I'm opening up the oven, taking out the cheesecake of the 1980's, and cutting off the cheesiest piece. We've got Mattel's most expensive toy commercial in history. You even have to look at how awesome the opening is (also see attached video):
At the center of the universe, at the border between the light and the dark stands Castle Grayskull. For countless ages the sorceress of Grayskull has kept this universe in harmony, but the armies of darkness do not rest, and the capture of Grayskull is ever-most on their minds. For to those who possess Grayskull will come...the power. The power to be supreme. The power to be almighty. The power to MASTERS of the UNIVERSE.
Masters of the Universe is one of those movies that you can both hate to love and love to hate, possibly even at the same time. From the minds of cinema's greatest schlock-salesmen, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, comes a desperate attempt to save their dying film studio. Gary Goddard directed this cheeseball with the likes of then-unknown Dolph Lundgren as He-Man and Frank Langella as Skeletor. Dolph Lundgren couldn't speak very good English at the time without his thick-Swedish accent motorboating his syllables into a realm of ridiculousness, so he chose instead to redub his lines. There's times what he says doesn't even remotely match what he says. His jaw wobbles like it's gonna fall out of his skull.
Sill, Frank Langella as Skeletor is pretty much the best part of the movie. This Skeletor isn't like the over-the-top, high-pitched children's bad-guy character from the TV show of the early 80's. This one dresses menacing, talks menacing, acts menacing and is all around...well, you get it. He's got pretty much all the cool dialogue, in the movie too. I think Frank Langella just wanted it in his contract that he had to be the badass of the film. "Do you hear? The Alpha and the Omega. Death and rebirth, and as you die...so will I be reborn."He's joined by Meg Foster as Evil-Lyn. No contact lenses there, her eyes are really that powerful. With her, you have that-one-80's-guy-from-that-one-80's-thing who plays Kevin, the human kid with no other characteristics than he's a human kid, and...oh sweet Jesus? Do I detect a hint of F*R*I*E*N*D*S in this movie? It's Courteney Cox as Julie, Kevin's girlfriend and the one who first meets with He-Man. It's a wonder how she settled for Chandler Bing when she could've had fucking He-Man.
I think one of my favorite parts about the movie is just how ridiculous and zany it is. They didn't have enough money to shoot the whole thing in Eternia, so they decided to shoot about 0.025% of the movie in Eternia, 34.975% of the movie in Skeletor's throne room, and 65% of the thing in the suburbs of "Your typical 80's Midwestern Town". So you have crazy characters like He-Man, Man-at-Arms, Beast Man, Blade, and Evil-Lyn wandering around the same 80's town that every John Hughes teen star would.
It's corny. It's cheesy. It's got weird characters. It's got dumb dialogue. It's just one of those generic 80's sci-fi movies that I love for being bizarre. I never once realized just how weird the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe toy-line was until this movie showed me as a little kid. I remember thinking "No way this is a toy line people can get behind, but low-and-behold, the toy-line came first. Then it was that 80's cartoon series that turned into so many memes, then it was this. This overlooked and underappreciated, poorly acted, badly dubbed, silly looking gem. It reeks of the decade it was made in.
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