Review of The Dark Crystal (1982) by Rachel S — 14 Apr 2010

The Dark Crystal. The film that turned most of my generation into meth addicts. Hey, the Dark Crystal DOES turn white and pure at the end of the film, saving the world. So, when my generation became teenagers and saw this white crystal shit, we thought we would find ULTIMATE POWER! But, no they just found death.

But mostly, performing sexual favors on old men for drug money. The Dark Crystal is another great '80s film from the awesome imagination of Jim Hensen. There is not one human character in the whole film, every actor is a puppet.

(You know why Jim Hensen is still so awesome to this day, even though he's dead? His son Brian keeps him stuffed in the attic and uses him as a puppet to put on neat little shows. All while Brian is dressed in women's clothing, with his penis tucked between his legs, of course.

) The main character are Gelfings - amazing little elf people. There's Jen (the chosen one) who soon meets Kira, who reveals her wings later to the shock of Jen, jealous because he doesn't have them.

Turns out only female Gelfings have wings. I'm sure the next film would've been about him seriously considering a sex change. Anyways, their race was all slaughtered by the Skeksis, who used the Dark Crystal to drain them of their essence so they could snort that shit up and get high.

The Skeksis are the evil fucks of the film. They're giant lizard-like vulture people who are deviously out to destroy the world. They're big and bulky looking because of their many layers of clothing.

There's ten of them, with one getting to be Emperor (which they battle eachother for such rank.) Meanwhile, there's a race of good beings, The Mystics, who raised Jen after his family was apparently raped to death by crab people.

The Mystics are old, wise and fucking cool looking (can't compare them to anything so you get the idea.) It seems the Mystics are somehow connected to the Skeksis, when one of them gets hurt their counterpart gets the wound as well.

That's fucking totally awesome! Itâ??s just like the twin brothers Tomax and Xamot in the old G.I. Joe cartoon! CRIMSON GUARD! This is pretty cool, especially when one of the Skeksis falls into a pit of lava and you see the Mystic burst into charred, fiery nothingness.

Anyways, Kira communicates with all of the cute little animals, making her kind of like Avatar woman. The best thing she asks for help from are these awesome long-legged, 12-foot-tall Land Striders, which they can ride.

These things run fucking fast, and I wonder how they did this effect. They are puppets, but the scene looks so seamlessly well done it's shocking how people used to be able to do these kinds of things back then without lazy-ass CGI.

Christ, they look fucking real, you know? Anyways, Jen is sent by his Master to acquire the crystal shard, which must be put back into the Dark Crystal before the conjunction of the three suns strikes it's light upon it and brings about a new age of darkness or something.

He takes him up on the quest because that actually doesn't sound very fun. He meets Aurua, this one-eyed crazy scientist bitch who constantly seems like she's on the rag. Inside her mountaintop dome, she has an amazing 3-D, fully-functioning and rotating mechanical model of their universe's planets, moon, and suns.

The thing is massive, and just one of the cool images I remember from the film as a kid (and Land Striders!) And then the Skeksis send these giant black crab people after them, and they're scary as fuck! Big, black-shelled monsters with 12 legs and giant claws, fucking KRABATHORS, man! Anything else? Nah, that's it I guess.

Just let me note that the film is imaginative, the puppetry amazingly well-done, a bit dark for children but cute as well. I haven't since this since I was 6-years-old, so it was cool to revisit. And no, I wouldn't fuck a Gelfing.

But you can, and I'll just sit back and film it.