r-c-s Review of Warlords of the Deep

Warlords of the Deep (1978)

mediocre mad max meets sinbad meets cable TV tripe

[2/10 · 22 May 2007]

one word to describe this movie: mediocre. sort of mad max (see the prisoners and the atlantean first cities ) meets sinbad (SFX would still be poor if dated 20 years earlier ) meets cable TV tripe, like those "lost/treasure island" short telepictures from the 1960-70s for a young audience. Acting is mediocre-to-poor. When gummy faced Mcclure plays the hot dud to impress the mad max belle, well...how corny can anything get? A superior race of martians defends itself using XIX century rifles and cannons? Do me a favor...lock the screenplay writer in a padded cell. They also try to add the victorian element, so well done and fitting in the earlier Dracula movies, yet with poor results here. All in all, rather than a real movie (yes, low budget and all ), it looked like an extended episode from some cable TV "adventure" series. They even try to add plot twists, but it gets even more laughable. Pathetic main actors; even ridiculous supporting cast. Perhaps Lea Brodie is the less pathetic one. Yes, you get monsters, but the Japanese ones decades older were much better. This tripe makes Harryhausen's SFX - a craftsman in his own right albeit very dated - look better than Matrix, Terminator II and Jurassic Park stitched together. Gummy faced Mcclure makes Arnold look like Laurence Olivier, and Gilmore makes Keanu Reeves better than Al Pacino, go figure.