Dar l'invincible 2 - La porte du temps

Dar (Marc Singer) fights against the villain Arklon (Wings Hauser) who can shoot laser beams and uses his devilish laugh frequently to prove how evil he really is. A witch (Sarah Douglas) offers him access to a strange world, the so-called LA, where Arklon can obtain a weapon of ultimate power, the neutron bomb. Quicker than you can say 'transdimensional gate', Arklon, Dar and the witch jump through the gate and confuse people in Los Angeles by their outlandish garb. Dar meets a senator's rich daughter (young Kari Wuhrer) who introduces him to cars and other miracles of this world.

The sequel is nowhere near the qualities of the first movie, and it suffers from some scenes where the contrast between barbarians and modern age is just not as funny as the makers expected it to be. Still an entertaining little trash flick with a couple of good moments - I don't think I have seen another movie where policemen are trying to catch a guy with a pet tiger.

...and all from the script. That's because this isn't a sequel, it's... more like an overgrown tongue-in-cheek fan-fic film that just happened to lure Singer in for the ride.

There's a lot to laugh at here, and unfortunately the "plot" is most of it. The players are fairly game and give some effort to their portrayals, but the writing just is never serious. Sadly, sometimes it pretends to be, but always returns to campiness before long. The dialog is very dated, too, as others have noted. Prepare to wince.

Taken for what it is -- cheesy, spoofish fun -- it actually isn't too bad, IMO. 4/10 for being brisk enough to carry me along to the end and make at least a few actually funny jokes. (My favorite was the line about the 2 guys she'd met in Mexico.) Kari's character annoyed me a lot at first but she got better later. Wings actually surprised me; I thought he made a serviceable villain (at least for this sort of camp), and I was expecting him not to fit well. Then again, I was expecting a real sequel....

One thing that needs pointing out is that Lyranna vanishes near the end of the film. The character just isn't seen any more, with no explanation of what happened to her. Oops.

So... If you don't allow it to be what it is and instead hold it up to the first movie, it stinks, as most reviewers have pointed out. If you're going to watch it, don't make that comparison. Just mostly forget the first movie, relax, and laugh at the intentional and unintentional humor here. Throw stuff at the TV when the cheese gets too thick. That way you should be able to enjoy it well enough.

Like the first Beastmaster movie this is s so-so ripoff of Andre Norton's Beastmaster and Lord of Thunder, great science fiction about the last survivor of the Navajo nation who arrives on a new planet following earth's destruction during a war with the alien Xik, and learns to deal with his loss and love his new home Marc Singer's character in no way resembles Hosteen Storm and his animal companions are only close to the book. This is basically a cheapo that owes more to the Hercules movies of the 60's than to Sci-Fi.

A middling sequel to the original, not as good as that but far better than the third. This one does actually have a budget, albeit a B-movie budget, and starts off with the usual low rent heroic action before moving the action to then-modern day L. A. where the usual fish out of water action takes place. A typical mix of CONAN and DR DOOLITTLE here, a far cry from THE ICEMAN COMETH but reasonably entertaining if you're in the right cheesy mood. The cast includes genre standby Wings Hauser, a young Kari Wuhrer, and Uncle Phil himself.