I had the same problem with First Knight that I had with Wolf: The entire principal cast was 10 years too old.
I’ve never bothered with FIRST KNIGHT but Gere is monumentally miscast. He simply can’t do period pieces past a certain point. He’s entirely too modern.
I bought him in Sommersby, at least at the time, but that’s probably as far back as he could go, era-wise, and true to form he was awful in First Knight. That said, the entire movie was bad, and a better Lancelot wouldn’t have saved it.
Yeah, I almost wrote “Nothing prior to the Civil War.”
There’s only ever been one good* King Arthur movie. Something that’s unlikely to ever change.
ETA: *non-comedy
I haven’t seen it for a long time, but I remember thinking Connery was good in First Knight (I’ll say this was one of his better '90s performances after Red October and The Rock), and so is Ben Cross as the villain. Julia Ormond was fine as well. It was Richard Gere, who admittedly looks the part, who felt miscast as Lancelot. While the costumes and sets looked nice, the actual battles and set-pieces paled in comparison to Braveheart and Rob Roy, released the same year.
Species > First Knight
The VHS tape and LaserDisc hit the shelves at Hollywood Video and Blockbuster on Tuesday, July 11th, 1995:
![[Image: Picture3.png]](https://forum.frameworkcast.com/uploads/db6724/original/3X/7/d/7d399f8626a5c35e18ec4936148f0f6485bdf661.jpeg)
Oooh, I hope this is available to view online somewhere!
Are the DARKMAN sequels any good? They were on Shudder for a stretch, but I never pulled the trigger.
That’s a negative! DTV crap and worst of all, at least at the time when I didn’t have access to the internet and copious amounts of nudity, no boobies.
… I think they’re kinda fun if you know what you’re getting into and set your expectations accordingly.
First Knight is goddamned horrible.
Yeah, who am I kidding, I’ll probably check them out. I watched all the WISHMASTER movies last year, I’m not going to pretend I’m above the DARKMAN sequels.
I haven’t seen the 3rd one but I remember Jeff Fahey hamming it up in the trailer so that’s probably worth a look.
Fahey is the best part of DIE DARKMAN DIE, by far.
It really is. If it wasn’t for its cast it would be completely worthless. It’s totally beneath Connery and even Gere. Sean Connery playing King Arthur in any capacity should have been really something substantial. And that is not it at all..
Natasha Henstridge was ungodly hot in SPECIES. The VHS was a childhood favorite of mine, delivering what Joe Bob Briggs referred to as the 3 B’s: Blood, Breasts & Beasts.
Haven’t seen it in years. I shudder to think how badly the CGI has probably aged.
If I recall, the weirdest FX shots were attempted with rod puppets, not animation.
(EDIT) No wait, they were CG, from mocapped rod puppets. A for effort?
Now is as good a time as any to revisit SPECIES, just to get a glimpse into that brief period of time when Michael Madsen was almost sorta/kinda a viable Leading Man.
Also the supporting cast for SPECIES rocks, they managed to pull together quite a team for that one.