Guilty Pleasures
Conan The Destroyer
Yeah, I would say that is a guilty pleasure of mine, although the last time i watched it, I put the dvd off during it, I could watch it once about every ten years and really enjoy it though.
I notice you do not have 'Hawk the Slayer' in your guilty pleasure list, if you have not seen that British S&S movie, I would get ahold of it pronto, it is not only hilarious in parts, but can actually be enjoyed as a daft adventure movie, well, if you are really into that kind of thing and are not bothered about movies that look like they have been made for about 50quid.
I saw HtS when I was a little kid, one night on tv, and it started a kind of obsession with elfs for me, like, I would always choose to be the elf when playing Gauntlet in the arcades, i would always choose to be young Link when playing Super Smash Bros(young Link as his arrows were flaming arrows!), and I used to wear metal clamps on my ears at night to try and stretch my ears up, but stopped when folk started giving me funny hand signals in the street.`\\//
and it was all because of the elf in HtS, whatjamacallhim from Lotr was a decent elf, but sometimes , y'know, ypu couldn't tell much difference between him and a kid who had worn metal clamps on his ears for a week, but the elf in HtS was a real weirdo, a very cool weirdo, but you could tell he was not just some guy with mad upsidedown ears, he had an otherworldly air to him. You need to see the movie just for this one guy.
I watched the movie again last year, for the first time since childhood, with some trepidation, mostly cause i was scared the elf would not be cool at all to my adult eyes, but he was, just as great.
They use a really cheap, cheerful, cheesey method to show his hyper speed skills at shooting lots of arrows in succession, ie they use blatant jump cuts, but it does not matter, the guy has such a cool elfy attitude, total man with no name of the elves, no talking a lot of crap about 'the wind is blowing the sorrow from the bridge of the heathery hills east of wyndynduosdorium, so we must hurry', a man of few words, who hangs back, checks out the situation and gets the job done, no ego, and not much of a haircut to be taking care of like whatdamacallhim, Lego-lass, with this guy- bowl cut, simple, no mess no fuss, no one way ticket to the baldpatchclubformen when you get your ponytails tangled up in your arrows.
Also, it's the guy who plays Jack's dad in 'Lost' who plays the 'Hawk' of the title, and Jack Palance who plays the villan, pretty sure he wears an eyepatch, crazy old warlock guy anyway. I have to watch that movie again.
There is one sequence in it that is so badly made that it's mind boggling, when they walk through some mad coloured landscape, maybe green, with some monster sounds, and some wee monster faces, i still have no idea what the hell that scene was supposed to be all about, and am maybe even over elaborating on the sfx.
has to be seen to be believed.
as for my favs...
1. Lord of the Rings, maybe with the chapters in this order of pref...a. TTT b. ROTK c. FOTR
They all have their pros and cons, but it is the full on companionship between Gollum, Frodo and Sam, that sells the tt to me as the best movie.
2. Conan the Barbarian - Arnie has charisma , and looks great onscreen as a big barbarian, if only the guy could act and they had written him like the conan I've read in the REH comic adaptations, then this movie would be up there with TDK, X-Men, and the Spidey trilogy as my most watched adaptations of characters I love in the comics. As it is, I consider it to be like the Burton Batmans and V for Vendetta, as something I will watch and get a lot of enjoyment out of , but am disapointed at the direction they have taken the main character in some regards, and watch this movie in the meantime, until a better one is made. Hopefully this new Conan film will go some way in rectifying that situation. They are saying the sequel will be a direct adaptation of a REH story.
But, as a movie, it is a fantastic watch, grand sets, music, and you genuinely feel like you have been transported back to some lost age , whereas with Hawk the Slayer, you would not be surprised if you saw an old red phone box in the back ground of a shot, and would just shrug it off, like you have to do with so much of that crazy movie.
Edit: 3. Excalibur - I forgot about this one, I have this on dvd but still always forget it for some reason. When i was a kid I thought this looked like an over elaborate bore-fest, and did not watch much of it when it was on tv one night, but i watched the dvd 2 yrs ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, yeah, it is a little pretentious, but it carries it well and takes it to the hilt, which it has to do for that to work in it's favour. It does have that essential quality of a S&S move, the feeling of taking you back in time to a lost age. Merlin's accent is a big plus too, very Coronation St(uk soap opera). Boorman almost directed an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings back in the 60s or 70s, from this evidence , he might have done not a bad job of it, well, as a S&S movie, not as an adaptation, as, even apart from modern sfx, i think it took very particular circumstances, with the studio and everyone involved creatively, to successfully pull off what Jackson and co did, which was truly landmark in terms of adaptations, and the S&S movie.
4. Hawk the Slayer - I don't think i have much to say on this one, a low budget UK movie from the 80s with an elf in it.
I have not got around to seeing Willow yet, I should get the dvd, as I am a big SW fan, it was just one of those movies I found the very existence of depressing when i was a kid, as i wanted Lucas to make more Star wars instead of something that seemed like it was Star Wars , just under a different name and locale.
edit: if Higlander counts, I would put that third.
Also, if '300' had counted(I guess it doesn't) , I would put that second on my list. I think '300' is maybe borderline S&S.
