THE LOST EMPIRE (1984)
Tagline: Beyond Time, Beyond Space, Beyond Imagination.
(Action, Adventure, Creepy Wizard) [R]
I hate robot spiders…
In this one police officer Angel Wolfe’s brother ends up
dying at the hands of evil cult ninjas trying to rob a jewelry store. She
decides she is going to need some help infiltrating the cult, so she conjures
up a Native American friend “Whitestar” and someone she arrested a while back
named Heather McClure. The only way into the fortified island run by the cult
is to join a gladiator-like tournament and win the favor of a wizard named “Dr.
Sin Do”. Will Angel get her revenge, or fall prey to THE LOST EMPIRE?
First off, I was pretty coherent for an 11-year-old in 1984
and I don’t remember this movie at all. In fact, the only reason I even thought
about checking it out was because there is a poster for it in the background of
a few scenes in CHOPPING MALL which came out 2 years later. Needless to say, this is a really bad movie with some pretty crazy concepts.
At the time adding Angus Scrimm to your movie roster was almost always going to
be a plus. I never got into the PHANTASM series, but he plays “The Tall Man” in
all 5 movies. So having him play Dr. Sin Do in this movie was a nice touch
because the dude was iconically creepy. We also get a dose of Paul Coufos in
this as Rick Stanton. Paul was also in CHOPPING MALL which adds another
connection between that movie and this one. The movie mostly centers around Melanie
Vincz who plays Angel Wolfe and her curvy revenge plans so she gets most of the
dialog in this. She is probably best known for this movie, but was also in
several TV shows ranging from “Night Court” to “Hart To Hart”. They also gave
quite a few lines to Angela Aames who plays a rambunctious Heather McClure.
Probably not surprisingly Angela also ended up with a role in CHOPPING MALL.
She was also in BACHELOR PARTY and was a regular on “Night Court”. A lot of
reviews also mention Raven De La Croix (who plays Whitestar), but she has
hardly any lines in this. She was also in the movie MUNCHIE, but even for me,
that is going to take being in a very goofy mood to want to ever see.
What works in this movie is some of the goofy one-liners. I
love that the 80s would just have someone standing there saying the goofiest
thing ever and it sounded awesome. This is also another one of those seemingly
forgotten movies where a female had the lead and no one cared. This is very
basic, the girl comes in, kicks butt, and moves on. There aren’t any long
diatribes about how everything is unfair and how men suck. Just straight up,
a-s kicking. I also really liked the crazy prosthetics for Dr. Sin Do and some
of the set designs were pretty awesome. They even threw a gorilla in this movie
for no apparent reason at all, just because one of the make-up artists had the
suit in his car.
Where this movie failed for me is in the gratuitous boobs department. This
movie could have been just as goofy and fun without the overemphasis on getting horny teens into the theater seats. Even looking back at this now, this
could have easily been a fully clothed film and I don’t think anyone would have
complained. Outside of that the story and acting were pretty bad, but for a
movie like this none of that mattered. It was the 80s and going for the
outrageous was a key factor in the fun.
This thing does start out slow with the second half taking on a more “fantasy”
type atmosphere. Overall I think I might end up watching this again someday,
but it’s not as “go-to” as most other 80’s “off-brand” flicks. For me this is a
3 out of 7, a few changes could have bumped this up to a 4.
GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF HARWOOD AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW
PURPOSES ONLY.
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