Across
feudal cultures, the peasantry had one safeguard hard-wired into the collective
unconscious: the notion that famine and disasters were a sign the monarch had
lost their divine sanction to rule. You could be a horrible dictator, but you
had to keep the serfs fed. It is therefore hard to believe a usurping prince
would ever risk unleashing both a dragon rampage and a zombie apocalypse,
simultaneously. Yet, that is exactly what the rightful king’s good-for-nothing
son does in Simon Wells’ Knights of the Damned (trailer
here), which releases today on DVD.
They
were once part of a large war party, but now only four of the king’s knights
still pursue the dragon as it wreaks destruction across the realm. Make that
three knights. Killing dragons is onerous work, but it is generally expected of
knights. Facing zombie hordes is something else entirely. They are going to
need some stronger mead.
At
first, they are skeptical of reports of the so-called “furies.” They really just
what recharge at an inn before chasing after that blasted dragon again. It is there
they meet a band of warrior women from the Katori Kingdom on a mission of
vengeance, which they respect. The knights are not about to mess with them,
unless they’re also interested in messing around a little. As a result, they
will have a few battle-tested allies to fight the dragon, the zombies, and the
usurper (but alas, Kunjue Li’s Kateya dies way too soon).
Knights might sound like
sheer lunacy, but it is probably the cheapest looking, most meatheaded genre
film that still manages to be fractionally watchable since Indo-porn star Priya
Rai played a mummy in Isis Rising. Prince
Favian’s evil scheming does not make an iota of sense, even if he is a member
of a satanic death cult, as the epilogue suggests. Nor does it remotely
believable the good Princess Elizabeth would openly take a gritty knight like
Sir George as her lover, especially when her father had anointed her his rightful
successor. Plus, it boggles the mind the knights who survive go through the
entire film without figuring out they should maybe aim for the furies’ heads.
Nevertheless,
you have to give Ben Loyd-Holmes (the bald one) and Ross O’Hennessy (the
bearded one) credit, because they both totally look like fierce medieval warriors.
They also have some screen presence as well as hack-and-slash cred. You could
cast either of them in an Expendables movie
with confidence.
The
idea of the Katori warriors and the more-or-less equal time they get kicking
fury-butt is also pretty cool. That is definitely our kind of progressive
filmmaking. Unfortunately, the movie itself looks like it was produced with
sets and props discarded by A Knight’s Tale
and discovered in a local landfill. Yet, in all honesty, we would be
tempted to cover the sequel as well, which is explicitly promised in that same
nutty epilogue. Only recommended for micro-budget B-movie connoisseurs, Knights of the Damned releases today on
DVD and BluRay.
