Hawk the Slayer (1980)

"I'd sooner eat cow dung.

Oh my. What did I just watch? 

I absolutely adored this movie. I mean, yet again, I make no bones about the fact that it is, let's face it, very much in the "so bad it's good" category. No camp humour here; the hilarity is not intentional.

And yet, as is often said, there's bad films and bad films. Some bad films can be highly entertaining: the real crime is to be boring, ad boring this is not. The action, melodrama and excitement never stops.

And yes, the acting is... shall we say, very B movie.But, yet again, it's hugely entertaining. I always enjoy a proper scenery chewing baddie, and Jack Palance really does chew the scenery with aplomb here as Voltan. Given the woodenness of John Terry as Hawk, he quite rightly gets top billing. 

But there's so much else to amuse and divert. There's Patricia Quinn's cyclopean sorceress, who is always rescuing our motley crew from their silly little escapades and is blatantly the only one of the goodies with any brains, yet is always addressed casually as "Woman"! There's the comic scenes between Bernard Bresslaw's giant and the dwarf. There's the actor spotting fun with all the many British character actors that briefly appear. There's the music, which falls slap bang in the middle of a genre that can only be described as "'80s sword and sorcery soundtrack". And, of course, there's the effects.

This film is a load of old tosh. It's also great.

Prisoners of the Lost Universe (1983)

"Please take your hand off my butt!"

Now this is what I call a proper B movie.

My good friend and host Nick pointed out, while we were watching this film, that B movies today- Sharknado and the like- are done with tongue in cheek, intended to be silly and camp. That isn't the case with Prisoners of the Lost Universe: this was honestly intended as a good film and was made by the same director as Hawk the Slayer, a film that people have actually heard of.

So what makes this a B movie? Is it the generally dodgy acting? Is it the cheap and eyebrow-raising costumes? Possibly. But more than anything it's the sound effects. Good sound effects shouldn't be noticed; this is s film where the sound effects alone made me laugh out loud on several occasions, with various silly "boings" and so forth. Then there's the fact that this other dimension looks suspiciously like Southern California, and Richard Hatch's worrying habit of copping a feel with every woman he interacts with for more than five seconds. Still, John Sacon chews the scenery splendidly as out bearded baddie. 

It's cheap, it's cheerful, it's an incredible coincidence that everyone in this other dimension seems to speak English, it's unmistakeably a B movie. They just don't make this kind of film any more.