In big 2026, with the clear and present danger of a new He-Man movie looming, Amazon Prime finally added the Dolph Lundgren-fronted, space underpants-sporting shit-tip of an original to its library, perhaps in the hope that anyone who watches it will judge the new one more generously. And after recklessly inflicting this storied masterpiece upon myself last night in a state of red wine-induced abandon, I’m delighted to report that 1987’s Masters of the Universe is unequivocally one of the most flagrantly insane failed money spinning spam fests of the 1980s, and also thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, if you’re the sort of person who slows down while driving past a car accident.
Masters is perhaps best remembered for bombing so biblically that Cannon studios, its distributor, went down with it. The design concept alone would’ve been enough to sink Warner Brothers, because someone apparently thought it would be a good idea to refract a Saturday morning superhero cartoon series through the mad-as-cheese prism of Flash Gordon-style sci-fi-fantasy hair metal. The result is an aesthetic oil spill; Dolph Lundgren’s halfwit He-Man appears as a BDSM-coded 5th century Germanic barbarian but, incomprehensibly, most of the other characters are laser-toting Star Wars spivs (although even here, the kinky undertones remain impossible to overlook; see Skeletor’s leather codpiece, or the Spaceballs-like buttock-chaps worn by his idiot droids).
Responsibility for this futuristic Wagnerian bondage aesthetic surely lies with the director, a certain Gary Goddard, whose credentials included constructing theme park sets and, instructively, a live-action rendering of Conan the Barbarian. Precisely this Luciferian combination is what he delivers here: two hours of the poor man’s Conan battling the rich man’s Palpatine in the lobby of Space Mountain, with Nikki Sixx on bass, and everyone involved looking disconcertingly aroused by proceedings, considering this is a film intended to flog a line of action figures.
Much of this is too mad for words, but… what’s that, dear reader? The plot? I was hoping we could avoid that topic, because the truth is, I remain puzzled about exactly what, why, and in which order the events of Masters of the Universe unfold. But here goes; we find ourselves in the space age desert realm of Eternia, the strategic key to which is “Castle Grayskull”, an intergalactic municipal power station that bestows godlike omnipotence upon whoever happens to be the sitting tenant. This is usually the beneficent “Sorceress”, an ancient cosmic priestess with Christmas tree lights on her head; He-Man is merely the gaff’s bouncer, standing on the door in his underwear and keeping out the riffraff.
Turns out he’s shit at his job, though, because Masters opens at the precise moment when evil triumphs, as Skeletor and his minions infiltrate and occupy Grayskull through the use of a “cosmic key”, a teleportation device created by an ingenious ginger-haired hobbit for the purpose of simplifying his morning commute. However, He-Man and his buddies also have access to such a device, no doubt a Chinese knock-off obtained through a banned eBay seller, and they use it to escape to Earth – specifically, and inevitably, to the white middle-class suburbia of the Spielbergian imagination.
What follows can only be described as Conan Strikes Back To The Future, as the cast of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off become unwittingly embroiled in the Eternians’ cosmic pissing contest. No need to expand further on the resulting “plot twists”, but needless to say, the final battle between good and evil is positively burlesque; He-Man is whipped extensively by a chainmail-wearing skinhead, the lights dim, smoke fills the room, and Skeletor appears looking impossibly fabulous in glittering stage diva armour.
There can be only one, though, and sadly, it’s not Skeletor, played here by the unironically sensational Frank Langella, who casually reimagines this comedy villain as a grotesque, jockstrap-sporting King Lear, in an unsettling premonition of 2008’s Frost / Nixon. The supporting cast is lively too; Monica Geller is endearingly idiotic; Meg Foster icily sadistic; James Tolkan the hardboiled shoot-first-ask-questions-never suburban cop. The only bum note is Prince Adam of Eternia himself, who looks the part, but who proves characteristically incapable of acting his way out of a wet paper bag, god love him.
Only one relevant question remains; was I bored during Masters of the Universe? No, I wasn’t; at no point did I find myself checking my phone or reaching for my hipflask, though that’s possibly because I’d polished off its contents before the opening credits finished. It’s so bad it’s good, obviously, but it’s somehow more than that, largely due to Langella and his minions, a grotesque, Morlock-like mafia which, by the end of the film, you’re actually rooting for, given He-Man’s insufferably guileless master race monosyllabism. Lundgren might not be willing to kneel before his master, but you wouldn’t have to ask me twice, whip in hand or not.
Rating: * * *