Lessons of Darkness: Krull (1983): C

November 03, 2005

Krull (1983): C

If The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars had an ugly baby, it would look a lot like Krull, a cheesy fantasy/sci-fi hybrid that, as a young kid, I wasn’t able to tolerate beyond the first excruciatingly lame fifteen minutes. Twenty years later, I wish I’d followed my younger self’s example. Helmed by Peter Yates – who also made Bullitt, though you wouldn’t know if from this adventure’s narrative and directorial sluggishness – the film follows the save-the-princess quest of Prince Colwyn (a stupendously goofy Ken Marshall), whose planet Krull has been overrun by the minions of the malevolent Beast. Journeying through a variety of stock swords-and-sorcery locales (the shrouded forest, the misty swamp, the open plains), Colwyn endeavors to rescue his love and stave off his world’s destruction with the help of a misfit crew comprised of criminals (including a young Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane), a wise-cracking magician (David Battley), a Cyclops (Bernard Bresslaw), an old sage with the hilarious name of Ynyr (Freddie Jackson), and – most goofily – a five-bladed boomerang known as the Glaive. A few striking images keep Krull from completely falling apart – most notably a shot involving the evil black-eyed doppelganger of an elderly Seer (John Welsh) – but the film is ultimately so brazen about its palagiarism that the only real fun comes from guessing which cinematic predecessor it’ll rip off next.