Krull [DVD] [1983]

KRULL of course can not be compared to LOTR, EXCALIBUR or CONAN THE BARBARIAN, but it is a very watchable and quite honest fantasy movie (and there is not a lot of good quality productions in this field).The story is about the planet Krull where humans reached Middle Age level of development, with some magic involved here and there. Suddenly, one day, an alien spaceship arrives and its one and only crew member, known simply as The Beast, sends his offsprings/soldiers/slaves, half-intelligent Slayers to conquer the planet. Faced with certain destruction two rival kings, rulers of the main powers on Krull, decide to unite their forces by marrying their children and then abdicating. By creating one united empire they hope to be able to face the army of Slayers and other monsters the Beast creates. Unfortunately, The Beast has other plans - and the wedding will be a very tragic one. All of this is just the very beginning of the film...KRULL is well paced, full of adventures, quite spectacular visually and is reasonably well interpreted. Ken Marshall, whose promising career somehow stopped in the middle of the 80s gives here a very honest performance as Crown Prince Colwyn. Alun Armstrong plays here Torquil the Bandit Leader, who helps Colwyn in his quest - and he really finds here a role right for him and especially for his face... Liam Neeson, who in this time was in the early stages of career, plays another bandit, knife playing Kegan who is Torquil's right hand.There are many interesting ideas in this movie, which nobody found before and which were not used since. The greatest finding of all was to make the Black Mountain mobile - the main citadel of The Beast is his old giant spaceship, which has the shape of a dark mountain, and which vanishes every day during the sunset, to reappear in a totally different place on the planet. It presents to the heroes a very unique problem - they are all willing and ready to face the villain, the problem is they simply never know where the heck he will be next morning...Another good finding are the Slayers. We do not know exactly what are they, but it seems they do not have a mind of their own and they certainly never speak. It looks like they are a kind of biological robots, with a part of Beast's living flesh as their hard drive, heart and brain in the same time. They certainly are dangerous - they climb walls, they walk under water and they shoot some primitive energy weapons (one shot per weapon - and clearly they can not reload out of their fortress) before going to close combat with wide blade short spears. There are also some other nice ideas in this movie, but you desserve to discover them by yourself.All in all, this is a very honest and very watchable fantasy movie, now a little forgotten but worth (re)discovering. Not exactly a masterpiece but a very nice watch.

This 1980s fantasy feature might be the poor relation to films such as Star Wars, but it is surprisingly entertaining nonetheless and a firm childhood favourite of mine. I'd been longing for a Blu-ray for years, but as Sony didn't appear to have any intention of releasing one I was very happy when they licensed the title to Mill Creek.Now Mill Creek isn't necessarily known for the quality of its Blu-ray output, but its Deep Rising/Puppet Masters release was decent enough so I held out some hope that Krull would at least be passable. Thankfully it's actually much better than that. Mill Creek has simply used the unmolested transfer supplied by Sony, which is no bad thing as Sony produces some of the best catalogue masters around. The film looks great; detailed, natural and with few (if any) artefacts. It's a really solid visual presentation that puts a good few modern features in the shade. The audio is similarly impressive, at least given the limitations of the source, with some decent surround activity, balanced dialogue and powerful bass. However, the aural highlight is James Horner's score, which should be unmistakable to anyone familiar with his other work and incredibly well-represented in the mix. There is no bonus material, which could be seen as a negative by some, but to be honest I'm just happy to have the film (and I have the old DVD for the extras).Although the disc purports to be region A locked - and indeed, a warning message is displayed when you try to play it in a region B player - it is extremely easy to circumvent this restriction. Simply pressing the 'top menu' button on the player's remote when region restriction message is displayed will take you the disc's (rudimentary) main menu, from which you can play the film. I've tried this workaround on four different brands of Blu-ray player and it's worked on all of them (as well as the PS3 and PC etc).If you're one of the film's loyal fans this is a must-have disc, but I'd also recommend it to parents whose children enjoy fantasy films. It's not as flashy as your average modern feature (no CGI here), but there's a real charm to the old-school practical effects and the film has genuine heart and good morals to teach. There's nothing unsuitable for the average PG-safe audience, but very small children might find some of the monsters a bit much. I first saw it when I was about eight years old, and it was just the right amount of 'scary'! I'll certainly be introducing my boy to the world of Krull when he's old enough to appreciate it!As usual, the seller 'All Your Music' delivered in a reasonable time-frame considering the disc came from the Sates (under two weeks door-to-door). The price, which worked out at around £4 at the time of order, is ridiculously good, so much so that I almost felt guilty for paying so little for one of my fondest childhood memories (almost).

There have been blu-rays of Krull available before, but it came in a slimline case and was (I think) Region 1; it wouldn't play on certain region players — indiscriminately so, too, with certain models complying while others did not (mine did, but you had to follow an arcane procedure to 'trip' past the blocking and access the main menu which frankly I can't be bothered to explain).I shan't review the film — those of you reading this probably already know it — but the packaging lends this often-overlooked and sometimes maligned film a little dignity on the shelf, for those of you who like that sort of thing! Within, you get the blu-ray AND a DVD copy, so all the extra features beloved of the old DVD remain intact — and all Region 2 to boot. Picture transfer is fine, grainy as you'd expect of a film from 1983 and hasn't been subjected to the kind of extensive, future-proofing sort of restoration that, say, a Star Wars film would enjoy — which means the artefacts of certain process shots are present as ever they were, and more so — but all in all an improvement on the DVD version. The inclusion of a handful of postcards and a small, frameworthy poster is a nice touch.

Awesome Memories better quality than I expected in HD

This is an entertaining classic sci-fi movie that is definitely worth a watch. It doesn't compare to some of the modern sci-fi films but this is a great adventure film that is both creative and action packed.