Nostalgia Kinky

Arrow has unleashed stunning 4K and Blu-ray limited editions of John Boorman’s legendary Excalibur (1981). This limited edition is packed with hours of archival and new extras, along with two versions of the film that look the best it has since its original theatrical run. While it appears the 4K has already sold out, the stunning Blu-ray collection can still be ordered from Arrow or here in the States from MVD.

John Boorman is a director I admired immensely. After all, this is the same man who made some of the great films I discovered in my youth, like Point Blank and Deliverance. Later, I fell in love with less-valued later works like the incredible Beyond Rangoon, starring a never-better Patricia Arquette. Boorman is a great artist and remarkable filmmaker. He seems like a nice man as well. All that said, Boorman’s filmography as a whole has never held much interest for me, and his passion project Excalibur was something that I watched so far off in the distance of my youth that revisiting it was basically like watching it for the first time.

On a purely technical level, Excalibur is one of the most impressive-looking films of the seventies. Covered in mist and mystery, Excalibur remains a mesmerizing piece of art to behold. Boorman, cinematographer Alex Thomson, art director Tim Hutchinson, and production designer Anthony Pratt join forces to create one of the most visually evocative, haunting, and stimulating works the cinema world has ever seen.

It is hard to imagine anyone complaining about Excalibur as a pure viewing experience. Dreamlike and seductive, Excalibur’s visual appeal is simply unmatched, and I cannot imagine how intoxicating it would be to see this on the big screen, as seeing it on my large 4K set was mind-blowing enough. All that said, Excalibur still has major problems as a film, stemming from Boorman and Rospo Pallenberg’s often positively baffling script and across-the-board miscasting that takes away from its visual appeal throughout.

Excalibur is kind of a mess. It is a beautiful mess, but even dedicated fans of this film who have watched it numerous times still seem to question aspects of its script. That is fair, and it is a problem. Excalibur is just downright confusing at times, and it is unnecessarily confusing. An audience member shouldn’t have to be an expert on the Arthurian legend to follow a basic plot. It is though Boorman and Pallenberg forgot this, or they simply got too lost in the fantasy world they were so in love with.

Despite its numerous “wait, what?” moments throughout, Excalibur’s biggest issue, to my eyes at least, can be found in much of the film’s casting. I’ve seen enough nonsensical but visually stunning films to overlook some narrative flaws, but a miscast film is much harder for me to completely accept. Excalibur has an absolutely jaw-dropping set of stars and future stars, but it doesn’t fix the major players who simply don’t work for me as a viewer.

Excalibur is packed with astonishing actors, including legendary Nicol Williamson as Merlin and yet Williamson is to me one of the film’s biggest problems. His Merlin never captivates me, and it is that lack of character captivation in general that keeps me at a distance from Excalibur. The same can be said Nigel Terry as Arthur, Nicholas Clay as Lancelot and Cherie Lunghi as Guinevere, leaving us with a perfectly cast film of supporting players but a disastrous set of talented but put in the wrong place leads.

There are a couple of bright spots found in the leading Excalibur cast. A young Helen Mirren is a menacingly sexual Morgan, and Paul Geoffrey walks away with the whole film as a very moving Perceval. Geoffrey is so good that it is easy to imagine him being a better pick for literally any of the miscast leads, save for Merlin. While Excalibur certainly would work better for me with a different cast, it still wouldn’t fix the film’s script. Honestly, a screenwriter with literally no allegiance to the Arthurian legend could have been used in a narratively vital way.

I have other small gripes with Excalibur, ranging from its classical-based soundtrack to its length, but ultimately I still admire this film very much despite my major reservations. It is hard to deny a film that looks this extraordinary, and it gallops more than stumbles, making Excalibur one of the great flawed English-language films of the seventies.

As for Boorman’s direction? Well, his passion is obvious, as is his attention to detail. The issues I have with Excalibur ultimately have nothing to do with Boorman on set or behind the camera. There is a nostalgic feeling about his direction throughout the film’s 140 minute run-time, as though Boorman is able to vividly recall dreams of a collective past. Excalibur is a beautifully made work by a remarkable filmmaker.

Speaking of a remakable filmmaker, there is another presence on the set of Excalibur that needs to be noted as the film marks some of the earliest work from one of my personal favorite filmmakers, Neil Jordan. Want, I guess, a pretty major hot-take? I think Neil Jordan’s long-unseen debut The Making of Excalibur: Myth Into Movie is better than the John Boorman film it covers. In fact, I’d argue that the most important thing about Excalibur in hindsight is that it accidentally kick-started the career of one of the most interesting filmmakers of my lifetime.

At the dawn of the eighties, Jordan considered himself a much more pen-and-paper artist with a passion for cinema rather than being an actual part of what he considered a distant film world. Well, his Myth Into Movie shows creative passion is much more important than professional experience. This is, simply put, one of the finest making-of documentaries I have ever seen.

Shot, I believe, on 16mm, entirely on the set of Boorman’s mystical and mystifying work, Jordan’s penetrating look at the film and its maker is a truly wondrous thing to behold. Along with all of the remarkable footage Jordan captured of the massive sets built for Boorman’s film, it is his interviews with the director that really make this fifty-minute film something utterly unique and very special.

Needless to say, of the hours of extras found on Arrow’s new edition of Boorman’s at times baffling feature, this Neil Jordan film is far and away my favorite thing about the collection. Hell, I’d buy an HD release of just this on its own.

Despite not being a supposed ‘movie guy’, Neil Jordan became one of the most vital English-language filmmakers within just a few years after this incredible little-seen debut. This amazing short led to one of the most interesting filmographies of my lifetime and allowed one of my favorite filmmakers his first experience with a camera. The Making of Excalibur: Myth into Movie is an exceptional piece of filmmaking about an ultimately flawed but important work.

I might have some issues with Excalibur but have zero complaints when it comes to this incredibly well-curated collection Arrow has released. I’m not going to go through every extra as, on top of the Jordan film, we have hours of new interviews, archival featurettes, new and old commentary tracks, video essays, and a mountain of promotional material. This limited set also includes a thick book and that shortened PG-rated television version, which neither takes away or adds to the theatrical cut’s issues. After reading and watching everything on this set (put aside a day) here are a few highlights:

To Be a Knight and Follow a King, a newly filmed interview with director John Boorman and actor Charley Boorman is extremely moving and, along with the Jordan film, the highlight of the set.

The interview with Jordan himself is so valuable. It is amazing to hear the future director of something as visually stunning as Byzantium talk about how he never thought he’d make films. This is a fantastic thirty-minute discussion with a master.

Loved the new commentary tracks from Boorman scholars
David Kittredge and Brian Hoyle. These are both loaded with incredibly detailed information about a film and director both of these guys are clearly passionate about.

I found the printed essay by A Dream to Some, A Nightmare To Others by Jez Winship a terrific and nostalgia-filled read, which I really responded to, although perhaps Winship’s introduction says something deep about one reason I don’t feel the same way about Excalibur as others:

“Excalibur is one of those films which has
been lodged in some level of my consciousness ever since
I first saw it as a young teenager on its initial release in
1981. I still find myself quoting lines from it at semi
regular intervals, mostly gnomic utterances from Nicol
Williamson’s thrillingly eccentric turn as Merlin, the
register dramatically shifting mid-sentence: “a dream to
some, a NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS,” “there’s always something cleverer
than yourself,” “it’s a lonely way, the way of the necromancer.”

You see, I just don’t have any of that experience or interest. Neither fantasy nor myths are something that I fell in love with as a youth, and even though I probably saw Excalibur around the same time as Winshep, probably close to the same age, the film just didn’t speak to me in the same way. I recognize that might elevate some of the film’s problems for me the same way lovers of this try to minimize them.

I also greatly enjoyed the delightfully named folklorist Icy Sedgwick’s essay and found this substantial book’s design very pleasing as a whole. The same goes for Arrow’s entirely limited set. A lot of love obviously went into this release. Reservations for the film aside, this is quite a magnificent job by Arrow in every way.

-Jeremy Richey, August 2026-