913 - QUEST OF THE DELTA KNIGHTS

Genre:  Medieval Quest (1993, Color)

Synopsis:  In another poorly made example of Medieval Times, a young boy named Tee is sold into slavery after his family is killed by the evil warlord Lord Vultare (David Warner).  A beggar named Baydool (David Warner again) buys the boy Tee and begins to train him as a member of his secret order, the Delta Knights.  Apparently, Tee was prophesized to find someplace called the “Storehouse” that holds the lost knowledge of Atlantis.  So after Baydool is arrested and later killed, Tee meets up with a man named Leonardo from the town of Vinci, who also is a Delta Knight.  They first rescue a young prostitute from Lord Vultare and then end up as prisoners of a group of tree people in a scene that actually makes the stupid Ewok village scenes in that Star Wars movie look good in comparison. (I was wishing the “I’m Coming!” guy would just go away!!!)  But it turns out that the hooker they rescued is actually the princess of the tree people, so Tee and Leonardo are set free for rescuing her (a hooker with a heart of gold... that idea sounds vaguely familiar).  Tee and Leonardo next somehow stumble upon the storehouse of knowledge.  But once the two Delta Knights get inside, they are captured by Lord Vultare, who had been secretly following them the entire time (a plot-point which makes absolutely no sense).  However, Tee and Leonardo are able to get away when Lord Vultare is too busy playing with the ancient laser beam weapon from Atlantis to notice.  And Tee blows up the entrance to the storehouse, trapping Lord Vultare inside (but he has a laser gun, so couldn’t he just blast his way out?  Sorry, I guess that’s using logic on a movie that has none).  So the whole movie was about the search for this ancient knowledge, but the boy destroys it all at the end, setting civilization back a thousand years and rendering almost everything that happened in the movie pointless.  (Way to go, kid!)

Don’s Review:  Well, obviously, this movie from the early-90s is pretty lame.  And, disappointingly, the riffing on it was rather weak with only a few highlights here and there (such as the “I’m coming” guy, who is pretty cheesy and a bit funny, but that’s not enough to save the other 99% of this movie).  The host segments were a bit amusing as Pearl temporarily switches places with Mike and even riffs the first segment of the movie (although she only does a fair job at best in the riffing, it does give a view of how crucial Mike is to the show’s success – if Mike had left as Joel did, I don’t think anyone else could’ve replace him).  So, overall, this is not that good of an episode and is a disappointing end to a rather disappointing season of MST.

Don’s Rating: 

Forrest’s Review:  This episode is not as poor as Don says – it’s worse.  I gave this episode a chance a long time ago when I saw it on Sci-Fi, and I thought it was pretty bad.  I then rewatched it this morning (December 20, 2003), and man, this episode is very poor.  The majority of the riffs are just not very funny at all.  I think the biggest problem was having Pearl in the Theater for the first theater segment. Sure it was amusing at first, but she’s just no replacement for Mike.  Without Mike, Servo and Crow are not as funny.  The three fit together, and when one’s missing, the two remaining are not as good.
      The host segments were not that great, but weren’t that bad, although I admit I didn’t see all of them today, I only watched half of this episode and decided to watch a movie called The Grey Zone on HBO instead, and I’ve never flicked off an MST3K episode on Sci-Fi!!  I have seen this entire episode on my first viewing, and I though it was poor then, and on my next viewing, I thought it was even more poor.  It’s easily the most unfunny of the sword and sorcery episode, if not the worst episode since The Hellcats back in Season Two.  An episode that gets less and less and less funny on repeat viewings can’t be good, and so in the realm of MST3K, I must give this a low rating. (But it’s still a FIVE-CROW laugh-fest when compared to Death to Smoochy.)

Forrest’s Rating: