In 1981, George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead) released a film called Knightriders. I was fortunate enough to see it when it premiered in L.A. It’s a really beautiful film, and not what I expected from the man who made Dawn of the Dead. There was an article in Newsweek that compared it to John Boorman’s Excalibur, and the writer of the article decided that Knightriders was a better film.
But few people have heard of it. I recently bought the DVD and George Romero says on the commentary that “nine people went to see it”. Too bad. It deserves to be seen. In 1980, the general attitude was that a film should not be more than two hours long. The original cut was four hours. It was released at two and a half hours.
This was Ed Harris’ first major role. Babylon 5’s Patricia Tallman is a featured player. Pulitzer Prize winner Warner Shook and Shakespearean-jive poet Brother Blue are major players.
In My Humble Opinion, more people should see this movie.
I hadn’t thought about this for a long time until I read your post but I actually saw this film years and years ago on late night tv. Although it was probably edited quite a bit I thought it was a great film. Motorcyclists as Arthurian characters was a far-out idea but it worked.
Romero originally planned to “play it straight” and use horses for jousting. He joked that he would use motorcycles and play rock music, and the idea grew on him.
I listened to more of the commentary and Newsweek hated the movie. It was Time that compared it to Excalibur according to Romero’s wife (who played Tom Savini’s mechanic). She also said that the crowd at the L.A. Film Expo (as I said, I was there) was expecting a gore film like Dawn. To be honest, I was. Getting ready to see the movie I was thinking, “Motorcycles, medieval wepons, George Romero… The carnage will be glorious!” I was taken aback that there is no gore at all in it, but I loved the film. Aside from a few things like hair styles, the costumes they had Tom Savini in when he was posing for the commercial off-shoot from the troupe, and the no-longer-accurate (IMO) attitudes of some of the characters, the film holds up well.
About the commentary on the DVD. There seems to be two kinds of commentary on DVDs: One in which a single person (usually the director) gives a monologue about the film, usually describing what’s going on in each scene; and an “ensemble” approach that is more like a bunch of friends sitting around chatting and frequently getting off-topic. The commentary on the Knightriders DVD is of the latter variety. Not as good as a monologue, but nevertheless nice to have.
The “home movies featurette” is what looks like 16mm footage shot during the filming for someone’s personal use. (Super-8 has a much more grainy appearance.) It would have been nice if it had narration, but it was completely silent.
It’s very expensive to produce a “director’s cut” of a movie, and it wouldn’t be cost-effective to release a new cut on DVD of a movie that failed so terribly at the box office. Too bad. I’d like to see the four-hour epic. I’ve heard that Brother Blue recorded a taped narrative during the filming. That would have been great!
If you liked the butchered late-night-teevee version, you’ll really enjoy the DVD. If only they showed Patricia Tallman naked as much as they showed the naked Ed Harris…
I don’t know why my brain spews forth with these weird bits of trivia at odd times but it does. If only I could make some money off of it. I just remembered seeing Stephen King in that film, briefly, playing a somewhat repugnant member of the crowd watching the jousters perform. Odd isn’t it?
Oh, incidentally, I’m of the variety that prefers a naked Ed Harris. (The full version sounds veeerrry interesting.)
(The full version sounds veeerrry interesting.)