If you like Terry Gilliam’s version of Baron Munchausen, you might try to find the 1961 Czechoslovakian version, or the 1943 German version. (Yes, it was made in Nazi Germany, but it’s not that bad. It was written by Erich Kastner, who was harassed by the Nazis, and whose books were burned by them.)
If you like Ladyhawke, you might try Sword of the Valiant, starring Miles O’Keefe as Sir Gawaine, and Sean Connery as the Green Knight. As a Twentieth Century work of cinematic art, it is terrible. However, as a cinematic version of a medieval romance ballad, it’s not bad. It’s exactly the sort of story that troubadors wrote to entertain pampered aristocrats who never had to work a day in their lives. The soundtrack is an egregious example of 1980s synthesizer music, but it is not as annoying as the Ladyhawke score.
If Beowulf is what you like, then there’s been a glut of Beowulf movies in the past decade or so (after a virtual silence on the topic before). Besides the Zemeckis motion-capture animated one that was so well known, there was Beowulf and Grendel, with Gerard Butler as Beowulf (and filmed in Iceland!), Beowulf as a sci-fi/postapocalyptic story, starring Christopher Lambert*, and the SyFy’s Grendel. In addition, there’s the rationalized (but underappreciated) the 13th Warrior, with Antonio Banderas, based on Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead.
*The film has been rightly ripped apart at various internet sites, but I think the Neil Gaiman-written Zemeckis-directed version lifted thiongs from this. Grendel’s mom is hot, a GMILF, and her monstrous form is good CGI. In addition, as in that film
King Hrothgar turns out to be Grendel’s father
The Syfy version has CGI Grendel and Grendel’s mom, too, but it’s pretty poor by comparison to these.
Curse of the Ring aka Ring of the Nibelungs aka Dark Kingdom: the Dragon King
A very cheesy TV movie based on the same story.
If you are including horror movies, try Innocent Blood. Anne Parillaud and Anthony LaPaglia are OK as the heroes, but Robert Loggia is excellent as the villain, a mafia don turned vampire. Don Rickles plays one of his henchmen, who has the funniest death scene since PeeWee Herman in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Jabberwocky, a quasi-Python film starring Michael Palin and directed by Terry Jones, set in medieval times and very loosely based on the Lewis Carroll poem. A hideous monster is ravaging the countryside. Palin’s character, who has left home and to seek his fortune in the big city, ends up through some bizarre twists of fate as squire to the knight who has been sent out to fight the monster and ends up confronting it himself.
Boy howdy. It’s one of my favorite fantasy movies, except that the soundtrack is so intolerable.
Near Dark is also an excellent recommendation.
City of Lost Children is another of my all-time favorite movies; it’s a fantasy with a unique aesthetic, somewhere between steampunk and fairy tale.
Cronos is another great vampire movie, by Guillermo del Toro; it’s really a story about a grandfather’s love for his granddaughter, and also a metallic immortality bug.
And for a fairly obscure one: The Navigator. Medieval people desperate to escape the plague that’s infected their village dig a tunnel to a 20th-century city.
Fire and Ice: The 1983 Bakshi/Frazetta animated film.
The Sword and the Sorcerer: 1982 Conan ripo—er, pastiche. Literary Conan, that is. I think I spotted elements from at least three or four different Conan plots. Actually not bad—well, not unentertaining, I should say.
Topper was a big hit when it came out, but isn’t very well known today. Lots of later comedies used its conceit, about ghosts who only one person can see and hear.
The Thief of Bagdad is a wonderful Arabian nights fantasy; there are several versions, but the 1940 one is the classic.
I wasn’t a fan of the much-touted 1940 version, but I love the restored 1925 silrent version, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
Also, since it’s one of the first movies I saw, the 1961 version with Steve Reeves, which manages to put a lot of stuff from the silent version i n it.
I came across this on television, not having heard of it before, and found it surprisingly well-made. “Rationalized but underappreciated” sums it up nicely; if you’re not paying attention you might miss the Beowulf connection but if you spot it it’s ingeniously woven into a coherent plot.
I “me too” that list. Some of them suffer a bit from being dated stylistically (ah, 1980’s hairstyles and heavy synth music) but they’re good solid stories.
Just want to second a few already-made recommendations:
Outlander with Jim Caveziel is pretty good.
The 13th Warrior is an excellent action flick and has some surprisingly believable acting by the actors who play the Norsemen in the movie. The costumes and armor are all cobbled together from about 1000 years worth of history, but the look is pretty cool.
It was well-known in its time, but lesser-known now
The Man Who Could Work Miracles – arguably the best adaptation of an H.G. Wells work, made in 1936. It features some decent stop-motion effects and a pretty nifty apocalypse at the end. Easily the most faithful filming of a Wells story. I recommend it, if you can find it.
She – the next effort by the team that made King Kong and Son of Kong, including the producer, scriptwriter, composed, production crew, and some of the effects people. The 1934 version is considered the definitive film version of H. Rider Haggard’s story of “She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed”. It’s pretty influential. Disney definitely took the costume for the Evil Stepmother Queen from snow White from one of SHE’s costumes, and Ray Harryhausen modeled the Reception Hall of the Grand Lunar in From the Earth to the Moon on the queen’s reception hall. It re-used the giant doors from King Kong, featured a pre-Sherlock Holmes Nigel Bruce in a major role, had Randloh Scott as the hero, and was the sole screen outing for Helen Gahagan in the lead roloe. She later went into politics. The art deco sets are impressive. Remade again in the 1960s with Ursula Andress, and then (kinsda) as a postapocalyptic straight-to-video version in the 80s.
I second this recommendation. All the Harryhausen films are worth watching if just for his wonderful animation sequences. Especially, “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” (1958), “The Three Worlds of Gulliver” (1960), “Mysterious Island” (1961) and “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963).
Minor nitpick, Harryhausen’s animation is not the same as claymation. His creations weren’t made of clay but were metal ball and socket armatures covered with a latex skin. His beautifully detailed models were shot a frame at a time, like the clay creatures seen in claymation films like “Chicken Run”, but his stop-motion process went by the name Dynamation. I believe the only one of his creatures that could be referred to as animatronic was a mechanical owl seen in Ray’s last film, “Clash of the Titans” (1981), although this creature was stop-motion animated in most of its scenes.
If you liked “The 7th Voyage of Sinbad” check out the lesser-known, “Jack the Giant Killer” (1962) which is a low budget remake of the Sinbad film. It even stars Kerwin Matthews, Sinbad in the “The 7th Voyage…”, as the hero. Avoid the re-cut musical version, though. Or not, depending on your masochistic tendencies.
Quite right. I miswrote.
By the way, I don’t understand how From the Earth to the Moon made someone’s “Good Little-Known SF Movie” list in the other thread. It’s an appallingly bad adaptation of verne, filled with scientific nonsense and not very true to the source.
