The Lords of Magick

A lot of people like watching films that are so bad they're good, some people say that a film being bad is not funny at all. I'm usually part of the latter, but this film has changed me. There are so many lines I quote with my friends and family, I feel compelled to show this film to everyone I know. It looks like it was made by college students for a school project, but they don't really care enough to make it good, and that somehow makes it even better! The story is pretty basic, wizards save princess from evil wizard, but the characters, the dialogue and the action are just all so perfectly horrible. If you like watching films that are so bad they're good, you should definitely watch this, and if you don't, then this film might change your mind.

We have a weekly session call "hard balls" ("huevos cuadrados" in spanish). In this sessions some of my friends try to get the lamest movie he can rent and the all of us must watch it (violence can be allowed), and I can say this is the most horrible film we've ever seen. Porn frame quality. The next one... C.H.U.D II Bud, the Chud

As a serious bad movie aficionado, this is up there with the very worst I've seen. Not just straight to video, but shot on video with video effects that 80s Canadian public access TV would be ashamed of, it features medieval sets that look like they were borrowed from a grade school pantomime, extras clearly recruited from a renaissance fair purely for their ability to provide their own costumes, and two brothers, Michael and Ulric, who are just about the most unlikeable heroes ever put to video.

Princess Luna (or Princess Moon, or Princess Lina -- she's called all three) is kidnapped by the dark lord Saletin... well, you pretty much know this part. To cut to the chase, our heroes are coshed and abducted from the nearest brothel where they were eyeing topless wenches, and tasked to travel to present day (in 1989) Los Angeles where Lord Saletin has hidden Luna in a cunning move to save on locations. Once they get there, they meander around aimlessly searching for exposition and the main villain, who spends the entire movie taunting them from an undisclosed location. In a profoundly adolescent touch, they have been told that the princess has a special birthmark on her left breast, so they rip the top off virtually every woman they meet to see if she is the princess they seek. You think I'm making this up. I'm not.

Whenever the plot really drags, our heroes are attacked at random by police, street punks, zombie bikers, and at one point concerned citizens who are outraged that our heroes have just sexually assaulted a woman in the street. It has already been established that the heroes' magic can teleport them out of any jam, yet they insist on duking it out in sequence after sequence of badly choreographed fights.

After one such fight, they team up with a 20th century D&D fanboy who has the vital special skill of being able to drive them to the villain's hidden lair. The third co-star has a distinct quality of "cousin James is prepared to put up $5,000 for financing, but he wants a leading role" about him. In one fight, instead of helping him, our heroes nobly start betting about when he'll bite it.

Boring, clichéd, with sub-adolescent sexual "humour", and paced so poorly it seems like the toughest obstacle the protagonists face is doing the paperwork to get into the local library's convenient vault of eldritch magic tomes, "Lords of Magick" is an abortion of a movie, utterly without redeeming merit. Do not watch it for the zombies or the topless wenches. In no way do they make up for the sheer tedium and humiliating embarrassment of enduring this turkey. You can actually see the expression play over Ruth Zakarian's face as she thinks "I'm so going to fire my agent."

I first saw Lords of Magick at Fukumura Video in Kitami, Japan. I was working as an ESL (English as a Second Language) and needed a break. What a treat this was on a snowy evening!

Lords of Magicks is very much an amateur's film: some of the swords were obviously picked up at Cost Plus Imports; the final battle takes place at the director's business; some parts of 10th century England look suspiciously like a California park; the film appears to have been shot on videotape, rather than reel-to-reel film, but the film displays two critical elements: simplicity, and energy.

What Lords of Magick lacks in Hollywood glitz, in makes up in its earnest simplicity: a princess is kidnapped by an evil wizard, and two young wizards (woefully unequal to the task) are railroaded to rescue her. Clichéd? Sure! The movie even makes fun of its own plot, "Another captured princess? How common!"

This kind of humor shows up again and again, which never fails to encourage laughter. When the villain froths at the mouth and makes a threat of doom when the princess is rescued from his clutches, Thomas (Brendan Dillon Jr.) remarks, "Lighten up, dude! You're so intense!"

There aren't very many films that can portray their own energy, but this is one of them. The film attempts (and for the most part succeeds) in attending to every one of the elements of a fantasy adventure. From time travel to sorcery, from gallantry to temptation, Lords of Magick shows that you don't have to have state-of-the-art special effects or an all-star cast, you just have to believe.

Sometimes that belief can lead you astray, however. During the final battle at Marsh Electronics (which I believe is the director's business--it seems just a bit too coincidental if it wasn't the same person) our heroes suddenly find themselves battling the living dead, who come out of the walls. This sequence was never fully explained, nor does the scene add anything to the duel between the two wizards other than confusion.

All the same, I'm glad I paid my 1800 Yen for my copy. It's a film I can go back to again and again just to ejoy it for what it is: a romp through fantasy, a sword and sorcery epic without musclebound goons stumbling over their lines, or excess Hollywood schmaltz!

Nine stars!

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the movie on Prism video cassette.

Overly ambitious low-budget feature takes ancient wizards a thousand years into present-day Los Angeles in their battle with an evildoer named Saladin. Poor special effects sink this direct-to-video release.

Jarrett Parker and Mark Gauthier play the two young 10th century magicians charged with necromancy, who travel to the future to retrieve a lovely, kidnapped princess (Ruth Zackarian). The expected culture clash in '80s L. A. is pretty tame, though Gauthier has a sexual encounter with a sassy black prostitute (Rene St. Peter).

Animated special effects are amateurish and the final battle in a warehouse with Saladin (Brendan Dillon Jr.) is poor.