The Evil Wizard John Saxon

Hello, Mr. Saxon…

As we all know, sometimes the unexpected stinks. Sometimes it’s pretty epic. Sometimes it’s just hilarious. 1997’s Lancelot: Guardian of Time is a mashup of of those, with some extra touches that make it all worthwhile.

It opens with Lancelot (Marc Singer) sparring with Sir Gawain (Robert Chapin) and beating him handily, although Sir Gawain tries to save face by attacking him from behind. Lancelot being Lancelot, he has Jedi-like reflexes and still trounces him.

There’s not much time to gloat, however, because Lancelot’s guardian mother, the Lady Vivian (C.C. Pulitzer) appears and tells Lancelot The Merlin wants him to go on a quest that only he can undertake. The fate of Camelot and possibly the world hangs in the balance.

Lancelot has a couple of tools at his disposal, a supersparkly ring, and the Sword of Glaumus, which is supposed to help him vanquish the bad guys. Our hero takes a few practice swings while Gawain looks on, slack-jawed. On a side note, the latter will hunt the Holy Grail one day, but I digress.

And what is Lancelot’s quest? To go into the past and protect the young Arthur (Adam Carter) from the evil wizard, Wolvencroft (John Saxon). The only problem is, Wolvencroft figures out the plan and sends Lancelot, Arthur and Lancelot’s horse into the twentieth century. Los Angeles, to be exact. Wolvencroft goes forward himself, just for good measure. Arthur wakes up a prisoner at the Museum of Natural History and Lancelot finds himself on a Venice beach, where he meets artist Michael Shelley (Jerry Levine).

Once Lancelot adjusts to Michael’s twentieth century jargon (it helps that Michael’s an Arthur fan), and realizes with horror that he’s gone forward in time, the two head off to Michael’s house, where he lives with his sister, Katherine (Claudia Christian). The first thing to do, of course, is to get on the Internet and look up Wolvencraft. Naturally, Lancelot stares at the computer with his jaw on the floor.

After a nostalgic (well, nostalgic for us in the present day) parade of late 90s websites and a bit of TV, Katherine comes home and wants to know why there’s a horse in the backyard. She’s not too trustful of men because they’re all the same kind of undependable, so naturally she’s suspicious of Lancelot at first.

It doesn’t take long for Lancelot to get Katherine and Michael on board with the quest, not to mention Katherine has a nice Mustang convertible. They have to find Arthur and vanquish Wolvencraft, who’s set himself up as a crime lord with his goons and an assortment of gargoyles he’s brought to life for the occasion.

Meanwhile, Arthur has figured out a way to slip out of Wolvencraft’s clutches and he makes his way to a park, where he falls in with a group of guys who get mad at first because Arthur’s eating their hot dogs. He soon wins them over, though, but Wolvencraft’s gargoyles are on his tail. Arthur’s new friends, unfortunately, get sent into the past and we don’t know what happens to them, but it doesn’t matter because there’s a big showdown happening. One of three, to be exact. Lancelot’s got a busy day ahead.

Now, while John Saxon might be our man of the weekend, and he’s wonderful under the circumstances in Lancelot, I have to briefly comment on his costar, Marc Singer and his abundance of wigs. Seriously, they change in almost every scene. It’s both hilarious and awe-inspiring.

Here’s a sample:

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Back to the movie, though, it’s hard to know where to start. It’s so obvious that Lancelot is a low-budget TV movie. Well, that and it’s rated TV-PG. And Wolvencraft in his present-day garb looks like any crime lord from any eighties or nineties TV show. Pick a show and drop Wolvencraft into any scene. He’ll blend in easily.

Speaking of which, I kinda feel like the medieval characters were brought forward in time as soon as possible so they could wear regular clothes and save money on the fancy though highly generic medieval costumes that were obviously rented for the occasion. The gargoyles are equally generic as well, as the filmmakers decided to film some guys in palace guard costumes with grey fabric on their faces. If I hadn’t read the IMDb cast list, I would have never known those were supposed to be gargoyles.

The CGI and filming angles are pretty terrible, too. In some of the swordfight scenes the camera shoots over things such as exhibits in the museums or around corners or in between stacks of boxes. A Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton comes to life for some reason and looks like something out of 1993. Too slick and weirdly fluid in their movement.

Story-wise, this movie could have been so much more as well. So Lancelot can travel through time? Have him bounce around a little, if only briefly. It would have been fun to see Lancelot in Time’s Square on V-J Day, or maybe at Candlestick Park on the day the Beatles played their final tour date. Or Michael could have taken Lancelot to the mall or That fish-out-of-water stuff could have been played up so much more.

And what happened to the young toughs who got transported back to Arthur’s time? We can only assume they became vapor.

It would help if anyone looked as if they were having fun, but everyone looks bored, annoyed, or slightly incredulous, even John Saxon, who spends a lot of time sneering and leering at everyone while thunderously intoning various unintelligible words. I hope they were having fun, anyway. I sure did, even if the movie was humorous stinkage. Who hasn’t fantasized about favorite characters suddenly appearing in front of them and going on adventures? It’s the dream.

For more of the versatile John Saxon, please see Gill at Realweegiemidget Reviews and Barry at Cinematic Catharsis. Thanks for hosting this, all! I didn’t know much about John Saxon going in, so it was nice to see some new stuff. Thanks for reading, all, and I hope to see you on Wednesday for another post…

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Launcelot: Guardian of Time is free to stream for Prime customers.

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