Weird Films Worth Watching: KRULL (1983)
It's ridiculous and stupid, and I love it.
All through my youth, the 1983 sci-fi fantasy KRULL is one of those movies I always saw posters or VHS cover art for in video stores, but never actually watched. Not until three years ago did I watch the entire thing, and only twice more since then. I’ve made up for lost time because it’s the kind of film I would have loved as an 8-year-old, had I seen it when it came out.
It’s one of those things I would have probably seen a storybook for at a friend’s house, or in a school book order catalog, but the actual film itself never really crossed my radar.
There are essentially four main categories of subjective nostalgia:
Things you loved back then and still love now, because it legitimately holds up as great art, timeless and made with an integrity that ages over time as a true classic.
Things you loved back then….but in the grand scheme of the universe it’s crap, and you finally realize that when you look at it again with an older, wiser perspective.
Things you loved back then…and deep down you know it’s either crap or at least flawed or out-dated, but you don’t care. You love it anyway because of the soft spot it has in your heart.
And then of course, there are things that were crap back then, and they are still crap.
KRULL probably sits somewhere between 2 and 3 for me, since I don’t have a ‘back then’ to really put it in its proper place. From a discerning place of wisdom, I wouldn’t necessarily defend it as great art or great storytelling, but it definitely fits within that area of “dumb things I like anyway.”
Here is KRULL in a nutshell, with exclamation points:
The Slayers! The Beast! The Cyclops! The Dark Fortress! Flaming horses! Flying horses! Climbing rocks! Climbing walls! More climbing! Liam Neeson! Robbie Coltrane! Ergo the Magnificent, who is short in stature, tall in power, narrow of purpose and wide of vision!
Quicksand! Lasers! A stop-motion spider! A tiger! A puppy!
And of course….The Glaive! The Glaive is useless because it still takes a really long time to cut through glass, and after it does some really cool things for a few minutes, it will get stuck in the Beast’s stomach! But no matter, the power of love will shoot flames from my hand and save the day! Huzzah!
It’s a stupid and ridiculous movie, but I like coming back to it because it reminds me of the kinds of aimless make-believe worlds I would imagine on the playground with my childhood friends at recess. There are so many moments in this movie that make no sense at all, and are typical of the kinds of improvised decisions we would make while playing.....like the Cyclops who sends the heroes off but must stay behind because it's time for him to die. But then he shows up one last time to save them, which is never explained, and then he dies anyway.
If one actually takes the time to think about KRULL seriously, it really is too bad that most of the cast ends up dying just so a wimpy and ineffective protagonist can defeat a monster with "the power of love", i.e. shooting fire from his hand. But on the playground, nobody really dies. We always find a way to come back. It’s that kind of play that matters most, until the bell rings and we go back to our classrooms to focus on things more "serious."
But in the meantime, pew! pew!
GLAIVE POWER.
I revisited this movie a little more than three years ago and posted these thoughts on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/j_overstreet/film/krull/
You and I seem to similarly gobsmacked by so many things: from the character arc of the Cyclops who MUST DIE to the strange way that the "Power of Love" gives us the chance to shoot fire out of our hands.
I have a vivid memory of watching some really creepy scenes of The Beast on a big-screen TV in a shopping-mall electronics store window while my parents were shopping. The imagery so troubled me that I went home and wrote a fantasy story with a very similar monster in it. When my mother discovered the drawing of the monster on the cover of the story, she was troubled and asked me to give the monster a different face.
So, I haven't seen Krull either, but I HAVE seen that red-headed actress in a film I'd happily put in your #3 category. It's a version of "The Emperor's New Clothes," and it's so lame, but it's so much fun, and we've watched it multiple times. Must be of about the same era: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0142260/