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a-z challenge, april, beast, blog, cinema, drama, fantasy, film, glaive, ken marshall, krull, love story, review, sci fi, smurfin the web
“K” is for Krull (1983)
en Marshall, to be fair, didn’t really become a great movie star. He is known for the heady heights of an episode of Baywatch, but what I remember him for the most is the 80s fantasy movie Krull.
Made in 1983, this children’s fantasy movie was made on a budget of around £30M but it failed spectacularly at the box office. That said, it remains one of my fondest childhood memories and it is films like these that ignited my love for the cinema that continues to this day.
I loved all those fantasy films from when I was a kid. Krull was one of them and I have successfully managed to use films like this to get my eldest son into movies. The story is a classic tale of the handsome Prince rescuing his bride from the evil tyrant, and although on first glimpse this movie would appear to be set on Earth in the middle ages, it is in fact a science fiction movie set on another planet.
The film is responsible for launching quite a number of actors. Lets take a look at who appears in this film. Liam Neeson, Todd Carty, Bernard Bresslaw, Lysette Anthony, Francesca Annis, Freddie Jones, Alun Armstrong. Quite a list I think. It is quite funny seeing Liam Neeson in this all these years later after seeing him in the likes of Taken and Schindler’s List. So getting back to the star of the movie, Ken Marshall is just hammy enough to get away with this and I remember playing in the school playground and pretending to be Colwyn fighting the bad guys.
The special effects were decent enough for the time, but the best part about this film for me was the Glaive, a magical, five-pointed blade that will defeat the evil Beast. there was just something about this film that made it a really good one for kids’ imaginations to expand on the story that existed and make up stuff for themselves. There were a huge run of films of this type in the early 80s, but I think this one holds up extremely well, even to this day and I think that the fact that my 5-year-old enjoyed it is testament to that.
Fun Fact: James Horner’s score re-uses re-arranged elements from his 1982 score for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982).