Krull should have been a blockbuster.

But seriously, it’s a mess. A glorious mess.

It’s like the craziest game of Dungeons & Dragons you ever played, filled with info about magic and strange lands that feel like they were invented five minutes before the camera started rolling. It has the most awesome weapon ever seen in probably any movie ever, the Glaive, a five-pointed, spinning death boomerang that looks like something a metal band would put on the cover of an album about slaying dragons. It has monsters that look amazing.

But it also has a somewhat boring hero and heroine surrounded by much more interesting friends. And it’s long and nonsensical.

Yet I love it. I’ve watched it so many times, and with every viewing I love it more and more, while remaining fully aware of its faults. It’s that kind of movie, I guess — the kind where every problem becomes part of the charm. The pacing is weird. The tone shifts all over the place. Characters appear, get a cool weapon, deliver one line and die. But the movie is so earnest about its insanity that you can’t help but admire it. It’s a movie that believes completely in itself, even when it absolutely shouldn’t.

Director Peter Yates (Bullit; Mother, Jugs and Speed; The Deep; Breaking Away; The Dresser) described making Krull as “complicated” and “enormous.” Special effects artist Brian Johnson took that even further, saying that Yates hated working on the film so much that in the middle of shooting, he took a vacation to the Caribbean for three weeks.

Which, honestly, is the most relatable thing anyone has ever done while making a giant fantasy epic.

Yet when Yates first took on the project, he was excited. His previous films were grounded in reality, and he considered Krull a challenge since he would have to rely on imagination and experimentation. That’s admirable, but it also means the movie sometimes feels like a very serious British filmmaker trying to wrangle a script written by someone who had just discovered heavy-metal album covers and pulp science-fiction paperbacks at the same time.

The movie begins with a narrator (Freddie Jones, Goodbye Gemini, Son of Dracula) telling of a prophecy: “This, it was given to me to know…that many worlds have been enslaved by the Beast and his army, the Slayers. And this, too, was given me to know…that the Beast would come to our world, the world of Krull, and his Black Fortress would be seen in the land. That the smoke of burning villages would darken the sky, and the cries of the dying echo through deserted valleys. But one thing I cannot know, whether the prophecy be true, that a girl of ancient name shall become queen, that she shall choose a king, and that together they shall rule our world, and that their son shall rule the galaxy.”

Right away, the movie tips its hand: this isn’t just a fantasy movie. It’s a fantasy movie that suddenly remembers it’s also science fiction. The villain’s fortress is actually a spaceship. The bad guys are alien stormtroopers. There’s prophecy, lasers, medieval kingdoms, and cosmic destiny, all mashed together like someone tossed Star Wars, Excalibur, and a pile of fantasy novels into a blender and hit puree.

On the day of Prince Colwyn and Princess Lyssa’s wedding that will unite the warring kingdoms of Krull, the Beast and his army of demonic Slayers arrive in the Black Fortress, a mountain-shaped spacecraft that randomly teleports to a different location every day just to make the heroes’ quest even more annoying. They kill both kings, wipe out the armies and kidnap Lyssa before anyone can even finish the reception.

The injured Prince Colwyn is brought back by Ynyr, the Old One (also played by Freddie Jones), who tells him of the legend of the Glaive, a legendary weapon that can kill the Beast. Colwyn and Ynry form a party with the magician Ergo (David Battley, Mr. Turkentine from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory) and nine criminals who are undertaking the mission to clear their names: the multi-married axe-wielding Kegan (a super young Liam Neeson), Torquil, Rhun (Robbie Coltrane), dagger-loving Bardolph, bo staff user Oswyn, Menno and Darro, the whip users, net-throwing Nennog (stuntman Bronco McLoughlin) and Quain the archer. Soon they’re joined by Rell the cyclops Bernard Bresslaw, who is also in Hawk the Slayer, who belongs to a race cursed with the ability to see their own deaths in the future, which is a pretty bleak superpower. 

From here, the movie becomes a fantasy road trip full of weird encounters. They visit the Emerald Seer, who can magically locate the Black Fortress with a crystal. Unfortunately, the Beast can reach through magic Skype calls and crush people from afar, so that plan ends badly. The bad guys are tenacious, killing everyone they can, including Darro, Menno and the Seer, even taking on the scryer’s form before he’s uncovered. That evil Beast even tries to get a woman to seduce Colwyn, but our hero is a little too smart for that.

Meanwhile, Ynyr visits the Widow of the Web, one of the film’s most bizarre sequences. She lives in a web-covered lair guarded by a giant Crystal Spider that honestly looks like something out of a prog rock album cover. She tells Ynyr where the Black Fortress will appear and gives him enchanted sand that will allow him to travel back instantly.

But the moment he leaves the protective sand circle, the spider kills her, because Krull is a movie that absolutely refuses to let anyone have a happy ending. Honestly, this movie is exactly like playing D&D with a dungeon master who has way too many ideas and refuses to throw any of them away. There’s a world of adventure, and yet people keep getting killed left and right as the heroes stumble around trying to keep up with the plot.

Finally, Colwyn does what we wanted all along: he throws the Glaive into the Beast and then, to destroy its counterattack, he and Lyssa get married and shoot fire at the monster, sending the Black Fortress into space.

Only Colwyn, Lyssa, Torquil, Oswyn, Ergo and Titch survive. The newly married couple becomes king and queen, with Torquil being named Lord Marshal of their newly combined kingdom. As the survivors run through a field, the narrator repeats the prophecy that the son of the queen and her chosen king shall rule the galaxy.

Krull was shot on 23 sets, ten of them at Pinewood Studios, including the monstrous 007 Stage. 16 Clydesdales were trained for months to be Fire Mares. Hundreds of costumes were sewn. 40 stuntmen were on hand. You’ll marvel at just how much money was thrown at a movie that has a completely incomprehensible story.

And yet, despite all that money and effort, the story somehow still feels like it was invented by a teenager who got ridiculously high with all of his friends and attempted to be the dungeon master before having the giggles and passing out.

The posters said, “Beyond our time, beyond our universe . . . there is a planet besieged by alien invaders, where a young king must rescue his love from the clutches of the Beast. Or risk the death of his world. KRULL. A world light-years beyond your imagination.”

They weren’t kidding. Krull is a movie that throws absolutely everything it can at the screen: magic weapons, prophecy, aliens, cyclopes, giant spiders, teleporting fortresses, flaming horses and a hero who spends most of the movie trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

I agree with the poster, though. I love this movie in spite of itself. Maybe even because of itself. It’s big, dumb, ambitious, messy and completely sincere. It’s not afraid to be strange or ridiculous or wildly over the top.

And for that, I salute it.

Between Pin, Cathy’s Curse and this film, what is it about Canadian families in horror films? Beneath a surface of politeness, is everyone this psychotic north of the border?

Julie (Isabelle Mejias, Scanners II: The New Order) just wants to play with her pet snake, hunt with her dad, and, well, lie in bed with him. But when her mom takes away her snake, she just watches a delivery boy (Paul Hubbard, who played Flash Gordon in the deleted scenes in A Christmas Story) violate her and does nothing to save her life, even though she’s holding a gun. It’s a horrifying scene, as the man is shocked that he’s knocked the woman’s head so hard into the ground. He’s more upset than Julie when he sees the blood seeping out of the back of her brain. Julie just watches, fascinated yet removed.

Julie thinks she has her father (Anthony Franciosa, Tenebre) all to herself, but he soon finds a new wife: the alluring Susan (Sybil Danning)! She brings sex appeal and a stepson. And because she may have been dating daddy before mommy died, maybe Julie’s dad is taking advantage of the death she caused.

One thing he’s definitely taking advantage of is the opportunity to make sweet, sweet love to Susan. He doesn’t know that his daughter is watching the entire time and enjoying things way too much, imagining herself in bed with her father! Ugh!

And it gets worse and worse, as Julie does things like lock her stepbrother in a refrigerator, nearly killing him, and then brings the rapist who killed her mother back to the house to take out her new mom in a blackmail plot. Yep, she even tells him, “You can rape her all you want!” It all adds up to an ending that totally shocked me, and I don’t want to cheat you out of it.

Unlike The Bad Seed, Julie isn’t just born bad; she is a product of a father who is so pathologically oblivious that he borders on being an accomplice.

Yep. This is one rough little film, which makes sense when you realize it’s by the writer and director of Chained Heat, Paul Nicolas (that movie also has Danning in it, plus Linda Blair, Henry Silva, Tamara Dobson, John Vernon and Stella Stevens for a movie that transcends the WIP genre).

It’s not for everyone. But Mejias is great in it. And it’s the kind of movie that you are amazed exists, and even more astounded as it plays in your DVD player (or streams on YouTube).

In a bizarre twist of “it’s a small world,” Cindy Girling (who plays the mother who gets her head smashed) was actually married in real life to Paul Hubbard (the delivery boy who kills her). Talk about taking your work home with you!

Jefferson Bailey (Scott McGinnis, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock) owns the hottest business in 1983: a video arcade. It’s driving local business tycoon Joseph Rutter (Joe Don Baker, a man whose name I screamed into the ear of a sleeping girlfriend once, which is a long story I should really get to sometime) nuts, so he gets his two nephews and plans on shutting down the arcade. Mean! Unfair! No!

Bailey’s too smart for Rutter and has two pals named Eugene Groebe (Leif Green, Davey Jaworski from the legendary bomb Grease 2) — who is molested by swimsuit girls before he even gets to the arcade — and McDorfus, who are ready to deal with this affront.

This movie was such a big deal that Midway allowed the image of Pac-Man, their new game Satan’s Hollow, and the as-yet-unreleased Super Pac-Man to be used during the big showdown at the movie’s end.

Corinne Bohrer, who is pretty much teen movie royalty thanks to appearances in films like Surf II, Zapped! and Stewardess School, shows up, as does John Voldstad, who played “my other brother Daryl” on TV’s Newhart.

There are two real reasons to watch this movie. One is the theme song, which has beeps, boops and promises “video to the max” and “totally awesome video games!” This song will infiltrate your mind and not leave, trust me.

The other big reason is John Gries, who completely owns every scene he appears in as King Vidiot, a punk rock maniac surrounded by punker girls who communicate only in video game noises when they’re not all riding miniature motorcycles. In a more perfect world, King Vidiot would be the star of the film. Every other person pales in comparison to his greatness. Gries would go on to steal the show in plenty of other films, including Real Genius, Napoleon Dynamite, Fright Night, The Monster Squad, and TerrorVision.

This all comes from Greydon Clark, who directed The Uninvited — a movie where George Kennedy does battle with a house cat — Without Warning and Wacko, as well as appearing in movies like Satan’s Sadists.

The saddest part of this movie was that, even though the good guys won, arcades would be dead by the mid-1980s. So really, the bad guys did win. King Vidiot? Well, no one knows what happened to him.

Also known as The Horror Star and Body Snatchers, this is the tale of Conrad Razkoff (Ferdy Mayne), a horror film star who fakes his death or maybe not, but definitely exists beyond life and death as he wipes out a drama class.

Before that, Ragzoff is in a dentures commercial, and the director argues with him over his acting, so Ragzoff shoves him off a balcony. Then, he visits the drama school and faints from excitement, revived by one of the students, Meg (Jennifer Starrett).

That night, he decides to die and tells his director, Wolfgang (Leon Askin), what he wants for his funeral. As he expires — or fakes it — Wolfgang says, “The world is rid of you, and I am rid of you. Good night, sweet prince of ham!” The great actor rises and kills the disbeliever with a pillow.

Meg, Saint (Luca Bercovici, the director of Ghoulies), Bobo (Scott Thomson, Copeland from the Police Academy series), Eve (Carlene Olson), Donna (Donna McDaniel, Angel), Oscar (Alan Stock) and Stu (Jeffrey Combs, cast for his hair color, really) go to the cemetery after dark to see Ragzoff’s tomb. A film begins, cursing them, before they steal the body and head off to an old mansion in time for the coffin to explode and all sorts of murder, including tongue ripping, black magic and crypt gas.

By the end, the police show up to find Meg surrounded by her dead friends and Conrad rising from his grave to kill a fake psychic and joins his wife, at which point we see the video inside the tomb with the actor saying how much he enjoys being in Hell.

I’m obsessed with the films of Norman Thaddeus Vane, like The Black Room and Midnight. Plus, the scenes of Conrad being a horror star are really Christopher Lee in Uncle Was a Vampire. It’s strange and wonderful. That’s what I want in all my movies.

The Troma “Tromatic Special Edition” Blu-ray includes extras such as the DVD Intro featuring Lloyd Kaufman and Debbie Rechon, an archival audio interview with director Norman Thaddeus Vane, historical commentary with David Del Valle and David DeCoteau, audio commentary from The Hysteria Continues, the original trailer, artwork gallery, an interview with DP Joel King, Troma behind-the-scenes and music videos. You can get it from MVD.