S01E04 - Did You Know?

In this episode, Professor Krebs shares 10 intriguing facts about the movie 'Krull'. Discover the film's original title, the massive budget for its time, the last-minute redesign of the Slayers, and more. Featuring rare tidbits and personal anecdotes, this episode is a must-listen for any 'Krull' enthusiast!

Transcript

Professor Krebs: 0:05

I think it's no mystery at this point that I super duper love Krull. And as part of that, whenever you love something, you investigate it, you learn more about it. You want to just know everything. And over the last several years, I've picked up little tidbits of information and I thought it would be handy for me to just share a handful of them with you. In fact, today I want to give you 10"Did you know?" facts about this world, the world of Krull. So in no particular order, here's our first little nugget. Did you know that Krull was not the original title. In fact, the original title of the film was The Dragons of Krull. So, when they were conceiving this film, again, this was in 1980, 1981, when they were first coming up with the idea. And at that point in time, you had, uh, the success of not just Star Wars, but eventually Empire Strikes Back as well. You had Conan the Barbarian, you had myriad sword and sorcery films, specifically Dragon Slayer, starring Peter MacNicol, that film was highly influential in both the design and the title of the film that would ultimately be called Krull. So, the Dragons of Krull was what they called it to begin with. And originally, the film, uh, was more like, uh, what you would see in a standard sword and sorcery type flick, where you had, warring kingdoms, and a prince and a princess, which we still get a little bit of that, don't we? But, what happened was that you had this group of knights, these Slayers, the Slayers were the big bad heavies that would come over the border and invade the hero's kingdom. Now, as I understand it, Krull was the name of this like, fantasy realm. I don't think it was ever intended to be Earth per se, but of course it was very Earth-like and very medieval. And Krull was this realm, this kingdom, something to that effect. And The Dragons of Krull, what's really interesting about that title is that the movie itself featured no dragons, whatsoever. In fact, the title was meant to be more metaphoric of the warring kingdoms fighting each other, the"dragons" of Krull. But they intentionally chose that title because of the appeal of dragons and medieval sword and sorcery at the time that they were conceiving the film. Ultimately, the script just wasn't working. It just wasn't interesting. It wasn't coming together the right way. So then head writer Stanford Sherman started bouncing some ideas around with producer Ron Silverman. They started proposing some more radical ideas, the idea that this wasn't just some fantasy realm, this was an entirely different planet, and that the bad guys were not just knights from a warring neighboring kingdom, but instead, they were alien invaders, and that's when the whole thing started to shift. They changed the title to just Krull. They dropped the dragons part and they made it more sci fi and fantasy. The idea was that magic was part of the natural order of the planet and they had these alien invaders. And so now you have extraterrestrial high technology versus the magic of the people on the planet that the aliens are trying to conquer. So, that's how we got from the original title,"The Dragons of Krull" to just"Krull". And they made an excellent choice in making that pivot. Now, did you know that Krull's budget, and it really depends on where you go for these numbers, but it was somewhere between 30 million and 40 million. If you go to official resources, it's closer to 30. If you talk to some of the people who were involved, like Nick Maley, for example, who we'll talk about later in this list, it's closer to 40, somewhere in that range, 30 to 40 million. It costs that much to make the film. And at that point in time, in the 1980s, that was not a small amount of money, especially for something that was meant to be a genre film. It was meant to just, you know, it's a, it's a flight of fancy. It's a fantasy film. And then they turned it into a fantasy sci fi hybrid. It was a lot of money for the time. And that film with all of its amazing qualities only grossed 16. 9 million worldwide. If we were to make this movie today for the exact same budget and it were to gross the exact same amount of money adjusted for inflation, the budget was somewhere in the neighborhood of 129.8, almost$130 million, and it grossed just shy of$55 million. It gross$54.8 million, and either way you slice that it's about 42% of the initial budget. That was a huge blow to Columbia Pictures at the time. That was just a movie that bombed at the box office. It was a huge loss. And of course, Krull to this day has been looked at as a box office failure, a box office bomb, but that does not stop the underground group of people who adore this film from loving it. Did you know that the Slayers were completely redesigned at the last moment? They reached out to Nick Maley, who I mentioned earlier. He had just come off of doing special effects for Yoda in Return of the Jedi. And Nick Maley was young and vibrant, and he was looking to sort of make his mark in the industry. And so when he got An invitation to join a 40 million budget film, as he puts it, he jumped on it because he really wanted his name to mean something when it came to special effects. So he joins on Krull, and in a whirlwind timeline I mean, was becoming more and more condensed. They brought him on kind of late in the project in the first place he did the special effects, the prosthetics, and all of the devices for the Cyclops, the Beast, the Widow of the Web, and the Changeling Seer. Now he was brought in to oversee. He not overseen necessarily, excuse me. He was brought in to observe the creation of the slayers, which was being handled by somebody else. And as he looked, he was disappointed. And when they came away from the onsite fabrication, he started talking to Ron Silverman and he was like, Hey, look, I'm really concerned. Basically the Slayers just look like a bunch of rubber pieces glued onto a leotard. It doesn't, it doesn't look very good. We're, we're in great danger of the Slayers not looking good. He just wanted to give his opinion. They promised him that he would not have to work on the Slayers because there was just too much to do as it was. And so they said, don't worry about that. We got this other guy. He's going to handle it. Well, then once Nick Mailey gave that opinion, it wasn't, but a handful of days later when they came to him and they said, Hey, we've only got a couple of weeks left. We need this to work. The Slayers aren't working. We need them as fast as humanly possible. We need you to build the Slayers. And of course he was very disappointed by this, but you know what? He got to work on it right away. He designed it as rapidly as he could. They ended up making 40 practical Slayer suits in a space of 10 days. Now this is from design to fabrication. That's incredibly rapid. And across those 10 days, he pushed two 12-hour shifts every day. Every day they were doing 12 hour shifts, which is absurd and unheard of, and you probably couldn't get away with it in today's Hollywood, but they pushed hard and they created these 40 suits. Remember, this is before CG was really at the level of use that we saw even as early as Jurassic Park. This all had to be done as practical effects. So, in 10 days, 40 suits, which is amazing. And if you ever listen to Nick Maley talk about this, he will tell you up front, he hates it. He actually does not, he is not pleased with how the Slayers came out. But as a fan myself, I like the initial design of the Slayers. Room for improvement? Sure. But the whole head coming apart and the pilot worm exiting and burrowing into the ground, all of that was just fantastic conceptualization. Things I never would have thought to do. And I give him enormous kudos for being able to pull off such a massive effort in such a short period of time. Did you know that the Beast was actually portrayed by an athletic, lean woman in the suit? Typically, when we see creature actors, we often immediately assume, Oh, that's some guy in a suit. But in this case, it was some gal in a suit and they chose her because she was of athletic build with a very slim waist. And that would allow them to build and sculpt the body of the suit into the shape that they desired. And they ended up having a creature that had this really interestingly slim mid body waist area, but then sort of massive, intimidating shoulders and pectorals and the head could be a certain size. They were able to get the dimensions they wanted that made it feel alien and menacing. So next time you see the Beast on screen, understand you're not looking at some guy in a suit. And that is a very talented physical actress who is wearing the prosthetic suit from head to toe. Again, designed by the incredible Nick Maley. Did you know, and this next one you probably did, that Lysette Anthony was completely dubbed over? Every single line in the movie is not her voice. Now, Lysette Anthony, at the time that she was shooting Krull, was about 18 years old. Very young and fairly new to the industry. But she had this gentle, lilting, ethereal voice. But they wanted, they wanted two, other attributes that they felt her voice did not carry. They wanted something that sounded strong and grounded, even sort of more mature beyond her years, and they wanted something that sounded more Western. Interestingly, and I can't really explain this, but you'll notice that King Turold, who is the father of Colwyn, has a decidedly perfect British accent, right? That's very refined British accent. Same is true of King, Irig or Eirig. I guess they, they pronounce it King Eirig, uh, who is Lyssa's father. You have these two British actors going after each other. And then Colwyn speaks and Colwyn has this incredibly American accent. Can't explain it. It just is. And Lyssa, who is the daughter of King Eirig is also speaking with an American accent. This was done intentionally. Ultimately in the production, they decided that they were going to voice over Lysette Anthony with an American actress, Lindsay Crouse. She had the sort of depth of tonality, the maturity in her voice, the strength that they were looking for. And so they dubbed over every single one of her lines. Now here's a bonus nugget for you. I had a chance to speak with Lysette Anthony in person, and I asked her quite directly that if they were ever able to find the original audio tracks of her voice in Krull, would she support them remastering Krull with her original dialogue? And she immediately said 100%, yes. She would 100 percent support that. Interestingly, Lysette Anthony currently is doing voiceover work as part of her just sort of daily grind as an actress. And, uh, And, uh, there is something inside of me that wants her to just voice over Lyssa again. If we can't have the original audio, then let's at least have the original actress do the dub. I think that would come across far more authentic. And to be clear, that is not meant as a slight in any way to American actress, Lindsay Crouse. I simply believe that when you separate the voice from the performance, there ends up being this uncanny valley disparity between the two. Our brains can pick that up and filter that out, and we know something is off. I realize what they were trying to accomplish, but I think they made a big mistake in asking Lindsay Crouse to voice Lyssa. I think that Lysette Anthony should have been allowed to deliver the performance herself, but that's just a personal opinion. Now, similar to that, did you know that there is this little factoid that keeps circulating everywhere on the internet that says that Robbie Coltrane, who played Rhun of the bandits, also was voiced over by famous British actor Michael Elphick? This is categorically false. How do I know this is false? Well, let's start with the soft evidence. Robbie Coltrane would go on to numerous projects after this, where he of course used his own voice. You can watch Nuns on the Run or 007 Goldeneye or any of the Harry Potter films where he portrays Hagrid. His voice is something that you can hear in a number of productions, and they are all very consistent with what you hear in Krull. Again, there's also soft evidence number two, which is our brains are really good at picking up ADR, meaning audio after the fact, audio that's recorded in a studio outside of the actual filming location. Most of his lines are delivered on location in person and your brain will pick up when it's ADR and when it's not. And there are several times where it's not. And thirdly, and most importantly, is this little clip from an episode of Dungeon Crawlers Radio. Check this out. Graham, is, is that true? Was he dubbed over by Michael Elphick in the post?

14:17

It's such an extraordinary urban myth that's, that's gathered momentum and infiltrated, uh, you know, these reference sources. Robbie did a, um, you know, a Cockney accent, if you like, a working man's accent for, you know, even though he was very Scottish, that was his accent and that is his voice that I heard on screen, you know, because it was the same.

Professor Krebs: 14:46

So there it is from Graham McGrath himself, and this has also been verified by other individuals who are connected to the creation of the film. I'm not going to drop those names at this time, but we might hear from them in the not too distant future. Suffice it to say, Robbie Coltrane was NOT voiced over by Michael Elphick, and I will make it a personal mission to get that quote unquote factoid removed from the internet in every dark corner I can. Currently, if you want to see this for yourself, it is presented in the IMDb listing for Krull. If you go down into the cast and you go down into like additional cast, you'll see Lindsay Crouse, listed uncredited as the voice of Lyssa, but you'll also see Michael Elphick listed uncredited as the voice of Rhun. So IMDb, you'll hear from me. Now, did you know that Francesca Annis played both versions of The Widow? Now, this might not come as a very big surprise, especially because I've already talked about Nick Mailey and I've already mentioned that he did the effects for The Widow, and so this might just be a natural deduction. However, if you watch that sequence carefully, then you might surmise that they hired an older actress to play the old widow and then Francesca honest for the younger, but fascinatingly and impressively enough, it is Francesca Annis in both cases. Now when Francesca Annis played this role, she was about 37 years old. And what I find very compelling and intriguing about this particular performance is that she absolutely mastered the movements and most importantly the speech patterns of someone three times her age, which is extraordinary because most people, when they try to sound like an old person, it comes off as a caricature. It comes off as almost ageist in a lot of ways, but she got the subtlety of it. She got the essence of it. I was totally thrilled and surprised when I found out that she played that role herself. I thought for a time that they had hired two different people, but they did not. Second, the old person, the aging makeup that they did In 1982, clearly rivals much of what we saw in the nineties and the two thousands. It's some of the best aging makeup I've ever seen, even to this day. They did everything in excellent detail, including her hands, which often get missed. Watch, watch some of your favorite shows and some of your favorite movies. They will often miss anything below the neckline. They will miss. anything on the hands. There are certain giveaways that people forget to cover up when they're doing aging, but they did not forget that with Francesca Annis' Widow of the Web. It is a stunning performance and a stunning delivery of that effect. In fact, the makeup itself took 22 different appliances to make her look that aged, and she would have to sit in the chair and have that put on her every time they went to go shoot anything regarding the elder widow of the web. Now, did you know that there was not just an Atari game which I have, and I've played many times and I do enjoy it despite the fact that it's a very challenging game in some ways and there was also an arcade game which was something I never got to play in my youth, but thanks to the power of emulators, I have played the Gottlieb arcade game and it also is one that I have not ever beaten all the way through; I've beaten the Atari game, I've never beaten the arcade game. But number of years ago. Oh gosh. I guess it would be about seven or eight years ago now. I came across the wonderful discovery that there is a pinball machine. I am a huge pinball fan and there is a Krull pinball machine. Now, you have to understand that at the time, pinball machines were very popular, but the process of getting them manufactured and sold was pretty arduous. First, you had to prototype it, and you had to do that a few times, you'd have to iterate, until you got to a version of the pinball machine that you were happy with, that you think people would put quarters in. Then once that happened, you had to then manufacture a small set yet to manufacture a demo set, because what would happen is whatever company was making the pinball machine would then give a demo machine to a salesperson who would then drive to certain regions of the country and demo the machine in person to garner pre orders to get arcades and and pinball enthusiasts to basically pay in advance for the building of a machine to have in their store. So after all the demos were done and they had enough pre orders, that's when they would go to mass production. Well, as you know, Krull did not do very well in the box office. And so they made the demo models. They made about 10 of them, a run of 10 but because of the expense of making the machine and the seeming lack of popularity for the film at the time, they decided to cancel the manufacturing of the machine at the mass production level. That means though, that there are 10 machines in the world that still exist. Now, from what I have seen in other articles, it's more like somewhere between six and eight of them are known. And a couple of them are either missing or maybe were parted out or maybe were destroyed. But what I love about this machine, it was incredibly innovative at the time. What was innovative was that the play field was actually dual layer. You had the main play field on top, and then if you shot the ball into certain lanes or into certain scoops, then the ball would then descend to a lower level and you would have an alternate set of flippers that you would then use to shoot the ball, simulating the glaive attacking the prison in the Black Fortress. Now, that meant that on the main play field, there was this transparent window into the lower play field, and allegedly the public reason given for why they didn't go to mass production is that the transparent overlay on that field was too expensive to produce in mass quantities. And so the table was canceled. Personally, I think that that was a PR saving move so that they didn't have to say that the film was doing poorly and the funding dried up. I don't think it was the transparency over the top of the lower field that made it prohibitively difficult to produce. That said, while I have found a lead or three on where some of these machines are, I still have never played one, but I'm going to. I don't know when, I don't know how, but I'm going to. Did you know that originally there were going to be toys manufactured for Krull. Now remember, this is the eighties. Every major IP, especially sci fi and fantasy had some toy line to go with it because it was an excellent avenue for revenue. George Lucas had shown this in spades with the Star Wars toys. We had also at this point seen some of this happen with other IPs like Battlestar Galactica and even older than that. Buck Rogers and even Roy Rogers were these IPs that did really well selling lines of toys and costumes and other such merchandise to youth. Krull was going to be no different. They were already looking at how to make an incredible toy line, just like we saw for Star Wars. However, once again, we have a situation where because the film didn't do well, we didn't get everything out of it that we wanted. Now Knickerbocker, which was a very popular toy company at the time, was in line to make these toys for Krull. Author Blake Wright, who is the creator of the Toys That Time Forgot book series, in volume one lays out the details of how Krull almost had a toy line. He got to go to Knickerbocker and he got to hold in his hands, he got to see for himself both the design documents from 1982, which was incredibly shocking at the time, most of those things get thrown away or destroyed or lost with time, But he got to see those design documents and he got to hold prototypes of the toys. He got to actually touch them and see them. And you can learn more about this in his book, Toys That Time Forgot, Volume One. Now this episode is obviously not endorsed by Blake Wright, but I will say I have ordered my copy of the book because I absolutely have to know what these toys were going to be like. And lastly for today's episode, did you know that back in the 1980s and 70s and 60s, whenever they would make movies and TV shows, there really was not a large effort to preserve the props and the sets and the costumes. Basically, if any of those things surfaced, it was because someone in the department that created it cared about it enough to save it. Otherwise it was often destroyed, stolen, or simply thrown away. But, in all of Hollywood, there is but one known hero Glaive left in existence. One. And I say"hero Glaive" because there's actually another Glaive, the stunt Glaive that was used for throwing and was also used for the title credits. But the hero Glaive, this is the one that Colwyn holds in his hand in front of the camera, and then the blades eject from each arm of the five appendaged weapon. That Glaive went up on auction in 2022. In fact, if you would like to see it for yourself, you can go over to YouTube and there is a video I want to say it was from Christie's don't get mad at me if I'm wrong, but I think it was Christie's auction house and they have a promotional video starring Adam Savage of Mythbusters fame who is then holding the Glaive and he shows how the mechanism for ejecting the blades works. In fact, it's one of those moments where I, as an engineer myself, find it to be incredibly beautiful because it's beauty in simplicity. It's It's five rubber bands and a wheel. That is incredibly genius work. It works brilliantly. And 40 years later, it still functions properly. Now I was going to go into debt. I'm not joking. I was going to go into debt to try to buy this hero Glaive at auction. I had no idea how I was going to pay off that kind of money, but I was going to do it. I decided not to because I'm a responsible husband and father. And it's good that I didn't because even though they priced it somewhere between five and 15, 000, I think it was, it ended up selling at auction for 56, 250 British pounds sterling. When you convert that into American dollars today in 2024, just a couple of years later, it comes out to$72, 807. There was no way on this planet I was going to cobble together 73, 000 that, uh, my family didn't need for other things like, I don't know, food and shelter. So I was never going to be able to win this auction, but it went to a collector who later, I think it was one year later, actually put it back up on auction. I don't have the final numbers for that just yet, but what it does give me is hope that one day one day I will pick up the Hero Glaive myself and give it a loving home for the rest of my life. Thank you for coming with me on this little journey through factoids about this world, the world of Krull. Every once in a while, I'll be dropping more episodes like this with little did-you-know-it's nested in there. And, uh, maybe we will learn something new together along the way. We'll do this again real soon. I'll see you next time.

27:08

Thank you so very much for listening to this episode of the Krulltimate Podcast. Now, I would like to hear from you. If you have any questions, curiosities, or comments that you would like to make about this or other episodes, you can send them to thekrulltimatefandom@gmail.com. Until next time I have been your host professor Krebs, and this is the Krulltimate Podcast.