Welcome to Tubi Tuesday. An ongoing experiment where we dig into some of the weird, underrated, and downright abysmal movies we don’t think our real life friends would let us talk at length about. At the time of writing, this movie is streaming for free on Tubi, the home of Super Bowl LIX!
Directed By: Gary Goddard
Starring: Dolph Lundgren, Frank Langela, Courteney Cox
Written By: David Odell
For Fans Of: Tubi
Thing I Find Funny: They got the Leprechaun™ in this one!
1987 was the beginning of the end for The Cannon Group. Founded just 20 years prior as a distributor of softcore porno, Cannon found early success with low budget exploitation movies in the 1970s. By 1979, after a string of flops like Mustang: House of Pleasure (1977) and Mako: The Jaws of Death (1976), the company sold to Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli cousins who would make Cannon synonymous with B movie action, deranged musicals, and ninjas.
Masters of the Universe was just one of 32 releases by Cannon during 1987. Other Cannon films that year included Allan Quatermain and the Lost City of Gold, Death Wish 4: The Crackdown, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The salad days of softcore and Chuck Norris over-performers were behind them, and Cannon prepared for a sale again. Italian businessman/criminal Giancarlo Parretti bought out Cannon in 1989. That same year, Golan resigned. The Cannon Group limped along until 1994, when they released their final film: Chuck Norris’ Hellbound.
1987 was also the beginning of the end of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. Originally a line of action figures from Mattel, in 1983 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe became the first syndicated television show to be based on a toy. Over the next 2 years, FIlmation would release 130 episodes, along with a Christmas special and the theatrical He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword (1985). The distaff spinoff She-Ra: Princess of Power released that same year and aired another 93 episodes over its two year run. Mattel, of course, is a toy company first; each TV show, comic, and – yes – movie, only existed to move plastic. Masters of the Universe released to little fanfare on August 7, 1987, and failed to recoup its reported $22 million budget. The seventh and final wave of the original toyline was released the following year.
Despite portending the end of two successful enterprises, The Masters of the Universe movie is no bomb. It’s a cosmic kitchen sink of a movie, with visuals and story influenced by Star Wars, Conan the Barbarian, and Jack Kirby’s Fourth World comics. The film follows He-Man (Dolph Lundgren) and his merry band of rebel troopers as they fight against the evil Skeletor (Frank Langella) who has captured Castle Greyskull and imprisoned its people. After freeing the dwarvish Gwildor from Skeletor’s forces, He-Man, the warrior Teela, and her father Man-at-Arms are transported to Earth circa 1987 by a magical device that is also a synthesizer. Here they meet Courteney Cox’s Julie, and all together must figure out how to get back to their homeworld of Eternia. Following? Great, because Skeletor dispatches his second-in-command Evil-Lyn to track them down, and she enlists the help of four distinct henchmen to chase the gang to Earth and do battle in abandoned warehouses and empty city streets. Can’t you just imagine the toy potential with all those proper nouns floating around?
Despite ostensibly being a He-Man movie, he is only one of a handful of characters that the movie follows. In a move that you could charitably call “Altmanesque” a great chunk of the second act involves Julie quitting her job and trying to end things with her musically talented puppy dog boyfriend before moving across the country. This means that, blissfully, Dolph Lundgren is not asked to do any heavy lifting here.Have you ever wanted to see a He-Man movie with a scene entirely set in a novelty BBQ restaurant where the waiters dress like cowgirls and carry toy guns? If so, run – don’t walk – to Tubi dot com and check this one out!
More than Dolph Lundgren’s He-Man, the movie belongs to Frank Langella’s Skeletor. A preening, evil-for-evils sake performance that doesn’t so much chew up the scenery as he fries it up and slathers it in sauce. It is unfortunate, then, that this film begins the long legacy of having an extremely good Skeletor performance by a guy who loves to sexually harass women.
Masters of the Universe is the platonic ideal of a Tubi movie. The barrier to entry is non-existent; at worst, you’ve spent an hour and 45 minutes watching Big Guys hit each other with swords in a High School Gym. At best? A pretty passable science fantasy adventure with lasers, a synthesizer that opens dimensional portals, and Skeletor. American cinema is not in such a good place that we can afford to ignore movies with Skeletor.
