Three years after creating the most Dungeons & Dragons film of all time (Hawk The Slayer) Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson reunited to try and recapture that 'lightning in a bottle' magic with Prisoners Of The Lost Universe.
The chances are your impression of their success can be gauged against how well you feel George Lucas recaptured the magic of the original Star Wars trilogy in the Ewok movies.
Even bringing back Peter O'Farrell and Ray Charleson in essentially the same roles as they had in Hawk, a roguish dwarf and a gifted elfin creature, doesn't really help.
TV presenter Carrie Madison (Kay Lenz, best known as Thursday from the classic western The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday) and handyman Dan (Richard Hatch aka Captain Apollo from the original Battlestar Galactica) find themselves shunted from our world to the primitive parallel world of Vonya. There the warlord, Kleel (a slumming-it John Saxon) is using his stash of Earth weaponry to maintain a brutal grip on the nomadic locals.
Kleel takes a shine to Carrie (because of her blonde hair and feisty nature) and it's up to Dan and the adventuring party he soon gathers (an elf, a dwarf, and a giant... sound familiar?) to rescue her.
As with Hawk, there's a strong whiff of Dungeons & Dragons in Prisoners Of The Lost Universe, with its abundance of random encounters.
But the cheesy monsters our heroes cross swords with are more reminiscent of the Italian low-budget sword-and-sandals fare such as the Hercules movies, Conquest etc that were being made around the same time.
Unfortunately for gamers - and neutral observers - all the humanoid monsters met are simply interchangeable, disposable goons in different costumes with no discernible differences in their abilities beyond their different outfits (be they midgets with glowing eyes, subterranean cloaked critters, or the Jason Voorhees-like waterbeast).
If Hawk The Slayer was Marcel and Robertson's Robert E Howard, then Prisoners Of The Lost Universe is their Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Despite the '80s opening on Earth and the presence of firearms, the sci-fi vibe that's suggested by the film's advertising (see poster/DVD cover above) is largely trampled by the fantasy elements, giving the film a micro-budget sword-and-planet John Carter of Mars flavour more than anything else.
Although Dan The Handyman is no John Carter!
On top of clunky dialogue and bargain basement effects, there's also a quite heavy-handed attempt to force humour into the mix by injecting some odd, comedy sound effects, which are totally cringe-worthy.
Trying too hard to lean into "camp charm", when such elements should be allowed to blossom naturally, it doesn't take long to realise why Prisoners Of The Lost Universe never gained the cult following that their earlier work did.
No comments:
Post a Comment