'I see strangers in our land.'
Welcome Back to My Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘What am I doing here?’
Only once before have we ventured into the super-low budget world of British filmmaker Michael J. Murphy,
'Exactly, blood and tits, a few scares, a few thrills, nothing too demanding.'
but we’re back there courtesy of one of our Patreon supporters to review Avalon.
‘With’ ‘Pleasure’
We open with the beauty pageant of apocalypse. Miss Pestilence.
‘A plague sweeps throughout the land.’
Miss Starvation.
‘Famine strikes as you commanded.’
Miss War.
‘Kingdom fights kingdom’
and Miss Buckinghamshire.
‘Barbarians invade and plunder.’
These doom-saying women report back to evil sorceress Morgana.
‘Soon Avalon will rule the world’
Back in the real world it’s just another day in the west country,
‘We must taste the blood of that virgin child’
I’m from Wiltshire, this is all very normal.
#cult like chanting, similar to what the Ewoks worshiping C3PO#
Fortunately a hero is passing with his horse,
this is Owen, who looks like Michael Palin grew a mullet and joined a gym.
He saves the girl
and a captured thief,
‘I hate druids’
and that’s all the character building you’ll be getting.
Together they escape.
‘We should try and find some horses.’
I had one a minute ago but we only hired it for the day.
Their flight takes them in the direction they were going anyway,
‘There is nothing but sea’
towards the fabled island of Avalon.
‘Avalon.’
As every D&D player knows a quest needs more than a warrior, a maiden and a thief.
‘I am Merlin the magician’
Owen is going to Avalon to raise King Arthur,
Clotilde to find her lost love, Edwin,
and thief, Kieran, is along for the ride.
So, can Merlin help?
‘We shall swim to the island’
Not noticeably, which is odd cos he’s got magic enough to restore his own youth for the swim,
'Now my little lord Ceaser, you might like to tell me who you really are.'
but on arrival.
‘First I must leave you for a little while.’
Leaving Owen in charge.
‘We shall walk…
...
...that way’
While Owen and Clotilde are brewing some forbidden sexual tension,
'Help help!'
Kieran is saved by the Elephant Man.
‘If I help you, you must help me’
with a strange request,
‘I am cursed by Morgana, kill my reflection’
Kieran is unable to help cos you can’t kill a reflection
and he relates his encounter to his friends,
‘It was all slimy like a sewer.’
Which is a thing we definitely have back now.
But Morgana has detected their approach and…
One of the problems with this film is that the genre demands fights
and fight scenes on zero budget with video editing are excruciating.
Clotilde is captured,
and Owen and Kieran plan to rescue her by signing up for a tournament that has kind of a game show feel.
‘On the table of destiny’
‘Who will be chosen?’
'Who will fight you.'
'Who will be chosen next'
That night Morgana tries to seduce Owen by teaching him the difference between boys and girls.
‘Look, I do not have a weapon like yours’
Meanwhile, Merlin visits the Lady of the Lake.
'I must leave now my Lady, my companions may be in mortal danger.'
You dirty old man.
But this is apparently the other way you go about getting the sword Excalibur,
which Merlin now uses in the tournament.
'Watch and learn boy.'
‘I appear to have won.’
You did have a tiny advantage.
Owen is grateful to see him,
‘If only Merlin were here. We can’t fight magic.’
Begs the question what are you doing here and why didn’t Merlin do this on his own but what the hell.
The men go to their rooms,
because Morgana is nice enough to accommodate the people trying to thwart her evil plans, and…
for about five minutes the film goes for the Slave Girls Beyond Infinity Award for sex scenes that have no baring on the plot.
as Morgana beds Owen,
Kieran
'You're the only man I ever loved.'
and even Merlin.
But…
It was a trick! Morgana has…
actually I’m not sure what her plan was; you thought you slept with me but you didn’t
– now you’ll all go, right?
‘Very clever’
Merlin takes the news badly.
'Witch!'
May just have lost the moral high ground.
‘Oh the weakness of men’
Yeah, ‘weakness’.
Morgana transforms her women into warriors.
But Owen has a plan.
‘Then run’
Fortunately their cowardly flight takes them to the creature Kieran met earlier.
‘I am Edwin’
Clotilde’s lost love.
He knows where she’s being held and,
having rescued her they return to the question of how to kill Edwin’s reflection,
‘A man is a reflection of himself’
Probably. And if not then… dinner?
‘The riddle is solved by Owen’s courage.’
Courage? Or stabbing the man whose girlfriend you fancy?
Now they face the final challenge; a dragon.
#Roar#
I think.
‘If you do not believe in it then there is no danger’
How satisfying. But to resurrect Arthur, Owen must make the ultimate sacrifice.
Which I thought was a pretty unexpected ending.
Until they all swim back to the mainland where...
‘The blast blew me clear’
I don’t have any useful conclusion here, it’s so cheap and so amateur and so stupid
– what do you say?
‘Oh, shut up!’
One more thing, Abigail Blackmore who played Clotilde recently directed portmanteau horror, Tales from the Lodge,
which is on Amazon so we’re reviewing it for Dark Corners Streaming.
‘Does this not excite you?’
You never know where the industry will take you.
'Kill me now and be done with it.
'Thanks for watching. See all our Sword and Sorcery reviews here.
What other bad movie bit players wound up elsewhere in the industry? Let us know in comments below.
'Now my friends, this is the end of our adventure.'