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From: Arthur Lipscomb <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2024-12-28 (Saturday)
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2024 13:10:25 -0800
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On 12/29/2024 11:39 AM, shawn wrote:
> On Sun, 29 Dec 2024 06:52:55 -0800, Arthur Lipscomb
> <arthur@alum.calberkeley.org> wrote:
> 
>> Yesterday I decided to kick back and watch some sword and sorcery type
>> movies from the 80s:
>>
>>
>> The Sword and the Sorcerer (4K disc) 1982 sword and sorcery movie
>> written and directed by Albert Pyun.  The plot has something to do with
>> Richard Lynch as an evil tyrant who conquered a kingdom and the king's
>> son is out for revenge.  I don't know.  I really wasn't paying any
>> attention.  But these movies all have the same plot.  The young
>> prince/hero has to rescue the princess and save the kingdom.  Plus, I
>> had the commentary on which muted all the audio.  It was an interesting
>> commentary with lots of stories about the making of the movie.  Pyun
>> discussed his battles with the cast and producers.  Apparently no one
>> had any faith in Pyun's ability to make this movie.  He became very
>> emotional about that at one point in the commentary.  One of the more
>> interesting stories Pyun told was apparently Oliver Reed was hired for a
>> role, but according to Pyun, Reed showed up drunk, and cursed him out
>> while complaining about not wanting to be in the movie.  He said the
>> producer went and hid leaving him alone with Reed and Reed then started
>> to break stuff.  Needless to say, they replaced Reed with a different
>> actor.  This is one of those movies that I vaguely remembered watching
>> as a kid, mainly I remember it as the movie with the three bladed sword.
>>   But watching now as an adult, it's really not a good movie.  And I was
>> a little offended when a couple of times on the commentary Pyun brought
>> up Conan, which came out the same year, claiming his movie was better
>> than Conan.  Not in this time space dimension!
> 
> Hmm, I don't think I ever saw this movie. Now I'm still not feeling
> like I want to watch it after reading that and seeing the trailer.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DREG0dOW8jw
> 
>>

It is *not* worth watching!  "The Sword and the Sorcerer" and "The 
Beastmaster" are two movies I watched when I was a kid.  And if you had 
asked about 5 years ago to describe the plot of Beastmaster, I could 
give a general idea of the plot or at least memorable events from the 
movie.  The *only* thing I would be able to say about Sorcerer is a guy 
has a 3 bladed sword.  But I wouldn't be able to recall anything 
specific about the plot or just in general stuff that happened.  And 
having just watched both movies yesterday, I could now explain in pretty 
good detail the plot of Beastmaster.  But I still couldn't tell you what 
was up with Sorcerer.  There were actually two princes in this movie and 
I didn't even realize that until I read it in Wikipedia.  The movie is 
an incoherent mess!

>> Beastmaster (4K disc) 1982 sword and sorcery movie written and directed
>> by Don Coscarelli.  Marc Singer stars as a man who can talk to animals.
>> Rip Torn stars as the villain who murders the king and takes over the
>> kingdom.  Singer is the young prince/hero who has to rescue the princess
>> and save the kingdom.  Mostly background noise with the commentary track.
> 
> This one I've seen before. Though admittedly not in many years. Tanya
> Roberts was certainly a lovely young woman.
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XOIqJ-U1ys
> 
> The trailer
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3FCM5UVsKU
> 
> The movie
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fg6JGN6R8a8
> 
> 
> 
>>
>> Krull (blu-ray) 1983 sword and sorcery movie directed by Peter Yates and
>> starring Ken Marshall (Yes, Michael Eddignton from DS9) as a young
>> prince who must rescue a princess and save his planet from an evil space
>> sorcerer or whatever.  These movies do all have the same plot!  I loved
>> this movie when I was a kid and it's still loads of fun to watch. And it
>> has a great score from James Horner.  I liked the score the first time I
>> heard it in Battle Beyond the Stars, and when I heard it again in Star
>> Trek II: The Wrath of Khan it was even better.  But it's really good in
>> this movie as well.  Between the beautiful cinematography and James
>> Horner's Star Trek II score blaring, this movie is great to watch.  I
>> just wish the blu-ray picture quality was better.
> 
> Another one that I haven't seen in years, but have seen a few times
> since the movies release. Mostly I remember it for the special weapon
> and the video game based on the movie.
> 
>>
>> Ladyhawke (blu-ray) 1985 sword and sorcery (or close enough!) movie
>> directed by Richard Donner starring Rutger Hauer as a hero who must save
>> a damsel in distress (Michelle Pfeiffer) who has been cursed to turn
>> into a Hawk each sunrise.  The problem however is he has also been
>> cursed to turn into a wolf each sunset.  This is a movie I watched all
>> the time when I was a kid.  Then it disappeared from TV rotation and I
>> didn't watch it again until almost 10 years ago when I bought the
>> blu-ray.  When I last watched it, I did not enjoy the movie at all.  Not
>> only did I not like the story, but the picture quality was unwatchable.
>> It looked like a bad DVD.  I was shocked when I was checking out the
>> blu-ray reviews ahead of putting the disc in and the review said it had
>> good picture quality.  And sure enough, the picture quality was fine.
>> The movie's plot still wasn't so good, but at least it was watchable and
>> I was able to squeeze a little more enjoyment out of actually being able
>> to make out what was happening on screen.  There must have been
>> something off with my equipment last viewing.
> 
> I know I've heard about this movie and I've seen bits of it over the
> years, but I'm not sure I ever saw the entire movie or at least not in
> one sitting.
> 

If you were a kid in the 80s then Ladyhawke was pretty much required 
viewing.


> The trailer:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGs4o_5jyhw
> Amazing that the trailer is from WB and yet it is such poor quality.
> 
>>
>> Legend (blu-ray) 1985 sword and sorcery (or close enough!) movie
>> directed by Ridley Scott.  Tom Cruise stars as a hero who must save a
>> damsel in distress.  I never noticed before now, but "Legend" has a
>> *very* similar plot to "Krull" with the evil monster in both movies
>> trying to seduce the kidnapped damsel in distress.  Anyway, this was the
>> theatrical cut with the tangerine dream score.  I don't care for the
>> European cut which has the Jerry Goldsmith score.  One of the extras on
>> the disc talks about the two different scores.  In defense of the Jerry
>> Goldsmith score they said Goldsmith was forced to start scoring the
>> movie before the movie was finished filming, which Goldsmith does not
>> normally do.  That Goldsmith's score was cut to shreds because of the
>> editing of the movie, and for scenes where he didn't write a score, the
>> producers inserted similar sounding scores from other movies.  I had no
>> idea, but that may be why I just never took to his score or that cut of
>> the movie.
>>
> I think I've only seen this once so much of it has been forgotten over
> the years. Ah, so the movie had both music by Jerry Goldsmith and
> Tangerine Dream. I get why that wouldn't quite work.
> 

Each cut of the movie had a single score from either Jerry Goldsmith or 
Tangerine Dream.  People have very definite preferences about which cut 
of the movie they prefer.  I never thought much about Legend when it was 
first out in the 80s, and I didn't give much thought to the different 
cuts of the movie or had any idea when version I ever watched.  I'm 
guessing 99% of the time it was the U.S. cut.  But once I had access to 
both cuts and I deliberately watched the director or European cut, which 
has the Jerry Goldsmith score, I found myself really not liking the 
movie.  Then when I watched it again with the U.S. cut and Tangerine 
dream score, suddenly the movie was good again.

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAAd2QKyhww
> Comparing the Cuts: Legend (1985) – Iconicon Special
> 
> The trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H210lEsVrvI
> 
> The movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7syOmKqn7s
> 
>>
>> What did you watch?