Weirdhouse Cinema: Krull

overwhelming aroma of a troubled, big budget production. This is a movie that really excels in many domains, especially domains where money can make a lot of difference in in a production, but also has major issues. This movie is a very mixed bag. Some elements are so genuinely wonderful and more or less the way they're intended to be. Some are kind of dull, maybe even boring. Sometimes others are extremely unintentionally funny. Uh. And on top of that,

it's called Krall. You really cannot beat the phonetics of the name, and it all comes together into a preposterous, beautiful, disorganized explosion at the Star Wars factory kind of movie. Yeah, Yeah, there there's a lot of wonderful weirdness in this one. It's gonna be fun to discuss. One note about the title. I don't know about everyone else out there, but I've seen Krawl multiple times over the years, and I frequently find myself having that moment in between viewings where I wonder, wait,

what was Krall was? And then I have to remind myself, oh, Krawl was the planet. That the planet and two suns, because other times I'll be like, what is the monster name Krawl? The monster on the post is the magical weapon, The Crawl is Krawl, that guy with the scruffy beard, that's the hero. No, No, it's it's the planet. It's like if you titled any movie that takes place on Earth Earth, so instead of cool hand, Luke is just Yeah. I always think Kroll is the monster because it looks

like the correct name for like the fish face. Uh you know, critter, that's that's keeping the princess hostage. Yeah, it would work. It would be like and in Days of Your the Cruel came to our world, but now it's um, it's the Beast, and the beast is in the Black Fortress, and the weapon is the glade and our hero is um clown. Right, it's not clown coal. It always looks on the screen and in text like

it's it's spelled almost like clown. This movie has such an ineffective hero every time, and the hero is talking. When Rachel and I were watching it, we we just sort of started making sounds like I don't know. I I would I would slightly disagree on on some of his heroic moments, but but we'll be Okay, that's fair enough. If you're a clown fan, I won't spoil your fund.

But okay, So, so I mentioned earlier, it's kind of an explosion at the Star Wars factory, I think, to reference a review that I was reading, a contemporaneous review from published in Variety in nineteen eighty two, you could also call it an explosion simultaneously at the Star Wars factory and the Excalibur factory, because this review said quote, although inoffensively designed only to please the senses and appeal to one's whimsical sense of adventure, krawl, nevertheless comes off

as a blatantly derivative hodgepodge of Excalibur meets Star Wars, lavishly mounted at a reported cost of twenty seven million dollars a collection of action set pieces never gels into an absorbing narrative. And it's funny because there's not really anything in that paragraph I can disagree with, even though I love Krall. Yeah, like this is this is correct, But it also is a very fun movie and one that I've seen many times over the years. So yeah,

I keep coming back to it. Uh, something works and that, and it's become a cult classic for this reason. Yeah. So the Variety review, like many others at the time, makes note of the enormous budget. This is twenty seven million in you know, nineteen eighty two eighty three dollars. Uh, And that is one of the curious things about Kralt. This is not the brain eaters. We're not watching a

Roger Corman production made on the cheap. So I don't think any failures of the film can be chalked up to lack of resources or lack of ability to realize the director's vision or something. This is a luxuriously realized almost one wants to say, gilded film with gorgeous location shots.

You know, they've got all those uh scenes set with like the jagged peaks of the Italian mountains, just beautiful, wonderful, cavernous indoor sets, including you know my favorite, the thing that has a place in my heart, built indoor sets of forests, misty, magical fake forests. Yeah, these are great. In fact, I'm I'm less into the movie when they're actually outdoors, but when they're indoors and they're on like an obvious but extremely well executed indoor swamp or indoor

forest or whatever the case might be, I'm all in. Yeah, So you've got all that jolly weird set pieces, uh, costumes, characters, and yet I do think I have to agree with with the review that Krull does not really work as a story. It's almost as if the main characters and their motivation are kind of like place holders that somebody put in an early draft of a script to kind of build a world around, but then they never came

back and replaced them and filled in the drama. Some occasional exceptions emerge, like I can think of a couple of really nice dialogue driven scenes here and there, Like one is a scene where the hero Colon persuades some rowdy bandits to join his quest for some reason. Suddenly I think the writing is a lot better in that scene. Yes, I think this is the first my first viewing of Kroll that well, first of all, this was my first

viewing of Kroll that was completely solo. In the past, I've always watched this with with at least one of their person if not a group of people, and there's a lot of talking over it. And also this was the first time I really got to appreciate the sequence in question, which has a number of terrific act actors will get to in a minute and just have some nice back and forth dialogue, and I'm like, yeah, this is this is a solid scene. I like everything about this.

But meanwhile, some of the other scenes, just like the kind of exposition of the quest scenes are I don't know, I mean like they I love them, but they they do not have a really believable element of human drama or character. I think I saw a user review somewhere this might have been on letterbox, where someone was like, yeah, this is this movie. The plot is a a first

time dungeon Master's campaign. Yes, and and I can yeah, I think that's a fair comment, you know, because you get that various feeling of Okay, these characters now meet these characters. These characters send the characters here. Now they have to go here, and then eventually they're going to face the big bat. And uh yeah, yeah. It has a It has a simple structure like that, and it almost feels like, yeah, of course, I'm not gonna describe

the characters. That's for the players to do. So that's why some of the major characters are kind of empty vessels in some respects. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think some of the semantic content of this film is just a skeleton upon which to drape the meat of the movie. And the meat is a buffet of delicious sets and set pieces mountains, hillsides, swamps, built, indoor forests. The meat, of course, is the beast. The meat is alan arms strong, and most of all, I would say, the meat is

the glave. How can you not love the glave? Because we really cannot discuss Krull any further without devoting a serious explainer to the glave. Once you see Krull, every time you close your eyes, you'll see the glave. The glave is just part of you. Now. It is like a golden, five fingered starfish with knives jutting out of each arm. And it is referred to with such solemnity. It's it's just wonderful. Yeah, the glave is awesome. The glavee is kind of I see about four different elements

coming into play here. Uh, it's it's it's pretty much directly stated that the glaze is like a an important sacred symbol that is now in physical weapon form. Uh. It is. There. There's a little bit of sort of Eastern design to it as well. It's reminiscent of of the scharoken that are attributed to the Japanese martial arts. For the most part, there's also a little bit of a South Asian flair to it. It reminds one of

the chockrame weapon, a spinning blade weapon. I looked it up on Etsy and there are sellers who appear to have created glave fidget spinners, which is just perfect. That's great. And of course it's also a magical weapon, and in

this movie, anything magical might also be possibly technological. So it also reminds me a lot of the flying silver Balls of Death from the Phantasm movies in the sense that it doesn't really have to behave in a way that makes sense from like a physics or aerodynamics point of view. No, it's like a flying starfish circular saw

that you control with telekinesis right. I'm still thinking about that comment you cited that it's a first time Dungeon Masters campaign that is so perfect, because I would say one of the main reasons for that is that the connections from set piece to set piece are very flimsy. It's just always like, well, we have to go here now, and and that gets you to the next scene that you wanted to show. But could you explain why they

were going from one thing to another? It's I think it's rare that you could credit or credits are doing the exact one sentence review for this from a letterbox from someone about the user name Cinema of Void Rights. It's like watching a first time d M test running a campaign of a level two parties searching for a plus five fidget spinner to fight a space goblin. So fidget spinner, there you go. Yeah, a bit harsh, but fair. They only gave it one and a half stars. I

I would give it. I would give it five glades. Five glades easy. You would sacrifice all five of your fingers in the process of giving it five glaves. All right, well, let's get to the elevator pitch here. I would just give it a brief one. I would say, it's dungeons and lasers. That's a that's a great tagline. Rob. I feel like I have been at least lately forgetting that the elevator pitch is actually supposed to be a straightforward

description of the movie. So I wanted to be yeah, okay, I've forgotten that lately, and so this time I remembered that. I was like, oh, wait, okay, so let me try to do that, just so you understand what we're talking about. Um. So, like an evil mountain arrives from space and it settles down on the world of Kroll. Kroll again is the name of the planet. And from this evil space mountain pour forth the Slayers who are laser blasting shock troops

who terrorized the peaceful villages of this magical planet. In response to Kingdoms of Krull planned a unite by joining by joining in marriage the heirs to their thrones, and these are Prince Cowen and Princess Lisa. But before they can they can get all their act together, Princess Lissa is kidnapped by the Beast, the vile ruler of the Space Mountain. Can Cowen save the princess? Probably? Yeah, yeah, he has a really good shot head pulling that off.

All right, Well, let's go ahead and listen to strailer audio. Here on a distant planet, a great kingdom was ravaged by beings who came from the future to conquer the universe. Now the only survivors follow a doubtful scene and its own was king. They will hold her in the black forts. You must have help at the end. Living in possible journey, they must fight an invincible enemy. Use knowledge your seat, I shall be your ky. Columbia Pictures presents a world

apart from anything you have seen before. Grow see sounds pretty delightful. It sounds like a big budget eighties swashbuckling fantasy sci fi adventure with the James Horner score. Yeah yeah, yeah, As we'll discuss, this is James Horner score for sure, so it's it's it's not my favorite score in the world. It's not my favorite James Horner score, but it's pretty good. It's pretty solid. It does everything it needs to do.

It's not my favorite either, but it has that that majesty all the kind of like fluttering brass of the orchestra always kind of uh, every other scene sounds like a coronation him. Yes, all right. When it comes to availability for this film, well, it's widely available. I think we both watched it on HBO Max, so it's available there at least for now until they take it down. They seem to be changing things around a lot over there. But but as of right now, they still have a

lot of good films in the in the collection. Karl has also been released in various blue rays, DVD, VHS of course, and special editions over the years. There's even a VHS style blu ray that came out that really captures the original awesomeness of the VHS tape, which I fondly remember seeing on the shelves at VHS rental stores when I was a kid, because it ultimately looks it

looks super scary. I think I was a little afraid of this VHS box because you see our heroes in the foreground and in the background they've merged the Beast and the Black Fortress together, and it's just absolutely horrifying. He's staring right into my soul with his blood red eyes yeah, the mountain is the beast's face. That does not happen in the movie. But I also like, is this a real picture of the VHS boxes? That tagline? Right? Um, I think so. I think this is an accurate recreation

of the VHS box. Okay, well then I just have to share it says journey into a mystical time where a horrible beast is the ruler. I feel like somebody could have put some more effort into that man maybe. So now, coming back to what we've been talking about with the basic plot of KRALL versus the this the the overall visual style of it. I think that's ultimately

where KRALL excels via its sets, via its costumes. By all accounts, the genesis of this film was it was a studio desire for a big fantasy holm and I think originally it was going to be a lot more uh traditional, and that the beast wasn't going to be a space titan, he was going to be a dragon. But but they changed over time, and clearly folks were brought in to just really breathe a great deal of

visual life into this piece. It's almost like they gave some extremely talented people a coloring book or a paint by numbers sort of a thing, and they're like, this is the movie we're making. Um, just do what do what you can with it. And boy did they ever. Like every little corner of the coloring book is just colored in with pigments you wouldn't expect or didn't expect or didn't know existed. Uh, and it makes it delightful. Like some of the choices they make. It's like, for instance,

it's not an earthlike merely an earthlike planet. No, it's a planet with two sons. It's not a dragon, it's a space titan. It doesn't live in a just a cavern or a castle that lives in a space mountain that came from down from the heavens. Uh. There's not a magic sword, there's a magic glave. And yeah, everything has this wonderful weird sheen to it and they're fabulous weird details that are not explained at all, And that's something I love in a film like this. I agree

it's very much a genre mashup. Is this sci fi or is this fantasy? It? It doesn't, it doesn't commit either way. It's just it's just pulling in whatever seems cool in in any given scene. Now, we were also enjoying the detail that there was a video game adaptation of Krawl was available in the arcades and on a hom Atari system. So, first of all, I think this is a pretty good looking game given its context. But also the main thing I love about it is the

sound effects. It has these chip generated sound effects that are just oh, there's a sound that it makes when you're a little coal one sprite picks up an item, like when it grabs a piece of the glade. It's so good. I wonder if we could even sample that sound effect. Can't you just imagine that that sound playing anytime you like, pick up a dish to put it in the dishwasher. Yeah, it's so perfectly muddy and glitchy

and fun. Um. I have to say to looking at not not merely the arcade cabinet for this, which of course many of these arcade cabinets look terrific, but just looking at stills from the arcade game at least, I was impressed by how much it actually looked like the film that was based on. Like I could look at the details and be like, oh, those are the Slayers, Okay, that's the beast running around. That's clearly the glade being

thrown about. So um yeah, unlike I can think of other examples where you look at it at screenshots from these older games, you're like, really, that's supposed to be et. That's Indiana Jones. I don't know, I muna say. In the poster for the game, Colwan looks right that the artist successfully rendered this guy. But Princess Lissa here, they gave her a spherical haircut. Yeah, and she has like

some really deep eyeshadow. I don't remember if she ever ended up looking like this in the movie, but she looks like she has decided to wed the beasts. Like she looks like the princess in peril in in uh in the legend, after she has decided that she will uh marry or she's been sort of ensourcefuled into dancing around with the the villain and that was he also

called the beast. I can't remember what his name was. Um, he's just called evil or some darkness, I think, yes, darkness, Yes, Tim Curry, Tim Curry and about a thousand pounds of late x and and so forth. All right, let's do those connections. Yeah, we have quiet, We have quite a selection of talented individuals involved here. Uh, I think I can safely say for none of them was this their finest work. Well, for a couple of them this might

have been their their biggest film. But for the most part we have several individuals who had done greater things before would go on to greater things. At the top here we have the director Peter Yates, who lived through eleven British TV and film director probably I think probably best known for nineteen Bullets starring Steve McQueen, Jacqueline Bassett and Robert Vaughan, featuring one of, if not the best car chase has ever committed to film. Actually have not

seen Bullet. I know it's famous for for the car chase. Also, I did not realize Robert Vaughan was in it. Who was in Batt'll Beyond the Stars. We talked extensively about Robert Vaughan's career as a guy in lawyer commercials. Yeah, he has a pretty prominent role in Bullet, as I recall, It's been a long time since I've seen it, but um,

but it's a classic. Yates also directed nineteen seventy seven's The Deep, based on the novel of the same name about double shipwrecks and Barracoutas from Peter Benchley, and that start also started um Jacqueline Bassett, Nick Nolty, Robert Shaw and Louis Gossett Jr. I've always wanted to see that one, but I haven't. Yeah, it looks very it's it's very wet,

very wet looking film. Um And and I heard what it's got A It's like they're going for one ship, right, but there's another ship wreck underneath it, like they're going for the heroine shipwreck, but that is on top. It turns out on top of like a Spanish galleon or something that has a bunch of gold in it. And then I think they're Baracoutis. But again I haven't seen it or read it myself. Not Sharks baracouta Is this time. Yeah, yeah. Now.

Yates also directed The Year of the Comet, The Dresser starring Albert Finney, two time Academy Award nominee for The Dresser and also for nineteen seventy nine Breaking Away. So you have a talented director here helming this thing, though, I think if you look at his other films, like this is the only one that's really kind of a big budget genre piece. So I think he was branching

out and trying something new here. Yeah. I read somewhere that he he sort of looked at this as as an amusing challenge, like that this is not somebody who's otherwise going to be making fantasy films. He's like, well, I wonder if I could do it now. The writer on this, or at least the right I don't recall the history on the screenplay exactly, but our final credited right or who gets all the credit is Stanford Sherman.

Dates unknown on Stanford here, but he's a screenwriter who wrote for such shows as TV shows as The Man from Uncle and the six nine sixties Batman series, multiple episodes of that. His film screenplays and include Kroll The Man who Wasn't There, which is a Steve Guttenberg Invisible Man movie, and is The Ice Pirates. Oh okay, so The Man who Wasn't There? Not the Cohen Brothers movie, right, right,

This is a Steve Guttenberg Invisible Man movie. I'm I believe it is a comedy, but you know, all the best to the goot, but I'm not in a big hurry to watch this movie. Oh but you mentioned Ice Pirates. That's something people have told us to cover on Weird House. Yeah, i'd have to. I only have vague memories of watching Ice Pirates. I can't remember how inappropriate it is, So

that's one of those that will require a review first. Okay, all right, let's get into the wonderful cast for this film, starting though with the star playing Cowlin, which, again it's really hard to not to say clown reading this name, but played by Ken Marshall, who was born nineteen fifty and American Juilliard trained actor. Acted from nineteen seventy nine through two thousand and three. He may also be familiar to some of our listeners as Lieutenant Commander Michael Eddington

on Deep Space nine. I'm a little foggy on these episodes, but I think he's like a trader to the Federation who ends up joining up with the one of that rag tag group of civilizations that had like the Shape Changer, the changeling species in it, and some other creatures. He also played Marco Polo in a three mini series and

also appeared in the movie Feds. Um. I have to say, like I I agree, he's not maybe the best in this but I feel like in those scenes that have good, well written dialogue, and he's also surrounded by often an incredible group of of more talented, more experienced actors. I found that I bought his charismatic you know, you know, raising everybody up, getting everybody united, his little speeches and so forth. I bought into that. So at least some of the time, I find that he works pretty well

on screen. Oh sure, I mean he I mean I was making a little bit of fun. But also he is fun in the role, like I would not replace Ken Marshall here, right alright. His his love interest, of course, is Princess Uh Lisa is it? Lisa Lissa Lissa l y s s a play by Lisette Anthony, British actor known for such titles as Dracula Dead and Loving It, Husbands and Wives, and reboot of Dark Shadows. She also appears in the Anton Corbin music video for the solid

depeche Mode song I Feel for You. I don't really remember this music video, but it's a solid track. It's not one of the depeche Mode tracks that annoys me. She also did an episode of Tales from the crypt Forever, Ambergriss. This is an episode that had Roger Daltry and Steve you Sime in it. And uh, yeah, she's a kidnapped princess in this movie, so her performance hits all the

expected notes for that kind of a role. Uh. And I also was reading that her voice was apparently dubbed in the final cut, so we have to take that into account. I was noticing that in nearly every scene there's a bit of a twinkle in her eye, like she's almost on the edge of playing it for comedy. Uh. I sense an awareness of the campiness of the movie that a little bit comes through on the screen, like, Uh,

I mean this not in an insulting way. She plays the role almost as if she's playing kind of like a princess in an SNL sketch. Yeah. Yeah, I think if it is the right tone for this because, like you say, it bordering on comedy without actually venturing into that territory, without actually subverting the film or the role

to any extent. Yeah, I can see that twinkle. All right. Well, you can't have a story like this without a wizard in it, and actually we have multiple wizards in this film, but we have at least one who really knows what he's doing. I bet you also didn't think you get a Dune crossover in Krawl. Oh yeah, we got at least a couple of them. Here. This is the character and who I'm I'm blanking on how we pronounced this one.

It's why inn, Why are so unior? Yeah? Uinier uinear Yes, a kind of wizard and seer uh and just general wise dude, he's putting the party together. He's the one who shows up after stuff goes goes poorly and says, all right, we need to we need to solve this peace problem. Played by the wonderful Freddie Jones, who lived through twenty nineteen. And Yeah, he's a real treat in this. He's got a he's got a strong screen presence. He's one of I think the central grounding performances in the film.

H Every scene he's in, he can he breathes a sort of seriousness in life into it. The Dune crossover, of course, is that he played through for Hollatt in David Lynch's eighty four adaptation of Dune. He was also in Lynch's nineteen eighty film The Elephant Man. He did he did a lot of TV work. He also had memorable roles in such films as eighty five is Young Sherlock Holmes, Firestarter, the nineteen eighty two Clint Eastwood, UH Fighter Jet SR seventy one movie Firefox, and n Zulu Dawn.

What would you call his facial hair style in this in Krall? I don't know what the exact name for that. It's like a mustache that goes down and becomes two beardlets on either side. And the great thing I included this for you, Joe, is if you put his character and Krall next to his character in Dune, it basically looks like his beard pieces were subsequently removed after the filming of Krall and pasted on his eyebrows for the character.

And it's just a face wristole inversion. I was thinking of the two parts of his beard as lobes, like his beard has two lobes, like the lobes of a brain. And uh yeah, I don't know, I I can't think of anywhere else I've seen this. Anyways, he's great, like I said, anytime he's on screen, he's got a very loud presence that I think works really well, really fills up those big, huge sets in a way that a lot of performances don't. And this character also has a

love interest of sorts as well. Discuss the Widow of the Web played by Francesca honest Uh born English actor, known for her roles as Lady Jessica in David Lynch's Dune from So there's our other Dune connection. She was Lily in the mini series of the same name. She was Lady Macbeth in that pretty great ninetevent one adaptation starring John Finch that was was long one of my

favorite Macbeth adaptations. And anyway, she's been very active in film, TV and theater over the years, and was active as recently as She plays a nice tragic role in this. But you know what else you didn't think you were going to get in Krall is the Green bass Vampire. Yeah, I had. For the most part, I forgot he was

in this. I think all subsequent viewings of Krall came before I really appreciated the awesomeness of Alan Armstrong, who plays a a bandit um, an axe wielding bandit ruler who answers to no man and wears a spiked choker around his neck. So that nobody can strangle him. Um, this is the thirty seven year old Alan Armstrong uh Boord six. We've talked about him here before on the show. He was of course in Split Second, but we mainly discussed him in our episode on the brilliant snooker musical

Billy the Kid in the Green Bay's Vampire. I have to point out that the Wikipedia page for Kroll describes his character in Krull Torquil as quote a man who favors an act and as a leader of a group of bandits. You know you've really made an impression when the first thing they say about you is that you favor an ax. He does always have a super shiny

axe on him. But this is a great role. This is especially for Alan Armstrong, who who has you know, as a great character actor doesn't always have a like a really central staying role in a picture, but in this he has a lot of screen time. He's an interesting character that actually has probably has more of a character arc than some of the other characters in the film. Like he goes through changes, he's uh, there's this sort of oh and I you know, what are we in

this for? As bandits? Do we just want to steal emeralds and make off. Do we care about the future of the world of Krull uh So? Really, I think Torquoil here has there's a lot more going on with him compared to some of the other characters. Torquel's great alan arms trying. He just has like unwashed charm for days. Absolutely brilliant. Yeah, this is another one of the performances that I think really cements the picture. You know what else I I actually thought was a pretty good performance

is the comic relief character Ergo. Yeah, Parigo the Wizard the he seems to mainly specialize in transmutation spells. That's pretty much all we see him doing, um trying to turn people into animals and failing, trying to turn himself into the right animal and failing, finally pulling through in

the end. But yet played by David Batley who lived five through two thousand and three, and he has that he has that sort of Eric Idol Nigel Planner manner and physicality to him that works really well for a comedic performance in a comedic presence, and he mostly did comedic roles on stage and screen. As soon as he showed up, Rachel was like he's in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Yeah. Yeah, he plays at what a care

to name? Mr Turcantine. I haven't seen this Willy Wonkin a bit, so I don't recall exactly how he factors into the stories of the doom Children. Rachel thought he was a teacher in a school. That would make sense, so I guess that would be at the beginning of the movie. I'm not sure. Yeah, outside of those two big films, those are the two big films I think for this guy. He mostly did TV, and especially after Krawl,

it was mostly television. You may already get the sense that we're meeting a lot of characters in this movie, but it just keeps going right. Yeah, because we also have a Cyclops, a memorable cinematic Cyclops played by Bernard Breslaw lived who lived ninety four through a towering six ft seven British actor. Uh in this playing a curse Cyclops with second sight in a weird trident weapon. Uh. This actor, I've seen him in at least one other thing. He has a really fun goon roll in The Delicious

nineteen sixty nine. I think it's a hammer for auction, a groovy space movie called Moon zero two, and he has also also had roles in the carry On movies in Britain and also nineteen seven Jabberwockie. I have to say that I think unfortunately the Cyclops in this movie is not a great creature design, at least not in

the way they intended. But I loved every time the Cyclops showed up because he he looked so amazingly humorous, like they make the Cyclops very placid and awkward and stiff in his movements, and I was wondering, why is he like that? Why is he so placid and awkward? And then I realized it's because, well, he's not really getting to act with much of his real face, and he can't see he can't see in his costume, so

his movements are necessarily very constricted. And the effect of all this put together oddly made me keep thinking of

him as trumpy and pod people. Yeah, this brings me back to a discussion we had in an episode on Metal Storm that is aduction of Jared Sin because that movie, of course has some Cyclops characters in it, and they created the Cyclops effect by deciding, Okay, we're gonna have like a mutation type thing going on, where one eye of the actor is obscured and only one eye of the faces in use, which gives it a unique look but also allows the actor to see and to act

through their own facial expressions to a degree that Bernard here was not permitted to do. So, Yeah, you put somebody in what I think is still ultimately pretty good Cyclops costume, but they are just severe limitations by putting that effect in place on someone. If you watch it again with this in mind, that like the actor couldn't see, it makes a lot more sense when you see the

way he moves like that. It always looks so funny, the way he kind of like it is very constrained, and the way he kind of rotates his body in order to do things, And I think it's because he's just he's trying to be careful not to run into or trip over things. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the limitations of the Cyclops does lie. This is why, to this day, one of the best and most memorable, if not the best Cyclops effect is Ray Harry Howsen's uh uh stop motion Cyclops creature. And I can't even

remember which film it's from. But I think if if, if you're listening to this, you probably can picture in your mind. All right, well, let's let's get into some of the other actors here. Uh, this is a lesser bandit character in the film that still has kind of a story arc to him, character art to him. And this is Keegan played by Liam Neeson. Oh boy, Liam Neeson, you know you can you can see his star power

shining through even though this is a small role. He plays a bandit who the main thing we know about him is that he's a horrible two timer who has like nine different wives who don't know about each other. That's right. Yeah, there's not much to go on here. And yet yeah, he's basically, you know, physically, he's a

big guy. So he's playing this this kind of hulking brood of a of a bandit, but he's got a twinkle in his and yeah, the Nissan magic is able to shine through a bit here, even though it's a bit part. And I don't I don't imagine I need to say anymore about about Liam Neeson. You know Liam Neeson, uh now mostly known as in his post taken career

as a as an older action star. But yeah, and then he had the you know, the whole series of films there we know Schindler's List, But even before sun There's list was he was in like two movies that I've always loved. He was in the six film The Mission. Uh, not a huge part in that, but but but memorable. And of course he's the lead in nine nine dark Man, which was a tremendously fun film at the time. Even in Krull, he has a particular set of skills, but

those skills are favoring an acts and cheating on his wives. Yeah, that's true. Alright, Let's get into some of these other characters in the party, this enormous party. I mean, really, this is just wear any dungeon master out. Some of these have to be a player nonplayer characters. How many characters are we at now? We're not even doing all of them? Were just okay, well we gotta have At some point they're like, uh um, how are we going

to figure out where the fortresses because it teleports every day. Well, we need a see her, right, you gotta have a

see here. So that that means they go to a seer by the name of see Her, I believe, or he's credited as such, and this is played by John Welch, who of nineteen fourteen through ninety five, longtime British TV actor who also appeared in such films as nineteen seventies Cromwell, nineteen seventies, The Man Who Haunted Himself and a very small part in Charles B. Pierce's nineteen seventy eight Viking movie The Norseman WHOA Yeah, I haven't seen that one yet.

But Charles B. Pierce of course gave us the Boggy Creek movies and a Viking saga. Gave us that as a gift. Yes, yes, he gave These are cinematic gifts that he bestowed upon the world. Was Boggy Creek to one of like the I don't know, like second or third movies we did on on Weird House. Yeah, I think it was. It was pretty pretty early on. Uh. That was That was a fun one. That one starred Charles p Pierce. Remember that. That's that's a Charles B.

Pierce tour to force, written, directed and starring. Can't beat that trio. All right, we have another bandit here. We have a run played by the great Robbie Coltrane born Robbie Coltrane. I know him, yeah, yeah, probably best known for his role as Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. We of course also had a memorable run in the James Bond franchise in Britain, who was on TV's Cracker.

Other roles include parts in Van Helsing from Hell, Henry the Five, and a very bit role you know, I was surprised to see this in nineteen eighties Flash Gordon. He is man at airfield in that. In that, so I don't think that is a major role in this movie. He has a really funny moment when he uh, he gets killed while they're assaulting the fortress, the Beasts fortress at the end, and after he gets shot by the slayers, everybody has to run over to him so they can

listen to him give a death monologue. But then it's just like the journey was worth it. Yeah, I think I'd read that his voice was apparently dubbed in the final cut of this movie as well. And oh what a mess alright, So the cast also there there are other folks involved in this. I don't think we even

hit everybody in the party. But moving on to some of the behind the scenes stuff we already mentioned James Horner, who lived fifty three through composed known for scores such as Battle Beyond the Stars, but also Alien Star Trek, To the Wrath of con Willow, Field of Dreams, many more. I think Avatar was one of his final even not his final score, and his score to the Name of the Rose remains one of my favorites, certainly one of my favorites hit my favorite James Horner uh score, but

also just one of my favorite scores in general. I feel like he really pulled that one off. This one, as we've said, is more of a traditional eighties fantasy fanfare adventure score. Alright, look into some more behind the scenes stuff here. The director of photography was Peter shows Just Sky born ninety one, Polish born cinematographer who is well known for his work with David Cronenberg on such films as Dead Ringers and Naked Lunch, but also various

other Cronenberg films. He also worked on the rocky horror picture show Mars Attacks and The Little Picture by the Name of the Empire Strikes Back. Um production designer on this was Stephen Grimes seven through eight award winning production designer known for Out of Africa and Never Say Never Again um from and eighty three respectively, among many others. And then I also noticed that an art direction credit

goes to Tony Curtis. Uh, not that Tony Curtis, but um the production designer art designer Tony Curtis, who with thirty seven through one, who did a lot of like seventies amicast horror movies and also worked on the snake movie Venom from one that we previously discussed. So at this point, all the playing pieces are on the table. It's time. It's time to crawl. It's time to crawl down on some crawl all right. I know this is the most overdone physics pedant thing to point out in

a movie. I don't usually mention it these days, but I thought it was funny by virtue of its prominence. The very first thing that happens in this movie is a depiction of sound in outer space. Uh So there's a vast field of stars in the void and the orchestras, you know, pumping out the kind of coronation overture you know that James Horner music with like a weird boys choir oong and eyeing. It's almost kind of you can't always get what you want. And then we see a glave.

We see this golden starfish whirling through space towards the camera, and the glave is so it's whirling like you know, the rotor blades on a helicopter, and it's making helicopter sounds, like switching sounds. But not only is it sound in space, the sound is directly what would be a result of the little starfish finger knives swishing through the air. Now you might say, oh, but this is a terrestrial fantasy film, but not exactly, because the next thing we see is

something flying through space. The villains Fortress slash Mountain is also a spaceship. Yeah, the Black Fortress. And really this this film comes out swinging, uh in terms of just like weird stuff that's gonna makes you ask a lot of questions, because yeah, here comes this this mountain and it has this structure in it, and we see more and more of this throughout the film. But I love the design of this because it it is essentially an evil castle. It is the film's evil castle where the

evil big bad lives. But it defies easy categorization. Beyond that, because it is. It is also a spaceship, it's also an asteroid. It's like it's geologic. It feels it is it is formed through geology and erosion, but it also feels, especially when you get into the occupied portions of it, it feels like it was it was was grown, like the whole interior castle was extruded by some sort of

strange space mollusc Yeah. On the outside, a lot of the texture we see as columnar basalt, but then when we go inside, a lot of the stuff looks like, um, I don't know, that kind of like rigid mucus architecture made by the creatures and aliens. Yeah, except the cleaner and and and well yet yes, yeah, or it's like a lot of times you feel like you're inside a

text book illustration of an ear canal. That's right. Um, So, the mountain from space gently settles down on the surface of this planet, very slowly, and yet the surface just explodes anyway. When it does, it looks like it's settling down in the sand hills of Nebraska. And we better make friends with Space Mountain because it's going to be a major set piece in the movie. You will see it over and over, and immediately we get some voiceover narration. So I think this is the voice of un Here.

Youre yes, this is this is this is Freddie Jones une hear uine? Hear yeah. The une Here starts saying we haven't met him yet, so we don't know who he is. It's just voiceover this. It was given to me to know that many worlds have been enslaved by the Beast and his army, the Slayers, And this too was given to me to know that the Beast would come to our world, to the world of Krull, and his black fortress would be seen in the land, the smoke of burning villages would darken the sky, and the

cries of the dying echo through deserted valleys. And meanwhile we see the Slayers for the first time. Um, Rob, how would you describe the Slayers? Oh boy, this is This is the one of the things that I think a lot about trying to figure out the Slayers, because the Slayers here, they have this kind of black armor that is at once it once it kind of feels like some sort of an evil suit of armor from fantasy, but it also feels kind of like a space suit.

Also kind of like an exoskeleton. They have these staffs which can be used as a melee weapon but also can shoot laser beams like this, So there there's clearly some high technology here. They come from another world. They ride horses though, um they ride horses into battle again, they shoot laser beams, and we also come to find out that if you kill one, they admit a high

pitched squeal. There they crackle with red electricity. Their heads explode a kind of like bloody space weasel comes out of their head and then burrows into the ground and then other pieces of their body kind of self berry as well. I have no idea, have no idea, there's no explanation exactly what's going on here, but it is then it's thoroughly agrigal and otherworldly, an alien and so it absolutely works. Yes, I love the Jason goes to

Hell thing here where they each have it. So the head, the helmet thing explodes, the bloody alien slug tongue comes out and then like burrows down into the ground. And the way I interpreted that, did you get the same thing? That like what the slayer actually is the tongue, it's the alien slug and that the rest of the body is just like a like a suit that the tongue operates. It's like crying in the body. Yeah, I think that

would make sense. I yeah, it's it's it's either that or it's it's like a humanoid body that has been repurposed and armored. Because this is the other weird thing about it. So this introduction again, which I'm assuming it's the voice of your year who we meet later, he's talking about, Oh, the prophecy was that the beast would come.

But then later we hear that, like the beast has been here for a very long time, law long enough that the Cyclops is that we encounter the Cyclops, we encounter like he has like they're his kind, has a generational issue with the beast, like he was cursed by

the beasts and his his people ages ago. So like, so he's been here for a while trying to conquer the world of Krull, and he has these slayers, which may or may not be entirely off world in origin, or they might be some sort of It might be a situation where they're like, Okay, go capture us some more humanoids so we can turn them into slayers. We just don't know. We're left to fill in the blanks on our own, which again is something I love to

do in movies like this. The Slayers present an enigma. Yes, yes, all of that is true. Um okay, but I forget I got sidetracked from n years narration here because he's not done he's going to talk about. He says, but one thing I cannot know, because remember he's been telling us all the things that have been given to him

to know. He says, one thing, I cannot know whether the prophecy be true that a girl of ancient name shall become queen, that she shall choose a king, and that together they shall rule our world, and that their son shall rule the galaxy. That we're getting into some doune territory here. Yeah, I mean, some of that be true. We know that it be true because it ultimately happens in the film. Some of this, I don't know the whole thing about the prophecy of the child and the galaxy.

There might have been a mistranslation when he was given to know this. We don't even see them have a son. Spoiler that there's no son in the movie at all. They so we don't even know if the Sun will rule Krull, let alone a galaxy. Right this this is another the scale of the saga here, of the the war between the kingdoms of Krull and the Beast. I have a lot of questions about this as well, because we never see an enormous force of slayers, and we

come to know later on. It has given us to know that the Black Fortress, even though it arrived via a descent from orbit, yet moves around regularly by just teleporting from one place to another, never the same place twice, so you never know where it's going to be. So this keeps a largely medieval civilization from mounting a proper siege against the Black Fortress, and it allows the Black Fortress to sort of to essentially carry out small raids

like you don't. They don't have that many slayers, but they have good horses apparently, and they have laser weapons, so they seems like they can be highly effective in surprise strikes. But ultimately, how it seems like they've been here on Crawl for a long time. They haven't conquered the whole planet yet. Supposedly they're working up to it, but it seems like a tall order. Given what the beast has at his disposal, we we have no idea like what the map looks like? What what does beast

territory look like? Versus these other kingdoms? We again, we have to fill in all these blanks. So I just have a hard time imagining, like, well, what is what does conquered territory look like? How does we hold territory? Is it? Just like I would love to know, what does a conquered region look like? Is it people going about their normal business but having to like, like harvest corn for the beast or build a space laser that

points at a planet they've never heard of? Does he have beast puppet rulers that he leaves behind, and do they look like him? Do they have like the fish the fish teeth and stuff? Yeah? Or does it do they just absolutely destroy everybody and turn all the humans they find into slayers? There is it a board situation? We didn have no idea. This is why we need a cruel series to to take all of this and stitch together, you know, a six season story. All right,

we gotta so in the castle. We're here in a castle with the princess. Now, because remember we heard about a girl of ancient name, she's gonna become queen and um, and so we see her in a castle, and this castle is full of guards wearing plastic armor with glossy paint that looks kind of like mid priced Iron Man costumes, um, but also with more not total body coverage, just like the actual armor part is more kind of shoulders and then bikini, so it's almost like sexy Iron Man costume.

This too. The look in the castle, of course, looks like a castle, but it's also immaculate. So this also made me thinking about the possible sci fi connections, because the castle looks like it was three D printed by like a colony barge or some sort of a spaceship that visited the planet crawl the the traditional armor of the kingdom kingdom here they Yeah, it looks like some sort of sci fi space armor or the or it's the memory of sci fi space armor reproduced for a

medieval level technology culture. So it's it's strange try and figure this out, like what who are the people of Krull? Did they? Are? They themselves aliens that came here maybe not too long before the Beast arrived? What is going on here? I also have thoughts on the decor of the still here, because again, this is not the evil castle from space. This is the nice castle where the princess lives. The doors here look like they have dart boards on them. Uh. And I couldn't help but keep

noticing this feature. That are these random metal torture chairs, just like sitting up against the wall in these big empty rooms where no one would ever sit. And later we see the chairs repeatedly like I don't think anybody ever sits in them, but we see when like a fight breaks out later the chair is getting kicked over. But okay, we gotta meet characters. So we got a princess, we got a king. Princess seems melancholy at first, but I think she's just waiting for her prince to arrive,

and he's on the way. This is gonna be Prince Colwin. She's gonna marry him, and she's very excited. But her father is weirdly disapproving, even though he has explicitly authorized this marriage. But he's making comments like, you know, Fease, too handsome and confident and too great a warrior. Uh. I think the implication is like, wouldn't you rather marry

a nice scheming, machiavellian backstabber. Um. But their marriage is going to be some kind of political arrangement, right, Like each one has a daddy who is a king, and the two daddy's have agreed to join the forces of their kingdoms by marrying their kids together. Right, It's like the Rights Romeo and Juliet, except it's about to work. It's about to actually, they're about to pull it off. And the fathers of are like, Okay, alright, it's fine.

You can bring peace to our family and we'll reunite, will unite our forces, and we'll we'll join forces against the beast and save our world. Okay, kids. And it's also, to be clear, not like a miserable political marriage. Fortunately, it seems like Listen and Colwyn are just really into each other, right. And I wanted to highlight one thing here in the Castle, which is that usually, as we were saying earlier, the sets and locations in this movie

are are very beautiful. Occasionally there's one that just looks pretty hokey, and I would single out the set where the where Colwan and his people arrive at the castle and there's like a dude, I don't know, Captain of the Guard or something standing at the top of a staircase. It looks it looks very fake. It looks thrown together, like it doesn't look like stone. It looks like a wooden staircase that was painted over to look like stone. And but it looks like you could swashbuckle all over

the place here. And that's oh, and they will, they will. And so the prince and the princess have a marriage ceremony. They're surrounded by all the iron man's and Princess Lissa pulls fire out of a bowl of water and hands it to the prince. And this is their traditional crull style marriage. But oh, the marriage is the wedding is interrupted when slayers show up. Slayers right in. They bust down the doors of the castle and they attack the wedding.

And I would say this is a scene where the mixed baggy nous of the movie really emerges, because there are some shots in this attack sequence that are very scary and effective, Like there's a great creepy looking scene where the slayers with some kind of apparent anti gravity magic or climbing up the walls to go into the castle. But then there are other shots that are so bad, Like some of the fight choreography in this section is

especially humorous, very phoned in. People just kind of halfheartedly jiggling swords at each other. Yeah, Now, don't look too closely at that that special anti gravity technology that the Slayers are using, because the string becomes visible at times which you can't blame it too much. This reminds me of I follow Todd Masters on Instagram as an effects guy who's been working in effects for ages, and I remember seeing some thread he had going there with some

other effects guys and they were talking about it. Yeah, I remember the days when you could just count on some VHS grime to cover up the details of an effect. You know, like a lot of these were not put together thinking you would ever view them, uh at the same in the same picture quality that you know, we're reviewing them in our homes now. Yeah. Still I'm I'm nitpicking here. The Slayers still look nice and creepy scaling

up that wall. Yes they do. But again, I mean, if you actually like stop and try to watch any of the fights, like any of the people trading blows here, it's some of them they're barely trying. Yeah, yeah, the fight choreography here is not amazing. They're still there's there's swashbuckling to be had here. There's a lot of jumping around. You get the sense of a battle, but maybe not those that the details and the nuance that you would associate with like a great fight scene, great sword fighting

or anything. Yeah. Anyway, big effect of this whole sequence is the princess is kidnapped by the slayers and taken back to the Black Fortress, and everybody else but Colewan is killed and then Colwan's left there. He's wounded, he's lying on the staircase, he's distraught. Everybody's dead, and Colewan is then revived by unear this guy Freddy Jones here who introduces himself. He's like, I am in here, and um Colewin's like, oh, the old one, and he's like,

I'm not old. But he says, you know, you've come down from the Granite mountains. So Colwyn knows who he is. This guy's a famous I don't know, profit or magician or wise man of some kind. He says he's needed now and Colwyn starts crying about his his father being dead. Uh though unfortunately it really looks like he's laughing in the scene where he's supposed to be crying. Yeah, he's um, yeah, it's it's hard to figure out exactly what's going on, but he gets a he gets a charge from unier

youniors like stop crying. You have to go rescue the princess and defeat the beast, but first you have to get a glave. So here begins our adventure and from here on out is just stringing together one set piece to the next. So we get a truly beautiful sequence where Colin has to go retrieve a glave from the top of a mountain, and I think this was a

shot in in mountains in Italy. But we get all these craggy, craggy peaks and and jagged mountain tops and Colan's climbing up them to get to the cave, to get to the glave cave. But meanwhile we're treated all these vistas, um and uh and yeah, this is a great looking sequence. Eventually he comes up to the cave and has to stick his arm into what looks like molten lava in order to retrieve the glave, and it's

covered in mud, like caked on mud or something. And it kind of crackles off and then underneath the brilliance of the glave shines through, and he's very excited. I like that he he has to do something to get the weapon, you know, like you have to pull the weapon from the burning fire. It reminds me in the recent film, uh, uh the north the Northman? Is it the Northman or the Northman? Uh? The Northman the Northman? Okay,

not the Northman. That was the film. The reference Eli and the Northman is a scene where he gets the sword and he has to, at least in his own mind, uh, fight some sort of an undead eighth in order to claim it. Uh. And it feels better when there's a trial that has to be overcome to get the weapon, as opposed to like say Thrilling Bloody Sword, where our main hero he does have to do some swimming. But then when he gets to the skeletons like, hey, they

want my armor and this sword. It's really good stuff. Let me tell you how it works. And he's like, yeah, I would love it. That's why I swam here. And then he takes off with and there's no trial to overcome. That's funny. I didn't compare that scene and thrilling, bloody sword to the one in The Northman, but they are kind of similar. They have both have to like go down into a mound or some kind of cavern to get the weapon. But yeah, and the Northman he has

to fight a drawer. I guess in Conan the Barbarian, he doesn't actually fight a skeleton, but he's he's at least he has to deal with the wild dogs or wolves that have cornered him in the crypt, and he has to accept the sword, go out and kill some dogs. At least there's that or wolves not dogs for their wolves. Okay, uh.

Here we get a moment where there's some I think very convenient writing to restrict the amount of special effects that are gonna have to happen in the movie because you and here says to Cole and he's like, hey, you can't just use the glave now. You gotta wait until it's time. And he's like, how well I know when it's time and you and he's like, well, it's when it's in the final act of the movie and you're facing the bad guy. This is not a weapon you get to bust out for um encounters leading up

to the final fight. I think he says, you will know when it's time. But here, we're gonna recruit a bunch more characters. So we recruit Ergo the Magnificent. This is the comic relief character who's a sort of eccentric, incompetent magician who's always referencing spells to try to change other people into things, but instead ends up changing himself into things. He transforms himself into a goose in the

first scene, I think, yeah, goose. When the Bandits show up, he's like, I'll turn the bandits into pigs, and he turns himself into like a cute little piglet. Oh yeah, So we meet the bandits there. It's when our heroes, having recruited Ergo by the way, sort of accidentally by way of Cyclops. Terror like ERGEs like, no, no, no, I'm not going with you. I'm going my own way. But then he just encounter runs into a Cyclops and then he's like, okay, I'm with you. I'm with you now.

But yeah, so the characters meet Torque Will that's alanor Armstrong and the band of thieves, and it starts with the thieves trying to rob them but then Colwan, rather cleverly and charismatically, is able to make them join his cause. I think it's by saying He's like, well, I'm the legitimate king now, so I can have all your crimes forgiven. And he demonstrates this by using the key that he has from his father's master at arms, I think, to unlock all of their manacles. Yeah, but still, I'll an

Armstrong's character. Torquial has to has to be convinced because he's like, we're already free, We're already do what we want. Why should we come with you and go on this

deafinition with you? And and yeah. Basically, our hero rolls in natural twenty on his persuasion and gives a nice speech and they're like, finally, like other other members of the bandit party, uh, they break first and they're like, yeah, I think I'm with this guy, like this is a noble mission, fighting not only for ourselves, but fighting for our children, fighting for the future of our world. Will join up with him, And finally Alan Armstrong is like,

all right, well we'll see where this goes. It's a solid huss all around. Yeah, So next there I lose again. As I said, earlier. You kind of lose track of what exactly the reason for each of the next stops on the journey is. But they're going somewhere for some reason. I think they have to meet a seer in order for him to be able to tell them where the fortress is. But they're wandering around through a forest and they have another encounter with the Cyclops we saw earlier.

I think the Cyclops sort of pivots out from behind a tree and throws a spear at a slayer in order to save the life of Ergo the Magnificent. I believe that's right, Yes, and ergoes all freaked out. But we get some backstory on the Cyclops. The Cyclops says, what's the plural cyclopes? The Cyclops is part of a member of a you know, a group of cyclops is that existed long before when the slayers came to crull in the ancient past, and that they fought then and

ever since then. Every Cyclops has a has a death grudge against slayers, and he will attack slayers on site. So that's why the Cyclops has been helping them. Yeah, and they are truly cursed with second side because they can see end of the future, but they see only

one thing. They see their death. They know where it will occur, they know when it will occur, and if they try to deviate from their fate, it will only ensure that their death is more painful, which always struck me like, that's one of the details in the film that when I especially want to watch this one was younger, I was like, Oh, the boy, that's that's awful, that's so tragic. How do you think that interacts with the

actual cyclops death when we see it later? I was thinking that the demise of the Cyclops was very clumsy writing, because there's like a scene where he's he says, I can't go on with you because I know I'm about to die, So I'm gonna die here, and then they leave, and then he immediately just follows after them and helps

them do the next thing and then he dies. Yeah. There, it seems like they're needed to be a bit more connective tissue, Like there a moment where he's where he realizes, no, they really need me, and even though it's going to totally mess up my noble death here, I've got to go and save them. And so then yeah, he ends up.

He ends up sort of saying he basically he's just kind of suddenly he's there with them, and he I guess he kind of holds a door open for them, and then he's subsequently crushed by that door and and does die horrible death. Right, So, so we learned about the cyclops and then on let's see, they collect the Seer, and Seer also has like a little kid friend, and

so they're part of the party. Now the Seer is like a ust of this blind old wizard um and uh, they're going to a place in the middle of a swamp where three trees grow together so that they can see where the where the fortress is going to teleport to. Next. You have to remember, the Seer tries to uh peek in to spy on the beasts whereabouts from his own abode. But then the beast like reaches through the magic with his six fingered claw and and and stops the Seer.

So he's like, no, no, we can't do it from here. We have to go from into a place where it's safe, where the beast can't like triangulate our our location or can't use some sort of a counter offense against us. It's like a it's like a Saron Palanteer kind of thing. They have to find a place where somehow the palanteer Saron can't see them through it. Yeah, and the place is the swamp overall, but I know you love the

swamp sequence. Do you want to describe it? Yeah, it's it's I thought it was really effective every time i've I've viewed it. It's prety effective because we get the slayer attack and you know, we were expecting Slayers to to to pop up again. So there's this, there's this fight. There's also a fabulous quicksand sequence. Characters get caught in in wonderful cinematic quicksand and you get the you know,

traditional shenanigans involving that. But then we realize all those the Beast is so clever because this was this this attack was really a distraction because then we see the Seer, who I think is supposed to be blind. Um, he's he's standing there, he's kind of away from it. He's not gonna be in the middle of this combat. He's he's standing off to the side, and then suddenly behind him is another seer. There's something that has taken on

his form. And then it reaches out to him and like extends its claws and stabs into him, and like the actor playing the Seer, he's he emits this horrible cry and and and yeah, I find everything with this changeling as they later call it, this doppel gang or creature, this and sent by the beast to replace the Seer,

it all comes off really creepy. And it's always creep me out anytime I've watched it, something about watching this old man suffer, uh, you know, killed in solitude by this interloper while everyone's distracted over here with the battle in the Quicksand yeah, this part was creepy. And then of course the the Seer, I think after this, tries to kill Colon, uh the Seer changeling. Yeah, yeah, there's

an attempt on his life. And then I believe it's the Cyclops that skewers him with his trident and all he emits this horrible screeching sound when he dies, and there's this kind of melting imploding effect, and he also his body kind of self buries when it falls. We don't see a blood weasel come out of his head, but it's it's very evident that this was a creature

of dark magic sent by the beast. So, oh, we're down a seer and now it isn't gonna do any good to go to these three trees in the swamp because we don't have a seer that can I don't know, look at the trees and figure out where the fortress is. So we have to go somewhere else. And uineer has an idea, right you hear is like, I know the widow of the web, but she can tell us where

the fortress is. Yeah, and this this becomes even more complicated because it's revealed that this is sort this is years X as well, so he has a they have a lot of history. There's a lot of baggage here. But also it's it makes it maybe a bit more possible as a solution because he has some sort of connection here. They're not going to just show up and be consumed by a monster. Right. Oh, and we should mention on the way I think it's before we get

to hear that. Uh, there's a there's like a sweet interaction where the kid who was with the seer has been talking about how if he could have if he can only have one wish, he would want a puppy, and then uh, ergo, the the selfish, incompetent magician transforms himself into a puppy for the kid. Oh yeah, this is great. This is yeah because it's a very cute

like Bassett hound puppy. It's adorable, and it's a much better There's a wonderful clumsy moment earlier where the seer is clearly dead because we just saw the crumpled body of the doppel ganger. And then the whole party comes around and the kid is like, he was my only family, and then uh, Colin turns human says we're your family now, and that's the that's the that's that's that's the entirety

of their um their grief counseling here. So at least, at least we we have a puppy, that is, at least one of the characters turns himself into a puppy and lets the kid carry the puppy. Earlier, there we interaction the kid had said if he could have one wish, he would want a puppy, and ERGEs like, why oh that you're messing up? Why one puppy when you could wish for a hundred, and the kid says I only want one, and Ergo just thinks this is stupid. Yeah,

I like that too. That's another one of these nice character interaction scenes. But anyway, onto the Widow of the Web. So Junior has to go on by himself because if more the one person approaches, the Widow of the Web will kill them all immediately. But if he goes alone he might have a chance. And so everybody else hangs back behind. And this is where we get some nice conversation where like Liam Neeson explains about his fourteen wives, uh,

and some locals coming. Where where did these like women

come from? When we we see them hanging out with the bandits, it's just one of those scenes where suddenly there are more people around and in first you're like, oh, this party is bigger than I thought it was, and they're like, oh no, this is these are different people that like the people of the forest that they're they're hanging out with and getting u you know, a full rest so they can restore all their spell slots for the encounter as ahead, right, and so oh meanwhile the fortress, uh,

we get some interactions with the beast and the princess, and the beast is like be my wife, and the princess is like, I don't want to, and he's like, let me show you what your prince is doing, and so he pulls up a TV screen pretty much for her to watch cole In here being seduced by a changeling who's pretending to be a woman here, and she I think she's supposed to like make Colewin look bad while the princess is watching, uh, and then kill him,

but instead she's like, you know, oh, let me comfort you, and he's like, I I will not accept comfort. And so he proves his virtue, he proves his faithfulness while the princess is watching him on TV and then uh, and then he's so good. The changeling is like, okay, well I have to kill you now, but she's like, but you're so nice. I can't do it. And so I mean, what more could you ask for? What a what A? What a stand up guy? Yeah, this is

a very confusing scene. Yeah, it's a lot going on here, but anyway, the princess is like, see see how good my my my husband is. Now that's additional reason why I'm not going to marry the beast. But okay, so in here has to go talk to the Widow of the web, who is like a sorcerer us who is trapped in a uh sphere in the middle of a giant cave surrounded by spider webs because there's a giant

spider that lives in the cave. And as he approaches and tries to get to the sphere, the spider attacks, but he manages to make it through and then he talks to the enchantress and they have a history together. Yeah, and there's why they talk about it for a while. There's there are a a lot of ins and out. It's a lot of tragedies. There's a uh deceased son in the mix. Like, it's a lot and I every time I watch it, I'm left not really having a full

ideal exactly what their personal history is. But it's well, it's well acted, so I'm buying that the history is there and that they reach some sort of decision here and it involves a magic hour glass and he's given the sand from the hour glass and this sometimes how helps him get back across the web. And there's that big stop motion spider. Uh. I think the deal is

this The spider would kill him as he was. She is able to use her magic to tell him where the fortress is going to be, but he can't get back out to the mouth of the cave without the spider killing him. So she's like, I know, if you if you carry the sand from my hour glass in your hand, then the spider can't hurt you, but as soon as the sand falls out of your hand, you will die. Uh. So he's like, okay, So she breaks

the hour glass. I think that kills her, dooms her in some way, and he gets the sand, he leaves, he makes it out, and then he tells he gets back to his friends, he's like the black fortresses in the desert, and then the sand pours out of his hand and they're like, oh no, the desert and he's dead. Good ride though, good good death. But there's a problem because how are we going to get to the desert

that's very far away? And I think it's the Cyclops that suggests, you know what we need, need us some firemars, yes, fire mayors of the answer. So we've we've reached the part of the film here that that was my wife's favorite part of the film growing up. She grew up as a as a horse enthusiast, and so I think a lot of horse enthusiasts and and and and viewers who were into horses when they were young, like this is their favorite part because we have when they finally

find these these fire mayres. These are played by Clydesdale's. There are some truly beautiful horses. Uh. It's it's hard not to, uh to to get pulled in by their their their equine majesty. Yeah, and they literally like their hooves are on fire while they gallop through the sky. But they take them to the fortress. The cyclop stays behind because he's like, no, it's my time now, I have to stay here and die. And so they go

off to the fortress and they assaulted. They start climbing up the sides of the Beast's fortress, and it kind of reminded me of the attack on the Riddler's Island at the end of Batman Forever, which I watched recently for an episode I did of Seth's music podcast Rusty Needles Record Club, which if you haven't checked that out, give it a listen. It's been a long time since I've seen Batman Forever, so you're gonna have to describe

the attack on Riddler's Island. Uh, we were talking about because we were talking about the Batman Forever soundtrack, but yes, uh, the Riddler's Island. In the end of this movie, Jim Carey and Tommy Lee Jones are hanging out on essentially an island that is also the Agro Crag from Guts, and Batman and Robin attack it by sea and by air, and eventually they just end up climbing up some very fake looking rocks. And that's what this assault is like.

They're climbing up some fake looking rocks while the Slayers shoot lasers at them and they're stuck. They're like, hey, what are we gonna do. They're shooting lasers at us. It's not like they've been doing that the whole movie, but you know, they don't know how they're going to get past the lasers. And then they're saved by the Cyclops going back on his word, showing up on a fire Mare and saying, I'll I'll run up there, and

and he does. Yeah, it's this is another part where I have to think about the nature of the beast power structure. So since the I guess it's the the the the castle the fortress here since it teleports regularly, they never have to really invest too much in the defense all of the fortress because they're only going to be there a short amount of time. Nobody's gonna be able to mount anything more than a quick rushed assault on the fortress. But still they they they have the

laser guns, so they're they're pretty adequate at defending it. Yes, but with the help of the Mighty Cyclops, they make their way in. And then his real death, unlike what he predicted earlier, is that, like you said, he's holding a couple of rocks apart until all of Colwyn's guys get through, and then he just sort of gives up and lets the rocks squash him. Yeah, but okay, so Colwyn and Torquoal's bandits and um, a couple of other other people in the party ergo and there's a lot

of people the kid. They all fight. They fight their way into the fortress. Inside is like a giant cave. It's got this big alien mucus bridge. They get sniped out by slayers. Liam Neeson has a death scene where you know, he I really wish his last line had been like tell my eight why I didn't care about them, but I don't know. He says something else, and then

he dies on the floor. I like the detail that the slayers on the outside of the of the castle, the ones that go out in the field and battle, they have dark armor, but the ones on the inside of the castle they have white armor. They're kind of like stormtrooper slayers. So it's it's it's a nice little tweaking of the design. So there's a part where in the castle, Coalwin and the bandits come to a dead

end there. They come up against like a dome that they can't get through, and they know the princess is in there, but they think there's no way in until cole One goes there is one way, and what do you what's it going to be? It's it's glave in time. It is time, uh he So the glave turns into a floating, flying circular saw and it cuts a hole in the wall of the princess's prison cell, but very slowly,

giving us plenty of time. Meanwhile for the the bandits to get trapped in another room and a spike death for one of them named Bardolph. Like spikes come out of the wall Holls and starts stabbing at them, but finally the glave cuts through the wall and then there's a reunion, you know, the Prince of the princess are together again. They embrace and oh it's so great. Uh and Colwan is ready to fight, but she could you explain what this meant? She goes, you can't fight the

beast here. You must fight him away from the center. I don't know what that means. I don't know either. They just it's like, you've got to fight him in another location. And so they do, and yeah, the final battle ensues, and I have to say this, the final battle has some real issues. So this not not very good. Yeah, the beast design, the car, the creature design seems great. Uh. They don't show a lot of it, so maybe it wasn't that great. Who knows, but uh, from what we see,

if it, it it looks pretty cool. Is this big, you know, black alien costume? Uh, this horrible mouth, big red eyes, weird tubes, the the six fingers on the hand. I think the big problem is though, that the beast is like thirty ft tall instead of a respectable seven, So it ends up feeling like our hero Colin is fighting a drive in movie theater project. We never feel like the Beast occupies the same physical space with any other character in the film, at least not in his full

blown beast mode, his beast form, you know. Uh, so we end up with these The whole battle is just kind of a battle of psychic and magical projectiles. Glave is flying through the air, Beast is breathing fireballs or something, and um, you know, it just doesn't feel like a battle. It doesn't have it doesn't I don't feel the stakes at all here, you know. But I always say a good fight scene needs, you know, it needs beats, it needs drama, it needs twists. And one twist here is that. Oh.

You know, the Glave is very powerful. It's clearly a great weapon. But at some point he gets stuck in the Beast and we see Colwyn trying to pull it out psychically. He's like reaching out like and the and the Glave will not get out of the Beast's flesh. So we're really in trouble now. But then Lissa, uh, she's like, cold one, it's not the Glave, it's you. And then he says, listen, it's us, it's us. He can't defeat um and uh he and he figures out that the woman he chooses as his wife needs to

give him fire. That will she says like, take the fire from my hand, and that somehow transforms Cole went into a pyromancer. Uh, and now he can shoot fireballs out of his hands. This would probably have been explained if we got to see the full wedding, like with the full vows, where it's like, do you promise to give your husband a magical fire that he may use

against extraterrestrial threats? Uh? And you can say I do you know that sort of yeah, with this fire that I got from my wife, I v burn yeah, yeah, And I kind of forgot about the whole thing with the fire and the Sarah money we saw earlier, so even reviewing and I'm like, what, what's this fire thing? What? This feels kind of out of left field, but I guess it was established, but still it feels kind of weird and thrown on. And it's also another one of

those it turns out the weapon wasn't magic. You were the magic the whole time. The magic was love. Here's the love fire. Now go blast that beast. Can you feel the love of kroll. So at this point they, yeah, he defeats the beast. The beast kind of blows up and stuff, and then the whole Black Fortress begins to

fall apart. It's like any magical fortress in a film, like the stuff starts falling to pieces, kind of like the Castle of the Dark Crystal, how poor portions of it were falling apart, except this time the whole Black Fortress is crumbling. And then as we we're having to get all the characters together, Hey, find find uh, you know, the wizard, and get him up. Make sure he's not a tiger anymore, because that's the other thing, you know, you've got to pull through and change into a tiger

to kill some slayers. Let's find the kid. Uh, let's seed. Is anybody dying and need some last words? Nope, okay, everybody's good. All right, everybody's living. Let's leave the castle. Let's leave the Black Fortress. And then as they actually leave the Black Fortress, we do get an awesome effect. The Black Fortress is not crumbling down, it's crumbling up and the pieces are falling up into the sky and going over the outer space. I love that, Yeah, I

I dig it. And then we get some nice happy stuff. I think cole One's like, hey, Alan Armstrong, why don't why don't you be my vice president? Yeah, Torquoi is named hand to the king, so good for Torquo, solid gut. It's a it's a very sweet and wholesome ending. Uh. And and that does it for Kroll. Will their son rule the galaxy? Though? Uh, it's not addressed. In fact, they even remind us at the end, almost like they were not hoping we would just forget about that because

the movie doesn't deal with it. It's like, uh, and as the prophecy said, they were wed and their son would rule the galaxy. But what's in the galaxy? Do we even? We don't even see what any other planet

look like. I don't know. Yeah, I guess if I'm digging into this idea that the castle of the humans on Crawl was built by a colony bards, then maybe there are other worlds out there that for some reason the human colonists they're decided on a medieval uh structure to their civilization, and maybe there are multiple beast ships moving around trying to uh to get them who knows, saying we must prevent these the beasts of people are like,

we must prevent these space medieval types from becoming Space Renaissance types or something. I don't know. The Guilt Navigator arrives, the representative of the Lance Raad disembarks that come out and they say, sorry, Colwen Lissa, you have been officially deposed by the Lancerraad. This planet now belongs to the Harconins. Uh,

too bad. Or they could go with the sort of a classic outer Limits ending where ope, the beasts parents show up and we realized that the beast was just a child of this species and now they have to deal with the grown ups with their full full strength. Okay, I think I can say no more about Krall. Yeah, there's nothing left to be said. But go watch it if you haven't seen it before, and if you have seen it before, well, now's a great time to go

rewatch Krawl. Watch it with someone you love or by yourself. It's great, it's great both ways. All Right, we're gonna go and close out this weird house cinema. But yeah, we'd love to hear from everyone out there. If you have memories about watching Krawl, if if Kral is close to your heart, etcetera. Share share your love for Kral

with us um as. As always, if you want to see some blog posts about these these movie selections, go to some muta music dot com and blog about them there and include the video clip I'm bad, the podcast episode and so forth. And also if you use letterboxed, that's uh L E T T E R B o x D dot com. We have a profile their Weird House. Go there. You'll find a list of all the movies we've covered on Weird House Cinema and sometimes there's a

peek ahead to what we're covering in the future. So it's a nice like visual a way to see what we've looked at, what we've watched. And you can also throw in little tabulations there and like see them by decade, uh see them in order that they were made, that sort of thing you just thinks. As always to our

excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart radio. For more podcasts My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.