How would you define Masters of the Universe?

Incidentally, I don’t know if there is any truth that Conan figures were repurposed as MOTU figures. One documentary I saw suggested that story was apocryphal, but I am sure some (Wizard, perhaps?) stated it as fact.

There was a brief attempt at a sword & sorcery franchise, on NBC tv, in the early 80s; but, they only ended up doing the first film: Archer, Fugitive From the Empire.



Itwas a pilot for a fantasy series, though I recall an article that ran in our local paper tv listings that said it was supposed to be a series of telemovies. Ironically, that was also suppsed to be the structure for Battlestar Galactica; but, they went with a weekly one-hour series, instead, with a telemovie debut.

Nicholas Corea, the writer, director and creator was a big fantasy lit fan and he incorporated a lot of classic features. The hero is the son of the leader of a nomadic people, who has united various clans. They are a threat to an empire and its agents murder the high chief and frame the son, after father and son had a dispute, before the other chiefs. The son escapes, with the help of a friend, who has a powerful bow, with mystical qualities. The hero ends up in possession of it and aids a sorceress in escaping her death and, if memory serves, a thief, who befriends him. The enemy is a general, with a humanoid serpent clan of warriors, who have terrorized the land. They go seeking a powerful wizard, called Lazar-Sa.

The hero is Toren, plade by Lane Caudell, who appeared on Days of Our Lives. George Kennedy was Brakus, the high chief. The sorceress, Estra, was played by Belinda Bauer, who was the doomed girlfriend in the Airwolf movie pilot and Dr Faxx, in Robocop 2. Victor Campos was the thief, Slant, who befriends Toren and joins his quest. The villain, Gar, was played by Indian actor Kabir Bedi, best known in the West for playing Gobinda, the henchman of Kamal Khan, in the Bond film, Octopussy.

Bedi was great, as the villain Gar, clad in reinforced leather armor, with helmet and facemask. He is wounded, at one point, by Toren and removes the facemask and appears without it for the rest of the film. Prior to that, you mostly saw only his eyes. Richard Moll has a minor role as a ferryman. I don't believe he transported Chris Debergh to the other side, though.

It was a pretty good effort, from a story standpoint, though some dodgy acting. Bauer was never particularly good in anything, other than she was beautiful and could play sexy. She just never demonstrated much of an emotional range (though her parts rarely called for that, either). Kennedy chews scenery and wasn't the best choice for a barbarian chief; but, he's a fine actor and he handles it well. The other chiefs were primarily tv character actors. Bedi is the glue that held it together, as he gives the best performance and really inhabits his character. he also plays it with the right tone, never seeming self conscious about it, like some of the other actors.

The serpent warriors had pretty good makeup pieces and looked suitably icky and scary and they had them emerge from the ground, which was nightmarish. The bow would fire magical arrows, which would lead to a sort of red flash effect, with people falling in slow motion. It worked well enough.

I liked it, with its faults, but a series didn't follow. It did get a theatrical run in parts of Europe and it is apparently popular in Germany. It did get a VHS release, in the US.

It would make for a great comic book series, in keeping with our other thread, about fictional characters not adapted in comics.

Here is a French trailer for it.....

What do we call the film Krull? It's got a lot of Sword & Sorcery trappings, but equally it has plenty of sci-fi elements. Yet I'm not sure it's really Planetary Romance.

Agreed, although I use the term Space Fantasy because that's the term Lucas used in 1976 and 77, and so too did the early Marvel comics. But same difference. It annoys me when I see SW described as sci-fi.

While I appreciate Conan and I’m a fan of Howard’s writing, I’m of the opinion that the biggest thing Conan had going for him is that he caught the eye of a big name SF writer in L. Sprague de Camp and Howard’s estate had a very aggressive literary agent in Glenn Lord. Barring either of those and it’s likely that Howard and Conan are as nearly forgotten as Seabury Quinn and Jules de Grandin.

People don’t seem to realize that Weird Tales had a pretty low circulation for a pulp and was viewed as being barely better than the “shudders.” Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser did just as much to codify sword & sorcery as Conan, and did it in magazines with a much larger circulation.