MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological* Some sources claim that KNIGHTS was meant to be writer-director Albert Pyun's follow-up to one of his more money-making works, the 1989 CYBORG. That might be one reason why KNIGHTS starts out without even explaining what catastrophe reduced all of Earth into a desert wasteland occupied by small human enclaves. The original reason was supposed to have been a plague, while cyborgs were invented later. An early segment claims that the first cyborgs in the KNIGHTS-world were invented for military use, but they didn't have anything to do with the apocalypse. It's not clear how the dominant form of cyborg becomes that of vampires, remorselessly searching out scattered humans to feed on. Somehow that seems like a counter-intuitive trait to be programmed by even the darkest of Black Ops.
The cyborgs are led by Job (Lance Henriksen). Presumably the cyborgs don't reproduce, so they enlist rogue humans to swell their ranks and conquer all the desert-dwellers. This might have provided fertile ground for a subplot about humans betraying other humans, but the reality is that the rogue humans are just there to provide more sparring-partners for the story's hero. This is Nea (Kathy Long), who escapes a cyborg-raid that wipes out her entire tribe. Just as other cyborgs led by Simon (Scott Paulin) overtake Nea, she's rescued by good cyborg Gabriel (Kris Kristofferson). Like the young heroes of many westerns, Nea attaches herself to the more experienced fighter and spends years training under him, until she becomes a lean, mean kickboxing-machine.
Regrettably, it takes Pyun roughly half the movie's running-time before Nea gets to come to the defense of other human tribes and kick major cyborg butt. Nea makes a strong but simplistic heroine and somewhat disproves the point I made in my CYBORG review, that the main attraction of this type of film is the testosterone factor. Long isn't a great actress, but she might have had more to work with had Pyun built up her relationship with Gabriel. But he keeps the good cyborg very simple as well. He's been programmed by his creator to defend the embattled humans, but for some reason he knows nothing about his creator or the creator's motives. Strangely, during Simon's encounter with Gabriel, Simon shows awareness that the good 'borg is named for the Christian angel-- though no one wonders why the head bad 'borg was named for a Biblical character who suffers travails at the will of God. And despite some very good fight-scenes for Nea in the last half-hour, she doesn't get to square off against the Big Bad at the climax. There are a couple of other recognizable performers in KNIGHTS, such as Gary Daniels (another kickboxer-turned-actor) and Vincent Klyn (who played the main villain in CYBORG), but action is pretty much all KNIGHTS has to offer-- though it does rate as one of a very few "apocaflicks" to focus on a female protagonist.
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