Orcs

I first saw this more than a decade ago on a dvd which i own. Revisited it recently on a fast forward mode. The poster of the dvd cover enticed me then.

A group of Forest Rangers fight back against an army of orcs, somehow they came out of the blue from some cave with helmets, armours, spears n different weapons.

Lots of extras in bad costume running here n there. The fight scenes are rubbish, there is zero horror element n this movie cannot fall into a decent fantasy genre.

Revisiting Ray Harryhausen/Charles H. Schneer's movies are much better options than this lousy Orcs!

Why the makers decided to make a movie on orcs, if their budget was less, is beyond me.

They cud have settled for savage cavemen instead.

Obviously, this isn't better than the The Lord Of The Rings trilogy as someone else suggested (I wish IMDb could stop cast and crew from posting glowing reviews of their own movies). What it is, is a fun, cheap, cheesy little exploitation flick. It's done for laughs and really is kind of funny. The plot in a sentence : 2 bumbling idiot park rangers square off against guys wearing armor that looks a lot like what the orcs wore in Lord of the Rings. The armor is, of course, to avoid having to have any special effects make-up most of the time. They apparently claim the movie cost 3 million to make. But, if it did, someone stole at least 2 million. It's not great. But it's not awful.

Well, you know what you are in for when you look at the title of the movie alone. But still, I decided to watch this movie to conquer the boredom.

The movie in itself was a mixed blessing. The camera-work was actually quite good, and the locations and scenery was off the charts. Lots of really nice stuff to look at here. Lots of vibrant colors and locations.

Now, the bad stuff about the movie was the story. Come on, orcs being released from the confined subterranean of a mountain by some miners blasting for ore. Well, alright, why not? But orcs? Come on... And to make matters worse, the orcs resembled nothing more than teenagers running confused around at a live role-playing game event. It was dreadful to look at. And the fighting scenes were rigid and painful to behold.

As for the acting, well, it was not top notch. Unknown names and faces, to me at least, but then again, in a movie like this, I wasn't expecting to see anyone with a named carved for themselves in Hollywood already. There were moments of good acting, but there were also moments of horrendous acting. And the movie wasn't particularly helped along by an exciting dialogue.

All in all, "Orcs!" is a low-budget movie that uses pungent humor and suffers from a terrible storyline. But the movie is set in amazing surroundings, which actually helps make it bearable to watch. If you are bored out of your mind and want some non-brainer movie, "Orcs!" might just be the thing for you.

That is the "Orcs(!)" for you. And while I do like low budget movies with quirky characters, this just has nothing offer. It's one thing to be predictable, it's another thing, not to try to bring at least something unique to the table if you have nothing much more to offer. I'm not sure, if someone really wrote that this is better then LotR. And while tastes differ, you shouldn't really watch this movie with that review in mind .. you'll be devastated in the end.

Unfortunately the actors have nothing much to work with, bad cgi and poor directorial decisions only add to the mess. If you go out and make a movie with no money, at least try to make something different and don't check all the boxes. That's my take on it of course. Was really disappointed in this, there is so much potential for a movie like this ...

If you are looking for LOTR look elsewhere. A stoner ranger, his dim witted trainee and his militant enviormentalist girlfriend fight an invading tribe of orcs at a national park. All the characters are pleasantly two dimensional. Cheesy special effect and costumes. Predictable plot. But fun none-the-less.