Prisoners Of The Lost Universe (1983)

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.

Mordenkainen Headlines New Dungeons & Dragons Comic

Main cover art by Esad Ribić

Gary Gygax's wizard Mordenkainen stars in a new ongoing Dungeons & Dragons comic coming from Dark Horse in November.

Powerless in the face of a draconic apocalypse, the story follows:

"... Mad Mage Mordenkainen as he assembles Faerûn’s most legendary heroes, including Volo, Tasha, and more fan-favourite adventurers, for a high-fantasy epic that spans the Forgotten Realms!"

Each issue will also include roleplaying-themed backmatter penned by RPG "personalities" or D&D gaming material.

Issue one will feature an essay by Erika Ishii, voice actor and actual play participant in the YouTube show Dimension 20.

The Dungeons & Dragons series will be written by Eisner-nominated creators Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly (Star Trek: The Last Starship, Captain America, NYX), penciled by Ibraim Roberson (Star Wars, Weapon X, Thor Annual 2023), inked by Arabson Oliveira, coloured by Dan Brown, and lettered by Haley Rose-Lyon.

Issue one variant cover gallery:

The Archer and The Sorceress (1981)

A sword-and-sorcery flick that has long eluded me, I finally caved and got myself an imported German DVD of The Archer and The Sorceress aka The Archer: Fugitive from The Empire (aka Der Zauberbogen).

The poster art, by Les Edwards, that had so stirred my youthful imagination, had always suggested that I was missing out out on another Deathstalker or The Warrior and The Sorceress, but sadly The Archer is a family-friendly, Certificate 12, failed TV pilot.

This kind of explains the lethargic set-up and anticlimactic denouement, but doesn't excuse the messily over-complicated plot and the occasionally nonsensical dialogue.

The land of Malveel, home to a disparate group of feuding nomadic tribes, is under threat of invasion by the Draikian empire (known, confusingly, as The Dynasty) and its snakemen allies.

The nomads have been united under the rule of King Brakus (George Kennedy), but behind-the-scenes shenanigans see him murdered and his son, Toran (Lane Caudell), framed.

With his dying breath, Brakus tells Toran to seek the wizard Lazar-Sa, to assist him in regaining his rightful position as the tribal leader.

Toran escapes with his mentor, Mak (George Innes), but Mak soon dies as well (for reasons) and in doing so bequeaths the magical Heartbow, known as Elbe, to Toran.

On his journey, Toran teams up with the slippery rogue Slant (Victor Campos) and the sultry sorceress Estra (Belinda Bauer). Having had a previous run-in with Toran, she is also seeking Lazar-Sa, but to kill him in revenge for the death of her mother.

All the while, they are being chased by Gar (Kabir Bedi), the leader of the Draikians (I think) and his warband of nine snake-people.

Snakeman

Although they add little more than a modicum of atmosphere, the make-up on the snakemen is superb, they wouldn't have looked out of place on Jabba's sailbarge.

Like the handful of other creatures and species shown in this hour-and-a-half flick, the snakepeople, ultimately, are little more than set dressing.

When our 'heroes' arrive in the town of Kamal, they end up saving the locals from someone claiming to be Lazar-Sa.

They pursue him to his hidden, magical base only to discover he is an imposter, a student of Lazar-Sa's, defaming his old master's name.

Nevertheless, Gar and his snakeboys pursue Toran and co. into the misty valley for a final showdown.

There's definitely potential in The Archer, but the ragged script (written and directed by TV stalwart Nicholas Corea) comes nowhere close to realising it, despite the best efforts of Victor Campos's duplicitous - but ultimately good-natured - scoundrel and Belinda Bauer, who smoulders extremely well in an Eva Green style.

Clearly a lot of worldbuilding had gone into the backstory, the film opens with a fleeting shot of a map of the area, people swear by different gods depending on where they hail from, and it's implied - more than once - that Elbe is not the only Heartbow.

But none of this, or any of the other setting nuggets the script is sprinkled with, really go anywhere because this wasn't written as a self-contained movie, but rather the start of an on-going serial.

Sadly, we will never know the full depth of Toran and Estra's world.

The Archer still has a few interesting moments, but its bloodless combat and bland lead mean it really should turn in its swords-and-sorcery genre membership card.

I don't know if I'm getting slow in my old age, but, for me, one of the main areas where the story fell down was my inability to keep track of who was on whose side, and really why Gar was bothering with Toran in the first place (having already successfully engineered his fall from grace).

My problem with following the narrative was heightened by the mumbly dialogue, made worse by the fact that more than once - when I could understand what was being said - it didn't make a lot of sense anyway.

For instance, the town leaders in Kamal, when thanking our heroes for their rescue, seemed to be riffing off the script they had been given, talking over each other, and generally behaving rather peculiarly.

The Archer and The Sorceress isn't so bad that it's good (cf. Deathstalker) and it obviously isn't particularly good.

Instead, it's horribly mediocre, one of the worst sins a film can inflict upon an audience.

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Whole World Is A Sourcebook!

As a creative, gaming-obsessed, pre-teen I sat in my corduroy shorts in prep school assembly seeking inspiration from the hymns we sang... just what was the to hit/damage bonus of a "bow of burning gold", what effect did "arrows of desire" have and just how fast was a "chariot of fire"?

In 1977, as well as discovering Star Wars, I had been introduced to Dungeons & Dragons and the whole world was suddenly "research material".

Everywhere I looked there were potential magic items or monsters for characters to contend with in dungeons drawn from every imaginable source.

My prep school co-dungeoneer, Tom, even ran me through a D&D adventure based on the first season of The Hitchhikers' Guide To The Galaxy (a radio serial he had introduced me to and also had a major impact on my life).

Television and books (particularly the sword and sorcery tales of Fritz Leiber, and a little later Harry Turtledove's first Elabon stories - Wereblood and Werenight) shaped many adventures and characters in those early years; then later comic books became a major source of inspiration as our games moved away from straight fantasy into the four-colour world of superheroes.

From these I still have three comic book standards that I would one day love to weave into a single, long-running roleplaying game: time travel, alternate dimensions, and cosmic entities.

Yet somehow, even in the games I've run for the Tuesday Knights in the past couple of decades, I have yet to squeeze all three of them in successfully; feeling that a campaign needs to progress at a steady pace for a considerable length of time before such contrasting, incredible elements can have their full, desired impact when introduced.

That said, all three feature heavily in The Sailor on The Seas of Fate, the second of Michael Moorcock's Elric books.

Even dreamier, more surreal and more psychedelic than Elric of Melniboné, this 190-page delight had me joining Elric on a ship sailing a strange ocean that linked not just islands, but worlds and planes of existence in time and space.

In a series of three adventures, Elric discovers he is but one face of The Eternal Champion, travelling to the Earth's future with three other incarnations of the Champion (Hawkmoon, Corum and Erekose) to battle two universe-threatening alien magicians; then he finds himself being chased by a Melnibonean sorcerer from history and swept up in a mythical love story; before finally taking a Heart of Darkness-style river journey to the legendary, lost birth place of his people.

These stories continue to leave me breathless, blown away by the absorbing text, the clever imagery and mental stimuli they spark in my enfeebled brain.

It also made me appreciate, perhaps, why I have never successfully tackled such cosmic themes as I desire to in my roleplaying games - they are best left to the master storytellers!

POSSE POWER!!!

Photo by Reda Bluo

Since this blog celebrated its first six months of active service back in May, another brave soul has joined our Posse of Followers: Tom D.

This pushes membership to a very lucky 13, but we could always do better! We're very welcoming around these 'ere parts.

Look to the right and you will see in the side column (below the current 'featured article') a widget entitled Join The Posse. Under avatars for my current followers is a button marked Follow.

Simply press that and - all being well - your avatar will join the ranks of this group of brave heroes.

I do think you'll need a Google account for this to work (Blogger, after all, is a Google thing).

Not only does this mean, my expertly crafted prose will appear in your Google "Reading List" but it demonstrates to me that you're interested in my waffle and support what I'm doing (without having to part with a single red cent, sign up to a Patreon, or back my Kickstarter).

For those of you new around here, my blog is kind of a broad church at present with a mix of film (and TV) reviews, trailers, books, comic books (particularly Titan's Conan and other Howardverse titles), and underpinning it all a life-long love of tabletop roleplaying games.

I also love swords-and-sorcery, monster horror, westerns, Star Wars, B-movies, select superheroes (primarily Superman and Fantastic Four these days), curry, pizzas, my long-suffering wife, Rachel, and our cute little doggo, Alice.

And probably other things that have slipped out of my Swiss Cheesed brain.

I also write, occasionally, about my health: the idea being that, as a stroke survivor, I can share both the highs and lows of my ongoing physical and mental battles. I try to limit this, at most, to once a week (although, where pertinent, it can slip into posts about other things).

Anyway, you're here now, reading this, so why wouldn't you want to join the Posse?

• Of course, honestly, the best way to follow the action on Cowboys, Capes, and Claws is to add this blog to your Feedly aggregator or similar RSS feed reader application (it almost sounds as though I know what I'm talking about!)

Jack The Giant Slayer (2013)

The first thing we need to get out of the way is the fact that 2013's Jack The Giant Slayer is NOT a reworking of the '60s fantasy classic Jack The Giant Killer but, instead, a retelling of the well-known fairy tale of Jack And The Beanstalk.

The movie - working from a screenplay by Darren Lemke, Christopher McQuarrie and Dan Studney - does a fantastic job of sidestepping cliché while still paying homage to fairy tale tropes.

After a marvellous pre-credit bit of worldbuilding, that establishes the mythology of the giants and their relationship with the land of Cloister, our likeable hero Jack (Fury Road's Nicholas Hoult) accidentally exposes a magical bean to rain water - creating a beanstalk up to the kingdom of the giants, Gantua, above the clouds.

He joins an expedition to to rescue the errant princess Isabelle (Poldark's Eleanor Tomlinson), who has managed to get herself trapped at the top of the beanstalk, is led by the captain of King's Guardians, Elmont (Ewan 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' McGregor, doing some fine 'stiff upper lip' acting) and Crawe (Eddie Marsan as the grizzled and worldly sergeant major type) - 

Their adventuring party (the whole film has a very Dungeons & Dragons quality about it) includes the treacherous Roderick (Stanley Tucci) - fiancé of the reluctant princess - and his sneaky manservant Wicke (Ewen Bremner) who have their own reasons for wanting to get to Gantua.

Jack The Giant Slayer rattles along with such great pace that you don't notice its almost two hour duration as the story is continually switching up a gear.

Although, in parts, the movie is also obviously quite CG heavy this never distracts from the human story as the characters are so well-rounded and the whole world believable that the viewer is just swept up in events.

Jack The Giant Slayer might be a bit long - and possibly scary - for some children but adults, especially gamers, will love the non-stop action and adventure.

Dragon Quest (2009)

I've said it before and I'll say it again, for my money, legendary mockbuster-makers The Asylum are at their best when they're turning out fantasy movies.

While Dragon Quest (or Dragonquest or DragonQuest) may not be anything particularly original (it's basically another rehash of the "hero's journey" we all know from Star Wars) it's still a half-decent Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure yarn.

Reluctant, magical-dope-smoking hero Arkadi (Daniel Bonjour) learns from local wiseman Grandfather (Jason Connery) that he is actually the prophesied Keeper tasked with collecting the stones of virtue under the guidance of legendary warrior Maxim (Marc Singer) and his rather attractive protégé, the scantily-clad Katya (Jennifer Dorogi).

Katya (Jennifer Dorogi) - Dragon Quest's eye candy

It's no surprise really that former Beastmaster Marc Singer steals the show with a scenery-devouring performance that blends Mister Miyagi with Yoda and a dash of Basil Exposition.

To be honest Maxim justified the minimal cost of the DVD alone and I could easily have enjoyed 90-minutes of his solo adventures!

The Keeper has been called into action because a former colleague of Maxim's, the Darth Vader-ish Kirill (or Krill) - played by X-Files/Buffy The Vampire Slayer bad guy Brian Thompson - has summoned a wicked (CGI) dragon of smoke and fire to act as his avatar in his (generally unspecified) plans for world domination... and bolster-up his legions of anarchy-spreading Tolfar mercenaries.

There's dragons and there's questing and some other CGI beasties along the way for Arkadi and crew, some running about and some fighting and it's all wrapped up in an easily-digestible 85 minutes.

Filmed in the deserts of California and interspersed with stock, aerial footage of sweeping landscapes, Dragon Quest quickly shakes off its early fairy tale vibe and segues into full-blooded swords and sorcery territory.

While it delivers very little we haven't seen before, it does so with an innocent, cheeky charm that makes it enjoyable nonetheless if you are open-minded to what it has to offer (and let's be honest you have to be reasonably open-minded knowingly sitting down to watch a movie from The Asylum).

Jabberwocky (1977)

A Dark Age kingdom is being terrorised by a mysterious monster, driving much of its populace to seek shelter behind the walls of the main city.

Eventually doddery, old King Bruno the Questionable (comedy legend Max Wall) decides to organise a brutal jousting tournament to find "a champion" to slay the beast.

This is despite appeals by his equally aged Chancellor, Passelewe (the always excellent John Le Mesurier of Dad's Army and the Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy radio plays) who would rather the search was conducted in such a way as to not keep killing off the land's knights.

Meanwhile, upon the death of his father, clueless and clumsy Dennis Cooper (future national treasure Michael Palin) decides to leave the village where he grew up and move to the city, to start afresh.

This leads to a series of chaotic, often slapstick, set-pieces as he bumbles his way through every encounter from trying to get into the city to being mistaken for a prince-in-disguise by Bruno's daughter, the princess (Deborah Fallender).

Her hand-in-marriage and half the kingdom are being offered by the king to whoever kills the troublesome monster.

After his only friend, Ethel the lusty squire (Steptoe and Son's Harry H. Corbett), is accidentally killed, Dennis ends up as the squire to the eventual champion of the joust, Red Herring (Dave Prowse aka Darth Vader), and the two brave men set out into the mist-dappled lands, looking for the fearful monster.

However, the church and the rich merchant-nobles of the city aren't so keen to see the creature murdered because it is surprisingly good for business, as people are buying and praying more.

Therefore, they engineer an ambush by the Black Knight (also Dave Prowse), and his small gang of thugs, to take out Red Herring - and Dennis - before they actually reach the monster's lair.

I can't believe I was halfway through my sixtieth cycle around the sun before I made time to see Jabberwocky, a wonderfully, very British, dark comedy with smatterings of gory Grand Guignol.

While strictly not a Monty Python movie, it is written and directed by Terry Gilliam, stars Michael Palin and features several Python regular collaborators, as well as a host of British comedy faces of the era.

There's also the visual, grimy Medieval verisimilitude of 1975's Monty Python and The Holy Grail (which Gilliam co-directed) and a similar picaresque throughline to 1979's Life of Brian.

The monster - which may be the Jabberwocky of the title, but is never directly called that - remains unseen until the climax, with Gilliam instead employing canny, low-budget camera techniques as would be used in Sam Raimi's 1981 Evil Dead (and then the rest of that gore-drenched franchise).

Once we finally see it, the Jabberwocky (a man in a costume) is more Classic Doctor Who era alien than glorious Sir John Tenniel illustration, but that just heightens the surreal craziness of the film.

The film's title, and monster's possible name, comes, of course, from the famous nonsense poem in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There.

Snatches of the poem are heard, Greek Chorus-like, throughout the film, recited by an unseen - and unidentified - Punch and Judy puppeteer, heightening the mythological - or fairy tale - nature of the adventure.

Ultimately, the 105-minute Jabberwocky may not be as laugh-out-loud funny as much of Gilliam's other work, but it still manages to be subversive and smart behind its veneer of blood, guts, and toilet humour.

Masters of The Universe (2026)

When the evil Skeletor (a surprisingly perfect Jared Leto) and his monstrous legions invade the city of Eternos, capital city of the planet of Eternia, young Prince Adam (Artie Wilkinson-Hunt) is magically sent to Earth (with the all-important Sword of Power) by The Sorceress (Morena Baccarin).

Unfortunately, along the way he loses the sword and so spends the next 15 years on Earth looking for it.

Now grown up Adam (Nicholas Galitzine) is stuck in a tedious corporate cubicle job until he is finally reunited with his magical sword.

This sends a signal back to Eternia - drawing the attention of both Skeletor's lieutenant, Beastman (voiced by Gary Martin) and Adam's childhood friend, Teela (Riverdale's Camila Mendes), who both race to find him as quickly as possible.

Whisked back to his home planet, Adam immediately discovers it is no longer the beautiful place he remembers, but has been devastated by Skeletor and his minions. Meanwhile, the heroes Adam was surrounded by as a child are downtrodden and no longer recognise him.

It is Adam's job to channel the power of his magical inheritance, boost the morale of his old friends, and overthrow the tyrannical Skeletor.

Masters of The Universe is a great 140-minute, light-hearted, action movie, barely slowing down for its entire duration, thanks for the excellent direction of Travis Knight (sadly, no relation).

This 45-year-old franchise has a rich - and oft confusing - amount of lore behind it already, but screenplay writers Chris Butler, Aaron Nee, Adam Nee, and Dave Callaham carve their own path that is both immediately accessible to anyone coming to the story for the first time yet also honouring what has gone before (including a slew of Easter Eggs).

Emphasising Adam's time on Earth adds a swords-and-planet veneer to what has always been (to me) a pumped up swords-and-sorcery epic. His mother, Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley) fleeting points out that she actually came from Earth, but this is never dwelt on. As with everything in Masters of The Universe this nugget sweeps in front of the audience at warp speed.

Travis Knight ensures nothing drags in his movie. From the trailers I'd feared that too much time might be spent setting up Adam's life on Earth, but I was so wrong. Even moments later on that I thought might be slowing the action down quickly hit the accelerator again.

Occasionally self-depreciating, the film's humour sometimes strays in to "more adult" territory, but this will probably be lost on younger members of the audience anyway, while the rapid fire delivery of some of the double entendres pretty much guarantees eyes and ears will be immediately distracted by the next shiny thing to flash across the screen.

While, it's not the greatest film ever made, it's full of heart and - most importantly - fun. This is no post-modern reimagining of the classic Masters of The Universe set-up: Skeletor and his army are the bad guys, Prince Adam and his are the good guys, end of.

Packed to the gills with interesting side-characters, the often camp nature of Masters of The Universe definitely has it leaning into Flash Gordon territory, but it also shares many traits with the original Star Wars movie, and, possibly in a different cinematic climate, I'm sure this could be "the next big thing".

If there is any justice in the world, Masters of The Universe will be the start of a massive new movie franchise, the final scenes (including one mid-credits) spotlight familiar faces who didn't appear in the main movie but we'd love to see more of in any upcoming projects.

POST 1,000!!!

Photo by Thomas Oxford on Unsplash

Just a quick message to acknowledge that this is the 1,000th post on this blog.

Although posting began on January 1, 2025, the site didn't open to the general public (i.e. you gentle readers) until November 17 of that year.

So, I had a bit of a head start on racking up up those numbers!

Intended - in my mind - as primarily a gaming blog, that aspect has yet to really take off, but I have plans (don't I always?), including a possible surprise for the site's next "true" anniversary (on Life Day).

The latter depending, really, on how the tabletop gaming aspect of the site is getting on at that point.

Let's see what shape we're in in another 1,000 posts.

FLY YOUR GEEK FLAG HIGH AS TODAY IS OUR NINETEENTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!!!

The only sensible way to settle domestic discussions

Not only is May the 25th (the original) Star Wars Day Towel Day (in recognition of Douglas Adams and Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy), and The Glorious 25th of May for Terry Pratchett fans, but it also happens to be our nineteenth wedding anniversary!

Rachel and I were married in a Star Wars-themed wedding... on the anniversary of the day the original film made its debut in 1977.

The commercial hubbub around May The 4th as Star Wars Day grows every year, especially since the arrival of Disney Plus, and I'm not adverse to any excuse to celebrate all things Star Wars, but, ultimately, I'm an old school, orthodox, Jedi who will always mark May 25 as his Star Wars Day.

Rachel and I tied the knot at Salomons in Southborough (between Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge), where I made sure all the guests' tables were named after planets from the Star Wars Universe.

Rachel's arrival music was the Imperial March (still her personalised ringtone on my phone... which always makes me giggle when she calls), and Darth Vader was our ring-bearer.

It was such an amazing day.

And the adventure continues... thanks to the love of my incredibly tolerant and understanding wife.

The Force is strong in Rachel, she supports most of my geeky whims and copes incredibly with the dramatic swings of my unpredictably variable physical and mental health.

Always by my side (metaphorically), she's definitely the best co-pilot since Chewbacca.

Nineteenth anniversaries are usually associated with "bronze", so I could have, for example, asked for something to do with Bronze Age gaming miniatures (yayyyy, Ancient Greeks!) or my favourite footballer, Lucy Bronze, but, as ever, our gifts to each other were an even more eccentric mix of our own hobbies and interests.

I got Rachel a collection of miniature weights (that really have some weight to them!) for her current dolls house project (a modern property), while she got me The Legend of Zelda Encyclopaedia.

Not that I play video games, but I thought this mighty tome would be a useful reference for the Twilight Sword RPG campaign I'm thinking about.

And it's a thing of beauty: so much information, so much world building. Perfect inspiration, no matter what fantasy campaign idea I finally settle on.

It's also weird to think - not that it's important because we both love our presents - that those tiny weights (and their stand) cost around the same price as my fully-illustrated, hardback, 325-page book!

Happy Anniversary To Us

MUSICAL MONDAY: The Mandalorian and Grogu (Boys Noize Remix)

Black Angel (1980)

A knight finds his village destroyed and abandoned.

He tries to track the attackers down and avenge his family, but almost drowns.

A maiden, prisoner of the Black Knight, saves him, so he vows to free her, even though she warns him not to.

Roger Christian’s legendary short film (above), a remake of which, that would expand Black Angel into a feature length fantasy epic, has now been in development since 2015 .

I last shared this online in 2019 (it's a favourite of Philip Reeve and he recommended it to me), but there have, sadly, been no updates on this crowdfunded labour of love since 2022. Much to the chagrin of the project's backers (check the recent comments on the IndieGoGo page).

THIS IS THE WAY... TO THE SILVER SCREEN

Move Over Frieren Friday, We're Heading To Maul Monday

Ator The Fighting Eagle (1982)

"During the childhood of mankind, while some colonies have only just discovered fire, others are already using technology, Inventor Akron discovers the 'radiating matter' which can be used to make earth a paradise or a hell. Soran, a strayed former pupil of Akron, steals his invention. Akron sends out his daughter to fetch the invincible Ator to fight Soran..."

-- so reads the descriptive blurb on the back of my DVD of Ator The Fighting Eagle. Only that's not the plot of Ator at all! But then the poster shown above is also rather misleading as Ator never uses a three-headed flail and his animal companion is a cute bear cub - not a sabretooth tiger!

This (unintentionally?) hilarious, cheesetastic film has Ator (Miles O'Keefe) on a mission to rescue his new bride, Sunya (Ritza Brown) - who he had believed was his sister until the moment his 'parents' gave their blessing to his wedding plans - from the Temple Of The Spider.

A mockbuster years before The Asylum made it an artform and released to cash in on the original Conan movie, Ator has a by-the-numbers, Joseph Campbell "hero's journey"/Star Wars storyline.

The titular protagonist even picks up an Obi-Wan-style mentor, Griba (Edmund Purdom), and a money-driven Han Solo-ish female rogue Roon (Sabrina Siani) along the way to help him blow up the Death Star... er... destroy The Temple Of The Spider.

It's all tied-in to a very long - and highly detailed - prophecy about how Ator's true father, the legendary Tauren, was doomed in his quest to defeat the Spider Cult and so the destiny has passed to his son, Ator.

The main problem is Ator is rather a rubbish hero - frequently bested in combat, gullible and, frankly, not the sharpest tool in the box - he is constantly being rescued by Roon and the cute bear cub.

The fights are joyously lacklustre, which only adds to the humour, and a couple of times Ator simply abandons Roon during a fight when his attention is distracted by something else.

He only appears to be able to beat people if he catches them by surprise - or has an incredibly powerful magic shield of zapping to hand!

Couple this with stilted and corny dialogue, some wonderfully WTF "monsters" (the walking dead that simply disappear, the blind warriors, the shadow demon, the shapechanging sorceress, the giant spider etc) and all the elements combine to make Ator The Fighting Eagle an incredibly entertaining - and amusing -  way to waste 90 minutes of your life.

That said, as Italian swords-and-sorcery films go, it's head and shoulders above Conquest, the scenery is surprisingly interesting - with strange statues dotted around the landscape - and some of the 'encounter' ideas aren't half-bad.

Conquest (1983)

Let's get one thing straight from the start, I'm no fan of Italian Giallo cinema, but I felt I owed it to myself to sample "godfather of gore" Lucio Fulci's one stab at the sword & sorcery genre - Conquest.

Sadly, it's as dreadful, rambling and poorly constructed as any Italian horror movie I've seen with a nonsensical story, cheap and cheesy effects, awful cinematography (if the picture doesn't look like it was shot through a fine net curtain, or is obscured by near-constant mist, it's probably too dark to see anything clearly) and a disappointing lack of notable casual nudity (even if the central, mask-wearing villainess Ocron is topless every time she appears on screen).

What passes for a story in Conquest is the narrative equivalent of a sandbox Dungeons & Dragons campaign. Our two "heroes" - whiny, Luke Skywalker-esque (circa A New Hope) Ilias (Andrea Occjipinti), armed with his magic bow, and surly rogue Mace (George Rivero) - wander around a mist-enshrouded land having random, often inexplicable, encounters and fighting monsters.

They are supposedly fighting evil, but are also seen simply killing a random person to steal his food!

Evil, brain-eating witch Ocron (Sabrina Sellers) has a vision that Ilias is going to kill her and so dispatches her legions of wolf-men/dog-soldiers and other masked minions to capture him.

Of course, he doesn't know who she is and only decides to go after her once her soldiers have slaughtered the tribe of very accommodating cave people that Ilias and Mace have been staying with.

I'll admit there was a surprising twist in the plot towards the end, but even that took its own bizarre turn that was never explained or returned to - much like Mace's sudden ability to teleport (unless that was the magic bow!)

Ridiculous, stupid, illogical and, at times, tedious, Conquest is a hard slog to get through and thankfully only lasts about 88 minutes.

Crime Lords & Laser Swords: The Welcome Return of Maul

The Problem with Coruscant (Planet Cities Explained)

What happens when a city never ends? No farmland. No oceans. Just a planet-wide urban machine — towers stacked 5,000 levels deep.

This video explores the ecumenopolis, a concept from the 1960s by Constantinos Doxiadis, who believed humanity might urbanize the entire Earth.

Through Coruscant (Star Wars) and Trantor (Asimov’s Foundation) — fully urban planets with over a trillion inhabitants — we ask: is a planet-city truly possible, or destined to collapse?

We break down Coruscant’s layers — from the political Emergent Level, to the criminal Underworld, to heat-choked machine tiers — exposing the brutal logistics of feeding, cooling, powering, and moving a civilization with zero nature.

Doxiadis imagined a fractal, human-scaled ecumenopolis, grown through Ekistics, with walking-distance cores and protected green lungs.

So — could a planet-city work through flexibility over control?

Or would it, like Rome, collapse the moment the grain stops flowing?

Since it was first introduced into Star Wars lore, I've always been fascinated by the idea of Coruscant.

It was even the name of the head table at our wedding, where all the tables were named after Star Wars planets.

DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Barbarian - The Last Great Warrior King (2003)

A strange one this, although you'd expect nothing less coming from the stable of Roger Corman.

The 2003 movie Barbarian (with its totally meaningless subtitle of The Last Great Warrior King) attempts to be both a remake of, and a sequel to, the original Deathstalker (although without mentioning the name Deathstalker at all).

The protagonist of this 90-minute oddity is not only trying to retrieve the same three magic items as Deathstalker did (the Sword of Justice, the Amulet of Life and the Chalice of Magic), but is also facing a villainous wizard of the same name, Munkar, who has - once again - organised a tournament to find the best warrior in the land.

The faux Deathstalker here is the most-well groomed barbarian in cinematic history Kane (former Mr Universe and American Gladiator Michael O'Hearn), a love 'em-and-leave 'em wandering rogue who - for some inexplicable reason - gets drawn into saving the princess (Irina Grigoryeva) and restoring her father King Kandor (Yuri Petrov) to the throne after he was usurped by Munkar (Martin Kove of Cobra Kai, Karate Kid and Cagney & Lacey fame).

However what makes Barbarian its own, bizarre, entity is the introduction of Kane's sidekick, Wooby (Yuri Danilchenko), a cross between an ewok and a child in a rubbish Cowardly Lion Halloween costume, who squeaks and wobbles his way through the plot until the movie's climax, where he disappears and is never heard from again.

A bevvy of Ukrainian lovelies add the eye-candy and random topless moments, although as well as recycling the plot of Deathstalker, Barbarian also digs up vast tracts of old footage from the original film - mostly around the all-important banquet/orgy scene where not only does the Pig-Man appear once again but we also get the strange sight of the true Deathstalker (Rick Hill) watching the events unfold from the side-lines as well as a return appearance by Codille (Barbi Benton)!

However, this is even more surreal as an opening exposition flashback suggests that the events of Barbarian take place generations after Deathstalker - the "timeline" is even broken up with images of Roman soldiers - although there is never any suggestion that Barbarian is supposed to take place on our world!

For all this random weirdness, lacklustre dialogue and variable fight choreography, Barbarian still stands head-and-shoulders above Deathstalker II - Duel Of The Titans and that's even factoring in Wooby, who I'd heard was on a par with Jar-Jar Binks.

I'd take Wooby any time over Jar-Jar, at least he has some uses (he knows healing magic and is probably quite warm for those long, cold nights out in the wilderness).