Also known as: El mago del reino perdido (Argentina), Wizard Wars (US alternate title)
Release Date: October 1985 (US)
Directed by: Héctor Olivera
Written by: Ed Naha
Music by: James Horner, Christopher Young
Cast: Bo Svenson, Vidal Peterson, Thom Christopher
Trinity Productions, Concorde Pictures, 72 Minutes
Review:
This was a really tough movie to sit through. At least I got to experience it in an episode of the new season of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Jonah and the ‘Bots made it watchable, at least and their skits were good.
This is an Argentinian film that tries to mesh together The Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. I think it was made more to capitalize off of the popularity of family fantasy movies like The NeverEnding Story and The Dark Crystal. It isn’t as well done as those pictures. In fact, it is poorly made and incredibly ridiculous.
The quality of this film from a special effects standpoint is laughably bad. In fact, it looks worse than Soviet fairytale movies that predate this by two decades. The wizard kid’s sidekick is basically a Wampa from The Empire Strikes Back without a face. He’s just a seven foot tall white shag carpet. It looks like a character from an old Sid & Marty Kroft show.
The biggest star in this thing is Bo Svenson, which should say a lot. He’s our big hero and instead of being some bad ass barbarian swordsman, we get a big out of shape guy that looks like he drank all the Old Crow at a Kris Kristofferson concert. He looks like a drunk extra from The Road Warrior. He’s like that drunken hobo that just shaved so he can apply for a job at True Value. And someone gave this turkey a sword.
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom is mind numbingly bad. I can’t imagine that this movie made any sort of money but somehow there was a sequel made four years later. That one is also in the new season of MST3K, so I guess I’ll be stuck watching it too.
Rating: 1.5/10
Talking Pulp 