Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is
Speaker 1: Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today we're
Speaker 1: going to be talking about the nineteen three sci fi
Speaker 1: fantasy adventure Krull. And while I'm sure we've done a
Speaker 1: movie that fits into this category before, one of the
Speaker 1: main things that stuck out to me about Krull, at
Speaker 1: least as a film project, is that it has the
Speaker 1: overwhelming aroma of a troubled, big budget production. This is
Speaker 1: a movie that really excels in many domains, especially domains
Speaker 1: where money can make a lot of difference in in
Speaker 1: a production, but also has major issues. This movie is
Speaker 1: a very mixed bag. Some elements are so genuinely wonderful
Speaker 1: and more or less the way they're intended to be.
Speaker 1: Some are kind of dull, maybe even boring. Sometimes others
Speaker 1: are extremely unintentionally funny. Uh. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: it's called Krall. You really cannot beat the phonetics of
Speaker 1: the name, and it all comes together into a preposterous, beautiful,
Speaker 1: disorganized explosion at the Star Wars factory kind of movie. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there there's a lot of wonderful weirdness in this one.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fun to discuss. One note about the title.
Speaker 1: I don't know about everyone else out there, but I've
Speaker 1: seen Krawl multiple times over the years, and I frequently
Speaker 1: find myself having that moment in between viewings where I wonder, wait,
Speaker 1: what was Krall was? And then I have to remind myself, oh,
Speaker 1: Krawl was the planet. That the planet and two suns,
Speaker 1: because other times I'll be like, what is the monster
Speaker 1: name Krawl? The monster on the post is the magical weapon,
Speaker 1: The Crawl is Krawl, that guy with the scruffy beard,
Speaker 1: that's the hero. No, No, it's it's the planet. It's
Speaker 1: like if you titled any movie that takes place on
Speaker 1: Earth Earth, so instead of cool hand, Luke is just Yeah.
Speaker 1: I always think Kroll is the monster because it looks
Speaker 1: like the correct name for like the fish face. Uh
Speaker 1: you know, critter, that's that's keeping the princess hostage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it would work. It would be like and in Days
Speaker 1: of Your the Cruel came to our world, but now
Speaker 1: it's um, it's the Beast, and the beast is in
Speaker 1: the Black Fortress, and the weapon is the glade and
Speaker 1: our hero is um clown. Right, it's not clown coal.
Speaker 1: It always looks on the screen and in text like
Speaker 1: it's it's spelled almost like clown. This movie has such
Speaker 1: an ineffective hero every time, and the hero is talking.
Speaker 1: When Rachel and I were watching it, we we just
Speaker 1: sort of started making sounds like I don't know. I
Speaker 1: I would I would slightly disagree on on some of
Speaker 1: his heroic moments, but but we'll be Okay, that's fair enough.
Speaker 1: If you're a clown fan, I won't spoil your fund.
Speaker 1: But okay, So, so I mentioned earlier, it's kind of
Speaker 1: an explosion at the Star Wars factory, I think, to
Speaker 1: reference a review that I was reading, a contemporaneous review
Speaker 1: from published in Variety in nineteen eighty two, you could
Speaker 1: also call it an explosion simultaneously at the Star Wars
Speaker 1: factory and the Excalibur factory, because this review said quote,
Speaker 1: although inoffensively designed only to please the senses and appeal
Speaker 1: to one's whimsical sense of adventure, krawl, nevertheless comes off
Speaker 1: as a blatantly derivative hodgepodge of Excalibur meets Star Wars,
Speaker 1: lavishly mounted at a reported cost of twenty seven million
Speaker 1: dollars a collection of action set pieces never gels into
Speaker 1: an absorbing narrative. And it's funny because there's not really
Speaker 1: anything in that paragraph I can disagree with, even though
Speaker 1: I love Krall. Yeah, like this is this is correct,
Speaker 1: But it also is a very fun movie and one
Speaker 1: that I've seen many times over the years. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I keep coming back to it. Uh, something works and that,
Speaker 1: and it's become a cult classic for this reason. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the Variety review, like many others at the time,
Speaker 1: makes note of the enormous budget. This is twenty seven
Speaker 1: million in you know, nineteen eighty two eighty three dollars. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that is one of the curious things about Kralt.
Speaker 1: This is not the brain eaters. We're not watching a
Speaker 1: Roger Corman production made on the cheap. So I don't
Speaker 1: think any failures of the film can be chalked up
Speaker 1: to lack of resources or lack of ability to realize
Speaker 1: the director's vision or something. This is a luxuriously realized
Speaker 1: almost one wants to say, gilded film with gorgeous location shots.
Speaker 1: You know, they've got all those uh scenes set with
Speaker 1: like the jagged peaks of the Italian mountains, just beautiful, wonderful,
Speaker 1: cavernous indoor sets, including you know my favorite, the thing
Speaker 1: that has a place in my heart, built indoor sets
Speaker 1: of forests, misty, magical fake forests. Yeah, these are great.
Speaker 1: In fact, I'm I'm less into the movie when they're
Speaker 1: actually outdoors, but when they're indoors and they're on like
Speaker 1: an obvious but extremely well executed indoor swamp or indoor
Speaker 1: forest or whatever the case might be, I'm all in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So you've got all that jolly weird set pieces, uh, costumes, characters,
Speaker 1: and yet I do think I have to agree with
Speaker 1: with the review that Krull does not really work as
Speaker 1: a story. It's almost as if the main characters and
Speaker 1: their motivation are kind of like place holders that somebody
Speaker 1: put in an early draft of a script to kind
Speaker 1: of build a world around, but then they never came
Speaker 1: back and replaced them and filled in the drama. Some
Speaker 1: occasional exceptions emerge, like I can think of a couple
Speaker 1: of really nice dialogue driven scenes here and there, Like
Speaker 1: one is a scene where the hero Colon persuades some
Speaker 1: rowdy bandits to join his quest for some reason. Suddenly
Speaker 1: I think the writing is a lot better in that scene. Yes,
Speaker 1: I think this is the first my first viewing of
Speaker 1: Kroll that well, first of all, this was my first
Speaker 1: viewing of Kroll that was completely solo. In the past,
Speaker 1: I've always watched this with with at least one of
Speaker 1: their person if not a group of people, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of talking over it. And also this was
Speaker 1: the first time I really got to appreciate the sequence
Speaker 1: in question, which has a number of terrific act actors
Speaker 1: will get to in a minute and just have some
Speaker 1: nice back and forth dialogue, and I'm like, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is this is a solid scene. I like everything about this.
Speaker 1: But meanwhile, some of the other scenes, just like the
Speaker 1: kind of exposition of the quest scenes are I don't know,
Speaker 1: I mean like they I love them, but they they
Speaker 1: do not have a really believable element of human drama
Speaker 1: or character. I think I saw a user review somewhere
Speaker 1: this might have been on letterbox, where someone was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this movie. The plot is a a first
Speaker 1: time dungeon Master's campaign. Yes, and and I can yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair comment, you know, because you
Speaker 1: get that various feeling of Okay, these characters now meet
Speaker 1: these characters. These characters send the characters here. Now they
Speaker 1: have to go here, and then eventually they're going to
Speaker 1: face the big bat. And uh yeah, yeah. It has
Speaker 1: a It has a simple structure like that, and it
Speaker 1: almost feels like, yeah, of course, I'm not gonna describe
Speaker 1: the characters. That's for the players to do. So that's
Speaker 1: why some of the major characters are kind of empty
Speaker 1: vessels in some respects. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think
Speaker 1: some of the semantic content of this film is just
Speaker 1: a skeleton upon which to drape the meat of the movie.
Speaker 1: And the meat is a buffet of delicious sets and
Speaker 1: set pieces mountains, hillsides, swamps, built, indoor forests. The meat,
Speaker 1: of course, is the beast. The meat is alan arms strong,
Speaker 1: and most of all, I would say, the meat is
Speaker 1: the glave. How can you not love the glave? Because
Speaker 1: we really cannot discuss Krull any further without devoting a
Speaker 1: serious explainer to the glave. Once you see Krull, every
Speaker 1: time you close your eyes, you'll see the glave. The
Speaker 1: glave is just part of you. Now. It is like
Speaker 1: a golden, five fingered starfish with knives jutting out of
Speaker 1: each arm. And it is referred to with such solemnity.
Speaker 1: It's it's just wonderful. Yeah, the glave is awesome. The
Speaker 1: glavee is kind of I see about four different elements
Speaker 1: coming into play here. Uh, it's it's it's pretty much
Speaker 1: directly stated that the glaze is like a an important
Speaker 1: sacred symbol that is now in physical weapon form. Uh.
Speaker 1: It is. There. There's a little bit of sort of
Speaker 1: Eastern design to it as well. It's reminiscent of of
Speaker 1: the scharoken that are attributed to the Japanese martial arts.
Speaker 1: For the most part, there's also a little bit of
Speaker 1: a South Asian flair to it. It reminds one of
Speaker 1: the chockrame weapon, a spinning blade weapon. I looked it
Speaker 1: up on Etsy and there are sellers who appear to
Speaker 1: have created glave fidget spinners, which is just perfect. That's great.
Speaker 1: And of course it's also a magical weapon, and in
Speaker 1: this movie, anything magical might also be possibly technological. So
Speaker 1: it also reminds me a lot of the flying silver
Speaker 1: Balls of Death from the Phantasm movies in the sense
Speaker 1: that it doesn't really have to behave in a way
Speaker 1: that makes sense from like a physics or aerodynamics point
Speaker 1: of view. No, it's like a flying starfish circular saw
Speaker 1: that you control with telekinesis right. I'm still thinking about
Speaker 1: that comment you cited that it's a first time Dungeon
Speaker 1: Masters campaign that is so perfect, because I would say
Speaker 1: one of the main reasons for that is that the
Speaker 1: connections from set piece to set piece are very flimsy.
Speaker 1: It's just always like, well, we have to go here now,
Speaker 1: and and that gets you to the next scene that
Speaker 1: you wanted to show. But could you explain why they
Speaker 1: were going from one thing to another? It's I think
Speaker 1: it's rare that you could credit or credits are doing
Speaker 1: the exact one sentence review for this from a letterbox
Speaker 1: from someone about the user name Cinema of Void Rights.
Speaker 1: It's like watching a first time d M test running
Speaker 1: a campaign of a level two parties searching for a
Speaker 1: plus five fidget spinner to fight a space goblin. So
Speaker 1: fidget spinner, there you go. Yeah, a bit harsh, but fair.
Speaker 1: They only gave it one and a half stars. I
Speaker 1: I would give it. I would give it five glades.
Speaker 1: Five glades easy. You would sacrifice all five of your
Speaker 1: fingers in the process of giving it five glaves. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's get to the elevator pitch here. I would just
Speaker 1: give it a brief one. I would say, it's dungeons
Speaker 1: and lasers. That's a that's a great tagline. Rob. I
Speaker 1: feel like I have been at least lately forgetting that
Speaker 1: the elevator pitch is actually supposed to be a straightforward
Speaker 1: description of the movie. So I wanted to be yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I've forgotten that lately, and so this time I remembered that.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, wait, okay, so let me try
Speaker 1: to do that, just so you understand what we're talking about. Um. So,
Speaker 1: like an evil mountain arrives from space and it settles
Speaker 1: down on the world of Kroll. Kroll again is the
Speaker 1: name of the planet. And from this evil space mountain
Speaker 1: pour forth the Slayers who are laser blasting shock troops
Speaker 1: who terrorized the peaceful villages of this magical planet. In
Speaker 1: response to Kingdoms of Krull planned a unite by joining
Speaker 1: by joining in marriage the heirs to their thrones, and
Speaker 1: these are Prince Cowen and Princess Lisa. But before they
Speaker 1: can they can get all their act together, Princess Lissa
Speaker 1: is kidnapped by the Beast, the vile ruler of the
Speaker 1: Space Mountain. Can Cowen save the princess? Probably? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a really good shot head pulling that off.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to strailer audio.
Speaker 1: Here on a distant planet, a great kingdom was ravaged
Speaker 1: by beings who came from the future to conquer the universe.
Speaker 1: Now the only survivors follow a doubtful scene and its
Speaker 1: own was king. They will hold her in the black forts.
Speaker 1: You must have help at the end. Living in possible journey,
Speaker 1: they must fight an invincible enemy. Use knowledge your seat,
Speaker 1: I shall be your ky. Columbia Pictures presents a world
Speaker 1: apart from anything you have seen before. Grow see sounds
Speaker 1: pretty delightful. It sounds like a big budget eighties swashbuckling
Speaker 1: fantasy sci fi adventure with the James Horner score. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: As we'll discuss, this is James Horner score for sure,
Speaker 1: so it's it's it's not my favorite score in the world.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite James Horner score, but it's pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's pretty solid. It does everything it needs to do.
Speaker 1: It's not my favorite either, but it has that that
Speaker 1: majesty all the kind of like fluttering brass of the
Speaker 1: orchestra always kind of uh, every other scene sounds like
Speaker 1: a coronation him. Yes, all right. When it comes to
Speaker 1: availability for this film, well, it's widely available. I think
Speaker 1: we both watched it on HBO Max, so it's available
Speaker 1: there at least for now until they take it down.
Speaker 1: They seem to be changing things around a lot over there.
Speaker 1: But but as of right now, they still have a
Speaker 1: lot of good films in the in the collection. Karl
Speaker 1: has also been released in various blue rays, DVD, VHS
Speaker 1: of course, and special editions over the years. There's even
Speaker 1: a VHS style blu ray that came out that really
Speaker 1: captures the original awesomeness of the VHS tape, which I
Speaker 1: fondly remember seeing on the shelves at VHS rental stores
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, because it ultimately looks it
Speaker 1: looks super scary. I think I was a little afraid
Speaker 1: of this VHS box because you see our heroes in
Speaker 1: the foreground and in the background they've merged the Beast
Speaker 1: and the Black Fortress together, and it's just absolutely horrifying.
Speaker 1: He's staring right into my soul with his blood red
Speaker 1: eyes yeah, the mountain is the beast's face. That does
Speaker 1: not happen in the movie. But I also like, is
Speaker 1: this a real picture of the VHS boxes? That tagline? Right? Um,
Speaker 1: I think so. I think this is an accurate recreation
Speaker 1: of the VHS box. Okay, well then I just have
Speaker 1: to share it says journey into a mystical time where
Speaker 1: a horrible beast is the ruler. I feel like somebody
Speaker 1: could have put some more effort into that man maybe.
Speaker 1: So now, coming back to what we've been talking about
Speaker 1: with the basic plot of KRALL versus the this the
Speaker 1: the overall visual style of it. I think that's ultimately
Speaker 1: where KRALL excels via its sets, via its costumes. By
Speaker 1: all accounts, the genesis of this film was it was
Speaker 1: a studio desire for a big fantasy holm and I
Speaker 1: think originally it was going to be a lot more
Speaker 1: uh traditional, and that the beast wasn't going to be
Speaker 1: a space titan, he was going to be a dragon.
Speaker 1: But but they changed over time, and clearly folks were
Speaker 1: brought in to just really breathe a great deal of
Speaker 1: visual life into this piece. It's almost like they gave
Speaker 1: some extremely talented people a coloring book or a paint
Speaker 1: by numbers sort of a thing, and they're like, this
Speaker 1: is the movie we're making. Um, just do what do
Speaker 1: what you can with it. And boy did they ever.
Speaker 1: Like every little corner of the coloring book is just
Speaker 1: colored in with pigments you wouldn't expect or didn't expect
Speaker 1: or didn't know existed. Uh, and it makes it delightful.
Speaker 1: Like some of the choices they make. It's like, for instance,
Speaker 1: it's not an earthlike merely an earthlike planet. No, it's
Speaker 1: a planet with two sons. It's not a dragon, it's
Speaker 1: a space titan. It doesn't live in a just a
Speaker 1: cavern or a castle that lives in a space mountain
Speaker 1: that came from down from the heavens. Uh. There's not
Speaker 1: a magic sword, there's a magic glave. And yeah, everything
Speaker 1: has this wonderful weird sheen to it and they're fabulous
Speaker 1: weird details that are not explained at all, And that's
Speaker 1: something I love in a film like this. I agree
Speaker 1: it's very much a genre mashup. Is this sci fi
Speaker 1: or is this fantasy? It? It doesn't, it doesn't commit
Speaker 1: either way. It's just it's just pulling in whatever seems
Speaker 1: cool in in any given scene. Now, we were also
Speaker 1: enjoying the detail that there was a video game adaptation
Speaker 1: of Krawl was available in the arcades and on a
Speaker 1: hom Atari system. So, first of all, I think this
Speaker 1: is a pretty good looking game given its context. But
Speaker 1: also the main thing I love about it is the
Speaker 1: sound effects. It has these chip generated sound effects that
Speaker 1: are just oh, there's a sound that it makes when
Speaker 1: you're a little coal one sprite picks up an item,
Speaker 1: like when it grabs a piece of the glade. It's
Speaker 1: so good. I wonder if we could even sample that
Speaker 1: sound effect. Can't you just imagine that that sound playing
Speaker 1: anytime you like, pick up a dish to put it
Speaker 1: in the dishwasher. Yeah, it's so perfectly muddy and glitchy
Speaker 1: and fun. Um. I have to say to looking at
Speaker 1: not not merely the arcade cabinet for this, which of
Speaker 1: course many of these arcade cabinets look terrific, but just
Speaker 1: looking at stills from the arcade game at least, I
Speaker 1: was impressed by how much it actually looked like the
Speaker 1: film that was based on. Like I could look at
Speaker 1: the details and be like, oh, those are the Slayers, Okay,
Speaker 1: that's the beast running around. That's clearly the glade being
Speaker 1: thrown about. So um yeah, unlike I can think of
Speaker 1: other examples where you look at it at screenshots from
Speaker 1: these older games, you're like, really, that's supposed to be et.
Speaker 1: That's Indiana Jones. I don't know, I muna say. In
Speaker 1: the poster for the game, Colwan looks right that the
Speaker 1: artist successfully rendered this guy. But Princess Lissa here, they
Speaker 1: gave her a spherical haircut. Yeah, and she has like
Speaker 1: some really deep eyeshadow. I don't remember if she ever
Speaker 1: ended up looking like this in the movie, but she
Speaker 1: looks like she has decided to wed the beasts. Like
Speaker 1: she looks like the princess in peril in in uh
Speaker 1: in the legend, after she has decided that she will
Speaker 1: uh marry or she's been sort of ensourcefuled into dancing
Speaker 1: around with the the villain and that was he also
Speaker 1: called the beast. I can't remember what his name was. Um,
Speaker 1: he's just called evil or some darkness, I think, yes, darkness, Yes,
Speaker 1: Tim Curry, Tim Curry and about a thousand pounds of
Speaker 1: late x and and so forth. All right, let's do
Speaker 1: those connections. Yeah, we have quiet, We have quite a
Speaker 1: selection of talented individuals involved here. Uh, I think I
Speaker 1: can safely say for none of them was this their
Speaker 1: finest work. Well, for a couple of them this might
Speaker 1: have been their their biggest film. But for the most
Speaker 1: part we have several individuals who had done greater things
Speaker 1: before would go on to greater things. At the top
Speaker 1: here we have the director Peter Yates, who lived through
Speaker 1: eleven British TV and film director probably I think probably
Speaker 1: best known for nineteen Bullets starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bassett
Speaker 1: and Robert Vaughan, featuring one of, if not the best
Speaker 1: car chase has ever committed to film. Actually have not
Speaker 1: seen Bullet. I know it's famous for for the car chase. Also,
Speaker 1: I did not realize Robert Vaughan was in it. Who
Speaker 1: was in Batt'll Beyond the Stars. We talked extensively about
Speaker 1: Robert Vaughan's career as a guy in lawyer commercials. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a pretty prominent role in Bullet, as I recall,
Speaker 1: It's been a long time since I've seen it, but um,
Speaker 1: but it's a classic. Yates also directed nineteen seventy seven's
Speaker 1: The Deep, based on the novel of the same name
Speaker 1: about double shipwrecks and Barracoutas from Peter Benchley, and that
Speaker 1: start also started um Jacqueline Bassett, Nick Nolty, Robert Shaw
Speaker 1: and Louis Gossett Jr. I've always wanted to see that one,
Speaker 1: but I haven't. Yeah, it looks very it's it's very wet,
Speaker 1: very wet looking film. Um And and I heard what
Speaker 1: it's got A It's like they're going for one ship, right,
Speaker 1: but there's another ship wreck underneath it, like they're going
Speaker 1: for the heroine shipwreck, but that is on top. It
Speaker 1: turns out on top of like a Spanish galleon or
Speaker 1: something that has a bunch of gold in it. And
Speaker 1: then I think they're Baracoutis. But again I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it or read it myself. Not Sharks baracouta Is this time. Yeah, yeah. Now.
Speaker 1: Yates also directed The Year of the Comet, The Dresser
Speaker 1: starring Albert Finney, two time Academy Award nominee for The
Speaker 1: Dresser and also for nineteen seventy nine Breaking Away. So
Speaker 1: you have a talented director here helming this thing, though,
Speaker 1: I think if you look at his other films, like
Speaker 1: this is the only one that's really kind of a
Speaker 1: big budget genre piece. So I think he was branching
Speaker 1: out and trying something new here. Yeah. I read somewhere
Speaker 1: that he he sort of looked at this as as
Speaker 1: an amusing challenge, like that this is not somebody who's
Speaker 1: otherwise going to be making fantasy films. He's like, well,
Speaker 1: I wonder if I could do it now. The writer
Speaker 1: on this, or at least the right I don't recall
Speaker 1: the history on the screenplay exactly, but our final credited
Speaker 1: right or who gets all the credit is Stanford Sherman.
Speaker 1: Dates unknown on Stanford here, but he's a screenwriter who
Speaker 1: wrote for such shows as TV shows as The Man
Speaker 1: from Uncle and the six nine sixties Batman series, multiple
Speaker 1: episodes of that. His film screenplays and include Kroll The
Speaker 1: Man who Wasn't There, which is a Steve Guttenberg Invisible
Speaker 1: Man movie, and is The Ice Pirates. Oh okay, so
Speaker 1: The Man who Wasn't There? Not the Cohen Brothers movie, right, right,
Speaker 1: This is a Steve Guttenberg Invisible Man movie. I'm I
Speaker 1: believe it is a comedy, but you know, all the
Speaker 1: best to the goot, but I'm not in a big
Speaker 1: hurry to watch this movie. Oh but you mentioned Ice Pirates.
Speaker 1: That's something people have told us to cover on Weird House. Yeah,
Speaker 1: i'd have to. I only have vague memories of watching
Speaker 1: Ice Pirates. I can't remember how inappropriate it is, So
Speaker 1: that's one of those that will require a review first. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, let's get into the wonderful cast for this film,
Speaker 1: starting though with the star playing Cowlin, which, again it's
Speaker 1: really hard to not to say clown reading this name,
Speaker 1: but played by Ken Marshall, who was born nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: and American Juilliard trained actor. Acted from nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 1: through two thousand and three. He may also be familiar
Speaker 1: to some of our listeners as Lieutenant Commander Michael Eddington
Speaker 1: on Deep Space nine. I'm a little foggy on these episodes,
Speaker 1: but I think he's like a trader to the Federation
Speaker 1: who ends up joining up with the one of that
Speaker 1: rag tag group of civilizations that had like the Shape Changer,
Speaker 1: the changeling species in it, and some other creatures. He
Speaker 1: also played Marco Polo in a three mini series and
Speaker 1: also appeared in the movie Feds. Um. I have to say,
Speaker 1: like I I agree, he's not maybe the best in
Speaker 1: this but I feel like in those scenes that have good,
Speaker 1: well written dialogue, and he's also surrounded by often an
Speaker 1: incredible group of of more talented, more experienced actors. I
Speaker 1: found that I bought his charismatic you know, you know,
Speaker 1: raising everybody up, getting everybody united, his little speeches and
Speaker 1: so forth. I bought into that. So at least some
Speaker 1: of the time, I find that he works pretty well
Speaker 1: on screen. Oh sure, I mean he I mean I
Speaker 1: was making a little bit of fun. But also he
Speaker 1: is fun in the role, like I would not replace
Speaker 1: Ken Marshall here, right alright. His his love interest, of course,
Speaker 1: is Princess Uh Lisa is it? Lisa Lissa Lissa l
Speaker 1: y s s a play by Lisette Anthony, British actor
Speaker 1: known for such titles as Dracula Dead and Loving It,
Speaker 1: Husbands and Wives, and reboot of Dark Shadows. She also
Speaker 1: appears in the Anton Corbin music video for the solid
Speaker 1: depeche Mode song I Feel for You. I don't really
Speaker 1: remember this music video, but it's a solid track. It's
Speaker 1: not one of the depeche Mode tracks that annoys me.
Speaker 1: She also did an episode of Tales from the crypt Forever, Ambergriss.
Speaker 1: This is an episode that had Roger Daltry and Steve
Speaker 1: you Sime in it. And uh, yeah, she's a kidnapped
Speaker 1: princess in this movie, so her performance hits all the
Speaker 1: expected notes for that kind of a role. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I also was reading that her voice was apparently dubbed
Speaker 1: in the final cut, so we have to take that
Speaker 1: into account. I was noticing that in nearly every scene
Speaker 1: there's a bit of a twinkle in her eye, like
Speaker 1: she's almost on the edge of playing it for comedy. Uh.
Speaker 1: I sense an awareness of the campiness of the movie
Speaker 1: that a little bit comes through on the screen, like, Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean this not in an insulting way. She plays
Speaker 1: the role almost as if she's playing kind of like
Speaker 1: a princess in an SNL sketch. Yeah. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: if it is the right tone for this because, like
Speaker 1: you say, it bordering on comedy without actually venturing into
Speaker 1: that territory, without actually subverting the film or the role
Speaker 1: to any extent. Yeah, I can see that twinkle. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: you can't have a story like this without a wizard
Speaker 1: in it, and actually we have multiple wizards in this film,
Speaker 1: but we have at least one who really knows what
Speaker 1: he's doing. I bet you also didn't think you get
Speaker 1: a Dune crossover in Krawl. Oh yeah, we got at
Speaker 1: least a couple of them. Here. This is the character
Speaker 1: and who I'm I'm blanking on how we pronounced this one.
Speaker 1: It's why inn, Why are so unior? Yeah? Uinier uinear Yes,
Speaker 1: a kind of wizard and seer uh and just general
Speaker 1: wise dude, he's putting the party together. He's the one
Speaker 1: who shows up after stuff goes goes poorly and says,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to we need to solve this
Speaker 1: peace problem. Played by the wonderful Freddie Jones, who lived
Speaker 1: through twenty nineteen. And Yeah, he's a real treat in this.
Speaker 1: He's got a he's got a strong screen presence. He's
Speaker 1: one of I think the central grounding performances in the film.
Speaker 1: H Every scene he's in, he can he breathes a
Speaker 1: sort of seriousness in life into it. The Dune crossover,
Speaker 1: of course, is that he played through for Hollatt in
Speaker 1: David Lynch's eighty four adaptation of Dune. He was also
Speaker 1: in Lynch's nineteen eighty film The Elephant Man. He did
Speaker 1: he did a lot of TV work. He also had
Speaker 1: memorable roles in such films as eighty five is Young
Speaker 1: Sherlock Holmes, Firestarter, the nineteen eighty two Clint Eastwood, UH
Speaker 1: Fighter Jet SR seventy one movie Firefox, and n Zulu Dawn.
Speaker 1: What would you call his facial hair style in this
Speaker 1: in Krall? I don't know what the exact name for that.
Speaker 1: It's like a mustache that goes down and becomes two
Speaker 1: beardlets on either side. And the great thing I included
Speaker 1: this for you, Joe, is if you put his character
Speaker 1: and Krall next to his character in Dune, it basically
Speaker 1: looks like his beard pieces were subsequently removed after the
Speaker 1: filming of Krall and pasted on his eyebrows for the character.
Speaker 1: And it's just a face wristole inversion. I was thinking
Speaker 1: of the two parts of his beard as lobes, like
Speaker 1: his beard has two lobes, like the lobes of a brain.
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, I don't know, I I can't think
Speaker 1: of anywhere else I've seen this. Anyways, he's great, like
Speaker 1: I said, anytime he's on screen, he's got a very
Speaker 1: loud presence that I think works really well, really fills
Speaker 1: up those big, huge sets in a way that a
Speaker 1: lot of performances don't. And this character also has a
Speaker 1: love interest of sorts as well. Discuss the Widow of
Speaker 1: the Web played by Francesca honest Uh born English actor,
Speaker 1: known for her roles as Lady Jessica in David Lynch's
Speaker 1: Dune from So there's our other Dune connection. She was
Speaker 1: Lily in the mini series of the same name. She
Speaker 1: was Lady Macbeth in that pretty great ninetevent one adaptation
Speaker 1: starring John Finch that was was long one of my
Speaker 1: favorite Macbeth adaptations. And anyway, she's been very active in film,
Speaker 1: TV and theater over the years, and was active as
Speaker 1: recently as She plays a nice tragic role in this.
Speaker 1: But you know what else you didn't think you were
Speaker 1: going to get in Krall is the Green bass Vampire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had. For the most part, I forgot he was
Speaker 1: in this. I think all subsequent viewings of Krall came
Speaker 1: before I really appreciated the awesomeness of Alan Armstrong, who
Speaker 1: plays a a bandit um, an axe wielding bandit ruler
Speaker 1: who answers to no man and wears a spiked choker
Speaker 1: around his neck. So that nobody can strangle him. Um,
Speaker 1: this is the thirty seven year old Alan Armstrong uh
Speaker 1: Boord six. We've talked about him here before on the show.
Speaker 1: He was of course in Split Second, but we mainly
Speaker 1: discussed him in our episode on the brilliant snooker musical
Speaker 1: Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. I have
Speaker 1: to point out that the Wikipedia page for Kroll describes
Speaker 1: his character in Krull Torquil as quote a man who
Speaker 1: favors an act and as a leader of a group
Speaker 1: of bandits. You know you've really made an impression when
Speaker 1: the first thing they say about you is that you
Speaker 1: favor an ax. He does always have a super shiny
Speaker 1: axe on him. But this is a great role. This
Speaker 1: is especially for Alan Armstrong, who who has you know,
Speaker 1: as a great character actor doesn't always have a like
Speaker 1: a really central staying role in a picture, but in
Speaker 1: this he has a lot of screen time. He's an
Speaker 1: interesting character that actually has probably has more of a
Speaker 1: character arc than some of the other characters in the film.
Speaker 1: Like he goes through changes, he's uh, there's this sort
Speaker 1: of oh and I you know, what are we in
Speaker 1: this for? As bandits? Do we just want to steal
Speaker 1: emeralds and make off. Do we care about the future
Speaker 1: of the world of Krull uh So? Really, I think
Speaker 1: Torquoil here has there's a lot more going on with
Speaker 1: him compared to some of the other characters. Torquel's great
Speaker 1: alan arms trying. He just has like unwashed charm for days.
Speaker 1: Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, this is another one of the performances
Speaker 1: that I think really cements the picture. You know what
Speaker 1: else I I actually thought was a pretty good performance
Speaker 1: is the comic relief character Ergo. Yeah, Parigo the Wizard
Speaker 1: the he seems to mainly specialize in transmutation spells. That's
Speaker 1: pretty much all we see him doing, um trying to
Speaker 1: turn people into animals and failing, trying to turn himself
Speaker 1: into the right animal and failing, finally pulling through in
Speaker 1: the end. But yet played by David Batley who lived
Speaker 1: five through two thousand and three, and he has that
Speaker 1: he has that sort of Eric Idol Nigel Planner manner
Speaker 1: and physicality to him that works really well for a
Speaker 1: comedic performance in a comedic presence, and he mostly did
Speaker 1: comedic roles on stage and screen. As soon as he
Speaker 1: showed up, Rachel was like he's in Charlie and the
Speaker 1: Chocolate Factory. Yeah. Yeah, he plays at what a care
Speaker 1: to name? Mr Turcantine. I haven't seen this Willy Wonkin
Speaker 1: a bit, so I don't recall exactly how he factors
Speaker 1: into the stories of the doom Children. Rachel thought he
Speaker 1: was a teacher in a school. That would make sense,
Speaker 1: so I guess that would be at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the movie. I'm not sure. Yeah, outside of those two
Speaker 1: big films, those are the two big films I think
Speaker 1: for this guy. He mostly did TV, and especially after Krawl,
Speaker 1: it was mostly television. You may already get the sense
Speaker 1: that we're meeting a lot of characters in this movie,
Speaker 1: but it just keeps going right. Yeah, because we also
Speaker 1: have a Cyclops, a memorable cinematic Cyclops played by Bernard
Speaker 1: Breslaw lived who lived ninety four through a towering six
Speaker 1: ft seven British actor. Uh in this playing a curse
Speaker 1: Cyclops with second sight in a weird trident weapon. Uh.
Speaker 1: This actor, I've seen him in at least one other thing.
Speaker 1: He has a really fun goon roll in The Delicious
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. I think it's a hammer for auction,
Speaker 1: a groovy space movie called Moon zero two, and he
Speaker 1: has also also had roles in the carry On movies
Speaker 1: in Britain and also nineteen seven Jabberwockie. I have to
Speaker 1: say that I think unfortunately the Cyclops in this movie
Speaker 1: is not a great creature design, at least not in
Speaker 1: the way they intended. But I loved every time the
Speaker 1: Cyclops showed up because he he looked so amazingly humorous,
Speaker 1: like they make the Cyclops very placid and awkward and
Speaker 1: stiff in his movements, and I was wondering, why is
Speaker 1: he like that? Why is he so placid and awkward?
Speaker 1: And then I realized it's because, well, he's not really
Speaker 1: getting to act with much of his real face, and
Speaker 1: he can't see he can't see in his costume, so
Speaker 1: his movements are necessarily very constricted. And the effect of
Speaker 1: all this put together oddly made me keep thinking of
Speaker 1: him as trumpy and pod people. Yeah, this brings me
Speaker 1: back to a discussion we had in an episode on
Speaker 1: Metal Storm that is aduction of Jared Sin because that movie,
Speaker 1: of course has some Cyclops characters in it, and they
Speaker 1: created the Cyclops effect by deciding, Okay, we're gonna have
Speaker 1: like a mutation type thing going on, where one eye
Speaker 1: of the actor is obscured and only one eye of
Speaker 1: the faces in use, which gives it a unique look
Speaker 1: but also allows the actor to see and to act
Speaker 1: through their own facial expressions to a degree that Bernard
Speaker 1: here was not permitted to do. So, Yeah, you put
Speaker 1: somebody in what I think is still ultimately pretty good
Speaker 1: Cyclops costume, but they are just severe limitations by putting
Speaker 1: that effect in place on someone. If you watch it
Speaker 1: again with this in mind, that like the actor couldn't see,
Speaker 1: it makes a lot more sense when you see the
Speaker 1: way he moves like that. It always looks so funny,
Speaker 1: the way he kind of like it is very constrained,
Speaker 1: and the way he kind of rotates his body in
Speaker 1: order to do things, And I think it's because he's
Speaker 1: just he's trying to be careful not to run into
Speaker 1: or trip over things. Yeah, I mean, it's one of
Speaker 1: the limitations of the Cyclops does lie. This is why,
Speaker 1: to this day, one of the best and most memorable,
Speaker 1: if not the best Cyclops effect is Ray Harry Howsen's
Speaker 1: uh uh stop motion Cyclops creature. And I can't even
Speaker 1: remember which film it's from. But I think if if,
Speaker 1: if you're listening to this, you probably can picture in
Speaker 1: your mind. All right, well, let's let's get into some
Speaker 1: of the other actors here. Uh, this is a lesser
Speaker 1: bandit character in the film that still has kind of
Speaker 1: a story arc to him, character art to him. And
Speaker 1: this is Keegan played by Liam Neeson. Oh boy, Liam Neeson,
Speaker 1: you know you can you can see his star power
Speaker 1: shining through even though this is a small role. He
Speaker 1: plays a bandit who the main thing we know about
Speaker 1: him is that he's a horrible two timer who has
Speaker 1: like nine different wives who don't know about each other.
Speaker 1: That's right. Yeah, there's not much to go on here.
Speaker 1: And yet yeah, he's basically, you know, physically, he's a
Speaker 1: big guy. So he's playing this this kind of hulking
Speaker 1: brood of a of a bandit, but he's got a
Speaker 1: twinkle in his and yeah, the Nissan magic is able
Speaker 1: to shine through a bit here, even though it's a
Speaker 1: bit part. And I don't I don't imagine I need
Speaker 1: to say anymore about about Liam Neeson. You know Liam Neeson,
Speaker 1: uh now mostly known as in his post taken career
Speaker 1: as a as an older action star. But yeah, and
Speaker 1: then he had the you know, the whole series of
Speaker 1: films there we know Schindler's List, But even before sun
Speaker 1: There's list was he was in like two movies that
Speaker 1: I've always loved. He was in the six film The Mission. Uh,
Speaker 1: not a huge part in that, but but but memorable.
Speaker 1: And of course he's the lead in nine nine dark Man,
Speaker 1: which was a tremendously fun film at the time. Even
Speaker 1: in Krull, he has a particular set of skills, but
Speaker 1: those skills are favoring an acts and cheating on his wives. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. Alright, Let's get into some of these other
Speaker 1: characters in the party, this enormous party. I mean, really,
Speaker 1: this is just wear any dungeon master out. Some of
Speaker 1: these have to be a player nonplayer characters. How many
Speaker 1: characters are we at now? We're not even doing all
Speaker 1: of them? Were just okay, well we gotta have At
Speaker 1: some point they're like, uh um, how are we going
Speaker 1: to figure out where the fortresses because it teleports every day. Well,
Speaker 1: we need a see her, right, you gotta have a
Speaker 1: see here. So that that means they go to a
Speaker 1: seer by the name of see Her, I believe, or
Speaker 1: he's credited as such, and this is played by John Welch,
Speaker 1: who of nineteen fourteen through ninety five, longtime British TV
Speaker 1: actor who also appeared in such films as nineteen seventies Cromwell,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, The Man Who Haunted Himself and a very
Speaker 1: small part in Charles B. Pierce's nineteen seventy eight Viking
Speaker 1: movie The Norseman WHOA Yeah, I haven't seen that one yet.
Speaker 1: But Charles B. Pierce of course gave us the Boggy
Speaker 1: Creek movies and a Viking saga. Gave us that as
Speaker 1: a gift. Yes, yes, he gave These are cinematic gifts
Speaker 1: that he bestowed upon the world. Was Boggy Creek to
Speaker 1: one of like the I don't know, like second or
Speaker 1: third movies we did on on Weird House. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it was. It was pretty pretty early on. Uh.
Speaker 1: That was That was a fun one. That one starred
Speaker 1: Charles p Pierce. Remember that. That's that's a Charles B.
Speaker 1: Pierce tour to force, written, directed and starring. Can't beat
Speaker 1: that trio. All right, we have another bandit here. We
Speaker 1: have a run played by the great Robbie Coltrane born
Speaker 1: Robbie Coltrane. I know him, yeah, yeah, probably best known
Speaker 1: for his role as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies.
Speaker 1: We of course also had a memorable run in the
Speaker 1: James Bond franchise in Britain, who was on TV's Cracker.
Speaker 1: Other roles include parts in Van Helsing from Hell, Henry
Speaker 1: the Five, and a very bit role you know, I
Speaker 1: was surprised to see this in nineteen eighties Flash Gordon.
Speaker 1: He is man at airfield in that. In that, so
Speaker 1: I don't think that is a major role in this movie.
Speaker 1: He has a really funny moment when he uh, he
Speaker 1: gets killed while they're assaulting the fortress, the Beasts fortress
Speaker 1: at the end, and after he gets shot by the slayers,
Speaker 1: everybody has to run over to him so they can
Speaker 1: listen to him give a death monologue. But then it's
Speaker 1: just like the journey was worth it. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: I'd read that his voice was apparently dubbed in the
Speaker 1: final cut of this movie as well. And oh what
Speaker 1: a mess alright, So the cast also there there are
Speaker 1: other folks involved in this. I don't think we even
Speaker 1: hit everybody in the party. But moving on to some
Speaker 1: of the behind the scenes stuff we already mentioned James Horner,
Speaker 1: who lived fifty three through composed known for scores such
Speaker 1: as Battle Beyond the Stars, but also Alien Star Trek,
Speaker 1: To the Wrath of con Willow, Field of Dreams, many more.
Speaker 1: I think Avatar was one of his final even not
Speaker 1: his final score, and his score to the Name of
Speaker 1: the Rose remains one of my favorites, certainly one of
Speaker 1: my favorites hit my favorite James Horner uh score, but
Speaker 1: also just one of my favorite scores in general. I
Speaker 1: feel like he really pulled that one off. This one,
Speaker 1: as we've said, is more of a traditional eighties fantasy
Speaker 1: fanfare adventure score. Alright, look into some more behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff here. The director of photography was Peter shows
Speaker 1: Just Sky born ninety one, Polish born cinematographer who is
Speaker 1: well known for his work with David Cronenberg on such
Speaker 1: films as Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, but also various
Speaker 1: other Cronenberg films. He also worked on the rocky horror
Speaker 1: picture show Mars Attacks and The Little Picture by the
Speaker 1: Name of the Empire Strikes Back. Um production designer on
Speaker 1: this was Stephen Grimes seven through eight award winning production
Speaker 1: designer known for Out of Africa and Never Say Never
Speaker 1: Again um from and eighty three respectively, among many others.
Speaker 1: And then I also noticed that an art direction credit
Speaker 1: goes to Tony Curtis. Uh, not that Tony Curtis, but
Speaker 1: um the production designer art designer Tony Curtis, who with
Speaker 1: thirty seven through one, who did a lot of like
Speaker 1: seventies amicast horror movies and also worked on the snake
Speaker 1: movie Venom from one that we previously discussed. So at
Speaker 1: this point, all the playing pieces are on the table.
Speaker 1: It's time. It's time to crawl. It's time to crawl
Speaker 1: down on some crawl all right. I know this is
Speaker 1: the most overdone physics pedant thing to point out in
Speaker 1: a movie. I don't usually mention it these days, but
Speaker 1: I thought it was funny by virtue of its prominence.
Speaker 1: The very first thing that happens in this movie is
Speaker 1: a depiction of sound in outer space. Uh So there's
Speaker 1: a vast field of stars in the void and the orchestras,
Speaker 1: you know, pumping out the kind of coronation overture you
Speaker 1: know that James Horner music with like a weird boys
Speaker 1: choir oong and eyeing. It's almost kind of you can't
Speaker 1: always get what you want. And then we see a glave.
Speaker 1: We see this golden starfish whirling through space towards the camera,
Speaker 1: and the glave is so it's whirling like you know,
Speaker 1: the rotor blades on a helicopter, and it's making helicopter sounds,
Speaker 1: like switching sounds. But not only is it sound in space,
Speaker 1: the sound is directly what would be a result of
Speaker 1: the little starfish finger knives swishing through the air. Now
Speaker 1: you might say, oh, but this is a terrestrial fantasy film,
Speaker 1: but not exactly, because the next thing we see is
Speaker 1: something flying through space. The villains Fortress slash Mountain is
Speaker 1: also a spaceship. Yeah, the Black Fortress. And really this
Speaker 1: this film comes out swinging, uh in terms of just
Speaker 1: like weird stuff that's gonna makes you ask a lot
Speaker 1: of questions, because yeah, here comes this this mountain and
Speaker 1: it has this structure in it, and we see more
Speaker 1: and more of this throughout the film. But I love
Speaker 1: the design of this because it it is essentially an
Speaker 1: evil castle. It is the film's evil castle where the
Speaker 1: evil big bad lives. But it defies easy categorization. Beyond that,
Speaker 1: because it is. It is also a spaceship, it's also
Speaker 1: an asteroid. It's like it's geologic. It feels it is
Speaker 1: it is formed through geology and erosion, but it also feels,
Speaker 1: especially when you get into the occupied portions of it,
Speaker 1: it feels like it was it was was grown, like
Speaker 1: the whole interior castle was extruded by some sort of
Speaker 1: strange space mollusc Yeah. On the outside, a lot of
Speaker 1: the texture we see as columnar basalt, but then when
Speaker 1: we go inside, a lot of the stuff looks like, um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, that kind of like rigid mucus architecture
Speaker 1: made by the creatures and aliens. Yeah, except the cleaner
Speaker 1: and and and well yet yes, yeah, or it's like
Speaker 1: a lot of times you feel like you're inside a
Speaker 1: text book illustration of an ear canal. That's right. Um, So,
Speaker 1: the mountain from space gently settles down on the surface
Speaker 1: of this planet, very slowly, and yet the surface just
Speaker 1: explodes anyway. When it does, it looks like it's settling
Speaker 1: down in the sand hills of Nebraska. And we better
Speaker 1: make friends with Space Mountain because it's going to be
Speaker 1: a major set piece in the movie. You will see
Speaker 1: it over and over, and immediately we get some voiceover narration.
Speaker 1: So I think this is the voice of un Here.
Speaker 1: Youre yes, this is this is this is Freddie Jones
Speaker 1: une hear uine? Hear yeah. The une Here starts saying
Speaker 1: we haven't met him yet, so we don't know who
Speaker 1: he is. It's just voiceover this. It was given to
Speaker 1: me to know that many worlds have been enslaved by
Speaker 1: the Beast and his army, the Slayers, And this too
Speaker 1: was given to me to know that the Beast would
Speaker 1: come to our world, to the world of Krull, and
Speaker 1: his black fortress would be seen in the land, the
Speaker 1: smoke of burning villages would darken the sky, and the
Speaker 1: cries of the dying echo through deserted valleys. And meanwhile
Speaker 1: we see the Slayers for the first time. Um, Rob,
Speaker 1: how would you describe the Slayers? Oh boy, this is
Speaker 1: This is the one of the things that I think
Speaker 1: a lot about trying to figure out the Slayers, because
Speaker 1: the Slayers here, they have this kind of black armor
Speaker 1: that is at once it once it kind of feels
Speaker 1: like some sort of an evil suit of armor from fantasy,
Speaker 1: but it also feels kind of like a space suit.
Speaker 1: Also kind of like an exoskeleton. They have these staffs
Speaker 1: which can be used as a melee weapon but also
Speaker 1: can shoot laser beams like this, So there there's clearly
Speaker 1: some high technology here. They come from another world. They
Speaker 1: ride horses though, um they ride horses into battle again,
Speaker 1: they shoot laser beams, and we also come to find
Speaker 1: out that if you kill one, they admit a high
Speaker 1: pitched squeal. There they crackle with red electricity. Their heads
Speaker 1: explode a kind of like bloody space weasel comes out
Speaker 1: of their head and then burrows into the ground and
Speaker 1: then other pieces of their body kind of self berry
Speaker 1: as well. I have no idea, have no idea, there's
Speaker 1: no explanation exactly what's going on here, but it is
Speaker 1: then it's thoroughly agrigal and otherworldly, an alien and so
Speaker 1: it absolutely works. Yes, I love the Jason goes to
Speaker 1: Hell thing here where they each have it. So the head,
Speaker 1: the helmet thing explodes, the bloody alien slug tongue comes
Speaker 1: out and then like burrows down into the ground. And
Speaker 1: the way I interpreted that, did you get the same thing?
Speaker 1: That like what the slayer actually is the tongue, it's
Speaker 1: the alien slug and that the rest of the body
Speaker 1: is just like a like a suit that the tongue operates.
Speaker 1: It's like crying in the body. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: would make sense. I yeah, it's it's it's either that
Speaker 1: or it's it's like a humanoid body that has been
Speaker 1: repurposed and armored. Because this is the other weird thing
Speaker 1: about it. So this introduction again, which I'm assuming it's
Speaker 1: the voice of your year who we meet later, he's
Speaker 1: talking about, Oh, the prophecy was that the beast would come.
Speaker 1: But then later we hear that, like the beast has
Speaker 1: been here for a very long time, law long enough
Speaker 1: that the Cyclops is that we encounter the Cyclops, we
Speaker 1: encounter like he has like they're his kind, has a
Speaker 1: generational issue with the beast, like he was cursed by
Speaker 1: the beasts and his his people ages ago. So like,
Speaker 1: so he's been here for a while trying to conquer
Speaker 1: the world of Krull, and he has these slayers, which
Speaker 1: may or may not be entirely off world in origin,
Speaker 1: or they might be some sort of It might be
Speaker 1: a situation where they're like, Okay, go capture us some
Speaker 1: more humanoids so we can turn them into slayers. We
Speaker 1: just don't know. We're left to fill in the blanks
Speaker 1: on our own, which again is something I love to
Speaker 1: do in movies like this. The Slayers present an enigma. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: all of that is true. Um okay, but I forget
Speaker 1: I got sidetracked from n years narration here because he's
Speaker 1: not done he's going to talk about. He says, but
Speaker 1: one thing I cannot know, because remember he's been telling
Speaker 1: us all the things that have been given to him
Speaker 1: to know. He says, one thing, I cannot know whether
Speaker 1: the prophecy be true that a girl of ancient name
Speaker 1: shall become queen, that she shall choose a king, and
Speaker 1: that together they shall rule our world, and that their
Speaker 1: son shall rule the galaxy. That we're getting into some
Speaker 1: doune territory here. Yeah, I mean, some of that be true.
Speaker 1: We know that it be true because it ultimately happens
Speaker 1: in the film. Some of this, I don't know the
Speaker 1: whole thing about the prophecy of the child and the galaxy.
Speaker 1: There might have been a mistranslation when he was given
Speaker 1: to know this. We don't even see them have a son.
Speaker 1: Spoiler that there's no son in the movie at all.
Speaker 1: They so we don't even know if the Sun will
Speaker 1: rule Krull, let alone a galaxy. Right this this is
Speaker 1: another the scale of the saga here, of the the
Speaker 1: war between the kingdoms of Krull and the Beast. I
Speaker 1: have a lot of questions about this as well, because
Speaker 1: we never see an enormous force of slayers, and we
Speaker 1: come to know later on. It has given us to
Speaker 1: know that the Black Fortress, even though it arrived via
Speaker 1: a descent from orbit, yet moves around regularly by just
Speaker 1: teleporting from one place to another, never the same place twice,
Speaker 1: so you never know where it's going to be. So
Speaker 1: this keeps a largely medieval civilization from mounting a proper
Speaker 1: siege against the Black Fortress, and it allows the Black
Speaker 1: Fortress to sort of to essentially carry out small raids
Speaker 1: like you don't. They don't have that many slayers, but
Speaker 1: they have good horses apparently, and they have laser weapons,
Speaker 1: so they seems like they can be highly effective in
Speaker 1: surprise strikes. But ultimately, how it seems like they've been
Speaker 1: here on Crawl for a long time. They haven't conquered
Speaker 1: the whole planet yet. Supposedly they're working up to it,
Speaker 1: but it seems like a tall order. Given what the
Speaker 1: beast has at his disposal, we we have no idea
Speaker 1: like what the map looks like? What what does beast
Speaker 1: territory look like? Versus these other kingdoms? We again, we
Speaker 1: have to fill in all these blanks. So I just
Speaker 1: have a hard time imagining, like, well, what is what
Speaker 1: does conquered territory look like? How does we hold territory?
Speaker 1: Is it? Just like I would love to know, what
Speaker 1: does a conquered region look like? Is it people going
Speaker 1: about their normal business but having to like, like harvest
Speaker 1: corn for the beast or build a space laser that
Speaker 1: points at a planet they've never heard of? Does he
Speaker 1: have beast puppet rulers that he leaves behind, and do
Speaker 1: they look like him? Do they have like the fish
Speaker 1: the fish teeth and stuff? Yeah? Or does it do
Speaker 1: they just absolutely destroy everybody and turn all the humans
Speaker 1: they find into slayers? There is it a board situation?
Speaker 1: We didn have no idea. This is why we need
Speaker 1: a cruel series to to take all of this and
Speaker 1: stitch together, you know, a six season story. All right,
Speaker 1: we gotta so in the castle. We're here in a
Speaker 1: castle with the princess. Now, because remember we heard about
Speaker 1: a girl of ancient name, she's gonna become queen and um,
Speaker 1: and so we see her in a castle, and this
Speaker 1: castle is full of guards wearing plastic armor with glossy
Speaker 1: paint that looks kind of like mid priced Iron Man costumes, um,
Speaker 1: but also with more not total body coverage, just like
Speaker 1: the actual armor part is more kind of shoulders and
Speaker 1: then bikini, so it's almost like sexy Iron Man costume.
Speaker 1: This too. The look in the castle, of course, looks
Speaker 1: like a castle, but it's also immaculate. So this also
Speaker 1: made me thinking about the possible sci fi connections, because
Speaker 1: the castle looks like it was three D printed by
Speaker 1: like a colony barge or some sort of a spaceship
Speaker 1: that visited the planet crawl the the traditional armor of
Speaker 1: the kingdom kingdom here they Yeah, it looks like some
Speaker 1: sort of sci fi space armor or the or it's
Speaker 1: the memory of sci fi space armor reproduced for a
Speaker 1: medieval level technology culture. So it's it's strange try and
Speaker 1: figure this out, like what who are the people of Krull?
Speaker 1: Did they? Are? They themselves aliens that came here maybe
Speaker 1: not too long before the Beast arrived? What is going
Speaker 1: on here? I also have thoughts on the decor of
Speaker 1: the still here, because again, this is not the evil
Speaker 1: castle from space. This is the nice castle where the
Speaker 1: princess lives. The doors here look like they have dart
Speaker 1: boards on them. Uh. And I couldn't help but keep
Speaker 1: noticing this feature. That are these random metal torture chairs,
Speaker 1: just like sitting up against the wall in these big
Speaker 1: empty rooms where no one would ever sit. And later
Speaker 1: we see the chairs repeatedly like I don't think anybody
Speaker 1: ever sits in them, but we see when like a
Speaker 1: fight breaks out later the chair is getting kicked over.
Speaker 1: But okay, we gotta meet characters. So we got a princess,
Speaker 1: we got a king. Princess seems melancholy at first, but
Speaker 1: I think she's just waiting for her prince to arrive,
Speaker 1: and he's on the way. This is gonna be Prince Colwin.
Speaker 1: She's gonna marry him, and she's very excited. But her
Speaker 1: father is weirdly disapproving, even though he has explicitly authorized
Speaker 1: this marriage. But he's making comments like, you know, Fease,
Speaker 1: too handsome and confident and too great a warrior. Uh.
Speaker 1: I think the implication is like, wouldn't you rather marry
Speaker 1: a nice scheming, machiavellian backstabber. Um. But their marriage is
Speaker 1: going to be some kind of political arrangement, right, Like
Speaker 1: each one has a daddy who is a king, and
Speaker 1: the two daddy's have agreed to join the forces of
Speaker 1: their kingdoms by marrying their kids together. Right, It's like
Speaker 1: the Rights Romeo and Juliet, except it's about to work.
Speaker 1: It's about to actually, they're about to pull it off.
Speaker 1: And the fathers of are like, Okay, alright, it's fine.
Speaker 1: You can bring peace to our family and we'll reunite,
Speaker 1: will unite our forces, and we'll we'll join forces against
Speaker 1: the beast and save our world. Okay, kids. And it's also,
Speaker 1: to be clear, not like a miserable political marriage. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: it seems like Listen and Colwyn are just really into
Speaker 1: each other, right. And I wanted to highlight one thing
Speaker 1: here in the Castle, which is that usually, as we
Speaker 1: were saying earlier, the sets and locations in this movie
Speaker 1: are are very beautiful. Occasionally there's one that just looks
Speaker 1: pretty hokey, and I would single out the set where
Speaker 1: the where Colwan and his people arrive at the castle
Speaker 1: and there's like a dude, I don't know, Captain of
Speaker 1: the Guard or something standing at the top of a staircase.
Speaker 1: It looks it looks very fake. It looks thrown together,
Speaker 1: like it doesn't look like stone. It looks like a
Speaker 1: wooden staircase that was painted over to look like stone.
Speaker 1: And but it looks like you could swashbuckle all over
Speaker 1: the place here. And that's oh, and they will, they will.
Speaker 1: And so the prince and the princess have a marriage ceremony.
Speaker 1: They're surrounded by all the iron man's and Princess Lissa
Speaker 1: pulls fire out of a bowl of water and hands
Speaker 1: it to the prince. And this is their traditional crull
Speaker 1: style marriage. But oh, the marriage is the wedding is
Speaker 1: interrupted when slayers show up. Slayers right in. They bust
Speaker 1: down the doors of the castle and they attack the wedding.
Speaker 1: And I would say this is a scene where the
Speaker 1: mixed baggy nous of the movie really emerges, because there
Speaker 1: are some shots in this attack sequence that are very
Speaker 1: scary and effective, Like there's a great creepy looking scene
Speaker 1: where the slayers with some kind of apparent anti gravity
Speaker 1: magic or climbing up the walls to go into the castle.
Speaker 1: But then there are other shots that are so bad,
Speaker 1: Like some of the fight choreography in this section is
Speaker 1: especially humorous, very phoned in. People just kind of halfheartedly
Speaker 1: jiggling swords at each other. Yeah, Now, don't look too
Speaker 1: closely at that that special anti gravity technology that the
Speaker 1: Slayers are using, because the string becomes visible at times
Speaker 1: which you can't blame it too much. This reminds me
Speaker 1: of I follow Todd Masters on Instagram as an effects
Speaker 1: guy who's been working in effects for ages, and I
Speaker 1: remember seeing some thread he had going there with some
Speaker 1: other effects guys and they were talking about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember the days when you could just count on
Speaker 1: some VHS grime to cover up the details of an effect.
Speaker 1: You know, like a lot of these were not put
Speaker 1: together thinking you would ever view them, uh at the
Speaker 1: same in the same picture quality that you know, we're
Speaker 1: reviewing them in our homes now. Yeah. Still I'm I'm
Speaker 1: nitpicking here. The Slayers still look nice and creepy scaling
Speaker 1: up that wall. Yes they do. But again, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you actually like stop and try to watch any
Speaker 1: of the fights, like any of the people trading blows here,
Speaker 1: it's some of them they're barely trying. Yeah, yeah, the
Speaker 1: fight choreography here is not amazing. They're still there's there's
Speaker 1: swashbuckling to be had here. There's a lot of jumping around.
Speaker 1: You get the sense of a battle, but maybe not
Speaker 1: those that the details and the nuance that you would
Speaker 1: associate with like a great fight scene, great sword fighting
Speaker 1: or anything. Yeah. Anyway, big effect of this whole sequence
Speaker 1: is the princess is kidnapped by the slayers and taken
Speaker 1: back to the Black Fortress, and everybody else but Colewan
Speaker 1: is killed and then Colwan's left there. He's wounded, he's
Speaker 1: lying on the staircase, he's distraught. Everybody's dead, and Colewan
Speaker 1: is then revived by unear this guy Freddy Jones here
Speaker 1: who introduces himself. He's like, I am in here, and
Speaker 1: um Colewin's like, oh, the old one, and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm not old. But he says, you know, you've come
Speaker 1: down from the Granite mountains. So Colwyn knows who he is.
Speaker 1: This guy's a famous I don't know, profit or magician
Speaker 1: or wise man of some kind. He says he's needed
Speaker 1: now and Colwyn starts crying about his his father being dead.
Speaker 1: Uh though unfortunately it really looks like he's laughing in
Speaker 1: the scene where he's supposed to be crying. Yeah, he's um, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on,
Speaker 1: but he gets a he gets a charge from unier
Speaker 1: youniors like stop crying. You have to go rescue the
Speaker 1: princess and defeat the beast, but first you have to
Speaker 1: get a glave. So here begins our adventure and from
Speaker 1: here on out is just stringing together one set piece
Speaker 1: to the next. So we get a truly beautiful sequence
Speaker 1: where Colin has to go retrieve a glave from the
Speaker 1: top of a mountain, and I think this was a
Speaker 1: shot in in mountains in Italy. But we get all
Speaker 1: these craggy, craggy peaks and and jagged mountain tops and
Speaker 1: Colan's climbing up them to get to the cave, to
Speaker 1: get to the glave cave. But meanwhile we're treated all
Speaker 1: these vistas, um and uh and yeah, this is a
Speaker 1: great looking sequence. Eventually he comes up to the cave
Speaker 1: and has to stick his arm into what looks like
Speaker 1: molten lava in order to retrieve the glave, and it's
Speaker 1: covered in mud, like caked on mud or something. And
Speaker 1: it kind of crackles off and then underneath the brilliance
Speaker 1: of the glave shines through, and he's very excited. I
Speaker 1: like that he he has to do something to get
Speaker 1: the weapon, you know, like you have to pull the
Speaker 1: weapon from the burning fire. It reminds me in the
Speaker 1: recent film, uh, uh the north the Northman? Is it
Speaker 1: the Northman or the Northman? Uh? The Northman the Northman? Okay,
Speaker 1: not the Northman. That was the film. The reference Eli
Speaker 1: and the Northman is a scene where he gets the
Speaker 1: sword and he has to, at least in his own mind, uh,
Speaker 1: fight some sort of an undead eighth in order to
Speaker 1: claim it. Uh. And it feels better when there's a
Speaker 1: trial that has to be overcome to get the weapon,
Speaker 1: as opposed to like say Thrilling Bloody Sword, where our
Speaker 1: main hero he does have to do some swimming. But
Speaker 1: then when he gets to the skeletons like, hey, they
Speaker 1: want my armor and this sword. It's really good stuff.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how it works. And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would love it. That's why I swam here. And
Speaker 1: then he takes off with and there's no trial to overcome.
Speaker 1: That's funny. I didn't compare that scene and thrilling, bloody
Speaker 1: sword to the one in The Northman, but they are
Speaker 1: kind of similar. They have both have to like go
Speaker 1: down into a mound or some kind of cavern to
Speaker 1: get the weapon. But yeah, and the Northman he has
Speaker 1: to fight a drawer. I guess in Conan the Barbarian,
Speaker 1: he doesn't actually fight a skeleton, but he's he's at
Speaker 1: least he has to deal with the wild dogs or
Speaker 1: wolves that have cornered him in the crypt, and he
Speaker 1: has to accept the sword, go out and kill some dogs.
Speaker 1: At least there's that or wolves not dogs for their wolves. Okay, uh.
Speaker 1: Here we get a moment where there's some I think
Speaker 1: very convenient writing to restrict the amount of special effects
Speaker 1: that are gonna have to happen in the movie because
Speaker 1: you and here says to Cole and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't just use the glave now. You gotta wait
Speaker 1: until it's time. And he's like, how well I know
Speaker 1: when it's time and you and he's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: when it's in the final act of the movie and
Speaker 1: you're facing the bad guy. This is not a weapon
Speaker 1: you get to bust out for um encounters leading up
Speaker 1: to the final fight. I think he says, you will
Speaker 1: know when it's time. But here, we're gonna recruit a
Speaker 1: bunch more characters. So we recruit Ergo the Magnificent. This
Speaker 1: is the comic relief character who's a sort of eccentric,
Speaker 1: incompetent magician who's always referencing spells to try to change
Speaker 1: other people into things, but instead ends up changing himself
Speaker 1: into things. He transforms himself into a goose in the
Speaker 1: first scene, I think, yeah, goose. When the Bandits show up,
Speaker 1: he's like, I'll turn the bandits into pigs, and he
Speaker 1: turns himself into like a cute little piglet. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So we meet the bandits there. It's when our heroes,
Speaker 1: having recruited Ergo by the way, sort of accidentally by
Speaker 1: way of Cyclops. Terror like ERGEs like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not going with you. I'm going my own way.
Speaker 1: But then he just encounter runs into a Cyclops and
Speaker 1: then he's like, okay, I'm with you. I'm with you now.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so the characters meet Torque Will that's alanor
Speaker 1: Armstrong and the band of thieves, and it starts with
Speaker 1: the thieves trying to rob them but then Colwan, rather
Speaker 1: cleverly and charismatically, is able to make them join his cause.
Speaker 1: I think it's by saying He's like, well, I'm the
Speaker 1: legitimate king now, so I can have all your crimes forgiven.
Speaker 1: And he demonstrates this by using the key that he
Speaker 1: has from his father's master at arms, I think, to
Speaker 1: unlock all of their manacles. Yeah, but still, I'll an
Speaker 1: Armstrong's character. Torquial has to has to be convinced because
Speaker 1: he's like, we're already free, We're already do what we want.
Speaker 1: Why should we come with you and go on this
Speaker 1: deafinition with you? And and yeah. Basically, our hero rolls
Speaker 1: in natural twenty on his persuasion and gives a nice
Speaker 1: speech and they're like, finally, like other other members of
Speaker 1: the bandit party, uh, they break first and they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I'm with this guy, like this is a
Speaker 1: noble mission, fighting not only for ourselves, but fighting for
Speaker 1: our children, fighting for the future of our world. Will
Speaker 1: join up with him, And finally Alan Armstrong is like,
Speaker 1: all right, well we'll see where this goes. It's a
Speaker 1: solid huss all around. Yeah, So next there I lose again.
Speaker 1: As I said, earlier. You kind of lose track of
Speaker 1: what exactly the reason for each of the next stops
Speaker 1: on the journey is. But they're going somewhere for some reason.
Speaker 1: I think they have to meet a seer in order
Speaker 1: for him to be able to tell them where the
Speaker 1: fortress is. But they're wandering around through a forest and
Speaker 1: they have another encounter with the Cyclops we saw earlier.
Speaker 1: I think the Cyclops sort of pivots out from behind
Speaker 1: a tree and throws a spear at a slayer in
Speaker 1: order to save the life of Ergo the Magnificent. I
Speaker 1: believe that's right, Yes, and ergoes all freaked out. But
Speaker 1: we get some backstory on the Cyclops. The Cyclops says,
Speaker 1: what's the plural cyclopes? The Cyclops is part of a
Speaker 1: member of a you know, a group of cyclops is
Speaker 1: that existed long before when the slayers came to crull
Speaker 1: in the ancient past, and that they fought then and
Speaker 1: ever since then. Every Cyclops has a has a death
Speaker 1: grudge against slayers, and he will attack slayers on site.
Speaker 1: So that's why the Cyclops has been helping them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are truly cursed with second side because they
Speaker 1: can see end of the future, but they see only
Speaker 1: one thing. They see their death. They know where it
Speaker 1: will occur, they know when it will occur, and if
Speaker 1: they try to deviate from their fate, it will only
Speaker 1: ensure that their death is more painful, which always struck
Speaker 1: me like, that's one of the details in the film
Speaker 1: that when I especially want to watch this one was younger,
Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, the boy, that's that's awful, that's
Speaker 1: so tragic. How do you think that interacts with the
Speaker 1: actual cyclops death when we see it later? I was
Speaker 1: thinking that the demise of the Cyclops was very clumsy writing,
Speaker 1: because there's like a scene where he's he says, I
Speaker 1: can't go on with you because I know I'm about
Speaker 1: to die, So I'm gonna die here, and then they leave,
Speaker 1: and then he immediately just follows after them and helps
Speaker 1: them do the next thing and then he dies. Yeah. There,
Speaker 1: it seems like they're needed to be a bit more
Speaker 1: connective tissue, Like there a moment where he's where he realizes, no,
Speaker 1: they really need me, and even though it's going to
Speaker 1: totally mess up my noble death here, I've got to
Speaker 1: go and save them. And so then yeah, he ends up.
Speaker 1: He ends up sort of saying he basically he's just
Speaker 1: kind of suddenly he's there with them, and he I
Speaker 1: guess he kind of holds a door open for them,
Speaker 1: and then he's subsequently crushed by that door and and
Speaker 1: does die horrible death. Right, So, so we learned about
Speaker 1: the cyclops and then on let's see, they collect the Seer,
Speaker 1: and Seer also has like a little kid friend, and
Speaker 1: so they're part of the party. Now the Seer is
Speaker 1: like a ust of this blind old wizard um and uh,
Speaker 1: they're going to a place in the middle of a
Speaker 1: swamp where three trees grow together so that they can
Speaker 1: see where the where the fortress is going to teleport to. Next.
Speaker 1: You have to remember, the Seer tries to uh peek
Speaker 1: in to spy on the beasts whereabouts from his own abode.
Speaker 1: But then the beast like reaches through the magic with
Speaker 1: his six fingered claw and and and stops the Seer.
Speaker 1: So he's like, no, no, we can't do it from here.
Speaker 1: We have to go from into a place where it's safe,
Speaker 1: where the beast can't like triangulate our our location or
Speaker 1: can't use some sort of a counter offense against us.
Speaker 1: It's like a it's like a Saron Palanteer kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They have to find a place where somehow the palanteer
Speaker 1: Saron can't see them through it. Yeah, and the place
Speaker 1: is the swamp overall, but I know you love the
Speaker 1: swamp sequence. Do you want to describe it? Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's I thought it was really effective every time i've
Speaker 1: I've viewed it. It's prety effective because we get the
Speaker 1: slayer attack and you know, we were expecting Slayers to
Speaker 1: to to pop up again. So there's this, there's this fight.
Speaker 1: There's also a fabulous quicksand sequence. Characters get caught in
Speaker 1: in wonderful cinematic quicksand and you get the you know,
Speaker 1: traditional shenanigans involving that. But then we realize all those
Speaker 1: the Beast is so clever because this was this this
Speaker 1: attack was really a distraction because then we see the Seer,
Speaker 1: who I think is supposed to be blind. Um, he's
Speaker 1: he's standing there, he's kind of away from it. He's
Speaker 1: not gonna be in the middle of this combat. He's
Speaker 1: he's standing off to the side, and then suddenly behind
Speaker 1: him is another seer. There's something that has taken on
Speaker 1: his form. And then it reaches out to him and
Speaker 1: like extends its claws and stabs into him, and like
Speaker 1: the actor playing the Seer, he's he emits this horrible
Speaker 1: cry and and and yeah, I find everything with this
Speaker 1: changeling as they later call it, this doppel gang or creature,
Speaker 1: this and sent by the beast to replace the Seer,
Speaker 1: it all comes off really creepy. And it's always creep
Speaker 1: me out anytime I've watched it, something about watching this
Speaker 1: old man suffer, uh, you know, killed in solitude by
Speaker 1: this interloper while everyone's distracted over here with the battle
Speaker 1: in the Quicksand yeah, this part was creepy. And then
Speaker 1: of course the the Seer, I think after this, tries
Speaker 1: to kill Colon, uh the Seer changeling. Yeah, yeah, there's
Speaker 1: an attempt on his life. And then I believe it's
Speaker 1: the Cyclops that skewers him with his trident and all
Speaker 1: he emits this horrible screeching sound when he dies, and
Speaker 1: there's this kind of melting imploding effect, and he also
Speaker 1: his body kind of self buries when it falls. We
Speaker 1: don't see a blood weasel come out of his head,
Speaker 1: but it's it's very evident that this was a creature
Speaker 1: of dark magic sent by the beast. So, oh, we're
Speaker 1: down a seer and now it isn't gonna do any
Speaker 1: good to go to these three trees in the swamp
Speaker 1: because we don't have a seer that can I don't know,
Speaker 1: look at the trees and figure out where the fortress is.
Speaker 1: So we have to go somewhere else. And uineer has
Speaker 1: an idea, right you hear is like, I know the
Speaker 1: widow of the web, but she can tell us where
Speaker 1: the fortress is. Yeah, and this this becomes even more
Speaker 1: complicated because it's revealed that this is sort this is
Speaker 1: years X as well, so he has a they have
Speaker 1: a lot of history. There's a lot of baggage here.
Speaker 1: But also it's it makes it maybe a bit more
Speaker 1: possible as a solution because he has some sort of
Speaker 1: connection here. They're not going to just show up and
Speaker 1: be consumed by a monster. Right. Oh, and we should
Speaker 1: mention on the way I think it's before we get
Speaker 1: to hear that. Uh, there's a there's like a sweet
Speaker 1: interaction where the kid who was with the seer has
Speaker 1: been talking about how if he could have if he
Speaker 1: can only have one wish, he would want a puppy,
Speaker 1: and then uh, ergo, the the selfish, incompetent magician transforms
Speaker 1: himself into a puppy for the kid. Oh yeah, this
Speaker 1: is great. This is yeah because it's a very cute
Speaker 1: like Bassett hound puppy. It's adorable, and it's a much
Speaker 1: better There's a wonderful clumsy moment earlier where the seer
Speaker 1: is clearly dead because we just saw the crumpled body
Speaker 1: of the doppel ganger. And then the whole party comes
Speaker 1: around and the kid is like, he was my only family,
Speaker 1: and then uh, Colin turns human says we're your family now,
Speaker 1: and that's the that's the that's that's that's the entirety
Speaker 1: of their um their grief counseling here. So at least,
Speaker 1: at least we we have a puppy, that is, at
Speaker 1: least one of the characters turns himself into a puppy
Speaker 1: and lets the kid carry the puppy. Earlier, there we
Speaker 1: interaction the kid had said if he could have one wish,
Speaker 1: he would want a puppy, and ERGEs like, why oh
Speaker 1: that you're messing up? Why one puppy when you could
Speaker 1: wish for a hundred, and the kid says I only
Speaker 1: want one, and Ergo just thinks this is stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I like that too. That's another one of these nice
Speaker 1: character interaction scenes. But anyway, onto the Widow of the Web.
Speaker 1: So Junior has to go on by himself because if
Speaker 1: more the one person approaches, the Widow of the Web
Speaker 1: will kill them all immediately. But if he goes alone
Speaker 1: he might have a chance. And so everybody else hangs
Speaker 1: back behind. And this is where we get some nice
Speaker 1: conversation where like Liam Neeson explains about his fourteen wives, uh,
Speaker 1: and some locals coming. Where where did these like women
Speaker 1: come from? When we we see them hanging out with
Speaker 1: the bandits, it's just one of those scenes where suddenly
Speaker 1: there are more people around and in first you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this party is bigger than I thought it was, and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh no, this is these are different people
Speaker 1: that like the people of the forest that they're they're
Speaker 1: hanging out with and getting u you know, a full
Speaker 1: rest so they can restore all their spell slots for
Speaker 1: the encounter as ahead, right, and so oh meanwhile the fortress, uh,
Speaker 1: we get some interactions with the beast and the princess,
Speaker 1: and the beast is like be my wife, and the
Speaker 1: princess is like, I don't want to, and he's like,
Speaker 1: let me show you what your prince is doing, and
Speaker 1: so he pulls up a TV screen pretty much for
Speaker 1: her to watch cole In here being seduced by a
Speaker 1: changeling who's pretending to be a woman here, and she
Speaker 1: I think she's supposed to like make Colewin look bad
Speaker 1: while the princess is watching, uh, and then kill him,
Speaker 1: but instead she's like, you know, oh, let me comfort you,
Speaker 1: and he's like, I I will not accept comfort. And
Speaker 1: so he proves his virtue, he proves his faithfulness while
Speaker 1: the princess is watching him on TV and then uh,
Speaker 1: and then he's so good. The changeling is like, okay,
Speaker 1: well I have to kill you now, but she's like,
Speaker 1: but you're so nice. I can't do it. And so
Speaker 1: I mean, what more could you ask for? What a
Speaker 1: what A? What a stand up guy? Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: a very confusing scene. Yeah, it's a lot going on here,
Speaker 1: but anyway, the princess is like, see see how good
Speaker 1: my my my husband is. Now that's additional reason why
Speaker 1: I'm not going to marry the beast. But okay, so
Speaker 1: in here has to go talk to the Widow of
Speaker 1: the web, who is like a sorcerer us who is
Speaker 1: trapped in a uh sphere in the middle of a
Speaker 1: giant cave surrounded by spider webs because there's a giant
Speaker 1: spider that lives in the cave. And as he approaches
Speaker 1: and tries to get to the sphere, the spider attacks,
Speaker 1: but he manages to make it through and then he
Speaker 1: talks to the enchantress and they have a history together. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's why they talk about it for a while.
Speaker 1: There's there are a a lot of ins and out. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of tragedies. There's a uh deceased son in
Speaker 1: the mix. Like, it's a lot and I every time
Speaker 1: I watch it, I'm left not really having a full
Speaker 1: ideal exactly what their personal history is. But it's well,
Speaker 1: it's well acted, so I'm buying that the history is
Speaker 1: there and that they reach some sort of decision here
Speaker 1: and it involves a magic hour glass and he's given
Speaker 1: the sand from the hour glass and this sometimes how
Speaker 1: helps him get back across the web. And there's that
Speaker 1: big stop motion spider. Uh. I think the deal is
Speaker 1: this The spider would kill him as he was. She
Speaker 1: is able to use her magic to tell him where
Speaker 1: the fortress is going to be, but he can't get
Speaker 1: back out to the mouth of the cave without the
Speaker 1: spider killing him. So she's like, I know, if you
Speaker 1: if you carry the sand from my hour glass in
Speaker 1: your hand, then the spider can't hurt you, but as
Speaker 1: soon as the sand falls out of your hand, you
Speaker 1: will die. Uh. So he's like, okay, So she breaks
Speaker 1: the hour glass. I think that kills her, dooms her
Speaker 1: in some way, and he gets the sand, he leaves,
Speaker 1: he makes it out, and then he tells he gets
Speaker 1: back to his friends, he's like the black fortresses in
Speaker 1: the desert, and then the sand pours out of his
Speaker 1: hand and they're like, oh no, the desert and he's dead.
Speaker 1: Good ride though, good good death. But there's a problem
Speaker 1: because how are we going to get to the desert
Speaker 1: that's very far away? And I think it's the Cyclops
Speaker 1: that suggests, you know what we need, need us some firemars, yes,
Speaker 1: fire mayors of the answer. So we've we've reached the
Speaker 1: part of the film here that that was my wife's
Speaker 1: favorite part of the film growing up. She grew up
Speaker 1: as a as a horse enthusiast, and so I think
Speaker 1: a lot of horse enthusiasts and and and and viewers
Speaker 1: who were into horses when they were young, like this
Speaker 1: is their favorite part because we have when they finally
Speaker 1: find these these fire mayres. These are played by Clydesdale's.
Speaker 1: There are some truly beautiful horses. Uh. It's it's hard
Speaker 1: not to, uh to to get pulled in by their
Speaker 1: their their equine majesty. Yeah, and they literally like their
Speaker 1: hooves are on fire while they gallop through the sky.
Speaker 1: But they take them to the fortress. The cyclop stays
Speaker 1: behind because he's like, no, it's my time now, I
Speaker 1: have to stay here and die. And so they go
Speaker 1: off to the fortress and they assaulted. They start climbing
Speaker 1: up the sides of the Beast's fortress, and it kind
Speaker 1: of reminded me of the attack on the Riddler's Island
Speaker 1: at the end of Batman Forever, which I watched recently
Speaker 1: for an episode I did of Seth's music podcast Rusty
Speaker 1: Needles Record Club, which if you haven't checked that out,
Speaker 1: give it a listen. It's been a long time since
Speaker 1: I've seen Batman Forever, so you're gonna have to describe
Speaker 1: the attack on Riddler's Island. Uh, we were talking about
Speaker 1: because we were talking about the Batman Forever soundtrack, but yes, uh,
Speaker 1: the Riddler's Island. In the end of this movie, Jim
Speaker 1: Carey and Tommy Lee Jones are hanging out on essentially
Speaker 1: an island that is also the Agro Crag from Guts,
Speaker 1: and Batman and Robin attack it by sea and by air,
Speaker 1: and eventually they just end up climbing up some very
Speaker 1: fake looking rocks. And that's what this assault is like.
Speaker 1: They're climbing up some fake looking rocks while the Slayers
Speaker 1: shoot lasers at them and they're stuck. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: what are we gonna do. They're shooting lasers at us.
Speaker 1: It's not like they've been doing that the whole movie,
Speaker 1: but you know, they don't know how they're going to
Speaker 1: get past the lasers. And then they're saved by the
Speaker 1: Cyclops going back on his word, showing up on a
Speaker 1: fire Mare and saying, I'll I'll run up there, and
Speaker 1: and he does. Yeah, it's this is another part where
Speaker 1: I have to think about the nature of the beast
Speaker 1: power structure. So since the I guess it's the the
Speaker 1: the the castle the fortress here since it teleports regularly,
Speaker 1: they never have to really invest too much in the
Speaker 1: defense all of the fortress because they're only going to
Speaker 1: be there a short amount of time. Nobody's gonna be
Speaker 1: able to mount anything more than a quick rushed assault
Speaker 1: on the fortress. But still they they they have the
Speaker 1: laser guns, so they're they're pretty adequate at defending it. Yes,
Speaker 1: but with the help of the Mighty Cyclops, they make
Speaker 1: their way in. And then his real death, unlike what
Speaker 1: he predicted earlier, is that, like you said, he's holding
Speaker 1: a couple of rocks apart until all of Colwyn's guys
Speaker 1: get through, and then he just sort of gives up
Speaker 1: and lets the rocks squash him. Yeah, but okay, so
Speaker 1: Colwyn and Torquoal's bandits and um, a couple of other
Speaker 1: other people in the party ergo and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people the kid. They all fight. They fight their
Speaker 1: way into the fortress. Inside is like a giant cave.
Speaker 1: It's got this big alien mucus bridge. They get sniped
Speaker 1: out by slayers. Liam Neeson has a death scene where
Speaker 1: you know, he I really wish his last line had
Speaker 1: been like tell my eight why I didn't care about them,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. He says something else, and then
Speaker 1: he dies on the floor. I like the detail that
Speaker 1: the slayers on the outside of the of the castle,
Speaker 1: the ones that go out in the field and battle,
Speaker 1: they have dark armor, but the ones on the inside
Speaker 1: of the castle they have white armor. They're kind of
Speaker 1: like stormtrooper slayers. So it's it's it's a nice little
Speaker 1: tweaking of the design. So there's a part where in
Speaker 1: the castle, Coalwin and the bandits come to a dead
Speaker 1: end there. They come up against like a dome that
Speaker 1: they can't get through, and they know the princess is
Speaker 1: in there, but they think there's no way in until
Speaker 1: cole One goes there is one way, and what do
Speaker 1: you what's it going to be? It's it's glave in time.
Speaker 1: It is time, uh he So the glave turns into
Speaker 1: a floating, flying circular saw and it cuts a hole
Speaker 1: in the wall of the princess's prison cell, but very slowly,
Speaker 1: giving us plenty of time. Meanwhile for the the bandits
Speaker 1: to get trapped in another room and a spike death
Speaker 1: for one of them named Bardolph. Like spikes come out
Speaker 1: of the wall Holls and starts stabbing at them, but
Speaker 1: finally the glave cuts through the wall and then there's
Speaker 1: a reunion, you know, the Prince of the princess are
Speaker 1: together again. They embrace and oh it's so great. Uh
Speaker 1: and Colwan is ready to fight, but she could you
Speaker 1: explain what this meant? She goes, you can't fight the
Speaker 1: beast here. You must fight him away from the center.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that means. I don't know either.
Speaker 1: They just it's like, you've got to fight him in
Speaker 1: another location. And so they do, and yeah, the final
Speaker 1: battle ensues, and I have to say this, the final
Speaker 1: battle has some real issues. So this not not very good. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the beast design, the car, the creature design seems great. Uh.
Speaker 1: They don't show a lot of it, so maybe it
Speaker 1: wasn't that great. Who knows, but uh, from what we see,
Speaker 1: if it, it it looks pretty cool. Is this big, you know,
Speaker 1: black alien costume? Uh, this horrible mouth, big red eyes,
Speaker 1: weird tubes, the the six fingers on the hand. I
Speaker 1: think the big problem is though, that the beast is
Speaker 1: like thirty ft tall instead of a respectable seven, So
Speaker 1: it ends up feeling like our hero Colin is fighting
Speaker 1: a drive in movie theater project. We never feel like
Speaker 1: the Beast occupies the same physical space with any other
Speaker 1: character in the film, at least not in his full
Speaker 1: blown beast mode, his beast form, you know. Uh, so
Speaker 1: we end up with these The whole battle is just
Speaker 1: kind of a battle of psychic and magical projectiles. Glave
Speaker 1: is flying through the air, Beast is breathing fireballs or something,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, it just doesn't feel like a battle.
Speaker 1: It doesn't have it doesn't I don't feel the stakes
Speaker 1: at all here, you know. But I always say a
Speaker 1: good fight scene needs, you know, it needs beats, it
Speaker 1: needs drama, it needs twists. And one twist here is that. Oh.
Speaker 1: You know, the Glave is very powerful. It's clearly a
Speaker 1: great weapon. But at some point he gets stuck in
Speaker 1: the Beast and we see Colwyn trying to pull it
Speaker 1: out psychically. He's like reaching out like and the and
Speaker 1: the Glave will not get out of the Beast's flesh.
Speaker 1: So we're really in trouble now. But then Lissa, uh,
Speaker 1: she's like, cold one, it's not the Glave, it's you.
Speaker 1: And then he says, listen, it's us, it's us. He
Speaker 1: can't defeat um and uh he and he figures out
Speaker 1: that the woman he chooses as his wife needs to
Speaker 1: give him fire. That will she says like, take the
Speaker 1: fire from my hand, and that somehow transforms Cole went
Speaker 1: into a pyromancer. Uh, and now he can shoot fireballs
Speaker 1: out of his hands. This would probably have been explained
Speaker 1: if we got to see the full wedding, like with
Speaker 1: the full vows, where it's like, do you promise to
Speaker 1: give your husband a magical fire that he may use
Speaker 1: against extraterrestrial threats? Uh? And you can say I do
Speaker 1: you know that sort of yeah, with this fire that
Speaker 1: I got from my wife, I v burn yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And I kind of forgot about the whole thing with
Speaker 1: the fire and the Sarah money we saw earlier, so
Speaker 1: even reviewing and I'm like, what, what's this fire thing? What?
Speaker 1: This feels kind of out of left field, but I
Speaker 1: guess it was established, but still it feels kind of
Speaker 1: weird and thrown on. And it's also another one of
Speaker 1: those it turns out the weapon wasn't magic. You were
Speaker 1: the magic the whole time. The magic was love. Here's
Speaker 1: the love fire. Now go blast that beast. Can you
Speaker 1: feel the love of kroll. So at this point they, yeah,
Speaker 1: he defeats the beast. The beast kind of blows up
Speaker 1: and stuff, and then the whole Black Fortress begins to
Speaker 1: fall apart. It's like any magical fortress in a film,
Speaker 1: like the stuff starts falling to pieces, kind of like
Speaker 1: the Castle of the Dark Crystal, how poor portions of
Speaker 1: it were falling apart, except this time the whole Black
Speaker 1: Fortress is crumbling. And then as we we're having to
Speaker 1: get all the characters together, Hey, find find uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the wizard, and get him up. Make sure he's not
Speaker 1: a tiger anymore, because that's the other thing, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to pull through and change into a tiger
Speaker 1: to kill some slayers. Let's find the kid. Uh, let's seed.
Speaker 1: Is anybody dying and need some last words? Nope, okay,
Speaker 1: everybody's good. All right, everybody's living. Let's leave the castle.
Speaker 1: Let's leave the Black Fortress. And then as they actually
Speaker 1: leave the Black Fortress, we do get an awesome effect.
Speaker 1: The Black Fortress is not crumbling down, it's crumbling up
Speaker 1: and the pieces are falling up into the sky and
Speaker 1: going over the outer space. I love that, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: I dig it. And then we get some nice happy stuff.
Speaker 1: I think cole One's like, hey, Alan Armstrong, why don't
Speaker 1: why don't you be my vice president? Yeah, Torquoi is
Speaker 1: named hand to the king, so good for Torquo, solid gut.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a very sweet and wholesome ending. Uh.
Speaker 1: And and that does it for Kroll. Will their son
Speaker 1: rule the galaxy? Though? Uh, it's not addressed. In fact,
Speaker 1: they even remind us at the end, almost like they
Speaker 1: were not hoping we would just forget about that because
Speaker 1: the movie doesn't deal with it. It's like, uh, and
Speaker 1: as the prophecy said, they were wed and their son
Speaker 1: would rule the galaxy. But what's in the galaxy? Do
Speaker 1: we even? We don't even see what any other planet
Speaker 1: look like. I don't know. Yeah, I guess if I'm
Speaker 1: digging into this idea that the castle of the humans
Speaker 1: on Crawl was built by a colony bards, then maybe
Speaker 1: there are other worlds out there that for some reason
Speaker 1: the human colonists they're decided on a medieval uh structure
Speaker 1: to their civilization, and maybe there are multiple beast ships
Speaker 1: moving around trying to uh to get them who knows,
Speaker 1: saying we must prevent these the beasts of people are like,
Speaker 1: we must prevent these space medieval types from becoming Space
Speaker 1: Renaissance types or something. I don't know. The Guilt Navigator arrives,
Speaker 1: the representative of the Lance Raad disembarks that come out
Speaker 1: and they say, sorry, Colwen Lissa, you have been officially
Speaker 1: deposed by the Lancerraad. This planet now belongs to the Harconins. Uh,
Speaker 1: too bad. Or they could go with the sort of
Speaker 1: a classic outer Limits ending where ope, the beasts parents
Speaker 1: show up and we realized that the beast was just
Speaker 1: a child of this species and now they have to
Speaker 1: deal with the grown ups with their full full strength. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think I can say no more about Krall. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's nothing left to be said. But go watch it
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen it before, and if you have
Speaker 1: seen it before, well, now's a great time to go
Speaker 1: rewatch Krawl. Watch it with someone you love or by yourself.
Speaker 1: It's great, it's great both ways. All Right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close out this weird house cinema. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you
Speaker 1: have memories about watching Krawl, if if Kral is close
Speaker 1: to your heart, etcetera. Share share your love for Kral
Speaker 1: with us um as. As always, if you want to
Speaker 1: see some blog posts about these these movie selections, go
Speaker 1: to some muta music dot com and blog about them
Speaker 1: there and include the video clip I'm bad, the podcast
Speaker 1: episode and so forth. And also if you use letterboxed,
Speaker 1: that's uh L E T T E R B o
Speaker 1: x D dot com. We have a profile their Weird House.
Speaker 1: Go there. You'll find a list of all the movies
Speaker 1: we've covered on Weird House Cinema and sometimes there's a
Speaker 1: peek ahead to what we're covering in the future. So
Speaker 1: it's a nice like visual a way to see what
Speaker 1: we've looked at, what we've watched. And you can also
Speaker 1: throw in little tabulations there and like see them by decade,
Speaker 1: uh see them in order that they were made, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing you just thinks. As always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart radio.
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