Monday, April 20, 2020

#AtoZChallenge Quests!

As far as MST3K and Rifftrax go there seem to be two popular time periods for fantasy movies:  the 60s and the 80s.  The ones in the early 80s I think you can attribute to the success of the Conan movies, but I'm not sure what brought it about in the early 60s.

The Magic Sword:  This early 60s movie features a guy raised by a witch who gives him a, wait for it, magic sword to go rescue a princess from an evil wizard played by Basil Rathbone.  There are knights of seven nations (Ireland, France, etc) who go with him, though most of them die.  In the end the wizard turns into a dragon.  Since this is from dreck producer Burt I Gordon there are lots of crappy effects and bad acting.  The MST3K episode features an intermission skit where Crow sings a love song dedicated to the middle-aged witch in the movie.

Jack the Giant Killer:  This early 60s movie has an MST3K episode and a Rifftrax--plus a live Rifftrax show.  It's about a, wait for it, guy named Jack who kills a giant.  Then he has to rescue a princess from an evil wizard.  So it's pretty much the same movie as The Magic Sword, only it makes even less sense and has crappier effects and acting.  A guy gets turned into a chimp, another into a dog, and the princess into some evil witch or succubus or something.  And a bunch of crap that doesn't make sense.

Hercules:  Like Godzilla or Gamera, early on in MST3K they showed a lot of Hercules movies.  Hercules and the Captive Women and Hercules Unchained are two they show frequently on Pluto TV.  I think they were made in Italy or Spain or something like that.  They were pretty cheaply made back in the 60s, most featuring Steve Reeves as Hercules, who spent most of his time pushing stuff, throwing stuff, or sleeping.  I really can't tell the movies apart.

They added a third one on Pluto TV:  Hercules and the Moon Men that's pretty much the same as the other two, only it stars Alan Steel as Herc. 

Sons of Hercules:  This Rifftrax is another old 60s movie that's supposed to be about the "sons" (plural) of Hercules.  The theme song tells us about two guys who are "man as man can be" or some damned thing.  And yet the actual movie only deals with one of them who has a nearly invisible blond beard.  He goes to some evil kingdom to rescue a damsel with the help of some whiny, annoying old guy sidekick.  It's pretty funny that as they're going to this place a bear keeps following them by walking on its hind legs.  Pretty obvious that it's a guy in a suit.  And when they're supposed to be fighting on a log it's shot so it's obvious that they're not actually on a log.  Then later it stops to say, "Next time..." and then tells you everything that happens so what would be the point in coming back?  It's all extremely cheap and lame and makes those other Hercules movies look like the Fast & Furious franchise.

Prisoners of the Lost Universe:  Now we get to the 80s portion of this entry.  This mostly takes place in a fantasy universe but like Narnia some of it is in modern times.  Richard Hatch from the original Battlestar Galactica plays a carpenter who gets in a wreck with a female reporter and threatens to spank her with a broken kendo sword before they both accidentally get beamed into another universe during an earthquake in a professor's lab.  This one has giants and weird creatures and John Saxon as an evil warlord who's used the professor to create "magic" like guns.  Besides some hammy acting and not great effects this is one of those movies that keeps shifting tone from cartoon sound effects to John Saxon slapping the female reporter and threatening to rape her.  It's just kind of creepy when you shift tone like that.  What kind of movie are you wanting to make?

The Sword and the Sorcerer:  In this early 80s movie a prince's family is murdered by an evil warlord named Cromwell but he escapes with a cool but useless sword that has three blades that can shoot away from each other, though in the end all he needed was a knife on his wrist.  Cromwell gets power from an evil wizard played by Bull from Night Court and takes over the kingdom.  Meanwhile the prince has become a douchebag mercenary man whose lieutenant is Frank from Murphy Brown, but eventually gets drawn into saving the kingdom when he saves a woman.  Only some other guy becomes the king.  It's pretty lame and there's one gross part where a tunnel fills with rats as it gets lit on fire.  As you'd expect it's not exactly top-notch quality entertainment.  Like Prisoners of the Lost Universe this can't really seem to settle on a tone; case in point a couple of soldiers try to rape a woman and then our hero comes in making dick jokes.

Outlaw of Gor:  Similar to Prisoners of the Lost Universe, this late 80s movie from Cannon Films features a couple of guys who go from the present to some fantasy world.  The world of Gor that's ruled by some evil queen and a wizard played by Jack Palance.  I think this has fewer cartoon sound effects though.  It's pretty funny that the queen dies via a spear thrown from like three hundred feet away that hits her in the midsection.  Was it tipped with poison?  Anyway, like Alien From LA this was on MST3K only a few years after its release thanks to Cannon Films going bankrupt.

Ator the Fighting Eagle:  This one was on Rifftrax about a year before it was also on the second season of the Netflix revival of MST3K.  It's an early 80s movie about a hero who wants to marry his sister but then their village is raided and he has to rescue her from bad guys.  To do that he has to learn to become a great warrior and shit.  As for the eagle thing, there are no eagles in the movie.  As you'd expect there's not great acting or effects and it's just damned creepy he wants to marry his sister.

Cave Dwellers:  The funny thing about this early 90s MST3K episode is it shows the sequel to Ator almost 30 years before they showed the first movie.  The other really funny thing is the opening credits to this movie use footage from some other movie about two guys from modern day who are in some fantasy world.  Which has nothing to do with this.  This is about some evil warlord trying to take over the world.  He wants some MacGuffin so a woman wearing a big gold plate like Flava Flave's clock goes to find Ator and his Asian kung-fu master.  Not watching the first one doesn't really matter since it recaps who Ator is and nothing from that movie really affects this one.  Basically Ator and the woman go back and defeat the bad guy.  The end.  There's less creepy incest stuff but otherwise it's not really an improvement over the first movie.

There you go, a bunch of fantasy movies that still aren't as bad as Willow.

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