Don't answer that! Obviously what sunk this movie was the tiny budget and the utter amateurishness of the writer/director. The plot reads like a ninth grade school boy's attempts to reproduce Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft - some weird melange about a lost city and a sacrificial cult and an exiled loner and a chase into the lost wastelands of Noggoth...er, or at least rural Canada.
Anyway, there are actually elements of a decent movie in here...they just get torpedoed by bad choices in almost every scene. The movie does give a sense of the isolation and loneliness of the land. "Zap" is something of a lunk, but he is an agreeable lunk, and makes a believable 'Everyman' character, even if he is something less than magnetic or inspiring. The guy playing the villain seems to have modeled himself after the Tall Man from "Phantasm" (not a bad choice, really), but instead of having the Tall Man's menacing rasp, he seems to be choking on a throatful of phlegm.
In fact, given a real budget and a real director and some decent film stock, the 3 main actors might have been able to pull off something that didn't resemble Amateur Night at the local community theater...but these poor fellows are completely over their heads. I'll say this for them, they gave it a good try.
Oh, and the soundtrack: it's one guy with a synthesizer. And it manages to be incredibly ambitious AND irritating. The composer shifts and changes moods dozens of times, sometimes within the same scene, varying wildly from "Beethoven's Fifth with aphasia" to "Video Poker Music" (from Mike Nelson's MST3K coverage) in an attempt to drum up some excitement. But it actually turns out to be one of the film's biggest problems. It's like having a kazoo band provide background music for your dinner party - no matter how many leitmotifs and riffs and themes they play, it's still kazoo music, and you wish they'd shut up and let some actual instruments play...or even allow some restful silence.
And just when I thought I was going to be able to at least accept this movie on its own terms without giggling hysterically at every new scene, along comes a character channeling Yosemite Sam. Yosemite Sam is a great Warner Brothers cartoon character, but for God's sake, what is he doing in this movie???
FWIW, as silly and amateurish as this movie is, no way does it deserve to be this deep into the Bottom 100. It's a very earnest little number that tries to be "about" something; and while the actors are unskilled and badly directed, they don't ham it up or chew the scenery, and they come across as sympathetic and likable.(That's more than you can say about 'Hobgoblins' or 'Space Mutiny').
Anyway, there are actually elements of a decent movie in here...they just get torpedoed by bad choices in almost every scene. The movie does give a sense of the isolation and loneliness of the land. "Zap" is something of a lunk, but he is an agreeable lunk, and makes a believable 'Everyman' character, even if he is something less than magnetic or inspiring. The guy playing the villain seems to have modeled himself after the Tall Man from "Phantasm" (not a bad choice, really), but instead of having the Tall Man's menacing rasp, he seems to be choking on a throatful of phlegm.
In fact, given a real budget and a real director and some decent film stock, the 3 main actors might have been able to pull off something that didn't resemble Amateur Night at the local community theater...but these poor fellows are completely over their heads. I'll say this for them, they gave it a good try.
Oh, and the soundtrack: it's one guy with a synthesizer. And it manages to be incredibly ambitious AND irritating. The composer shifts and changes moods dozens of times, sometimes within the same scene, varying wildly from "Beethoven's Fifth with aphasia" to "Video Poker Music" (from Mike Nelson's MST3K coverage) in an attempt to drum up some excitement. But it actually turns out to be one of the film's biggest problems. It's like having a kazoo band provide background music for your dinner party - no matter how many leitmotifs and riffs and themes they play, it's still kazoo music, and you wish they'd shut up and let some actual instruments play...or even allow some restful silence.
And just when I thought I was going to be able to at least accept this movie on its own terms without giggling hysterically at every new scene, along comes a character channeling Yosemite Sam. Yosemite Sam is a great Warner Brothers cartoon character, but for God's sake, what is he doing in this movie???
FWIW, as silly and amateurish as this movie is, no way does it deserve to be this deep into the Bottom 100. It's a very earnest little number that tries to be "about" something; and while the actors are unskilled and badly directed, they don't ham it up or chew the scenery, and they come across as sympathetic and likable.(That's more than you can say about 'Hobgoblins' or 'Space Mutiny').