Ex-Rent Hell presents… Krull

Ex-Rent Hell is a col­umn ded­i­cat­ed to the seami­er side of the 1980s VHS boom. Each week, ERH selects a film from this cursed era and asks one sim­ple ques­tion: what went wrong?

In his book ​‘The Hero with a Thou­sand Faces’, com­par­a­tive fab­u­list Joseph Camp­bell attempt­ed to divine the fun­da­men­tal struc­ture of the arche­typ­al hero’s jour­ney. He draws togeth­er var­i­ous mytholo­gies from around the world to cre­ate a mon­o­myth, an all-encom­pass­ing ur-caper. Once strad­dled atop the uncon­trol­lable stal­lion of adven­ture, Camp­bell says that our boy must trav­el a road of tri­als, achieve his goal and return to bestow his prize upon his fel­low man. Toss in a few orcs, robots, princess­es, the odd noble truth, some fiery foliage and three rusty nails and you have the nar­ra­tive mould for every­thing from the awak­en­ing of the Bud­dha to the Return of the King. It is a sto­ry­telling tem­plate so iron­clad that it could have been forged in the mines of Moria and, ropey pro­duc­tion val­ues aside (cf Moses), there is almost noth­ing one can do to make a dragon’s break­fast of it. All of which high-mind­ed bal­loon juice brings us to Krull…

With the fan­fare of James Horner’s furi­ous­ly back-ped­al­ing Star Trek theme still ring­ing in our ears, we are announced to the last minute wed­ding prepa­ra­tions tak­ing place in Cas­tle Forced­per­spec­tive upon the frisca­lat­ing plains of the plan­et Krull. Here, Ken Marshall’s Prince Col­wyn is to be hitched to dubbed man­nequin Lysette Anthony’s equal­ly unap­peal­ing Princess Lyssa. The cer­e­mo­ny oscil­lates between the type of high com­e­dy and low camp that only declaim­ing, self-penned, cod Shake­spear­i­an wed­ding vows in sec­ond-hand fetish wear can ever hope to produce.

Luck­i­ly for all con­cerned, this rhap­sod­ic mare’s nest is inter­rupt­ed by a sim­i­lar­ly dung-ho dis­play of far­ty bom­bast sur­round­ing the unin­vit­ed arrival of the mighty Berwhale the Avenger – a bipo­lar demigod who flies around the galaxy in a big stone head much like the one in soft­core Sean Con­nery nap­py riot Zardoz. The ghast­ly, nou­veau riche off­spring of the Ran­cor Mon­ster and the Tox­ic Avenger, Berwhale smash­es the place up, kid­naps the bride-to-be and impris­ons her in the Vase­line-lensed brain­wrong of Ste­vie Nicks’ dream archive until such time as she suc­cumbs to his swampy charms.

After a failed attempt to cop off with the few brides­maids still in one piece and the heartrend­ing dis­cov­ery that his deposit for the hon­ey­moon suite is non-refund­able, Col­wyn glum­ly amass­es a stock band of starv­ing British char­ac­ter actors and sets out to res­cue his immor­tal beloved. The (horny) hero has thus been called to adventure…

The film’s mak­ers can­ni­ly iden­ti­fy the need for a weapon that is gim­micky enough to com­pete in the audi­ences minds with Beastmaster’s fer­ret army and Hawk the Slayer’s bad­die-bewil­der­ing dis­co infer­no sound­track. And so Col­wyn enters the dark, eerie, for­bid­den depths of The Pine Wood (read: a Pinewood Stu­dios sound­stage, after hours) to seeketh/​steal the myth­i­cal ​‘Glaive’ – a fly­ing five pronged swasti­ka made out of sharp­ened shoe­horns that per­forms as Berwhale’s Kryp­tonite. Total­ly pre­pos­ter­ous and seem­ing­ly designed with both eyes on a Com­modore 64 spin-off game, the Glaive does how­ev­er obvi­ate the need for yet more bloody sword fight­ing and did, to be fair, go on to spawn that short lived weak sis­ter of fan­ta­sy sub-gen­res – ​‘Swastikas and Sor­cery’ (RIP).

The rest of the film is about as enjoy­able as a naked don­key ride to hell, in a sand­pa­per sad­dle. There’s some pro­tract­ed, dia­logue-free busi­ness with a giant crys­tal spi­der over which noise baron James Horner goes total­ly loco with a Theremin/​jackhammer duel. We suf­fer the most insult­ing deus ex machi­na since the The­o­ry of Evo­lu­tion (a fleet of expe­di­ent, hith­er­to unmen­tioned fly­ing Shire hors­es). And we wit­ness the worst Glaive fight… well, ever. Oth­er­wise it’s Star of the War Rings exe­cut­ed with every bit of the pre­ci­sion and del­i­ca­cy you would imag­ine from the direc­tor of Moth­er, Jugs and Speed.

Pro­duced by hal­lowed film titans Bar­clays Mer­can­tile Indus­tri­al Finance, Krull (AKA Inter­nal ComDev Equi­ty B‑M671/K) may be fond­ly remem­bered as one of the decade’s nobler fail­ures, but is mere­ly an exam­ple of an ERH liv­ing high on the tax-deductible hog. Where­as the pre­vi­ous year’s Tron was a brain-jack­ing acid-cat­a­pult into a viable futu­ra­ma, and ​’81’s Drag­on­slay­er did exact­ly what it said on the box, the unique fan­ta­sy sell­ing point of Krull is an inci­dent free, 90-minute stroll from Point A (Cas­tle Forced­per­spec­tive) to Point B (Berwhale Tow­ers) in the com­pa­ny of an unut­ter­ably smug TV-movie actor in a blow-dried codpiece.

They throw a bit of fold­ing mon­ey at it, sure, but the over­rid­ing feel­ing is that, like so many of it’s poor­er cousins, Krull was on the video shelf pure­ly because it exist­ed, and owed its exis­tence sole­ly to the fact that those end­less shelves were there.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in LWLies 12: The Tales from Earth­sea issue