Cannon Group, 1987

Directed by Gary Goddard
Written by David Odell
Produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus
Music by Bill Conti
Cinematography by Hanania Baer
Edited by Anne V. Coates
Visual Effects by Richard Edlund
Production Design by William Stout
Costume Design by Julie Weiss

Cast
Dolph Lundgren (He-Man)
Frank Langella (Skeletor)
Courteney Cox (Julie Winston)
James Tolkan (Detective Lubick)
Billy Barty (Gwildor)
Meg Foster (Evil Lynn)
Robert Duncan McNeill (Kevin Corrigan)
Jon Cypher (Duncan)
Chelsea Field (Teela)
Christina Pickles (The Sorceress of Castle Grayskull)

Reviewed by Ryan Harvey

But it seems unlikely that the movie would have had much success even if it had come out two years earlier. As a sword-and-sorcery adventure, it comes across as too flimsy and cute. Most of the fault lies with the production company. The license fell into the hands of Israeli-born producers Yoram Globus and Menahem Golan. Like He-Man, their company, Cannon Films, has a special place in 1980s culture. Although Cannon distributed and funded a number of acclaimed artistic projects, like Barfly and Neil Jordan’s The Company of Wolves, it made the lion’s share of its money through low-budget action programmers: American Ninja, Missing in Action, Cobra, two of the Death Wish sequels, Cyborg, a repugnant remake of King Solomon’s Mines, and Firewalker. Cannon also hopped on the sword-and-sorcery bandwagon in the wake of Conan the Barbarian and released some of the worst examples of the genre: the Lou Ferringo Hercules, the John Norman adaptations Gor and Outlaw of Gor, and The Barbarians. None of this boded well for The Masters of the Universe when Golan and Globus picked up the property and attached muscleman Dolph Lundgren, hot off the success of Rocky IV, to star in it and hired a first-time director to sit behind the camera.

At the time, Cannon was campaigning to make itself into an ‘A’-list production company and started to lavish bigger budgets on their films. But even with $17 million spent on Masters of the Universe—the largest budget ever for a Cannon production—the results still look cheap and uninspired. Cannon’s other big picture of 1987, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, suffered from the same flat look, and the company’s days of reaching for the top rung of Hollywood came to a quick end. By the early 1990s, Golan and Globus had separated and were busy making competing Lambada movies…and audiences were busy ignoring them both.

To fit The Masters of the Universe into a streamlined budget, the filmmakers had to alter the established back-story. The background originally developed for the toy figures appeared in a series of mini-comics from DC that were packaged with the figures. In these early comics, He-Man is a wandering barbarian on the apocalyptic planet of Eternia, fighting an endless struggle against the evil Skeletor who wishes to control the secrets of Castle Grayskull. Eternia was created as a science-fantasy world where sorcery mixed with unusual technology like lasers weapons and flying transports. The animated show made the story more kid-friendly by changing He-Man into a traditional superhero who could transform from his lazy Prince Adam alter ego into the thong-wearing hero. He-Man also got a cat sidekick and a comic foil in the form of the inhuman flying wizard Orko.

The movie’s story keeps most of the major characters—He-Man, female warrior pal Teela, Skeletor, Evil-Lyn, Man-At-Arms, The Sorceress—and substituted a tinkering dwarf named Gwildor for the more expensive Orko. But the screenplay makes a significant change in the setting, and this throws the whole film out of balance so that even as low-budget sword-and-sorcery it doesn’t work. The film starts in Eternia at Castle Grayskull (represented with an unsatisfying matte painting), but after Skeletor seizes the castle, He-Man and pals escape with the help of Gwildor’s “cosmic key,” which transports them to the exotic other world of…

Whittier, California.

So instead of a mildly enjoyable science-fantasy romp, we instead have contemporary fish-out-of-water story. This means He-Man driving around in a pink ’68 Thunderbird, Gwildor discovering the joys of a bucket of chicken and ribs, Beast-Man interrupting preparations for a senior high dance, and Skeletor’s army assaulting a guitar store. The utter silliness of the enterprise sinks the movie. Director Gary Goddard and crew put on a good show trying to make the premise look credible with unusual lighting and night shooting so that a hunky guy in a loincloth running around the suburbs doesn’t look quite so ludicrous, but it’s ultimately a lost cause.

The script from David Odell, who wrote the superb The Dark Crystal but seems to have slipped somewhat since then, patches together the best story it can from the budget-conscious set-up. He-Man, Teela, Duncan, and Gwildor search through Whittier to find the missing Cosmic Key so they can get back to Eternia. Skeletor wants He-Man dead for reasons never made clear, so he sends his own troop of incompetents to modern-day Earth. The heroes have only a limited time to complete their mission, because Skeletor will soon drain all the power from the captive Sorceress of Castle Grayskull and so gain mastery over Grayskull’s secrets and the people of Eternia. All ten of them.

Meanwhile, in a completely unrelated movie that looks like a low-budget Sixteen Candles, teenager Julie Winston decides to get out of Whittier to go to college, and this means breaking up with Kevin Corrigan, her synth-playing boyfriend. Since Julie is played by Courteney Cox, future Friends superstar, she knows she has much better things than Kevin coming along. While reminiscing with Julie at her parents’ graves, Kevin stumbles upon Gwildor’s lost Cosmic Key. He immediately mistakes it for a Japanese synthesizer. Before Kevin can run off to audition for Loverboy with his newfound gizmo, Skeletor’s goons arrive and target the two teens. And so the battle for Whittier and Julie’s college dreams and Kevin’s groovy synth-playing career begins as the two movies come together and viewers battle not to keep snickering at it all.

The limited budget and the targeting of children viewers means that The Masters of the Universe has scant action excitement. He-Man rarely uses his fabled sword (why it’s fabled the film never satisfactorily explains) and instead relies on laser-guns. He-Man only gets two chances to really swing the steel, and both end too quickly. The final duel with Skeletor had to be shot on a bare bones black backdrop because Cannon abruptly cut short the production schedule. He-Man gets to shout his trademark line in the scene—“I am the power!”—but his power could have been better used making the action finale more than a featureless set lit by a laser light from a Pink Floyd show.

Although Dolph Lundgren is technically the film’s star, he has little to do and less to say. Lundgren doesn’t provide He-Man with much screen presence aside from ripped abs and delts, and he can’t even recite basic lines like “He’s in terrible danger” and “I’ll never yield to you” convincingly. As if to accommodate Lundgren’s limitations, the rest of the cast contains impressive names and a few enjoyable performances. No one could know how big Courtney Cox would become, but she was a good choice for the teen lead with her natural charm and likeability. Popular stage actor Frank Langella, best known for his performance of Dracula on Broadway and in a 1979 film version, plays Skeletor with classic movie villain theatrics. He has to work through a bony white mask, but Langella has the voice and training to pull off this kind of tricky job. He clearly had a good time in the part and he makes some of the more generic bad-guy lines work well.

The real movie-stealer, however, is James Tolkan as the tough-guy cop (from the mean streets of Whittier!) who tries to get control of the cosmic mess that has invaded his town. Most viewers will recognize Tolkan as the principle from Back to the Future or Napoleon from Woody Allen’s Love and Death. His growling, wise guy performance counts as the film’s biggest pleasure. The scene where he pulls out a shotgun and starts mowing down Skeletor’s stormtrooper-esque goons is the only thrilling jolt in the whole movie.

The crew also boasts some impressive names, which makes much of the general cheapness of the production surprising. Special effects legend Richard Edlund must have really had a miniscule budget since the matte work looks terribly fake. A scene where He-Man hijacks the flying sleds of one of Skeletor’s soldiers and zips around the streets looks so rigid and flat that it ruins what could have been the best action sequence in the movie. Michael Westmore, a make-up artist associated with the modern Star Trek TV shows, does disappointing work on the immobile special make-up. Gwildor’s make-up design looks notably bad, with actor Billy Barty barely able to emote through the heavy layers. The score by Bill Conti (composer of the music for Rocky and For Your Eyes Only), however, makes a robust compensation for the shabby on-screen action.

The current DVD of the film does a fair job for a second-tier title from a defunct company. The movie is presented in a 1.85 anamorphic transfer, but the 2.0 surround sound is shallow and dull. The image shows scratches in places, but looks adequate overall. The extras include an insightful commentary from director Goddard that sheds light on the film’s cost-saving shortcuts. Whatever you might say about the movie, it sounds like Goddard had a good time shooting it and tried to do the best he could with the limited means at his disposal.

Masters of the Universe will still please younger children with its colorful and simple look, but 1980s nostalgia lovers and those who remember playing with the toys will probably get a bigger thrill from seeing the old animated shows on DVD. The movie has too few pleasures in it for adult viewers. If the best thing about a sword-and-sorcery movie is a tough cop saying lines like, “How come I got this feeling I’ve been looking for you all night?” then you might be better off watching cartoons.