Almost everyone in the world has seen this movie. Trouble is, no one remembers it -- partly because it's so horrible that most people immediately put it out of their minds, and partly because if you have seen it, it was probably when you were six years old and your memory of it has faded over time.

Ant's memory, however, never fades, at least when it comes to crappy movies. He recalled a single scene, where a Kroft-like cyclops in a wedding dress attempts to entice one of the heroes. From that tiny bit of information, Ant scoured the internet and finally came up with a title: Wizards of the Lost Kingdom. After that, he went to half.com and bought it for like four dollars. And then we watched it.

I recognized the cover art on the box, but the movie itself seemed unfamiliar at first...until, slowly, I began to remember certain scenes as well. I had seen it before. The repressed memories of a childhood spent renting crappy movies from the third-rate grocery store in town crept back into my brain, and it all came rushing back to me.

Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, made (supposedly) in 1985, tells the story of an apprentice wizard and his annoying companions who seek to overthrow the evil wizard who has taken over the kingdom. You could probably pull together a pretty decent film out of this relatively boring plot if you had money or knew what you were doing, but the people who made this film obviously lacked sufficient funds and sufficient skills, and the end result is a spectacular mess.





The movie begins in the best way possible, by showing clips from other, better movies! Yes, it's true, a good sixty percent of the film was pieced together from other movies, namely Italian Conan rip-offs from the early Eighties -- apparently chosen for their medieval flavor. The opening scenes are so jarring, in fact, that the first few minutes seem more like a series of trailers than a single, actual movie. Anyway, the narration tells us that "it was an Age of Magic," and then that "it was an Age of Sorcery," and that "wizard fought against wizard". Great stuff. After the opening bonanza of gladiators and peasants and knights, the production values shrink down to nearly nothing as the real movie begins in earnest: we get shots of a cheap castle set complete with a handful of unappealing actors and actresses.

This sucker was made in Argentina. Brace yourselves.

Our main character is Simon, the apprentice wizard. Or prince, whatever. The movie can't make up its mind about Simon's status. (Early on he's clearly courting the princess, which would seem to suggest that he's royalty, but then his magical abilities are revealed and he claims to be the apprentice to the court wizard. Then, at the end, everyone tells him he's going to be king. Very confusing.)

Simon makes a statue come to life to impress the princess (it would have been more impressive if the statue wasn't so poorly puppeteered) but before any other such tricks can be performed, the castle is attacked by the evil wizard Shurka, who looks almost exactly like Jamie Farr. There's a bunch of great fight scenes and general mayhem going on outside, but it's all from another movie, which makes the orginal material look like even worse crap than it is. The king is disintegrated by Shurka, who quips, "It's all in the wrist," after throwing a fire spell at him. The turncoat queen behind the invasion is also pleased, cause Shurka is apparently her lover.

Meanwhile, Simon is trying to escape with Wulfrick, his teacher, but ol' Wulfie decides to stay and fight Shurka while Simon teleports away. He gives Simon this ring, which is supposed to be really great and magically important, and tells him not to lose it. Five seconds later, Simon loses it, and Wulfrick's magical powers (blue Ghostbusters-like animation) can't topple Shurka and his magical powers (red Ghostbusters-like animation). Simon is stranded in some forest with his shaggy companion, Gulfax, who is sort of like a bigger, uglier, stupider version of Chewbacca, with white hair instead of brown.

Then Kor the Conquerer (Bo Svenson, from Delta Force, as the movie's box proudly acknowledges) appears. Kor has got a bad case of Eighties Wrestler Hair; he looks like Roddy Piper. He even wears a kilt! But anyway, he appears, calls Gulfax a furball, fights a few incompetent opponents, and decides to help Simon for some reason. He does all this with absolutely no charisma, charm, style, or enthusiasm, but he's still the best character in the whole stupid movie.





The second half of the movie is even more confusing than the first. Simon casts a spell that destroys Shurka's cauldron-thing, so he can't spy on them, which really ticks Shurka off: he yells something like "Damn him! He has beaten me this time but beano...!!" I don't know what it means, either, but there's really no reason for him to get so upset -- about thirty seconds later he's spying on them again with another cauldron!

Shortly after this, Simon meets a transvestite. I mean, I think it was supposed to be a beautiful young forest woman, but she sure as hell didn't look very much like a woman to me. She/he leads Simon to some weird forest gathering and drugs him, at which point he begins to hallucinate some useless filler material (more stock footage from other movies). Then she/he turns into a giant insect and he stabs her. Yay! I had no idea what was going on, but it's still pretty great, especially after we learn that Shurka orchestrated the entire surreal event!

Ugh. So then Simon decides to raise the dead, hoping that they will fight Shurka for him. This wonderful, sensible plan goes awry when the dead turn out to be mainly interested in eating flesh and drinking blood, and Kor has to barge in to save the day again.

Meanwhile, Shurka is still looking for the magic ring. When his colorfully-dressed midget servants can't find it, he alternately makes them disappear and turns them into mice. (His warthog-like jester then stomps on the mice). It was about here that I began to really enjoy Shurka's performance; the guy's over-the-top schtick is pretty hilarious.

At any rate, Kor and Simon then find themselves at the home of Furlough the Hobgoblin, a forest magician. Little guy looks like a lawn gnome.

Furlough is getting pushed around by some lizard thugs, so Kor kills them and drinks Furlough's wine. Later, Furlough complains to Simon, "You have to hurry; the power of Good is fading!" He then illustrates this point with even more scenes from other movies, and tells them to go through the Suicide Caverns to get back to the castle. Simon helps things along by constantly whining, "But I can't!" (It is perhaps worth mentioning somewhere in this review that although Simon is supposed to be about fourteen or so, he looks more like a twenty-seven year old whose growth was somehow stunted at fourteen. Just so you know).

At the Suicide Caverns Simon and Kor are attacked by ghosts, but Kor yells at them, so they go away. A few puppets attack them, too, but eventually they escape, and are taken prisoner by a cyclops and his henchthings.

Now here's where the comedy comes in.

Turns out Kor was supposed to marry the cyclops' ugly sister (who looks just like her brother), but he reneged on the deal at some point in the past. Brother cyclops demands that he marry her immediately, or be eaten ("Married...or marinated!" he barks, in a voice that sounds suspicously like Hermie's hateful elf boss from the stop-motion Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. You know the one: "Why weren't you at elf practice?" and "A dentist! Gooood grief!")

It was somewhere around here that the name of the kingdom was finally mentioned: Assholm. Just kidding; I think it was Axholm, but everyone pronounces it "Assholm", so I will too.

One bad fight scene later (Kor swings his sword about as expertly as a blind, gimpy, elderly woman) the duo make it to a river, where they see a girl calling for help. Kor rushes in to save her, but she turns out to be a mermaid, who was only "testing your manhood." I'm not kidding.





They get to the castle a bit later, "following their hearts across the rainbow bridge!" Simon recovers the ring and Kor stages some sort of rebellion, and a big battle ensues. Yep, more stock footage, except for the anticlimactic magical duel between Shurka and Simon, which Shurka loses. Sort of. Frankly, it's hard to tell what went on. At the same time, the turncoat queen escapes with the aid of a midget, but no explanation is given for this turn of events -- and I'm also not quite sure why Shurka's evil black warthog critter suddenly switches sides at the end, cheering along with the victors. The film ends with Kor delivering some half-baked lecture about Good and Evil and telling Simon that he'll be a good king. Then he leaves.

All told, a pretty rough ride. You might be wondering if Roger Corman had anything to do with this mess -- well, wonder no more! He was the executive producer, which means he bought the thing from some whacked-out Argentinian and made sure that every third-rate grocery store in America had a copy to rent to unsuspecting tots who were drawn in by the flashy box art. Score one for Corman!

Seriously, though, this movie sucks. The magical special effects, by one Richard Lennox, are actually respectable at times, but the whole thing basically looks like it crawled out of the sick brains of Sid and Marty Kroft, and the mixing in of so much serious Conan-type footage in an otherwise juvenile film is just plain strange.

They also made a sequel. Suicide Caverns, here I come.

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