High Crusade - Frikassee im Weltraum |
Germany • 1994 • 100m •
   • Directed by: Klaus Knoesel, Holger Neuhäuser. • Starring: John Rhys-Davies, Rick Overton, Michael Des Barres, Catherine Punch, Patrick Brymer, Debbie Lee Carrington, Rinaldo Talamonti, Frank Kanakusen, Tahareh Becker, Ray Cokes, Holger Neuhäuser, Werner Baum, Tim Luna. • Music by: 4. Stock.   Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day, and Godzilla) brings you John Rhys-Davies in a Monty Pythonesque tale of a band of Crusaders who find themselves in possession of an Alien ship and the Alien to pilot it. Armed with the means to conquer the Holy Land the naive Crusaders set off for a grand crusade only to find themselves not in Jerusalem but at the mercy of an entire alien world....heaven help the Aliens.
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Review:
I was completely surprised by the direction taken by the screen play and direction of this movie. Or maybe shocked would be a better word. It had simply never occurred to me that Anderson's book would be interpreted as a comedy. Certainly, there is humor in the novel, but it is basically a story of high adventure with some very serious elements balancing the humor. There is none of that in the movie. Brown (the screen writer) and Knoesel & Neuhauser (the directors) extracted elements from the book and used them as a skeleton on which to build a second rate "Monty Python and the Holy Grail."
This movie was almost painful for me to watch because I could see enough of the novel on the screen to know that a good movie could have been made from "The High Crusade." The SFX, though a little cheezy by current standards, are still acceptable. The cast was adequate, though some of the parts would have been cast differently if this were not a comedy, I'm sure. Certainly, John Rys-Davies makes an excellent Brother Parvis and he is one of the few redeeming factors of this film. And the few scenes taken from the novel were almost watchable. But the overall tone and direction were not even remotely true to the novel. Frankly, even fans of "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" will be disappointed because it's just not that funny.
If you have never read the book, then you may find this movie mildly amusing. If you are a fan of this classic science fiction novel, then I recommend steering clear of this movie. It will taint your good memories of the book forever.
Review by Dan Thompson from the Internet Movie Database.
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