Wizards of the Lost Kingdom

Go immediately and rent this movie. It will be be on a bottom shelf in your local video store and will be covered in dust. No one will have touched it in years. It may even be a $.50 special! It's worth ten bucks, I swear! Buy it! There aren't very many films than can compare with this - the celluloid version of that goo that forms at the bottom of a trash can after a few years. Yes, I gave it a '1,' but it really deserves much lower. 1-10 scales were not designed with stuff like this in mind.

Imagine if an 8-year-old tried to write a film, and cobbled together an amalgam of characters from all the films they'd seen-'The Wizard of Oz,' 'The Never-Ending Story,' 'Star Wars,' 'Conan the Barbarian,' 'Raiders of the Lost Ark', Disney cartoons, etc. That's 'Wizards of the Lost Kingdom', in a nutshell.

It's essentially a half-baked coming-of-age story of a young wizard who has to recover a ring before the evil wizard finds it. Whoever made it had huge ambitions, but it comes off like an extended episode of 'H. R. Puffenstuff' just less fun and with much lamer costumes and sets. A typical middle school play looks pretty professional, by comparison.

There's no real character development, with every character remaining just as they were at the beginning. The main character is meant to be trained in wizardry, but acts mentally slow throughout and falls for the lamest, most obvious tricks in the book over and over. Rather than survive on his wits, he seems to survive by pure luck.

As noted, it's plot light, so there's not much of a story arc, more a series of predicaments, none of which has much drama. There's a seemingly endless stream of characters who come and go, sometimes in a matter of seconds, often without any explanation of who they were.

The acting is embarrassing all around, especially number-one billed Bo Svenson, who acts like he's begrudgingly playing along with his kids in the backyard. The others are either amateur or high-camp, like the cartoonishly evil bad wizard and his partner, who make Frank-N-Furter from 'Rocky Horror' seem subtle in comparison.

The action sequences often begin and end without any actual action, as if they couldn't afford a stunt coordinator and couldn't be bothered choreographing anything, so just asked the baddies to drop their swords and run away, then moved on to the next scene.

I don't think I've ever rated anything a 1, but this film definitely earned it. Terrible acting, terrible script, terrible costumes, terrible effects, terrible action sequences. I know 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' is meant to be the king of bad movies, but this one's worse.

I saw this movie by accident when it was on TV a few years ago... immediately it became a cult movie for me and my friends.

I've seen this movie about 500 times (i'm serious), and the bad special effects, bad acting, bad story, never gets old.

All i have to say is, it's so bad that it's good.

According to the page for this swords-and-sorcery disaster, Warriors of the Lost Kingdom was originally made in Argentina. That comes as no real surprise to me, since half of the dialogue doesn't even try to match up with the actors' lip movements. So what else can be said about a movie that everyone else in the world has already mentioned? Well, I guess I'll start off by explaining how I came about this movie. In all fairness, I would have never recognized the title if it had not been for the hilarious review on the Jabootu bad movie Web site. So while scowering the Family section of my local Star Trax video (a B-movie fan's paradise, as I quickly found out), I immediately knew the movie by its title and pictures on the back. Of course, the video cover tries in vain to make this look much more interesting than it actually is, so I weep for the poor kids who rented this wanting a good time. Sorry boys and girls, but this is one stinky Argentinian film that no one could enjoy outside of the camp value. And believe me, this thing has tons of camp. As my friend and I threw comments at the screen, there were numerous moments where our jaws just dropped. That sequed into out and out laughter, as certain elements are simply ridiculous. For example, the "big name actor" here is BO SVENSON. Who, you may ask? Who indeed! He's the only one whose voice isn't dubbed, and he has a thick country accent in a medeival time setting! Of course, nobody else here knows what period of history they're in, either. The villain looks like a pharoah, his minions are Skittle-colored midgets, ninjas, and Arabian nights, and his woman is half mermaid/swamp thing! I'm not going to go into anymore specifics, because this is honestly something you have to experience fresh. So if you're like me and happen to stumble upon this turd, be sure to pick it up if you're in the mood for some insanely bad fun. Truth be told, if Mike and the bots were still around, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom would be a great subject for them to study. 0/4 stars

It's not a good thing when the first thing you notice in a movie is the bad costume design. It's not just the spangles on everything, like Wigstock gone mid-budget, it's someone who's clearly the Wookie -- he looks to be about seven feet tall and wears a costume made from freshly washed, white poodle fur, who is usually shot at crotch level. Well, I suppose there were all those costumes from THE BIRD CAGE just lying around....

Anyway, story. Yes. Wizard Thom Christopher in a darling spangled hat kills the old king and takes over the castle and, presumably the kingdom, if he could find it. The old king's son, Vidal Peterson is a wizard, but not a very good one. He hooks up with wandering warrior Bo Svenson and the aforementioned fake Wookie, and they go on a series of poorly designed, low-level D&D encounters in their quest to get the magic ring. What magic ring? Shut up, he explained.

Along the way, there's a lot of sets from Dollar Store's Post-Christmas. sale There are also bat puppets, computer effects designed on a Sinclair ZX80, and lots of people in spangly hats. This was the year Bo Svenson joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Coincidence?