unbrokenmetal

"Star Knight" ("El caballero del dragon") is a weird little movie. It doesn't work as a comedy, it doesn't work as a sci-fi movie, and it doesn't work as a love story, yet it is a little bit of all these.

The alchemist Boetius (Klaus Kinski) tries to summon a demon, but instead the alien Ix (Miguel Bose) lands with a space-ship on earth. The knights of the country think the space-ship is a dragon, but fail miserably to "slay" that dragon. The local priest (Fernando Rey) wants to hold Boetius responsible for the probably not related event. When a local princess is abducted, her father agrees that Boetius and the invincible alien warrior must be fought and sends his the best knight (Harvey Keitel), but the princess is now in love with Ix and asks Boetius to save him.

The comedy elements like the Green Knight who wants to fight everyone crossing "his" bridge are terribly unfunny. The love story, why the princess should fall in love with an alien who can't even speak, is inexplicable. The movie has a lot of good ideas, also the casting of Klaus Kinski as the good guy is a rare choice, but nothing works in this movie. Except that this mess is somehow entertaining because it's definitely unusual and you won't have seen something like this before.

I saw this movie at the cinema back in the day, and I remember I was slightly disappointed then because there were no actual alien monsters, just humans making metallic noises and stiff movements. However, rewatching it today I'm impressed what a clever little movie this is. Going into a genre which is clearly beyond its budget, arming its heroes only with a bucket of water, it plays virtuously on the classic doppelganger theme. Again and again, aliens and their flying saucer appear, but who will believe the eyewitnesses that they are among us? Cruchot and his team on their 5th mission (of 6 in total) are fighting an amusing battle, dedicated to the max. The flick was definitely better than I remembered it.

Asylum flicks were always cheap, but oftentimes fun nonetheless. This one, unfortunately, was quite annoying. Trying to exceed previous Megalodon movies, The Frenzy doesn't show one or two, but five of those beasts. Can't say it's 5 times as scary, though, when CGI never makes them more than cartoon characters. Eric Roberts stars as a captain commanding 2 "marines". He always shouts like a whole crew stand before him, but the next shot will mercilessly reveal the same 2 guys. They didn't have money for 5 extras in uniforms, so I presume Mr Roberts was as embarrassed as the audience. The same surely goes for the "scientists" pretending to read instruments while staring at an empty wall. Nope, this flick definitely crossed the borderline between cheap and ridiculous. In several scenes, characters just invite sharks to kill them and thus take them out of this movie. Although these, uh, 'heroic' death scenes make you cringe, one can't blame them.