I was a college student when Masters of the Universe came and went circa 1987. Obviously I didn’t bother to see it. There were other more interesting things to do, namely acquiring a taste for beer (aka, drinking it without make an after taste face) and ladies. Well, maybe video games, tunes and trying to perfect my radio show. The other thing I always wondered was why did this turkey happen? By 1987, He-Man toys had run their course. I think kids in the key demographic were more interested in Robotech toys which was what I saw continuously during Christmas ’86.
We can thank the fine programming people at Alamo Drafthouse for the special screening. Until then, I had never seen it and Somara hadn’t since that Summer. It may have been a stinker but it was the early work of two future TV staples of the Nineties: Courtney Cox (Friends’ Monica) and Robert Duncan McNeill (Star Trek Voyager’s Lt. Paris). Awesome niche players were present too: Meg Foster (my favorite Hester Prynne), Billy Barty (probably the most famous midget actor in history) and James Tolkan (a legendary heavy, best known for an instructor in Top Gun). Frank Langella as Skeletor is in a class all by himself. Oh, can’t forget this being Dolph Lundgren’s first big starring and good-guy role before he moved over to B-movie staples like I Come in Peace and Universal Soldier.
What I didn’t know and learned from our hosts was that Masters was the finale in a trilogy of turkeys responsible for bankrupting the primary production company The Cannon Group; first was Lifeforce (couldn’t finish, it was so lame), Superman IV and this.
Anyway, what’s the story or plot? Thankfully it was a departure from the preachy weekday afternoon cartoons. The movie begins with Skeletor and his forces winning the war for the planet Eternia. He can’t take complete control until He-Man (yeah, they kept this awful name) is captured. He-Man, Duncan and Teela are still fighting in the hills where they rescue a little creature (Billy Barty wearing the cheapest appliance I’ve seen in years) who has a teleporting device. The quartet try to use it to take back Eternia by popping into Castle Greyskull but come to modern-day Earth. You can figure out how the rest plays out in this low-rent Flash Gordon knockoff.
I did love the Skeletor makeup on Langella. He had the skull face without it being cheesy; not a helmet or lumpy appliances. Today they’d probably use CG to tweak it, make it scarier looking.
Oh, I also enjoyed the movie sans irony. Not like how I liked the recent Avengers, more along the lines of remembering the hairstyles, the reminiscing of the details, seeing favorite B-movie legends at their peak and the background music…”Living in a Box” by Living in a Box when the “teenagers” are talking in the van!
Alamo Extras: Trailer for Hercules 2 starring Lou Ferigno, She-Ra, He-Man and Thundercat‘s opening sequences, someone’s gag of using He-Man cartoons to the dance mix of 4-Non Blonde’s “What’s Up,” scenes from Dolph Lundgren’s exercise video, key parts of the Rocky v. Drago fight in Rocky IV, He-Man commercial for the Moss Man figure, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when Charlie and Mac discuss how they could revive Dolph Lundgren’s career as an action star, an explanation about how Courtney Cox got to be the girl Springsteen invites to dance in his “Dancing in the Dark” video, Teela giving the moral lesson about singing at the end of an episode of He-Man, He-Man ad for the dinosaurs the toy line had at the end and a plug for the He-Man/She-Ra movie.