Excalibur | 
| Director: John Boorman
Actors: Nigel Terry, Helen Mirren, Nicholas Clay, Cherie Lunghi, Paul Geoffrey
Studio: Warner Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $12.98
Buy Used: $1.80
You Save: $11.18 (86%)
New (57) Used (79) from $1.80
Rating:  323 reviews
Sales Rank: 376
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dvd, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
DVD Layers: 2
DVD Sides: 1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 140 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.7 x 0.6
MPN: D22018D
ISBN: 6305558167
UPC: 085392201822
EAN: 9786305558163
ASIN: 6305558167
Theatrical Release Date: April 10, 1981
Release Date: September 21, 1999
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Director John Boorman's passionate adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory's LE MORTE D'ARTHUR stars Nigel Terry as the faithful King Arthur. Necromancer Merlin (Nicol Williamson) offers the magic sword Excalibur to the warlike Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne) in exchange for a promise that he'll make peace with his enemy, the duke of Cornwall (Corin Redgrave). He agrees but breaks his word after catching sight of Cornwall's wife, Igraine (Katrine Boorman). With the magician's help he makes love to the woman in the guise of her husband. She bears a child, Arthur, who is taken by Merlin as payment for his assistance and left in the care of Ector (Clive Swift). Years pass, and the boy, now a humble squire, pulls Excalibur from the stone in which Uther had sunk it--a task no other could accomplish. With Merlin's counsel, he marries the stunning Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi), finds a champion in Sir Lancelot (Nicholas Clay), subdues the skirmishing knights, and builds the Round Table to unite them. Yet his half-sister, Morgana (Helen Mirren), lurks in the shadows, preparing to poison her brother's reign. Perhaps the best film made in this genre, EXCALIBUR benefits from an extraordinary cast, including appearances by Byrne, Patrick Stewart, and Liam Neeson early in their celluloid careers. Counterpointing ethereally filtered sex scenes against scenes of graphic blood-and-guts swordplay, Boorman's sumptuous production galvanizes the familiar mythology, as he charts the transition from an age of magic to one of reason.
Amazon.com essential video
This lush retelling of the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table is a dark and engrossing tale. Director John Boorman (Deliverance) masterfully handles the tale of the mythical sword Excalibur, and its passing from the wizard Merlin to the future king of England. Arthur pulls the famed sword from a stone and is destined to be crowned king. As the king embarks on a passionate love affair with Guenevere, an illegitimate son, and Merlin's designs on power, threaten Arthur's reign. The film is visually stunning and unflinching in its scenes of combat and black magic. Featuring an impressive supporting cast, including early work from the likes of Liam Neeson and Gabriel Byrne, Excalibur is an adaptation of the legend both faithful and bold. --Robert Lane
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| Customer Reviews: Read 318 more reviews...
 Best King Arthur Movie of All Time July 2, 2009
Kenneth Burritt (New Hartford, NY)
When this movie came out, I went eight times. Every time it comes out in a new format, I get it. I will keep watching this beautiful story for the rest of my life. This telling of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table and their quest for the Holy Grail speaks to a primal part of your soul. Flawless acting, impeccable screenplay and stunning cinematography make up one of the best movies ever made.
sensational May 11, 2009
Terence Marriott (melbourne australia)
Everything about this film is sensational- lighting, pacing, dialogue, mood, music, and the script just carries the actors along. Wonderful stuff!
Excalibur May 3, 2009
Political Junkie (Carlisle, PA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Excalibur
Absolutely the best movie to date on the legend of Arthur. It is aptly adapted from Le Morte d'Arthur by Mallory. The cast is superb, the sets beyond belief, the story is captivating. I guarantee that you will be extremely pleased for making this purchase. Enjoy this one!!!!
DVD April 12, 2009
Linda Macintyre (Marlboro, MA USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The delivery was quick and we had to replace our VHS version and we love the DVD.
 After twenty-plus years, I finally got to see it, and... what a letdown. March 30, 2009
Robert P. Beveridge (Cleveland, OH)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Excalibur (John Boorman, 1981)
I've been wanting to see Excalibur since the first days I had HBO, back when it was still in its first run on pay TV. I was still a little squid back then, however, and my parents forbade me to see it; it's since taken almost twenty-five years for me to actually get round to seeing it. And I must say that, given the level of talent in the cast and a director of the stature of John Boorman, I didn't expect the thing to be quite so awful. But, then again, John Boorman, in the twenty years between Deliverance and The General, with the arguable exception of Hope and Glory, directed movies ranging from harmless fluff to gormless crap, and as far as the cast, well, Tinto Brass managed to harness one even more impressive than this for the [edited for Amazon consumption] that was Caligula. Which makes me, in retrospect, somewhat less surprised at the jaw-dropping carnage that Boorman and co-screenwriter Rospo Pallenberg (who also collaborated with Boorman on The Emerald Forest and Exorcist II) made of Thomas Malory. And I say this as someone who, in school, grew to absolutely loathe Malory. (In all honesty, to date the only Arthurian literature I've read that I can stomach is von Eschenbach's Parzival, though I tried not to let my anti-Arthur bias affect me too much; Boorman had as much to do with this production's mange as Malory ever could.)
The story, of course, involves the rise and fall of King Arthur (Nigel Terry, recently of Troy), from his conception by Uther (Spider's Gabriel Byrne in an early role) to the fall of the Round Table. Of course, even clocking in at one hundred forty minutes, Excalibur is the Cliffs' Notes version of Le Morte d'Arthur, and so you're bound to notice a few stories that fell by the wayside (the most notable omission to my mind was the tale of the Green Knight), but even those they kept were pared to the minimum; Boorman's tale spends half an hour and more on Uther's seduction of Arthur's mother, and then strips out the meat of the Grail quest almost entire? One wonders how long the original directors' cut ran, and if it might be any better.
It's not just the plot that gets short shrift here. Boorman coaxed every last shred of overacting out of everyone in this cast. Not that that's entirely unexpected in British costume drama (Dangerous Liaisons, anyone? A Room with a View?), but it seems somehow far more out of place in Arthurian drama than it does in those silly Victorian drawing-room things. You kind of expect all the heavy sighs and the fainting there. Here it runs to the farcical, especially when done by the knights themselves. There are times when it seemed Monty Python and the Holy Grail had more the right of it than Excalibur (and I had to check to see which one came first the third time I found myself wondering how much Boorman had been informed by Gilliam; Holy Grail, of course, was released six years before this, and yes, there are times when it looks like Boorman is drawing more from Gilliam than Malory).
Still, while it is undoubtedly a mess, it is a very pretty mess, with cinematography by the late Alex Thompson (who did the camerawork on many of Branagh's Shakespeare adaptations) and an early score from Trevor Jones (interestingly, Thompson and Jones would work together again, over a decade later, on another unqualified mess that's become a cult hit--the Sly Stallone vehicle Cliffhanger). While I can't in good conscience recommend it to anyone except medieval-lit students who are too lazy to read Internet summaries of Malory, if you do decide to go ahead and watch it, at the very least you'll be entertained by the scenery. (And by this, no, I do not mean that Helen Mirren gets anywhere near as naked here as she does in Caligula, more's the pity.) **
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