La Alta Cruzada

A very bizarre movie but highly amusing, at least it was years ago, when I watched it on video. Back then, all the aliens had comedy Sean Connery accents which the English could not understand. All very high camp and kind of stupid, but definitely amusing. However, when I watched it recently on DVD, all the Aliens spoke alien gibberish which subsequently required subtitles. This lost a massive amount of the comedy value of the original version. It seems a shame that the directors or whoever, would mess with the original format when the end result is vastly less entertaining. The acting is still pretty good (for such a daft film) as are the effects. I guess the budget was pretty low but it doesn't show as much as you might expect. Certainly it has a better production values than so called "B movie classics" such as Spaceballs. For those who've read the book and are now complaining that the film is not the same, hard luck, get over it. As a movie, it was pretty good (originally).

This film has almost everything it needs to be first class science fiction, except a decent screenwriter. The effects, makeup, photography, and direction are all perfectly acceptable for the story. However, the script is a disaster. This is a highly inept adaptation of Poul Anderson's classic sifi novel. Most of the basic premise, and introduction, are preserved. However, the rest is terrible. Anderson's competent crusader knights are replaced by idiots and buffoons. The subtle humor of the original is replaced by inane slapstick. The result is implausible, and embarrassing. If they had simply cut for time, without trying to replace or add, the film would have been vastly better.

Poul Anderson had done all the screenwriters' work for them. With a solid historical backbone, subtle wit, and an engaging story, his novel was enough to relegate the writing of the script to a fill-in-the-blank exercise. Instead, the movie emerges as a pale ripoff of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, yet with even more historical inaccuracies (HIGH CRUSADE has Jerusalem falling to Saracens in 1345, not 1187, and even has a trio of Saracens attacking a keep in England!)

The dialogue does flirt with intelligence, as when John Rhys-Davies's character, Brother Parvus, insistently tries to "educate" spacefaring aliens about the Holy Trinity and geocentric cosmology, but ultimately it's just a tease. Things quickly descend into weak farce, and some devices, such as the aliens' construction of an evil human clone, are pure throwaway filler.

I sure hope Poul Anderson never saw this film. My fear is that he would never sell film rights for one of his excellent books again, which would be a shame, since in the right hands some fine movies could be produced.

at first i must say that i'm german. considering this film to be made by a german producer/director, my comment is influenced by a different way of life than the american one. this film is made by european and made for europeans. the humor, the jokes appearing in this movie are hard to understand when you're u.s. american.

ok, i don't know the book. but my personal experiences tell me that nearly every movie is disappointing compared to the original book.

this film is simply "cool". a weird story, british black humor mixed with some intelligent jokes. not made for broad masses. "underdog" would be a good word to describe it. it's a pity that it had not a sucess like the blair witch project. a european film has to be extraordinary to be succesful in the u.s. the last try to make a good film was "das boot", directed by wolfgang petersen, now being a great director in hollywood. a great story, great emotions, great actors (juergen prochnow, e.g.),a surprising end and a perfect technique was not enough to prevail in u.s. cinemas. the same happened to "high crusade". not lacking on famous actors, not lacking in good fx, the film was not good enough for the u.s. market.

what more to say. it had no success and it won't have any success. but i will watch it everytime it is shown on tv.

A mildly amusing film. And I do put an emphasis in the word "mildly". It doesn't go further than that.

You get farcical treatments of cliche subject matter. The wide feels underappreciated, the barbarians just want to pillage, the advanced aliens try to explain basic scientific knowledge to medieval idiots, etc. And of course everything gets wrapped up in a quick and tidy happy ending.

It's a bunch of tripe capped off with an insufferable final tracked that puts quotes from the movie to an ugly techno beat.

The original book was a bit farcical and silly in its own right, but it had ambiance and an intriguing concept. It had runaway ambition and intrigue and sincere portrayals of betrayal, romantic and otherwise. This film doesn't amount to even a fraction of what the book was and in no way deserves to bear its name.

Honourable Mentions: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). Probably the darkest of the Disney movies. Turns a serious novel into a musical with comedy elements. It wasn't bad, though.