Quest of the Delta Knights

...there was a production company that wanted to make a sword-and-sorcery flick on a shoestring budget. So they hired out a California Rennaisance Festival and had the extras wander around in front of the merchant shops, and used them for the backdrop of an unoriginal story about a kid, a whore, and Leonardo daVinci (I am SO not making this up) off to find a bunch of junk Archimedes left lying around after the fall of Rome.

Of course, it fails spectacularly. It fails even more spectacularly if you're actually involved in RenFest or SCA-type activities, because then you can tell that the costumes on the extras come from about fifteen different time periods and locations. And that nobody, no not even the Vikings, wore horns on their helmets the way the Vulchare's henchmen do. And that nobody PERIOD would have dressed in the EFX-chorus costumes they stuck Olivia Hussey and David Warner (as Vulchare) into.

The painful segments of this film are innumerable. Such as the pee-throwing scene. Or "advanced" spy techniques employed by the Delta Knights, which involve meteorlogical discussions and that writing-with-lemon-juice-on-paper-and-heating-it-to-reveal-secret-message trick that children's science shows always do. Or Richard Kind in an annoying cameo and possibly the worst fake beard in film history (yes, even counting the wool on Captain Santa's face in Space Mutiny). Or the way the whore solicits the kid for sex even though he's not old enough to shave. Or the guys who wear Halloween masks and live in a summer camp obsticale course, one of whom screams "I'M COMMMIIIIIIIIIIING!" in what sounds for all the world like Cheech Marin's voice. Or the notion that Leonardo wasn't a genius, he was an irritating schmuck who stole all his ideas from Archimedes.

The MST3K version, of course, is priceless. I highly recommend it--it will ease the pain.

I saw this film on MST3K, and can really not add that much to what has already been said. This movie really is that bad, and incredibly historically inaccurate. It also rips off Citizen of the Galaxy with the whole "beggar/spy-in-foreign-land-buys-slave-boy-for-secret-society -and-gives-him-special-training" I'd also like to point out that they not only filmed a renfest in Northern California for the medieval/renaissance/whatever setting, but the exterior of the Ancient Greece scene was apparently filmed in San Francisco at the Palace of Fine Arts. The guys really do suck at crafting a story or directing, but I've got to give them credit original cheap sets solutions. They're Ed Woodian in their ingenuity!

Okay, I didn't go into this movie expecting a winner. I rented it counting on the fact that it would be lame. So I was quite happy. The movie was bad, so bad it was funny. Most noteable was a scene (don't worry this won't spoil anything) where the main charcter is eating at an inn. Brigid Conley Walsh (one of the worlds most unerrated actresses) hints at prostitution for about five minutes before she finally decides the guy just doesn't understand. Worth the cost of renting.

GASP! at the amazing bad acting. FLINCH! at the horrible in-jokiness of it all (Leonard from the village of Vinci?!?). Yes, it's Sword & Sorcery as you never wanted to see it. It's probably Warner's worst movie (beating out Naked Souls), and possibly his worse performance, but he's just not given much to work with here. Sarah Douglas is suitably evil (can't go wrong there), but even she seems overwhelmed by the sheer hokiness of it all. The rest of the cast seems to be out-of-work SCA members. There's just nothing, nothing good about this.

the most historically inaccurate film ever made. I'm not even sure this can be called a movie, maybe it's just an after school special on the middle ages gone horribly wrong.

There's something in here, about a boy who becomes the leader of an underground knight group that's trying to stop an evil villain from obtaining a device of unlimited power, at least I think that's what happens.

The acting is bad, but the sets and "special effects" are just so laughably bad that it's a wonder this film got released at all. The MST version was funny, though not one of their best efforts. Nothing for the film, but a 7 for the MST version.

-I wonder how cheap the casting for the film must have been, well David Warner played both the villain and one of the main heroes, so that may be some indication as to how low the budget was.