and Luke get his hand lobbed off. But Han was alive and Luke never seemed to be in that much danger. This feels like if, at the last second, Boba Fett shoots Han and the Millennium Falcon was five seconds too late to save Luke.
Not to mention it killed Liam Neeson. Only Christian Bale, Ray Park, scores of extras in the Irish countryside, Daniel Day Lewis and Pierce Brosnan can get away with doing that. In the grand scheme of killing Neeson on screen, The Beast was the first, thus making him the most evil of villains.
JE: Speaking of the Hollow Center of Krull: Ken Marshall.Kind of a callow youth facing a hero's journey, but a dainty fey puss who goes waaaaaaaaaa and lies down and cries like total bay-bee, "I lost my father and my KINGDOM in the same daaaaay" and has to have his little scratch on his hairless chest dressed and treated by someone else.
AF: Colwyn’s temper tantrum is such an off-putting moment. He also gives this silly little high-pitched grunt when he's reaching his arm out in the swamp. He's like Harry Potter in books 1-3—utterly dependent on others to save him, even at the end. When he's rescued by a girl.
The leader of the thieves is a much stronger character, both in the writing & in the performance.
JE: "I chose well," says Lyssa the princess, two minutes after meeting this prime specimen of daintiness. (Different strokes for different folks, but Ken Marshall: not on my menu.)
But Lysette Anthony gives feisty good princess. Underneath her epic shrub of 80s hair (Aqua Net & Henna: been there), behind the dubbed voice, she's better than the average ingenue. Feisty, rave, ardent. Yes, I did notice her awesome expressive cleavage. When the movie began, I could've sworn Lyssa was the protagonist—and the Colwyn character is just an instrument of her princess-American Girl Doll quest (to protect her kingdom by a strategic marriage). Until she basically loiters hangs around at the Beast Castle of the Body for 90 minutes, waiting for Colwyn to show up, so she can unleash her Fire-thing at... whatever that thing was.
SB: I was going to say that the hollow center of Krull is the hollow center of all the '80s Spielberg-Lucas wannabes—hacky above-the-line creative staff. But, no, the combination of sturdy storyteller Peter Yates and screenwriter Stanford Sherman, who's responsible for both a Clint Eastwood orangutan movie and (good God) Ice Pirates sounds as inspired as the Kershner-Lucas-Brackett combo on The Empire Strikes Back. (Any revenue generated by this article should be turned over to IMDb).
So I can't account for why the film is only a superficial thrill. It's not the work of hacks, but it didn't steal my pre-adolescent mind and soul in the manner of Star Wars.
What earned my enduring love, though, were the Slayers. One thing that really gets the kids is an evil army that has its shit together. The fetishistic thrill of the Storm Troopers, the original Pong-eyed Cylons, the Planet of the Apes apes in their leather Black Panther vests. The Slayers belong in that company. Contrast them with the ineffectual, lightfooted Droid Army in the Star Wars prequels to see what I mean. Every little sci-fi fantasy geek has a fascism jones.
AF: One thing that has always intrigued me about Krull is its status as hybrid. It's a medieval epic set in space, where battle is done with lasers AND hand weapons. I can't think of another film like it.JL: But that's the beauty of the 80s: everyone was so goddamn coked out of their minds that a space western castle fantasy where Liam Neeson bites it was acceptable.
JE: Maybe the Rock Star Robbers asked to die early, so they could sleep off their hangovers? Anyway, I submit that the House Next Door Award for Best Costume Design goes to... whoever decided to outfit the helpful highwaymen in heavy metal leather, fur and studded collars. Liam Neeson making out with a rock chick who looks like a Jazzercise instructor: eternally fresh. And who knew that Alun Armstrong was, in his prime, the lead guitarist of the Scorpions?
SB: Justine, you're right: This flick could have been cut up into at least a dozen metal videos, thanks to the robber gang. But where Annie disagreed with me over the production design, I have to defend the special effects as... special. Those firehorses are every bit as cool as a rollerblading Decepticon, blotchy composites and all. The Renaissance Fairy's transformations and the blind wizard's freaky talons ("Here is the knowledge you SEEEK!") thrilled/spooked me at 11 years old.
AF: So is Krull due for a remake/sequel/prequel?
JL: If you made a Krull today, it would be on Saturday night at 9pm as a Sci-Fi Channel Original feature. These days, fantasy films demand they must be either kid friendly, marketable or a video game tie-in. They can't ever exist on their own universe or without a pre-set fanbase, otherwise studios won't go near them. That's part of the fascination I have with a film like Krull: you literally couldn't make it today.
Even the crappiest "Sci-Fi Original," which is their fun way of saying they acquired a Direct To Video product, has a tie to something else. Either it is D-level shlock (Rock Monster, which is pretty funny) or one of the countless giant animal films. Or that one coming up which is about tornadoes in New York.
SB: Annie, I'm starting to doubt whether you truly love Krull with all your heart. How could you, with a question like, "Is Krull due for a remake/sequel/prequel?" Next you'll be asking for a re-imagining of Critters or The Last Dragon ("Nick Cannon as Bruce Leroy").
But I'll bet Krull: Reloaded is on the way. In that case, I'd prefer an unpretentious pop culture junkie like Brett Ratner at the helm rather than the inevitable Michael Bay (Slayers with sweaty biceps) or Paul W.S. Anderson (Slayers with rotary machine guns).
AF: I think the biggest unanswered question Krull raises for me is this: "Where have all the badgood movies gone?"
SB: Your question has produced the answer to another: Uwe Boll. That's who should direct a Krull remake, and that's who is making the new badgood movies you crave. Alone in the Dark and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale are but two flicks by Toilet Boll that convince me he'd do Krull justice.JL: As you all probably know, I am the #2 Boll Fan Supporter since he is the Anti-Director. And with Krull's status as hybrid fantasy justice creature from flaming Clydesdale hell, it is only fitting he helm it.
Of course, it'd star Michael Madsen.
AF: I can't believe you all are degrading my precious Krull with Uwe Boll enthusiasm. I ought to dump you all in the fires of Mordor for that.
But can we get Tracy Morgan to play the Renaissance Fairy?
SB: Tracy Morgan, of course. I want to get started on a petition campaign with John Lichman, for an Uwe Boll Krull remake produced by the Sci-Fi network. I joked a lot in here, but on this matter I am dead serious.
JE: Does that guy get paid every time someone mentions his name, or is it: say his name 100,000 times and one idiot buys a ticket to his movie?
Okay, I'll say his silly name: Uwe Boll cannot direct a remake of Krull because he's afraid to. Uwe Boll is a wee, trembling madchen-boy who prances around a boxing ring wearing lederhosen, looking at himself in the mirror, dreaming up sales pitches for his movies instead of re-writing and storyboarding and generally making them suck less. And I, Justine Elias, challenge Uwe Boll to a Fire-Mare (draught-horse) riding competition because Boll—if he recalls—refused to box female critics. The puss. If he wins, he has to direct Krull: The Remake. And if he loses, he has to buy me a real, live horse.
________________________________________________
Steven Boone is a New York-based critic and filmmaker, a contributor to Vinyl is Heavy and the publisher of Big Media Vandalism.
Justine Elias is a legal assistant for a non-profit public health organization, and writes about film and television for the Boston Phoenix and other publications.
Annie Frisbie defends genre on a regular basis at Reading is My Superpower. She is a screenwriter living in Queens with husband John and daughter Beatrice.
John Lichman is a freelance writer who contributes to The Reeler, Primetime A&E [print only] and anyone with cash. He works odd jobs to afford his vices, sleeps on couches and can drink Vadim Rizov under a table.
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15 comments:
A great discussion of a staple from the heyday of HBO.
The House Next Door should consider some type of Blog-A-Thon about the impact HBO had on a generation of movie critics during the 1980s.
A lot of the movies from the Summer of '83 really got their cultural status the following year as they were on constant rotation on HBO.
Not only did HBO have the better selection of movies, they also had Fraggle Rock, BrainGames, The Hitch-Hiker, and Not Necessarily the News.
I feel a HBO Blog-A-Thon coming on.
Ah, this was fun. More fun than actually watching Krull. Despite having the poster as a kid and playing the crap out of the videogame, I didn't actually see Krull until two years ago at a 24-hr. B-movie marathon. my thoughts at the time:
Krull was a real-time travelogue about walking, climbing, walking, riding horses (so why all the walking earlier?!), walking some more, climbing a little, capturing and riding new horses (what about the old horses?!), letting the new horses catch fire and fly (that was actually sorta cool), and a little more climbing for good measure. It was also about not bothering to use the ultimate weapon that the hero recovers in the first act for most of the film.
Ah, thanks for bringing back so many memories -- but no mention whatsoever of the Krull arcade game? Wasn't this one of the first not so successful video game tie-ins after Tron?
I don't know how, but I've never seen this movie. I remember it playing in theatres when I was a kid.
Wow. Watching the trailers though, I have to say that this should have won some award for the Worst Sound Effects ever. They're embarassingly bad.
I saw it in the theaters when it came out. All I remember it was that it sucked and the glaive thing and lots of rock quarries as backdrops.
But what was shocking to me at the time was that Peter Yates directed it. He was the guy who directed Bullit, of the Steve McQueen's great films and an important action film of the 70s. What a career drop. Ouch.
from my above-mentioned brother:
"the guy who played the main character was in a movie i saw called FEDs, with that chick from Risky Business. don't ask me why i watched it. it was late and i was drunk"
Gary Susman of EW.com recalls that the Krull-man, Ken Marshall, is fondly remembered from Marco Polo
Or at least the miniseries was admired - one of those 20 hour, two week, early 80s megabudget, cast of many handsome thousands TV events.
My Dad actually went on the set of Krull and watched the cast of heroes trying to get out of a vat of porridge (sorry, quicksand, but they used porridge).
He was convinced Freddie Jones, the crazy old guy, was, I'm pretty sure, drunk all the way through too. But that added to its charm.
Buy the DVD, it has a great commentary from Lysette, Ken and Peter Yates - talking about how Lysette was dubbed and a slightly bitter-sounding Marshall talking about being in the same drama class as Robin Williams and the Mum from Six Feet Under.
Oh - and I tried to contact Ken a couple of years ago. Got his home! number and called. Spoke to someone I assume was his wife who told me Ken left the house at six a.m. and didn't get back until after eight at night. Goodness knows what he was up to, but I never did talk to him.
Genius movie though - I have the original poster on my wall.
I miss Lysette Anthony. It was downhill for her career after Krull.
Krull is one of my FAVORITE movies! So inept that you just have to have the kind of imagination of today to make it work. I would watch a sequel about the son who ends up ruling the galaxy. One thing thought, either make it a fantasy or sci-fi. Bring back Ergo played by Jon Heder. Make young Zac Efron play the hero (teen girls will swoon) Evil emperor with telekinetic powers and a young bad girl daughter (ala Willow) played by Hayden P. I think you might have something worth watching. Call it Legend of the Glave or Son of Krull.
Boy I must be old. Did anyone see this movie in a theater? Seems ya'll caught it on cable.
I saw this movie in a movie theater in Queens, NY when it came out in 1983. I was 13. In those days I would see any movie that featured laser beams -- and Krull's were blue, which is really cool. (I was still getting over the fact blasters in Gallactica -- the original -- didn't shoot real beams and were more or less flashlights and a starfilter.)
I wish I could remember if I saw it at the Midway Theater on Queens Blvd or the Trylon or the Elmwood (the latter two are gone now). Does anyone know?
Tangent: I was doing research on microfilm fairly recently (it happens) and it turned out the reel of old New York Times papers contained the week the Empire Strikes Back opened. It was so transporting, seeing the ads, the review, just as it appeared in 1980. I could go back and find out where Krull played in Queens...
Anyway, I really wanted to see this movie cause it was sci fi and I had probably read about it in Starlog. I remember thinking it was very noisy and disconnected and having a headache when it was over. But it was sci fi (fantasy) and I just couldn't get enough in those days. It was sorta like getting an extra Star Wars movie... sorta.
The REAL impact this movie had on me was Ken Marshall in tights. He keeps leaping around in the long shots so you can never really get a really satisfying fix on 'em but as a 13 year old gay kid I was mesmerized. Oh yeah, shirtless too, with chest hair, no less. Maybe this accounts for my headache back then. Something was aching.
I've been sick all week and I decided to rent Star Trek the Motion Picture from iTunes. I wanted to see all those loving shots of the space ship (they should have photographed Ken Marshall in the tights the way Doug Trumball photographed the Enterprise, long slow, close, lingering shots). It was fun watching Star Trek and I decided to rent Krull. I had seen the trailer a few months ago and it looked kinda cheap and depressing but there was the promise of lasers the memory of those tights...
How great that the transfer is pristine and that Peter Schuzitsky shot the movie. Some the photography is really, really nice and the mountain exteriors with the music is good stuff. The by the numbers Joseph Campbell stuff was tough on the stomach (who was that Obi Wan guy? Two suns?) and some of the blue screen work reminded me of the Rancor scene in Jedi, which was pretty dreadful.
But, I can't help but like this movie. Really like it. I know it sucks, but I really like it. Something about things we come across as kids that's so profoundly affecting. Nothing slaps me in the face like a picture of the Six Million Dollar Man figure in it's original box on ebay -- or better, a picture of that secret base he had that was inflatable...
Raoul
So now I have Krull on the brain. Reading all sorts of stuff on the net till all hours and then last night taking screen captures and putting them into photoshop. I added some to Flicker:
Krull Pics on Flicker
Direct URL:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/15421300@N06/sets/72157608237404088/
Raoul
In regards to the lack of dragons, the script was originally titled THE DRAGONS OF KRULL and the Best himself was revealed in the end to be a huge, black, winged dragon as he faced down Colwyn in a fierce psionic battle (complete with them hurling entire floors of the structure at one another) atop the Fortress. You can read the script here.
Thanks, that was an entertaining read.
Nicely discussed. Though I can't believe Rell, the Cyclops of my nightmares wasn't mentioned... I've blogged about "Starkly Horrifying Children's Films of the late 70's and early 80's", and this one's certainly in there, if for Rell's death-by-stone-doors alone.
And you didn't get to the question of whatever happened to Kenneth Marshall... dude turned up, bald and unrecognizable, on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine as a turncoat Starfleet officer.
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