STARKNIGHT

STARKNIGHT

When I first glanced at the cover of this little gem I initially thought I would have to pleasure of some softcore antiquity. Silly me! It wasn’t "Stark Night" as first believed – it was actually Star Knight. (Damn those silent ‘k’s) But my disappointment was to be short lived when the leading players of this bizarre tale were none other than Harvey Keitel and Klaus Kinski.

Travel with me back in time to the dark ages. The rural community are convinced that a malicious dragon is out to "devour goats, women and children"! The frenzied paranoia reaches boiling point when Princess Alba (Maria Lamor) is evidently snatched by the offending beast after treating herself (and the viewer!) to a bit of good honest skinny dipping.

Enter the King’s tax collector Klever (Harvey Keitel) who is facing somewhat of a public revolt. Unless the "dragon" is captured, the people point blank refuse to pay any more taxes. He takes it upon himself to make the quantum leap from tax man to dragon slayer and rescue the kidnapped daughter of his boss.

But when Klever does encounter the Princess’s captor he finds it is not a dragon at all. It is in fact a UFO from outer space!! On top of that Alba herself is not only keen to make the mysterious spaceman’s acquaintance – she is positively in love with him!

Running alongside this story way down in the basement of the Kings lair is an alchemist called Bothus (Klaus Kinski). It is his labour of love to try and discover the "secret of life" in the form of a magical elixir. Throw in a Monty Python tribute with the Green Knight and Matilda the flying goat and you have a recipe for a chaotic medieval cheeseathon!

Cheezy Flicks are steadily carving a niche in the market by unashamedly indulging in unearthing some of the zaniest pictures from yesteryear. StarKnight is a prime example.

I guess the most frightening thing about the movie is the absurdity of the narrative especially in the climax. Our heroine, we are lead to believe, lives happily ever after, albeit with a mute alien as oppose to a handsome prince!

The aspect ratio is 1:33 but the blurred print makes a mockery of the covers claim that it is a ‘digitally re-mastered’ version of the movie. All I can say is if you already own Vestron’s VHS tape don’t expect an improvement in quality with this DVD. If you can tolerate this snag you could still have some fun with it however.

Spanish director Fernando Colomo seemed torn between making a family fantasy yarn (with a flash of boobies immersed in water) and an all-out comedy. The movie does tend to fall short in both respects which results in it being a plodding mess with some ludicrous special effects.

Ultimately, the highlight for me simply had to be Keitel’s dialogue. His Olde English dialect goes into overdrive with ‘for art’s, ‘thee’s and ‘thou’s being bandied around like he had ingested a Shakespearian manuscript. It all culminates in a squirming homage to "Taxi Driver" when a smirking Keitel delivers the line "Are ye talking’ to me?" Who needs a crystal clear print when you have a killer script eh? Just a shame StarKnight wasn’t made after 1992 whereby Keital could have reprised his role as the Bad Lieutenant with... "Show thee how thou suck a guy’s zerd!" Didn’t know I could speak a bit of Anglo Saxon huh?

The extras on the disc were a slight disappointment as they were only a couple of ancient cinema intermission adverts trying to tempt patrons to the foyer, which have been already been included on previous Cheezy Flicks releases.

Not funny, not Klever but it surely doesn’t get much more surreal than this. Did I mention there is a brief shot of underwater baps?

Review by Marc Lissenburg


 
Released by Cheezy Flicks
Region 1
Not Rated
Extras :
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