The past couple of weeks I’ve been in the mood for cheese, and so I’ve been watching (or rewatching) bad 80s movies to see if they’re still bad. Spoiler alert: They are.
Heartbeeps (1981)
I actually saw this movie in the theater. I loved it at the time, but I was 8, and I loved anything with a robot in it. I do remember my parents said the movie was stupid. This week’s viewing was my first time seeing it since 1981, and… wow, what a pointless movie. Seriously, I probably could have written a better script myself, when I was 8. The whole thing feels like an excuse to show off the makeup effects, which admittedly weren’t bad for the time.
A trio of defective robots escapes from a warehouse. Well, I say “escape”, but they don’t really know they’re on the run. One of them mistakenly thinks it’s programmed to gather data about nature, and the other two have nothing better to do. Along the way they build a baby robot that’s supposed to be cute, except this was four years after Star Wars and we’d already seen cuter robots. In order for there to be some conflict, a crimefighting murderbot also malfunctions and escapes to hunt them down. Convenient!
Anyway, the script feels more like an outline than a finished story. It feels like it has placeholder lines and jokes, just waiting for the actual writers to come in and finish the job. If this movie were software, I’d think that this was the alpha build, and it was released early to hit the shelves before Christmas. Nothing specific is missing from the story - it has a definite beginning, middle, and end, it’s just that every single aspect feels unfinished.
It’s also a waste of a great cast. Don’t waste your time on this one, it’s not even worth watching to make fun of. Rewatch Short Circuit (1986) instead. Parts of it haven’t aged well (like Fisher Stevens in brownface), but overall it has a lot more charm.
Ice Pirates (1984)
This is one of those I only half remembered from when I was a kid. Did I even actually even see it, or am I just remembering the trailers? But some of the bits I remembered were too long for a trailer. All I can say is that when I rewatched it, I only got déjà vu in the first half. I’m thinking maybe I fell asleep halfway through, or my parents made me leave the theater.
Anyway, Ice Pirates makes Flash Gordon look like 2001: A Space Odyssey. The script is full of vaguely dirty jokes that don’t really land, and none of the characters really made much of an impact. Some jokes are worth a chuckle, but the funniest bits feel like they were stolen from other movies.
It’s one of those movies that feels like things just sort of happen because they happen. The heroes (if you want to call them that) just sort of “right place at the right time” their way through the plot, then there’s a gimmicky climax, and a sort of abrupt ending. The tone and special effects remind me of Barbarella (1968), which came out 16 years earlier and somehow aged better.
Anyway, even if you have fond memories of seeing this as a child, it’s probably not as good as you remember.
Krull (1983)
I did not see Krull as a kid. I wanted to, but I missed it. I played the arcade game, and I really liked that cool “glaive” weapon. Of the three movies in this blog, Krull is undoubtedly the best, but that’s not saying a whole lot, is it? It’s hard to explain why, but to me, Krull feels like it would have actually been better with a smaller budget. Not that the special effects are good, they’re pretty bad. It came out the same year as Return of the Jedi, but somehow Krull looks ten years older.
Wild tangent – comparing all these movies to the Star Wars films that came out around the same time, just makes me realize how much love certain filmmakers put into their movies. Krull had a budget of $27-30 million, and Return of the Jedi had a budget of $32-47 million. Not a huge difference in budget, but the special effects are as different as night and day. I feel the same way about Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 – they’re all films that look ten years newer than they were, when you compare them to other movies that came out the same year. Sure, they had bigger budgets, but a lot of it’s about the amount of elbow grease they put into polishing it.
Anyway, Krull feels like if Hawk the Slayer had a bigger budget. But since that bigger budget was spent on crappy visuals instead of any real polish, the movie suffers greatly.
It’s a bad movie, but this is not a bad review. The movie is actually kind of fun, despite its shortcomings. I like the concept, pitting swords-and-sorcery heroes against a sci-fi villain. It’s almost like a proto-version of Cowboys & Aliens. It might even be a good candidate for a remake. But it’s definitely something you watch to laugh at. If I were in that kind of mood, I’d probably rewatch The Beastmaster instead.
