Wizards of the Lost Kingdom

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?

This movie is truly brilliant. It ducks through banality to crap at such speed you don't even see good sense and common decency to mankind go whizzing past. But it doesn't stop there! This movie hits the bottom of the barrel so hard it bounces back to the point of ludicrous comedy: behold as Kor the Beergutted Conan wannabe with the over-abundance of neck hair struts his stuff swinging his sword like there's no tomorrow (and the way he swung it, I really am amazed there *was* a tomorrow for him, or at least, for his beer gut). Don't miss this movie, it's a fantastic romp through idiocy, and sheer bloody mindedness! And once you have finished watching this one, dry the tears of joy (or tears of frustration at such an inept attempt at storytelling) from your eyes because some stupid f00l gave these people another $5 to make a sequel!

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.

Someone watched a lot of fantasy movies and thought: Hey I can do that. Well I would argue, no you can't. No offense to whoever did this. Maybe there was interference maybe other influences ... whatever the case, this is quite the hot mess (or cold mess if you prefer that).

There is I guess a Chewbacca style character that is just ... I mean I guess you can view him as cute too. If you watched this as a kid ... who am I to say what you should feel about this? But Production values and everything cries ... in agony and pain. Even the actors it seems struggle ... then again maybe this has nothing to do with the movie but with their "talent". I'm not going to suggest anything.

Still believe it or not, I have seen worse movies. This can have some moments that are sort of fun (and I'm not talking about the not very well aged Special effects or in camera tricks) ... nothing one has to have seen ... unless they are as crazy as me I guess