Knights of the Damned (2017)

I suppose many of us grew up watching "Hercules" or "Xena" or "Merlin" on the television, so it's not really a surprise that Simon Wells managed to scrape together enough cash to get a few of his pals to write and star in this entirely derivative television movie along those lines. After many years of peace, there's now an irate dragon on the loose in the kingdom and it's gobbling up the King's finest knights. Why, though? Well that's what the chivalrous "Richard" (Ross O'Hennessy), "George" (co-writer Ben Loyd-Holmes) and "Thomas" (Silvio Simac) have to find out. As their search leads them to the castle of "Prince Favian" (Jon-Paul Gates) and his sister "Elizabeth" (Rebecca Dyson-Smith) we realise that there's a cunning plot going on to destabilise the kingdom. Can they thwart it? What do you think? I actually quite liked the imagination behind the story, and some of the visual effects are not terrible for a project that can't have had much in the way of budget. The acting, though, well that's the stuff of 1970s television and it's supported by some writing that sucks any semblance of passion from the proceedings comprehensively. The combat scenes are ridiculously over-choreographed and the technique of slowing down the film speed (remember the "Six Million Dollar Man"?) to maximise the impact of the sword fights just doesn't really work. Add to the mix some zombies and the aforementioned dragon and we could have had the makings of a decent fantasy adventure. As it is, we do have the makings but the chef couldn't boil an egg - dragon's or otherwise. It's not the worst film you'll ever see, and if you like the genre then it's just about bearable. Recommend it? Well, no.