Even as a kid, I knew Krull to be a weird and not altogether successful amalgam of Star Wars, Excalibur, The Lord of the Rings, Clash of the Titans, Dragonslayer and many, many others. Peter Yates’ film follows the standard adventure template set out by its betters: Take some reasonably attractive and devastatingly dull people, throw in an incomprehensible evil only they can stop, mix with secondary actors far more charismatic than the leads, and stir. It doesn’t really matter that it feels like the people behind the camera are making it all up as they go along, as long as something is always happening.

And what happens offers its share of pleasures, if you can fight your way past a few substandard effects and the pale-white blandness of leads Ken Marshall and Lysette Anthony. Past that, Krull offers:
• bizarre Stormtrooper/alien hybrids conquering a pseudo-feudal kingdom with laser muskets;
• invaluable character actor Freddie Jones (Dune) as the movie’s Obi-Wan;
• fierce-yet-lovable highwaymen (including Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane!);
• a wimpy-yet-lovable shape-shifting magician;
• a towering-yet-lovable cyclops;
• the glave, a legendary weapon that actually has very little purpose, but is kinda cool;
• and the crystal spider, terrifying and not-at-all-lovable. It’s one of the last true examples of Ray Harryhausen-esque stop-motion monsters and cinema’s last great giant spider until Shelob replaced it in my nightmares.

If nothing else, I would love Krull just for its part in one of my favorite geek jokes of all time, a quick visual gag on TV’s American Dad: a close-up of Wizards and Shut-Ins magazine, the cover proudly proclaiming, “500 Reasons Why Krull is Better than Sex!”

Better than sex Krull ain’t. But it’s far preferable to more modern, but far less fun adventure epics like Dungeons & Dragons and Eragon. Those movies were craven attempts at pandering to a fan base, whereas Krull, for all its numerous faults, at least tries to have some fun. —Corey Redekop

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The “jumper” of Jumper is a young man named David (Hayden Christensen, Star Wars episodes I through III) who suddenly and inexplicably acquires the gift of teleportation. (Plot points pop up and vanish almost as quickly.) The newfound power allows him to escape an abusive father and get the bright idea to “borrow” considerable cash sums from bank vaults.

While romancing Millie (Rachel Bilson, TV’s The O.C.), a childhood crush grown up to be a clueless barmaid, David is chased not by the cops, but by the Paladins, a shadowy organization for whom Roland (Samuel L. Jackson, sporting white hair that makes him look like a Fisher-Price toy) works. Yes, that’s right: David is not the only “jumper,” as he learns when he meets the cocky Brit named Griffin (Jamie Bell, Billy Elliot).

The mild joy of Steven C. Gould’s 1992 source novel stems from its childlike view of an amazing power. With the on-the-page David greeting his newfound skills with equal guilt and glee, it’s not unreasonable to view it as a thinly veiled tale of hitting puberty and discovering the magic of erections.

For the screen, however, the normally gifted director Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity) reduces that story to a mere special effect. Although mildly diverting, there’s nothing all that innocent — or human — about it. Wooden, however, is a quality Christensen has in spades. –Rod Lott

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Birds committing suicide by smashing into a Japanese airliner doesn’t bode well for its passengers. Shortly thereafter, a glowing UFO appears and forces the plane to crash-land in a remote area not only without water, but an almost equal hope of rescue.

Among the survivors is a white-gloved, would-be terrorist (Hideo Ko, Horrors of Malformed Men) who wanders into a cave where a blue blob of space Jell-O throbs and telepathically splits his forehead vertically, from hairline to nose tip – or, as a fellow passenger puts it, “like a pomegranate.” Now under the control of an unseen alien force, he becomes the host for its bidding.

The aliens’ objective: Exterminate the human race. They do it via body snatching. You know how to snatch a body, don’t you? You just press your lips together and suck a neck.

In Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, there exists a surfeit of survivors arguing over who will leave the confines of the downed jet and when. Pacing and padding issues, however, are made up for in the vibrant visuals. Impressive miniatures in the plane crash and rockslides (both of them) are one thing; the use of saturated color is another — even the plane’s pilots make note of it in the opening scene.

While the title links itself to the classic pod-people Invasion of 1956, Goke appears to hold influence itself, most notably on 1987’s The Hidden. More than just sci-fi shocks, the film is a pointed commentary on the nuclear age from Hajime Sato, the director of Terror Beneath the Sea, with the most memorable moments arriving in the final minutes. —Rod Lott

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In the late 1970s, sci-fi flicks popped up like mad, because producers wrongly assumed any space-themed film would be the next Star Wars. Italy made scads of them, including Cosmos: War of the Planets. If a plot exists to its first half, it skipped the translation process.

For 45 minutes, the members of a spaceship push buttons, take orders from a computer named Wiz, go on a spacewalk where acid seeps into the suit, and have virtual sex in the “Cosmic Love” room (which has two settings: “violent or gentle”). Because they all wear red cloth helmets that obscure a majority of the head, it’s extremely difficult to tell the characters apart. Okay, so one has a beard, one is black (and gets the whitest voice-dub of them all) and a couple of them have breasts, but other than that, baby, they’re the same.

Then they visit a mysterious planet, where a semblance of a story takes shape. Our heroes come across a Stonehenge-like structure that, when walked through, zaps them underground to a cavernous dwelling housing a race of mostly naked slaves who look like Blue Man Group with Mr. Spock ears. As these slaves explain via telepathy, they’re lorded over by a boxy slot-machine robot that suspiciously resembles that non-threatening educational toy Tomy put on the market around the time.

The last few minutes is one of those endings that makes you go, “What the—?” for several reasons, not the least of which is a crew member who inexplicably turns into a rabid, pustule-faced monster. With the flick’s low budget, expect a goofy electronic score, rudimentary optical effects and cardboard direction by Super Stooges vs. the Wonder Women‘s Al Bradley (aka Alfonso Brescia); ironically, don’t expect the one thing that costs nothing: lucidity. —Rod Lott

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Also known as The Time Shifters, Thrill Seekers is not thrilling. Despite the presence of JAG hottie Catherine Bell, Thrill Seekers is not something that will give you an erection. Despite having Starship Troopers vet Casper Van Dien in the lead, Thrill Seekers is something I watched anyway.

VD (as I like to call him) portrays (okay, maybe “portrays” is too strong a word for someone of his limited talents) a disgraced broadcast reporter forced to seek employment at a National Enquirer-type weekly. He uncovers the story of a lifetime when he spots the same man in photos of three natural disasters spaced 100 years apart, all in his first 15 minutes on the job. (Whereas in reality, a single page of Where’s Waldo? probably would have VD flummoxed for a good 45.)

Through some crack investigative techniques (i.e. pure dumb luck), VD discovers a travel agency in the future is sending tourists back in time to the sites of these disasters as part of their “Thrill Seekers” package, masterminded in part by a jowly Martin Sheen. Using a brochure swiped from one of the tourists, VD and fellow reporter Bell aim to change history by preventing the tragedies before they can happen. Lucky for them, they all appear to occur in the same city in the span of a couple days.

Thrill Seekers is almost worth sitting through just to see VD’s ham-fisted theatrics. Every time he gets a monologue, it’s like watching the high school quarterback audition for the drama department’s play just for a joke. I think the reason they gave him facial hair in this movie is to remind you you’re not watching something on Nickelodeon. Catherine Oxenberg has a small part as the Thrill Seekers spokesperson. Geez, who’d she have to blow to nail that plum role? Oh, yeah, I forgot: her husband, VD. —Rod Lott

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