The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

Welcome... to another edition of Excite-o-rama!



Torgo and I share a love for a juicy September buildup of Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Weird, and the Horror-Adjacent prior to the Holy Month of October... but last year, in our September thread together, I think we found that it is a celebration unto itself. And in that spirit, we share with you our revels as we delve into all manner of media and surround ourselves and you as well with thrills of all manner. Behold the glory.


For a solid month we will bring to you write-ups on a number of films from a variety of enticing genres as well as posters, gifs, videos, animations, images, and whatever the hell else strikes our fancy to build excitement and thrill all of our souls for no other reason than the sheer enjoyment of it. Hopefully, we can pull you in.


So, please come this way...


... and join us on our Journey Of Excitement. And please feel free to get in the spirit and contribute whatever you like, this is for all of us. Let's rock.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

hell yeah

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

Even though 90% of what gets discussed here are films I haven't seen, I'll be reading anyways.

Thrilled to have you. And Rock.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

Last years thread was damned entertaining so definitely in for round 2.

Thanks a lot!

Hey guys, as I told my illustrious co-author, I'll be writing about sci-fi and fantasy movies this month that are a mix of prestige, so bad they're good and of the cheesy, silly fun variety...starting tomorrow (well, later today for those of you whose September already started). Stay tuned!

Who are you more thrilled to have between the two of us though? That's the real question.

There's only one way to settle this...


https://i.imgur.com/kxVZzXS.gif

Will there be a Merch link where I can buy a framed print of this?

I’m here for Sandahl Bergman.

Honestly, I kinda thought of you when I put it in.

Rather have the corvette dropping out in "Heavy Metal".

In the mid 1980s, the cinematic world was still in the throes of Star Wars mania, I guess, and I mean studios trying to create arch Sci-Fi and High Fantasy that would break through and be blockbusters. Conan, Excalibur, Dragonslayer, Time Bandits, Krull, The Last Unicorn, The Dark Crystal had all made various ripples but the shift of Spielberg and Lucas toward a more kid-friendly tone in Return of the Jedi and The Temple of Doom was being felt everywhere and the success of The Neverending Story would also set the stage. And then Ridley Scott threw his hat in the ring with a movie that seems to be trying to create a new tone that is some combination of these things with Blade Runner visual flair and music. And here we are.
Mia Sara plays Lily, some sort of undefined Princess who is apparently pure of heart and likes to hang out in the woods with the peasants rather than be rich. She is in love with this really inexplicable character, Jack (Tom Cruise) who even more vaguely sort of hangs out in the woods and is maybe halfway between the human world and the woodland world. What he does and if he bathes are unclear. Apparently she has always wanted to see a unicorn and he may be sort of a unicorn-guardian or something or at least knows where they are and all about them? So he takes her to see them without any instruction that there are rules to unicorns so that then when she breaks them the whole world comes tumbling down but the audience doesn’t know why until every character, including many we haven’t even met, are all a’dither.
Because the movie is either hacked to pieces by the studio or Scott’s vision was trying to hit too many targets at once and sort of lands vaguely in the area of all of them, a lot of the story is kinda back-filled. The main conflict of the film is introduced early on but before the audience really has any grasp of what the hell is going on and thus stumbles almost immediately out of the gate. Later, when the audience has had a moment to catch up… and Tim Curry enters the film (that gif in the launch-post was intentional)…


… the movie comes together a little more cohesively. And yet, even though it turns out the narrative is very, very simple it still never seems to flow.
Tom Cruise looks very much the part here but even so he seems out of place or maybe anybody would as Roger Ebert points out that his character is so leanly drawn and overwhelmed by the spectacle around him that Jack could have been played by any actor with the same result.
The same holds true of Mia Sara who probably could not look more perfect for her role and yet seems a bit lost in all this, at least when she’s white (good) Lily. She fares better during her dalliance with Darkness and that’s probably to her credit that she was able to find that as an actress…


…but a rushed narrative and some odd editing almost make it seem like she gives a bad performance as white Lily.
Of course, I hardly need to mention Tim Curry’s, um, legendary performance as Darkness. This is easily the best idea the film has and whenever he’s onscreen the film is elevated significantly. As movie-villains go, I think this one gets lost to time because the movie is… well, it’s not forgettable it’s just not something people would really wanna watch over and over.
One thing I immediately felt was that this film made the contemporary use of CGI look ridiculous. I was struck by how real most of these fantasy settings looked compared to the bluescreened worlds of today. It was really striking because they weren’t expensive CGI, they were, ya know, real. I mean, a real rabbit ran across the screen and, mind-blowingly, it looked... real? (I want to say more about that separately, perhaps after film No.2.)
The Tangerine Dream score is the reason I chose the theatrical version and not the Director’s Cut, and it’s interesting to have an electronic score to a fantasy film but I think I will just find the Director’s Cut and see that as well now. The DC is 19 minutes longer and I hear it fills in some of the gaps and that the orchestra score actually works a lot better for the film.
Not much of this film really works and yet I’m not sorry it exists. There’s something just… off - about the whole thing. But that doesn’t mean everyone shouldn’t watch it once.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

Great thread!

Will be checking in frequently...

Re: Legend - Like Ridley Scott, I much prefer the longer Director's Cut with the Orchestral score. The theatrical cut plays more like someone at MTV was brought in at the last minute and tried to cut the film like a music video. You know, back when MTV played such a thing.

The theatrical cut opens with Curry's Darkness sitting around musing to himself, which ruins any sort of tension there could have been in building up the identity of the main villain, and doesn't allow him to have any sort of grand entrance to the proceedings. The fact that the DC handles his character in a much, much better way is reason alone to considering the superior cut, but I feel it is the better version for various other reasons, as well.

Definitely track it down and give it a shot!

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

You had me at hello

https://i.postimg.cc/GhNY1nPR/darkangel-poster.jpg

Dark Angel -

Dolph Lundgren is tough, no-nonsense Houston vice cop Jack Caine, a man who plays by his own rules. With reservations, he's paired with Brian Benben's Agent Smith (not that one) after some White Boys - a gang of yuppie drug dealers resembling the American Psycho cast - and Caine's former partner are massacred at a club. If a lot of this sounds familiar to you, I don't blame you, but the villain likely won't: he's a tall, white-eyed alien (Matthias Hues) who injects his victims with heroin and extracts their endorphins in order to make his planet's illegal wonder drug. While Caine and Smith pursue him, they have to fend off the surviving White Boys who blame Caine for thinning their membership as well as another tall visitor who may or may not be on their side.

This movie came out in 1990 and it's very much a product of that year and in the best way for how it has traces of the '80s and predictors of what the '90s had in store. Synth pioneer Jan Hammer composed the soundtrack, which also has its fair share of fun rap and glam rock tracks, and the movie is very much in line with the gritty neo-noir/action subgenre that was the bread and butter for so many filmmakers and actors in the '90s like Shane Black, Bruce Willis and, well, Steven Seagal. Its theme of white-collar drug trafficking very much reared its ugly head in the preceding decade, though, and the way it uses sci-fi to tackle it is fun and insightful. The action is always exciting, the highlights being a car chase through a Houston mall and any time our villain uses his favorite weapon: a magnetic, serrated CD that we follow from its perspective as it shreds its victims. As for the performances, Lundgren's hulking, rebellious man of few words and Benben's fast-talking company man play off each other very well. It's also nice to see familiar faces like Al Leong and Michael J. Pollard, who plays one of his many odd informants. Also, with its towering skyscrapers, Houston proves to be a surprisingly cinematic city - not to mention a welcome change of pace from the oft-used New York and L.A. - and the city’s stench of capitalism's dark side is more than appropriate.

For serving up fun if not cheesy sci-fi action and for not handling its theme with kid gloves - it's not a coincidence that the alien's victims are homeless people, blue collar workers who can barely make ends meet, i.e., the actual victims of this drug trade - this movie is worth checking out. Just don't expect to see anything you've never seen before since the plot is barely distinguishable from Split Second from a couple years later, and it's rife with the kind of clichés that inspired National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon. It still proves that not everything starring B-movie gods like Lundgren, Van Damme and Seagal from this era should be so quickly dismissed. There's just one more thing, though: how does a vice cop afford such a luxurious apartment?

My rating: 3 spinning discs of death out of 5

My guy (or gal): The "other" alien, who I don't want to say too much about for fear of spoiling it. I will say, though, that basketball lovers and ESPN watchers will recognize him: he's played by Jay Bilas!

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

I was reading your description of Dark Angel and thought "Man, they totally ripped off that other Lundgren flick, I Come in Peace!"

Turns out it is the same film - it was renamed when released in America.

Good call, that is the title everywhere else besides America. Oh, and if someone says that in this movie (or in real life, really), be suspicious of them. :shifty:
I Come in Peace was a apparently a popular video rental in the U.K., being a top ten rental for months, FWIW.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

I wonder how many of the films I've seen when this spectacle is over. This far I'm 2/2.

Legend I'd need to rewatch at some point. Dark Angel, well, not sure if that deserves a rewatch :)

This sounds right on point, particularly with the music-video concept. And I definitely think the movie should have opened in the woods instead of with Darkness and built both him and the story of what the hell is going on from there. I'm gonna see if I can find the DC on blu-ray on Amazon. I'm pretty sure they used to have it but last time I checked it was gone. If I can get it I'll watch it this month and write up a comparison.
Curry's Darkness could still make it a decent lead in to October late in the month.

Fwiw, I Come in Peace is what I remember the VHS tape at Blockbuster said back in the early 90s (in the US). Be warned though, I was in middle school at the time, so the memory isn't the most reliable, but "Dark Angel" as a title, didn't ring any bells for me.

It's really nice having you back.

Wow. Nice. I did not see this one coming.
I didn't even know this movie existed, and yet you have me at Jan Hammer and Glowing-eyed Alien Dude.

Funny because I do remember I Come In Peace, I'm just not sure if I ever saw it.

Should I have used the I Come in Peace poster to begin with since it's so much cooler?

https://i.imgur.com/CuSILuu.jpg

Dolph seems to think so:

https://i.imgur.com/RaxsWF3.gif

Ha! The Dark Angel poster reminded me of Split Second, so I thought "I'm gonna impress the guys and bring up that one." But you stole my thunder.

I watched Split Second last month and found it surprisingly entertaining. I say "surprisingly" because early-90s low-budget action movies are definitely not my comfort zone, but I kind of loved it. I rated it higher than you in fact on the ol' LB. I was left wishing there was a sequel.
From the director of The Burning!!

https://64.media.tumblr.com/16c43044...s6yo7_500.gifv

https://64.media.tumblr.com/7ade6567...s6yo1_500.gifv

If you liked that, you should like Dark Angel a.k.a. I Come in Peace as well since the Lundgren/Benben partnership reminded me of Hauer and Duncan's. While they're not quite as funny - Lundgren could have chewed the scenery a bit more like Hauer does - I'll just say that the best quotes on IMDB are from their exchanges.

As for that review, I see I mentioned National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon I there, too. I need new material.

When I was reading the plot description I was like "Wait . . . have I seen this film?" And my mind was trying to reconcile my movie memories with a clear lack of Lundgren.

I'm 0/2 so far.

Funny that you would mention it because that was one of my favorite parts. The uptight partner bit is an overused one, but here it was genuinely funny and the nerdy guy was actually given some sort of personality beyond just "frets over partner's recklessness".

Consider Dark Angel watchlisted.

I love Split Second. I remember being underwhelmed by I Come In Peace (which is the title in Canada).


I have no idea if I've ever seen Legend. It's the kind of film I can't imagine not having watched, but I have no recollection of it.

Obviously I cannot vouch for the film but I think it's something to see.

I do know that I saw it.
I cannot remember much beyond the basic premise though.

I feel like Krull, Legend, and there's one other fantasy movie from the era that kind of overlap in my mind of "portagonists going to fight a great evil/the devil in its castle."


There's also some movie I remember seeing as a kid in which there was a band of space rogues (pirates? bounty hunters? adventurers?) that for some reason were trying to protect this kid on their ship, and I seem to recall them getting wild bunched trying to save him in the end. For some reason, talking about Krull and half remembered movies, this vague, unknown movie came to mind.


Legend had some interesting weirdness to it. Mainly Scott's particulate atmospherics giving an even greater dreamlike quality to his fantasy movie. But it also has David Bennent in it as well.

Only things I remember from I Come in Peace is the alien attacking a hot female mechanic and ripping her top open as he….injects something?…..in her boob.


Don’t look at me like that. To 15 year old me that was huge.

I actually started watching this not that long ago but can't remember which movie it is.

Sometimes I go, "maybe Ice Pirates? I literally remember that movie being listed in TV guide in those Saturday afternoon movie listings," but then read the plot synopsis and go, "I don't think it was Ice Pirates..."

Wooley's gotten into the drugs again! We need an intervention!

Neverending Story?


And yeah - Krull and Legend are dope. Krull is like a who's who of British actors and Legend has an amazing soundtrack. And Tim Curry is t!ts.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

oh this looks like fun! Thanks Torgo and Wooley.

Oh yeah, I Come in Peace (that's what I'll forever call it :cool:) was one I saw at the cinema with that title here in America. I loved it and rented it many times on VHS to show my friends who had the same Sci-Fi/Fantasy love I did/have. I hadn't seen it in years till I caught it this year on Amazon, I believe. Still as much fun as I remembered. And Benben. He was the perfect sidekick with his smartass talk, then his eagerness to help stop the alien. And the last line to the alien is perfect Schwarzenegger-lite. 🙂

Legend is great fantasy fun. And yeah, Tim Curry, a long time favorite, steals the show. The visuals rock.

I've been wondering about Split Second for decades now but haven't seen it, as much as I love Rutger Hauer. Gotta find it now!

Great thread!

Krull.
A fantastic tale of might and magic, of swords and lasers, of wizards and aliens, of people still trying to catch that Star Wars magic without the budget or the work.
Which is not to say it doesn't have its charms, it has many.
But you gotta be pretty forgiving. ;)

This is the story of two rival kingdoms, uniting through the marriage of their respective prince and princess, both extremely good-looking and willful people, to fight the alien scourge that has come to rule their planet.
Lysette Anthony’s Lyssa, a direct spiritual descendent of Princess Leia without enough screen-time to prove it, is exactly the kind of strong woman I always fell for, even when I was a kid. The marriage is her idea, in defiance of her father, because she is the one in her family with the wisdom and courage to do what is necessary. But gets kidnapped by the Stormtroopers, erm, Slayers of Darth Vader, erm, The Beast, in the first ten minutes of the movie. So that the headstrong young hero can come and rescue her along with some fun sidekicks and a wise old mentor... wait a minute... :suspicious:
Ken Marshall's Colwyn is a somewhat less convincing, albeit good-looking in a skinny-legged way, hero when he's crying at the beginning of the movie but builds up some steam as things go along, particularly in a scene where he convinces a band of outlaws to join him and be his "army". He will lead his plucky band on a guerrilla raid of the evil ruler's fortress to rescue Princess Leia, erm, Lyssa... oh, come on!
Look, this movie is still pretty fun but Jesus is it practically like a cover-version of Star Wars with less money, vision, and technique.
Still, I am a generous man, so I enjoy what this movie did do enough to forgive it its (many) shortcomings. The shortcomings are a LOT of terrible blue-screens because they didn't have the budget to build all the fantastic sets they wanted, some other special/makeup effects that just aren't good enough for 1983, a pretty meandering plot that you just sort of go along for the ride on, some pretty spotty dialogue at times, and the general feeling that you have seen this movie before.
The strength is mostly some cool ideas. The whole Widow Of The Web bit is really pretty in concept and could be worse given the budget. The Cyclops who can see the future... but only the future of his own death, the Emerald Seer, the Changelings, Ergo, a sort of magician who can transform into animals, a pretty great group of bandits including Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane (who both get upstaged by a pretty excellent Alun Armstrong as the band's leader), and honestly, whatever the hell The Glaive is it's so cool I don’t really give a shit if the quest to get it is the lamest part of the movie that seems like filler and how Colwyn is able to master its magic immediately doesn't really make a lick of sense.


Ultimately, this is a movie that feels like it gets stuck in the middle between being an actually decent fantasy knock-off of Star Wars and a bad one. Which is a tough place to be. There are some fun parts to watch and some characters that work and by the end are actually pretty fun... but there’s a lot of "oof" in this movie. You really need to know that going in, particularly with regard to the effects, before you get to excited about this one.

I always confuse Krull with Kull the Conqueror. I have seen neither.

Kull The Conqueror is a Kevin Sorbo movie so I assume it's not even watchable (though the stories it's based on are pretty good).
Krull is fun, under-budgeted Star Wars knockoff.
Very different.

I think that my brain has always resisted the knowledge that they are two separate films, and has always defaulted to thinking of them both as the late 90s Kevin Sorbo movie.

I was an unabashed Krull fan as a kid, even had the Atari game, but I haven't seen it since approximately 1986, I'd say. It's been on my "I should watch that again" list forever.

LOL

Krull is early 80s, which is always better than anything 90s.

Pontchartrain Beach, in its final year, had the Krull arcade game.


I dropped all the quarters and way too much time into it on my final visit to The Beach, much to my grandfather's dismay.

Nice! I'm 100% sure I never played the arcade version

Love Krull, even with its light budget. I remembered Liam Neeson after I saw this movie for the first time and it was when I saw The Dead Pool (1988) that it clicked that it was the same guy from Krull. Only years later did I realize he was also in one of my favorite all-time movies, Excalibur (another 80s classic).
I love movies when a band of good guys team up to face off against evil, and this fit the bill for me. And Lysette Anthony was an eyecatcher for sure---I began to notice her in lots of stuff after this. Ken Marshall was a fine hero and again, years later while I was watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and they had a run of episodes featuring the leader of a covert government group within Starfleet and the leader was played by an actor named Ken Marshall. I thought the name was familiar and sure enough, same actor! But because he had a much-receded hairline by then, I didn't recognize him by sight at the time. Freddie Jones and Francesca Annis (who would both act in the next year's Dune), I thought they were great with their relationship involving the Widow of the Web. And the person who turned into animals. It goes on and on. A very popular movie with me. I'm loving this thread!

Yeah, I don't mind the budget so much as that the movie felt like it got stuck in a weird place between being a lower-budget fantasy film and a big-budget one. It ended up in this weird middle place where it seemed like they were trying to make it look as grand and arch as they could with not enough money to pull it off. A lower-budget film like The Sword And The Sorcerer doesn't have to worry about this but in this film it feels like it has set its mark too high and simply can't hit it with the money they have to spend.
Which, again, is not to say I don't like the movie, lord, I've seen it at least a dozen times. But it suffers some from not being low-budget or big-budget and the space in between being inadequate for the film's aspirations.
I'm actually a Freddie Jones fan from Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed.

No. I think it's another fortress type of thing. I'm also wondering if my brain actually split Legend into two movies in my memory, because in my head there's, "the movie with Tim Curry as basically the devil," and then there's, "the movie with the last unicorns and Tom Cruise and he screwed things up."


And movies I'm pretty sure I wasn't mentally grouping in there either:
Dragonslayer
The Dungeon Master


Though, they do fall under that rubric of 80s fantasy.

ETA: in starting to wonder if "the third movie" is actually a vague almagan in my head taking small parts from movies I do remember.

One movie from that era I'm pretty sure I haven't seen is The Last Unicorn.

I saw Krull again in the last ten years. The thing that surprised me the most was that the villains were clearly stormtroopers... and we're sci-fi and shooting lasers. I really didn't remember the lasers.


The main things that stick out in my memory are, of course, the widow of the web, the glaive, the cyclops, and the scene in the bog with the doppelganger thing. Mainly the eyes and the nails.

Y'all need to quit naming movies I'm about to write up.

"You know, Zapped sucks; why don't we go see Krull instead?":


https://youtu.be/yUZE6EveGE0

Last Unicorn is great. The harpy is f#cking terrifying.

You should fix this. Stat.

Here to say I haven’t seen The Last Unicorn yet, either.

You need to. Everyone needs to.
It is on the list for later in the month, possibly this upcoming week, so y'all may wanna get ahead of that.

https://i.postimg.cc/CKMCFTFy/lancelotdulac.jpg

Lancelot du Lac (Lancelot of the Lake) -

I watched Excalibur for the first time this year and I found the sequence about Lancelot's struggle to remain faithful to both God and King Arthur despite his affair with Guinevere to have such compelling drama, I wish it were longer. It was a pleasant surprise to discover that this movie is all about this part of the legend. It's as much of a low point in Lancelot's time with the Knights of the Round Table as it is for the rest of them since it occurs after their disastrous attempt to attain the Holy Grail. While Lancelot copes with his existential crisis, Mordred plots to leverage the knights' sad state for his own gain.

If you've seen at least one Robert Bresson movie, you should know that this is more examination than celebration of the legendary knights. When the over-the-top fanfare that plays during the opening credits ends, the movie appropriately does away with a musical score. Instead of music, the dominant sounds are the clanging and shuffling of the knights' armor, which eventually has an ASMR effect. Besides proving with subtle comic grace that the knights wear it more than they should, it shows how they believe it gives them a free pass. It's no coincidence in scenes like the shocking one that kicks off the movie and the jousting tournament that whenever they commit violence, they put their face covers down as if doing so absolves them. Speaking of the tournament, Bresson wisely removes all traces of excitement from it, mostly via repetition. With each fanfare, hoisting of the competitors' flags, impacts of the lances, etc., the brutality and pride inherent to the event become more apparent. The highlights of Lancelot's reckoning are in his conversations with his equally disillusioned cohorts or his unanswered ones with God. The heart of this drama and the movie in general, though, is in his time spent with voice of reason Guinevere. If she made Lancelot realize, as she puts it, that "God is no trophy to bring home," things would have gone much differently. Conversely, Lancelot learns about the consequences of having divided loyalties the hard way, not to mention in a truly Bresson way that's free of cheap thrills and chills. In their place are grim reminders of the crimes against nature and humanity that result from betrayal and unchecked hubris.

This movie may sound like it's an anti-Excalibur, or better yet, one that mocks Arthurian legend lovers. I don’t find that to be the case; besides, Excalibur doesn't always put the Knights of the Round Table on a pedestal either. Instead, it shows that even a revered organization like this one isn't immune to the consequences of pride and corruption. They are forces that can bring even the strongest and most honorable members of a fellowship to their knees or make them easy prey to the Mordreds of the world. While I enjoyed the movie, its spare, deglamorized and detached vibe may not be for everyone. It could be called anti-fantasy, in other words. The fact that the legend attracted Bresson - who's now 3 for 3 in my book – makes it even more legit in my eyes, and besides, if alternative takes of the legend were not allowed, I doubt we’d still be talking about it.

My rating: 4 broken lances out of 5

My guy (or gal): Guinevere. The truth in every word she says and the eloquence in which she says them is music to my ears.

Paging Wooley!!

https://www.avclub.com/trick-r-treat...ime-1849494365

It’s playing at Regal Cinemas near us.

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

Not sure I like the film enough to watch it again in theaters, but I do like it a decent bit.

Oh, I know. I've already alerted my entire tribe.

It's one of my top-2 Halloween films. Probably.

Not sure what other Halloween movies I've seen. There's Carpenter's Halloween, of course, which is terrific, but that's all I can name at the moment.

This looks like it might be just my thing.
I grew up very into Arthurian Legend, in large part, believe it or not, because of Camelot, the 1967 musical (and in part because of Dungeons and Dragons).
And even as a kid, Guinevere was the one for me. She is played, in that film, as probably the smartest person in the room, by the excellent Vanessa Redgrave, and the sympathetic way that Richard Harris' Arthur feels for her even wallowing in the pain of her transgression with Franco Nero's Lanceleot.
I really feel like that particular part of Arthurian Legend is really the meat and everything else is just fun stories. But the knights and royalty as actual people is what makes it interesting.

And Nero is the perfect Lancelot to me in the same way that he is the perfect Space Jesus.

I mean, more, movies that I want to watch on Halloween itself. Obviously Halloween would be the other, but I have a list for this somewhere, like, the Ten Movies To Choose From If You're Watching A Movie On Halloween.

Aye, gotcha.

They should make more horror films set on Halloween though.

100.
And release them at Halloween!

(I'm always wondering why Horror movies never seem to come out in October. Makes no sense to me.)

I think you'd enjoy it, but I'm not sure if you'll walk away from it with the same kind of affection for any of the performances. They're played by non-professional and/or unknown actors and none of them barely emote. In other words, no Space Jesuses/Jesi/what have you to be found.
...it is good, though, honest!

The only way I'm aware to watch this - in the U.S., anyway - is via the left-hand path, a.k.a. SpelingError (thanks again). Will PM.

Glad to be this forum's resident movie pirate.

I'm not sure if you're talking Excalibur or Camelot, but they both appear to be rentable on iTunes. Excalibur is on sale on iTunes, if you want to buy it, for $5 (which is $1 more than the rental).

Sorry, I meant Lancelot du Lac, the movie I reviewed. That's good to know about Camelot, though, since I haven't seen it.

That's what I get for skimming threads too quickly, and not expanding the lead-in image (on mobile, images are collapsed by default).

Trancers

300 years (?) in the future, with old Los Angeles under water, The Council does its best to rule benevolently over the human race. But a violent cop, Jack Deth (!) continues to hunt down the remaining disciples of a psychotic cult-leader who murdered his wife. Forced into retirement, he is called back when it turns out the cult-leader is alive... in the year 1985. A new technology has allowed him to move back through his own bloodline to live in the body of an ancestor and hunt down the ancestors of The Council. And Jack Deth is sent back the same way to hunt him down.


This movie is fun in like the first 3 minutes. It knows what it is and has a clear vision in terms of its style and tone and jumps right in starts having a good time and it just does its thing and that's that. It’s narrative is coherent, it makes sense, it isn’t just a mad rush from action sequence to action sequence nor does it really drag at any point and honestly, I like the simple story a lot. The concept of the future, the idea of “time traveling” through your own bloodline, and the first instance I can think of of “bullet-time” in the clever “Long Second” watch, are all nice ideas that are realized on the screen.
And its low-budget-Blade-Runner look actually kinda works.


Not to mention a little fun 80s L.A. vibes.


Academy Award-winner Helen Hunt, of course, is charming and it made me think about how many good actors there are out there who only make it this far. This was her first big role in a feature film and it might have been her last if you look at her filmography but she hung in there and manages to take a turn later because she has what it takes. I think about somebody like Jenny Wright who also isn’t bad but doesn’t have what Helen Hunt has. She brings a lot to this movie.
Tim Thomerson is just a really under-appreciated guy. I’ve enjoyed him in everything I’ve ever seen him in from Jekyll and Hyde, Together Again to this film to Volunteers (“I’m gonna kill ya. I’m gonna skin ya. I’m gonna use your shin-bone for a pencil-box”) to his hilarious and charismatic turn in Cherry 2000.
Honestly, there’s nothing really bad about this movie. It may not be great but it’s pretty fun and really in its weird way is better than a lot of action movies these days. Frankly, this is how you make a low-budget movie. I honestly think this is a perfectly worthwhile, low-budget 80s film. It has my respect.

That neon aesthetic is my jam. I also see Charles Band directed this. Can he do no wrong? I say no. Oh, and an Art LaFleur appearance? In CT's immortal words, consider this watchlisted.

Seriously, it's not exactly a masterpiece, but a lower-budget movie that fully succeeds at what it is trying to do?
How can you not give that some love?

This thread is slowly solidifying itself as "movies I've never seen, but whose covers I vividly remember from trips to the video store in the late 80s/early 90s".

Call me crazy, but I'd rather watch Doctor Mordred than Doctor Strange (2016).

My next entry, which I'll have ready in the next couple days, is a relatively recent release that more or less goes along with your question. Keep reading!

I'm the kid who rented them.

Nice to see mentions of both Split Second and Dark Angel (which is how I knew it even though I first learned of it watching America's Top Ten at God past whatever in the morning when it was released over there) if I can add another for a great triple bill, The Hidden.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl-iB4WAB0o

I think I still have all three of these on VHS. :D

Conan The Destroyer

Conan returns in this more Lovecraftian and yet also more Lucaspielbergian adventure where the Cimmerian is tasked with protecting a princess on her quest to acquire an ancient artifact that will awaken a sleeping god. Little does he, or the princess for that matter, know that she is to be sacrificed and he slain at the end of their quest. Could it be curtains for the precocious young maiden and the Barbarian warrior? Probably not but, hey, let's do it.

Revisiting this adventure for the first time in a good 30 years, after watching it at least a dozen times back in the day, I wondered why it was common knowledge that this was an inferior film compared to John Milius' cult favorite. And I was struck immediately, in the first moments of the film, by the undeniable and overwhelming influence that Lucas and Spielberg had on cinema by the mid 1980s. Milius' film is, not to put too fine a point on it, tough, muscular, and sinewy, with real grit and some genuine artistry.
This is so NOT John Milius’ film. Producer Dino DeLaurentis wanted the sequel to make a lot more money and so decided to soften the tone of the film, make it more popular with a younger audience, and of course that also meant securing a PG rating instead of the R of the original. And boy does he ever. The film definitely has more of that Indiana Jones feel, the way the action is filmed and edited with more camp, the addition of a lot more humor, and overwhelmingly in the rousing score. The early introduction of a new, comic-relief sidekick in the first scene really sets the tone and it is, frankly, silly, and a great deal of violence and sexual content was cut. I mean, there's still heads flying through the air, but don't show a boob, for god's sake!
Anything that seems adult or mature is cut from this film, there's the post-Raiders gloss all over this thing, and there's even stunt casting galore with both Wilt Chamberlain and Grace Jones thrown into the mix (neither can act a lick).
It’s funny to note, however, that, even though this is the Silly Conan Movie, it’s still so much more credible than either Krull or Legend, in respective ways. Despite all the distracting Spielbergery, there is some pretty credible fantasy, particularly when the Evil Wizard turns into a giant pterodactyl made of smoke and abducts d'Abo's Princess. And the sequence of the rest of the group entering the castle and Conan battling the wizard is the centerpiece of the film, really.


Though it just can't help but devolve into some lightheartedness to broaden the audience...


But it is still just deeper and better realized fantasy than most of the sword and sandal films of this time (though there were some lower-budget ones that did a pretty decent job with much less production). While I wouldn’t champion this movie I would say that 27% on RT is absurd and that this might actually be the quintessential representation of mid-80s fantasy film. It has the budget, it has most of the technicals (though I had some issues with the cinematography and the creature effects will require both understanding and a sense of humor), it has the post-Raiders big-movie feel (soundtrack and rating and comic relief), and, despite an adolescent sensibility, it actually ends up being pretty fun.
If you like the seriousness of Max von Sydow and James Earl Jones in your Conan, I suggest you stick with Milius' original. If you're up for some silly Spielberg-era fantasy fun, then this might just be the Conan for you.

Would you say Destroyer is to the Conan franchise what Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome is to the Mad Max franchise? If that's a main reason why it's not highly regarded, I've been avoiding it for too long. I don't mind a little faux Lucaspielbergism.

Maybe a little, except that Beyond Thunderdome is actually a good movie, no matter what anyone says, and was guided by the same hand as its two predecessors. Milius was replaced for Conan The Destroyer (I mean, he turned it down once he heard about the plans to to soften it up and broaden its appeal, so they had to) and the film was guided much more by DeLaurentis than the first film had been. I think Miller, on the other hand, actually incorporates what he may have picked up from Lucas and Spielberg rather well, probably better than even they did at times.
This is not to say that Destroyer is a bad movie but it's a much bigger step down than Thunderdome is to Max (still my personal favorite of the series) and RW.

Road Warrior is best of the 4.

Barbarian is definitely better than Destroyer. But destroyer isn’t a bad movie

I know a lot of people feel that way, but I never will. I've been watching the series for almost 40 years and my mind has yet to be changed.
I rank them:
Mad Max
The Road Warrior
Beyond Thunderdome = Fury Road

Re: The Return of Torgo and Wooley's September Excite-o-rama!
 

My mom was a firm believer in the MPAA ratings, so I did not see Barbarian until I was old enough to rent it myself. She did take us to see Destroyer at the theater, however, and even at that young age (13) I could tell that we were slumming here. I was a serious-minded little tween and did not think highly of comic-relief in my fantasy movies, and was also skeptical of pop singers and NBA players, so I wasn't having it.
I revisited it a few years ago and I can see the charm now, but I think yall are still being kinder to it than I was. Wooley's review is pretty much spot-on though, I just think it's a matter of how forgiving the individual viewer is.

Yeah, I kinda re-set my mind-set about halfway through the movie when I really decided to start focusing on what the movie was doing well rather than what it wasn't. And honestly, the second half of the film is significantly better than the first, when the film is assembling its scrappy band of rapscallions. None of it holds a candle really to the first film with its philosophical schools (that is strength boy, that is power!), Thulsa Doom turning into a snake, The Tree Of Woe, and Valeria.
Honestly, you wanna be comparing Destroyer to things like Krull, The Sword And The Sorcerer, Red Sonja, Deathstalker, The Beastmaster, that sort of thing. Though I'll take Beastmaster over Destroyer any day. Except for Olivia d'Abo. She was great. 13-going-on-14 years old and she nearly owns the movie.

Isn't Kate Winslet in it as well?

https://i.postimg.cc/FzMrGG3w/conan-spin.gif