Spaced-out sword and sorcery

Press, 25 August 1983, Page 18

Spaced-out sword and sorcery

“Krull,” now showing at the Avon, is one of the recent sword and sorcery movies which, with its own touch of magic, somehow stands out from the rest.

At a time that belongs to neither the past nor the future, the planet of Krull — a world peopled by creatures of myth and magic — faces annihilation. Slayers, alien beings commanded by the seemingly omnipotent Beast, are everywhere, and only one man can oppose them. Prince Colwyn must journey to a faraway cavern to recover the mystical Glaive, a key to extraordinary powers required to defend his world.

On his quest, he gathers about him an unlikely army, with which he travels through Krull, witnessing sights and events beyond his wildest imagination, searching for his young bride and the Beast that holds her captive. Following almost a year of pre-production, which saw the director, Peter Yates, meticulously storyboarding; the production designer, Stephen Grimes, sketching hundreds of set ideas; the visual effects supervisor, Derek Meddings, experimenting with elaborate combinations of opticals; and scores of construction workers building fantastical landscapes, “Krull” began production in early 1982.

For five months, a cast and crew of several hundred created the planet of Krull, inhabiting 10 sound stages and exploring 23 different sets.

In England, horses from the Queen’s Household Cavalry, near Buckingham Palace, were borrowed and brought to the Pinewood Studios backlog the stunt co-ordinator, Vic Armstrong, scoured all over the United Kingdom for 16 Clydesdale horses to purchase and train; a gymnasium, equipped with an Olympic-size trampoline, was set up in a vacant storeroom to facilitate the

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40 stuntmen who had been cast.

Within weeks, the wardrobe department evolved into a showcase of more than 100 different costumes, ranging from iridescent wedding gowns to tattered suede and leather riding apparel. Daggers, swords, crossbows, crates of emeraldcoloured stones, crystal hour-glasses and countless other items, many of which defied classification, filled every shelf and corner of the prop rooms. The first sequence to go before the cameras (shooting non-sequentially) was the Widow of the Web.

Under the supervision of Stephen Grimes, a fantastic cave, laced with the threads of a gigantic spider’s web, was constructed on one stage, while on an adjacent stage, an over-sized cocoon, spanning an area of 6.7 m by 3.7 m, was designed. We follow Ynyr (Freddie Jones) as he makes his way through the cave and enters the cocoon, where the Widow (Francesca Annis) spins out her days.

As the director, Peter Yates, guided Ynyr along the glass fibre rovings of the web, at times calling in a stunt-double, Derek Meddings and the animator, Steve Archer, were giving life to the monstrous 4.3 m crystal spider that pursues Ynyr once he enters the cave. The special make-up ef-

fects designer, Nick Maley, had the task of transforming Miss Annis into the aged and weathered Widow, which demanded six hours and a half of make-up daily. By mid-afternoon, when

the main unit moved from the cave to the cocoon to film Ynyr and the Widow “reliving” their romance of 50 years long gone, the actress was unrecognisable to anyone who knew her.