Krull

Krull has one distinction from the other films we've discussed so far in our 'Film Club.' While our previous films are b-movies through and through... Krull is a big studio movie trying to be the next Star Wars. Everything about it is horribly dated, but the film obviously had some studio money behind it: elaborate make-up, matte paintings, an epic James Horner score, and big stars like the guy who played the teacher in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I joke about 'big stars' but Krull actually has a couple of them: Liam Neeson and Harry Potter's Hagrid Robbie Coltrane have small roles. Both stars surely owe their current success to this film. I'm sure lead Ken Marshall was hoping Krull would elevate him to Marc Hamill levels of stardom, but it was not to be.

Its actually quite an opportune time to check in with Krull. Director David Gordon Green has cited the movie as a primary influence on his latest film, Your Highness, which opens this weekend. Its easy to see why someone would make a comedy influenced by early 80s fantasy films like Krull, Beastmaster, and Willow. There's an earnestness that comes through in these films that is missing from the snarky, 'excuse me princess' flavor of recent fantasy/adventure movies like Prince of Persia and the optical and practical special effects have a charm absent from the CGI of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Green hopefully has a similar nostalgia and reverence for this sub-genre as Edgar Wright and his collaborators have for the specific breed of action films that begot Hot Fuzz.

Krull is not a good movie- its 'hero-rescues-princess-from-evil' plot follows Joseph Campbell's hero's journey step by step without the slightest bit of reinvention and its 'love conquers all' finale is eye-rolling, but its an easy film to like- I mean, there's a cyclops and the glaive.

While its a fun movie, I find it hard while watching Krull to imagine an alternate universe where this film was successful and went on to spawn sequels, remakes, hundreds of spin-off novels, action figures, and animated series. Its mythology is too depthless and the tone too goofy to make it anything more than an drinking night curiosity.

Random notes and topics for conversation:

Krull was in the news recently because of the passing away of director Peter Yates in January. Yates also directed the Steve McQueen classic Bullitt and the goofy-title classic Mother, Jugs & Speed.

I mentioned in an earlier post that my primary memory of Krull was the Atari game. I don't remember much about it other than it involved throwing the glaive at the end. Considering most games of that era didn't have much story, let alone an ending, it was one of my favorite games to play.

Krull's score is kind of awesome.

Are there any fantasy films from the 70s-80s that aren't appreciated purely on a semi-ironic or nostalgic level? I'm hard-pressed to think of any.

Please share your favorite part of the movie in the comments section...

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I'm actually sort of torn on what the next selection should be---we have yet to have a straight-up 'bad' horror movie yet...but I also don't want us to get stuck in a strictly genre rut.

Here are two suggestions, please let me know in the comments which one we should pursue:

Alice's Restaurant

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant, but the only thing music icon Arlo Guthrie needs is a good Thanksgiving dinner. After he gets his fill, Guthrie's run-in with the law over a trumped-up littering charge leads to a unique way of avoiding the Vietnam War draft.

or

The Video Dead

When teenagers Jeff (Rocky Duvall) and Zoe Blair (Roxanna Augesen) move into their new house before their parents arrive, they discover the television from hell: Flesh-eating zombies walk straight off the screen, looking for some tasty human dinner. Now the siblings join forces with neighbors April (Victoria Bastel) and Joshua (Sam David McClelland) -- who supply a machete, bow and arrow, and chainsaw -- in a bloody fight for their lives.

I suspect I know which way this is going to go...but feel free to prove me wrong by voting the comments section!

Hellbound

I sort of surprised myself when I came to the realization that I had never actually seen a Chuck Norris movie prior to Hellbound. After watching this biblical horror actioner, I don't know if I am likely to seek out any additional entries in his oeuvre. I want to make myself clear- Hellbound does a fine job at being a very watchable bad movie...its just that Norris, despite his internet meme status, is sort of a charisma vacuum. Hellbound features Norris past his physical prime (though it has its quota of slow-mo roundhouses), so you would hope he'd compensate by cracking wise a bit more. The mulleted one doesn't even play it as laughably intense as Van Damme or Seagal would have done.

Norris leaves the wise-cracking to his sidekick, Jackson ("Hey! The cabbie from Adventures in Babysitting"). He gets to deliver lines (as club member Jimmy observed) like “I’m so hungry, I could eat the south end of a north bound skunk” and “either this guys nuttier than a Snickers or we’re in some heavy duty s*** here”
Somehow its within their jurisdiction to travel to Jerusalem to solve a (demonic) Chicago murder. I don't understand how our legal system worked back in 1994- so why not!

Hellbound is a much more successful ironic watch than our last selection- we get some slant-eyed demons, cornrows, freeze frames, roundhouse kicks, lame synthesizer music, and...Jesus?

I want to believe all the above are trademarks of director Aaron Norris. I want to believe it so badly in fact that I probably won't watch another of his movies to disprove this thought.
By the way-Aaron Norris has directed 10 movies...guess who they all star.
Frank Stallone owes less to nepotism.

We've gotten some good comments about Hellbound so far in the Black Eagle posting- so please check them out. Club Member Brady actually pointed out what became my favorite moment in the movie:
"Jackson attempts to tackle Prosatanos (a Greek name, perhaps?) as they scramble for the magical sceptre, and falls hilariously short. "



In SLOW MOTION!!! It was glorious and I may not have given it a second thought if Brady hadn't commented- so please leave your comment and share your funny observations on the film.

Topic for discussion- Where does Norris fall in your list of action heroes?

As posted earlier, our next film will be Krull- a film I remember fondly because of the Atari game.

Next Movie...

I'm still working my way through Hellbound, but wanted to announce the next movie for the film club, chosen by member Brady-

"Next on the list: Krull.

Yes, this movie will be as awesome as its title. Watch the opening credits for at least one very familiar name. Hint: This actor has TAKEN a lot of action roles lately for some UNKNOWN reason. "

Who could he be talking about? John Cusack? William H Macy? To find out... watch KRULL!!!!!

Barring any further internet connectivity issues, I will have some thoughts on Hellbound by the end of the week.

Order of the Black Eagle

Well, that was disappointing. I was hoping to start the 'film club off with a movie of such 'so-bad-its-good' awesomeness that it would forever bond us together forever like a shared traumatic experience-but in the best way possible.
Unfortunately, for the club's initial pick I managed to find the one film in existence that manages to make both Nazis and clothed monkeys dull to watch.
Far from an unintentionally humorous b-movie, Order of the Black Eagle is instead unintentionally humorless. Alas, 'Eagle' thinks its a comedy. I'm all for a film being a bit tongue-in-cheek, this film chokes on itself. Very rarely when a film sets out to be a cult-classic is it ever anything deserving to be so.

Eagle straddles the line between spoof and rip-off so haphazardly that I suspect that the blooper reel may have accidently made it into the final edit. In many of the sequences, the Bond-ish Duncan Jax and his wacky posse of high-lariously named killers are competent enough at their jobs that it feels like any other film from the Rambo/Missing in Action era...but then the film tries to make the audience laugh and reeks of flop sweat (Jax coming out of a hideout surrounded by armed bandits pretending to be fa-lay-ming.)

Its not all a waste, however. While the first hour is dull and incomprehensible, the last third at least throws in some gratuitous explosions and awful, enthusiastic stunt work with the confusion.
The Nazis' plan to take out the big African-American on the team, which involves trying to tackel him one at a time, has a special place in my heart.
Favorite moment:
Jax's encounter with de führer

For discussion:
Is a movie that pretty much tells the audience that it knows its bad better or worse than one that's just as bad, but doesn't acknowledge it?

I have a theory that all the baboon scenes were added in later in order to play up the COMEDY (caps necessary, mind you)...anyone else believe this to be a believable scenario?

I noticed in the credits that the film is in memory of Flo Hyman, the former Olympic volleyball player who portrayed 'Spike.' Black Eagle was her only film role.

Did anyone else make it through? If so, let me know in the comments.

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No one's made any suggestions in the comments, yet---so it's my choice again.
After being a bit let down by my first selection, I'm going to stack the deck a bit and recruit Internet meme star and staunch Mike Huckabee supporter Chuck Norris for the next pick...1994's Hellbound.

Undercover cops Shatter (Chuck Norris) and Jackson (Calvin Levels) encounter an enemy far more dangerous than the murderers and gangsters they deal with on their Chicago beat in this supernatural thriller. A murder mystery leads the partners to the Holy Land, where they discover that Satan's messenger has awakened and is planning to conquer the world. Now, Shatter and Jackson must try to stop the powerful demon before evil invades the planet.

Directed by Aaron Norris...so that's like...double the Norris or something.

Spooooooooky

Contributing...

Please let me know if you want to choose selections and start discussions---I will give you 'contributor' status as soon as I figure out how.
This is a 'club' not my personal blog.

An Introduction to...

The Film Club for the Weird/Bad-Looking Netflix Instant Titles Daring You To Watch Them



I haven't always had what one would call a 'good' taste in movies. Several of my good friends may claim that I still don't, but I digress... In the infancy of my film obsession, as a teenager growing up near the metropolis of Knoxville, IA, I would travel on a near-daily basis to the video store Mike's Movies and rent a handful of VHS tapes on each visit.
Sure, I rented the occasional 'classic' or new release--but I was far often drawn to the back area (not that back area) where shelves of cheesy-looking B and below-grade horror and sci-fi movies.
Movies with names like 'Castle Freak' and 'Ice Pirates' -movies with covers often depicting sad-looking spaceships, cheap-looking monsters, or gratuitous T&A. If it had all three, I knew I had a winner on my hands.
I knew these movies weren't going to be good, but I watched them anyway. I've since evolved from watching solely 'so bad its good' movies into more of your typical cine-phile who would rather watch a Hungarian film about cheese-making than the latest Adam Sandler vehicle.
Still, whenever I'm browsing through the Netflix Instant selections, I often choose films that remind me of Mike's Movies for my queue---80s comedies, 90s direct-to-video schlock-fests, Star Wars knockoffs.

This 'film club' will not be for just those films.
I will let whoever wants to make a selection, make a selection--but I'm going to be upfront that my choices will often be of the 'why the heck not?' 5-VHS-rentals-at-a-time-variety.

How's this going to work?

Well, once or twice a month (at least on my end- I can't afford this to take up all my movie viewings) someone in the club will select something from the dregs of Netfilx's Instant selection and whoever wants to participate and can watch.

A week or so after the selection is named, the nominator gets to write at least a couple paragraphs about the movie and offer some talking points/questions for discussion (to be held in the comments section).

These aren't recommendations, I'll be watching these for the first time with the rest of the club. Because of such and because of the presumed quality (or lack there of) with a lot of these movies- I personally don't expect everyone to finish each movie. The fun will be just to check out enough of each selection to see its merits.

So what's the first selection? I may be guilty of following for an intentionally campy film here, but this description is hard to pass up:

"Duncan Jax (Ian Hunter) and his tank-driving baboon infiltrate a South American lair where a group of Nazis scheme to revive a cryogenically frozen Adolf Hitler. Armed with high-tech gadgets and joined by sizzling hot lady agents, Jax turns his mission into a wildly explosive crusade against the fascist baddies. Worth Keeter directs this over-the-top action flick."

The movie- 1987's Order of the Black Eagle.



How far will you make it?