Mystery Science Theater 3000: WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II

June 21, 2017 7:45 PM - Season 11, Episode 11

"Across the Sea of Dreams... behind the Curtain of Time... lies the land of ultimate fantasy." I bet you weren't looking forward to another visit to the world of last week's movie. Good news, other than the name and executive producer Roger Corman, this movie has nothing to do with the first one! A shepherd who's also a wizard tries to save the world from bad wizards blah blah Tolkien Eddings Brooks. A lot of people think Part 1 was a highlight of the season, but many also think this is a lowlight, so beware guys. A subplot begins in this episode, with Kinga deciding to marry Jonah. And we have another visit from Pearl! Episode 1111 is available on Netflix.

Episode 1111 WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II
MST3K Wikia - MST3K Discussion Board - TVTropes

Paste Magazine thought this was the worst episode of Season 11.

Movie
Rotten Tomatoes (Critics N/A, Viewers 13%) - Wikipedia - TVTropes

IMDB (1989, 1.8 stars)
Directed by Charles B. Griffith. Written by him and Lance Smith. Starring Mel Welles, Robert Jayne and David Carradine.

posted by JHarris (18 comments total)

I'm not sure it was the worst *episode*, but the movie is definitely unpleasant.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:20 PM on June 21, 2017 [2 favorites]

Most disappointing episode of the new season, mostly because this movie is just painful to watch. And I was hoping for more Golfax and Apeula and Crabby.
posted by mmoncur at 1:50 AM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

A rather gruesome note about this film: the blonde warrior princess is played by Lana Clarkson, the woman music producer Phil Spector shot and killed in his home back in 2003.
posted by valkane at 2:10 AM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

This one fascinated me, because on the one hand, everything about it feels cheap and phoned-in to an extent rarely encountered even in MST3K features. Case in point: Mel Welles' performance, every moment of which suggests that the only thing he's thinking is "When will death come for me?" And yet Carradine somehow, amazingly, does maintain some dignity throughout.

But yeah, it belongs alongside Creeping Terror, Invasion of the Neptune Men, and Monster a-Go Go in the "tough to watch even for hardcore MiSTies" pantheon. I suppose it wouldn't have been a real comeback without one!
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 2:45 AM on June 22, 2017 [3 favorites]

I've said this elsewhere, but I think the one-two punch of WizardsOTLK I and II is one of the best things in the season, and in its own way is an incredible meta-joke that plays out separately from the riffing proper. You get to the end of the first movie, and think to yourself "Wow, that was terrible. Those characters were the worst!" And then you start watching the second movie, and 15 minutes in you think "COME BACK FIRST MOVIE, ALL IS FORGIVEN."
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:12 AM on June 22, 2017 [14 favorites]

When I was a kid, I always pegged the kid that starred in this movie as either a sidekick or a villain, so it was weird seeing him as the lead.
posted by drezdn at 9:14 AM on June 22, 2017

Okay it's short notice, but surely you guys know the drill by now....

Every week on Thursday MST Club shows that week's episode in a video sharing room on the internet. We've also been going through Season 11 through rabb.it, which allows for sharing a Netflix feed between people. This week our room is https://www.rabb.it/rodneylives.

Here's the schedule for tonight's show:
7 PM Eastern/4 PM Pacific: 1111 WIZARDS OF THE LOST KINGDOM II
8:30 PM Eastern/5:30 PM Pacific: YouTube Potluck (bring your favorite short YouTube videos of the week!)
9 PM Eastern/6 PM Pacific: TBA (804 THE DEADLY MANTIS is not on YouTube! We'll have to see if we can make due....)
10:30 PM Eastern/7:30 PM Pacific: YouTube Potluck if we can still stand it
posted by JHarris at 2:19 PM on June 22, 2017

Wait, Caedmon keeps his father's skull in his cave, and talks to it? He's not a bumpkin-y shepherd, he's the wizarding Ed Gein.

And then he takes a pubescent boy on a three-kingdom murder spree? This movie is basically Badlands meets The Belgariad.


Also, Christian Bale was really in some crap films starting out, wasn't he? I mean, everyone has to pay their dues, but damn.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 2:53 PM on June 22, 2017 [1 favorite]

I do kind of wish they'd done a voice for the bat hat like they did for Crabby. In my mind, it sounds like Peter Lorre.


This episode was pretty terrible, but still not as bad as The Beast of Hollow Mountain.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 6:38 PM on June 22, 2017 [2 favorites]

Second film in a row where the young protagonist is nearly seduced by a much older woman. Weird.

Agree with everybody else: Less talk, more Crabby.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 10:00 PM on June 22, 2017

I'm a masochist for this kind of movie, and also kind of a completionist? Like, I found out Robot Wars and Crash and Burn were informal sequels to Robot Jox and I couldn't find them streaming or a torrent or anything (Somewhat unpopular, it turns out. Go figure.) So I had to spend American dollars to own those movies so that I could scratch the itch.

So when they mentioned in the Wizards of the Lost Kingdom episode that there was a sequel, I'm like, "God Damnit, MST3K. Now I've gotta go on one of my gonzo compulsive internet quests to buy some terrible run-off movie about rotoscoped wizards, and I'm going to wind up buying the original with it, because I am a crazy person."

BUT NO! In nothing less than a flagrant assault on good taste, they were kind enough to double feature them in back-to-back episodes.

This new season? It gets me.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:08 PM on June 23, 2017 [5 favorites]

Oh, the episode? I don't remember. Blacked out soon as I realized Carradine wasn't wearing pants.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:18 PM on June 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Carradine movies have been featured on a couple of episodes of Best of the Worst, by the Red Letter Media guys. Suffice it to say that the manner of his demise gets mentioned once or twice.

I certainly didn't expect MST3K to joke about that, but it's very hard to watch Carradine now and not think about it.
posted by Chrysostom at 2:27 PM on June 23, 2017

I certainly didn't expect MST3K to joke about that, but it's very hard to watch Carradine now and not think about it.

Josh Weinstein iokes about that twice during the run of Cinematic Titanic, and both times the live audience "Oooohhh"ed at his willingness to go there.
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:08 AM on June 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

As for the episode, I loved it. And I think it was wonderfully chosen and placed for the reasons already described by Strange Interlude.

And though I don't remember the exact quote right now, I laughed long and hard when Jonah said, "I wouldn't trust this guy with Force Lightning, I'll tell ya that for free."
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 10:17 AM on June 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

the manner of his demise gets mentioned

Not to derail unduly on this point, but I just want to get something off my chest. I've noticed that ever since Carradine's death, it's become kind of a standard hot take for Edgy Internet Dudes(tm) talking about tragic celebrity deaths (usually those involving suicide by hanging, but not always) to immediately speculate about whether autoerotic asphyxiation was somehow a factor. I remember it coming up in the first day or two after Robin Williams' death, and again just in the past month with Chris Cornell's death, and it just seems like such a crass thing to reduce anyone's battle with mental illness or substance abuse to "heh-heh, maybe they died because of a sex thing." /derail
posted by Strange Interlude at 10:24 AM on June 24, 2017 [1 favorite]

Just FYI everyone, a 38-hour MST3K marathon just started online on Twitch; you can just watch or join the chatroom.

Our viewings are much cooler, but just in case you're suffering from withdrawal...

The first six are:

- Cave Dwellers
- The Touch of Satan
- Final Justice
- City Limits
- Phantom Planet
- Hercules Unchained
posted by ilana at 12:09 PM on June 26, 2017 [1 favorite]

This movie's horribleness is actually compounded by the fact that, like, this is definitely shooting for "parody", right?

I kind of liked Grima Wormtongue, but everything else is just terrible.
posted by tobascodagama at 5:47 PM on July 2, 2017