Ator IV: The Hobgoblin (1990)

I find I often like really bad movies,they can have a certain charm that is appealing. I can't say that this is one of them. Poorly written, bad editing, clumsy acting, goofy costumes, incredibly disjunct yet so simplistic you don't have any trouble following the lack of a sensible plot. It's sooo bad that it sucks you in and you feel compelled to see it through to the bitter end (ack, make it stop.....). Viewers will recognize Eric Allan Kramer from 'Men in Tights' and other movies, plus his most recent stint as 'Bob Duncan' on the Disney Channel. I like him a lot but I'm not sure what compelled him to do this rather fascinating bit of rot. At any rate even though I'm sounding really negative about it, if you've not seen this flick it's probably worth watching once so that you can say with pride that you suffered through it and can comment knowingly about it.

Well, I thought I had seen bad movies before............but this one is the worst by far. No plot, overweight and drag-queen-like "hero", cheap plastic monsters and effects, new york accents on all of the characters............. can you really get any worse? Even the background music is ridiculous.......often sounding Japanese, then techno, then just non-descript and drowning out the dialogue. Actually, the music drowning out the awful dialogue is probably the best thing to say about this movie. And just when you think the movie hits bottom, it never fails to disappoint you in reaching yet further into poor cheap effects. I am truly at a loss for words.

I must plea with you, do not watch this movie! Unless you want to know what not to do in a movie, then that's okay. We all must learn from others' mistakes. Such as: hiring people that can act; do make-up; edit sound; do special effects; edit film; produce; direct; and proper caterers, 'cause these people were emaciated from lack of talent.

I'll always have a special place in my heart for this movie, bad as it is. My sister and I ran across it years ago on HBO and quoted lines from it all summer. In fact, we taped the movie and I often made other people watch it, but nobody seemed to think it was as funny as my sister and I did.I think what I find most interesting about this movie is that the filmmakers would even try to produce an action-fantasy epic with the $500 budget they apparently had. Usually, your independent filmmakers have a general sense of their limitations. They tend to shoot small films that can get by on small budgets. But the folks who made "Quest for the Mighty Sword" thought BIG. They must have had remarkable confidence in their film-making ingenuity--a real belief that through a little clever camera angling, they could turn their fifteen cents into a dollar--turn their plastic sword, overweight lead actor, and single troll costume (used for almost every monster who shows up in the film) into a passable fantasy experience. This isn't "the little movie that could." It's "the little movie that thought it could, but couldn't." Something about that, however, makes the film lovable in its own way.In any event, I sincerely envy these filmmakers. Their power to view the glass as "half full" must be nearly inhuman. They must be pretty happy people, generally speaking.