EDITOR’S NOTE: Arthur the King was on the CBS Late Movie on August 13, 1987.

If you were British and didn’t get a role in Excalibur in 1981*, a year later, you could have been in Arthur the King, also known as Merlin and the Sword. It was directed by Clive Donner, the man who brought us The Nude Bomb, Charlie Chan and the Dragon Queen, Old Dracula, Spectre, Luv and What’s New, Pussycat? It was written by David Wyles, who also wrote Treasure: In Search of the Gold Horse.

Katharine (Dyan Cannon) is exploring the caves around Stonehenge — Where a man’s a man and the children dance to the Pipes of Pan — and ends up falling and waking up stuck in the cave where Merlin (Edward Woodward, The Equalizer, which had to be mentioned in the CBS ads) and Niniane (Lucy Gutteridge, Top Secret!) have slept and argued for a thousand years. Oh, what a cast — King Arthur (Malcolm McDowell) is a jerk, so you can figure that Guinevere (Rosalyn Landor) ran away more than that she was kidnapped by MorganLe Fay (Candice Bergen, yes, really). She’s rescued by Lancelot (Rupert Everett) and, as you know from the legend of Arthur, they fall in love.

Filmed in Yugoslavia and sitting on the bench for three years before CBS decided to air it as a three-hour TV movie, this is the kind of movie that if you love the legends, you’ll hate, because it feels like, well, a TV movie shot in Yugoslavia. But if you don’t, you’ll wonder why it’s more about Gawain (Patrick Ryecart) and Ragnell (Ann Thornton) than Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.

In this, Morgan is the aunt of Mordred (Joseph Blatchley), Arthur’s evil bastard son, instead of Arthur’s half-sister, which makes the story even darker. But you know, incest and 1980s TV maybe didn’t mix. This also rewrites the ending with Merlin astral projecting himself back in time, possessing Excalibur and stabbing the life out of Mordred.

Spoilers, sorry.

Teri Tordia from Julia shows up, as does Mary Stavin from Top Line and Strike Commando 2. Yes, I realize she was in A View to a Kill and Octopussy, as well as the videos for “Strip” and “Ant Rap” by Adam Ant, but I know her from what I know her from. Carole Ashby was also in both of those movies and this, too, so maybe they found something to talk about. Perhaps they made fun of Alison Worth because she wasn’t going to get to be in A View to a Kill. I offer this conjecture knowing Octopussy was made a year later and A View to a Kill three years after. More Bond girls? Maryam d’Abo was in this, too! Yes, she’s in The Living Daylights, but don’t we all know her from Xtro?

Michael Gough, the butler for Batman, is also on hand; yes, he was also the villain of  Horrors of the Black Museum.

Lancelot is the real hero of this story, defeating an entire army of bad guys all by himself and a dragon before exiting as a hero. That dragon, well, look, we don’t need to talk about the effects, do we? I’m trying to be nice.

Malcolm McDowell is the kind of actor who can play King Arthur and Merlin. I am referring to Kids of the Round Table. He’s also very Eric Roberts in that if you say his name out loud three times, he shows up in a $2 million budget straight-to-Walmart movie.

I have never seen Candice Bergen throw a fireball, and now I have.

*Unless you’re Liam Neeson. He was Grak in this and Gawain in that.

You can watch this on YouTube.