"Cult Classic", a phrase that is destined to drive feelings of morbid dread into the very hearts of movie/TV fans world wide. It's a phrase that can mean only one thing, that you are about to view a product that is crap, not just any crap mind, but pure crap, the worst kind. Pure crap that worldwide has succeeded in attaining 2 fans in it's entire run, and thus enables the makers to brag about how they have this 'Cult Classic' on their hands. Lexx: Tales From The Darkzone is one of these cult classics, and judging by the comments of our esteemed category lead (leave you guessing which) it's a show that has has sailed over the heads of most people, a show that is destined to be misunderstood. You are no doubt wondering how I could make such a claim though, and it's very simple really. Lexx must be a misunderstood classic, because Lexx cannot be pure crap, and Lexx can not be pure crap because I am one of those 2 fans!

Now I'll apologize in advance, but because this first film is literally just the set up for the concept of the rest of the series, then I will need to reveal the entire plot if my future reviews on the subject will make any sense. However I will clearly mark where the plot description ends so that you can skip it if you so choose.

Plot
So anyway, Lexx tells that there are 2 different universes that share the same space at the same time. The light universe is a nice and fluffy place (supposedly) where all the good and happy people reside, whereas the Dark Zone is a universe of evil and depravity and generally a place you do not want to visit. However in the Dark Zone there are a few, and I do mean a few, good races including the Brunnen-G, plus there are a few people in the light universe that are not all that nice to know. His divine shadow, the leader of a bunch of creepy weird people who use a lot of bug based technology, has basically taken over the entire light universe. However a prophesy is foretold that his divine shadow, and all of the divine predecessors, will eventually be overthrown by the Brunnen-G, who are now residing in the Light Universe. SO the bug race things launch an all out war against the Brunnen-G, destroying their home world and killing everyone until a single warrior survives. Kai, Last Of The Brunnen-G, has his life semi spared by his divine shadow as he has his soul sucked out and he's turned into an unstoppable, undead assassin.

Of course that all happened thousands of years in the past, and as our story begins his divine shadow is still in power, though he's not technically the divine shadow that killed Kai, but rather his great great great great grandson, who has inherited his families memories, as well as keeps all of the divine predecessors brains in jars so that he can talk with them whenever he gets lonely. Anyway, under the Shadow regime a group of characters are about to find their respective journeys meeting up. There's Stanley Tweedle, a traitor to the enemies of his divine shadow who's required to work as a security guard, class 4, the lowest rank possible, on one of the shadow's space stations. However after committing the crime of refusing access to a strange woman with no access codes, he finds himself being disciplined. He tries to avoid this discipline because he likes both his eyes and his testicles, but when he changes his mind too late he becomes a fugitive that needs to be brought in deader than Michael Jackson's career prospects, so he has to run.

Meanwhile a big, fat, spotty, buck toothed hideous excuse of a woman, named Zev, is being charged with disrespecting her husband, she punched him out when he called her a fat cow that made him want to hurl, and so is punished by having her body and mind transformed into a love slave. After an accident though, a cluster lizard, some nasty man eating lizard, gets into the room during the initial transformation, so now not only is she hotter than Cameron Diaz in a pink bikini, dancing on hot coal in the middle of a Hawaiian summer, but she's also been infused with the DNA of this cluster lizard thing. This added strength enables her to escape her bonds and replace herself with a robot's head before the mental tuning is started, causing this robot head to fall instantly and unquestioningly in love with her. Then she escapes and ends up finding Stanley, before the two of them find themselves being led to the 'special projects area'.

All of this occurred because of the acts of one man, a hero is the resistance named Thodin who has arranged a little bomb to mess up the circuitry of this station. It appears that Thodin has himself a key to The Lexx, The Lexx being his divine shadows special project. A giant biomechanical Dragonfly, and the most powerful weapon in either of the 2 universes. So Thodin escapes using this and then rescues the other prisoners, including a cannibal named Gigorata, and sets off to board The Lexx, which is where he meets Stan and Zev. His divine shadow, being a disbeliever in all things prophesied, decides to send Kai to deal with this, and as soon as Kai shows up the key craps it's pants and flees Thodin's body, eventually finding it's way into Stan. Thodin is killed by Kai, with the last surviving soldier being eaten by a cluster lizard, which leaves Stan, Zev, 790 (The previously mentioned Robot Head now has a name) and Gigorata alone on the Lexx, except that Kai shows up. Yada yada yada, Kai throws Gigorata seemingly to her doom, goes to save the brains in the jars, absorbs the memories of the shadow that killed him, gets his memories back and helps them to escape in The Lexx through a fractal core into the Dark Zone.

Analysis
Now, I'll fully understand if those of you who actually read through my plot description want to go and get themselves an aspirin, because I have literally just rushed through one of the most headache inducing plots ever to open up a series.

Now, despite what I said at the start I am forced to admit that our category lead was more than just a little right in stating that they hated this show. Why? Simple, Lexx is technically more than just a little crap. Visually; the effects work is terrible, as I said you can't see the strings, but that's the most impressive thing about them. Matt paintings are used in 99% of the shots, leading some to claim that the series is more animated than live action, but that's not the point, the point is that these are bad Mat paintings, and when characters are walking about in front of them, they look just plain laughable.

The writing doesn't help though. The writers have been quoted as saying that you shouldn't really think about this show, which translated means "We didn't bother thinking about what we were writing" and while it's not a major problem in this first film, things that happen in it are direct contradictions of some of the major plot points in the later series. Plus when you factor in dialogue where the highlight is "What kind of Robot are you?" "I am a Robot that wants to live in your underpants" you begin to realize why it is that Lexx was never a mainstream success.

However, let's face facts here. Science Fiction 'classic' Star Trek was also a series that featured cheap effects, waay cheaper than the ones in Lexx, and had dialogue most people would die rather than utter, and yet that hasn't prevented that series from being a Cult Classic, and it wont hinder Lexx either.

Lexx as a series benefits from the fact that it's well aware of it's own cheesiness and uses that to it's own advantage in producing one of the most surreal shows ever filmed. The whole thing is just tinted with several shades of weird, especially in the shows general look. Yes the effects are bad, but when you're watching a show that uses bugs in place of technology then who cares how cheesy it looks? Cheesiness is a given at that point. As such the character's of Lexx will get too the ship, not in X-Wings but in giant Biomechanical Moths. The Lexx itself takes the form of a giant wingless dragonfly, or so the producers claim, personally I have never seen a dragonfly look so, well phallic, but anyway, as you would imagine, by the time you have reached a point where a giant Dragonfly spaceship is blowing up entire planets, then you couldn't really care less what the effects look like because it's already the best idea ever devised.

Thankfully Lexx is not the kind of deadly serious surrealist that you would expect from someone like David Lynch. Nor is it an embarrassing attempt at surrealistic along the lines of Freddy Got Fingered, but rather Lexx has a style unique to itself. The look I mentioned earlier is totally unlike anything I've seen anywhere else, with the possible exception of Farscape which also uses Biomechanical technology, but even then the 2 shows couldn't be more different. You see Lexx: I Worship His Shadow is sick, not just sick, but sickly sick. The Shadow's government will punish people by sticking them onto large metallic slabs, pushing them through a courtroom where automated holograms play the roles of judge, jury, executioner and even defense lawyer, before the inevitably found guilty party are smashed into a wall where power saws can be clearly seen moving around in an area shaped like a persons brain, or kidney, or any other vital organ that can be used in a protein bank. While you don't actually see the actual moment of gore, the following scenes where said organs will drop down a shoot and get rapped up in plastic bags, all in lovely gooey detail, leave you imagining directors Paul Donovan and Rainer Matsutani rubbing their palms in sadistic glee as they imagine all of this. Of course this is all sick, as the title of my review suggests, and I would not recommend it to the squeamish, but still it's nowhere near as graphic as something like Itchi The Killer, leaving a lot of the actual violence off screen and spending most of it's gooier effects on recreating the internal organs and brains in jars that are just asking to get a sadistic smushing. It's this fact that your imagination fills you in on the gory details, combined with the general nature of these things that makes them, not shocking, but absolutely, 100%, positively, hilarious.

As far as the cast goes I would have to say that they do pretty well. Brian Downey (Secret Nation) plays Stanley, a character who has no nuances to portray, a weaselly character that will always jump behind the woman rather than risk his own life. Yet Downey somehow manages to make him likeable despite that, underplaying the cowardice and selfishness and overplaying the vulnerabilities and frustrations, creating a character you don't mind rooting for. Eva Habermann (Angel Express) is more than just a pretty face when she plays Zev, actually she's much more, she's also a perfect body but ahem, she is more than that too because she has such a playful charm to her that she makes the aggressive, shallow Zev another character you could root for. Michael McManus has the easiest job as Kai, because his character is dead and as a result displays zero emotion, and an equal amount of personality. McManus nails the mysterious monotone voice, and while he doesn't technically have to do anything other than speak monotone, he looks plain cool while doing it. Finally there's Jeffrey Hirschfield, who provides the voice of 790 and overplays the obsessive compulsive personality to hilarious levels.

The Disk

Extras

The disk starts off with 2 trailers for the series, at least that's what the menu states but I wouldn't really call them trailers. The Sci-fi User's Guide is actually a featurette that was shown between programs on the Sci-fi channel. It sees quotes from the cast and crew but in the end is not informative enough to be interesting, and too informative to be intriguing.

The Kult TV Trailer is the ad for the video release, about 30 seconds long but again is not particularly interesting.

The Documentary subtitles itself 'Extra Stuff' and that's all it is, a little filler designed to make the disk look better. It's interesting to see the original Lexx promo, but other than that it's just 3 people talking about themselves. (He's bound to say something, no Dave that's not the usual case)

That's it, those 3 measly things, and the usual DVD Rom bits that equal a few links and stuff, so it's not the most feature packed disk on the market.

Video
The film looks good for a made for TV fantasy film that opens up a series. There's no grain at all on the print, no dirt and nothing else to distract you. However it's still not as crystal clear as most film DVDs around.

Audio
Like the video, the audio is fine. It has no moments where it loses sound, and there's no noise on the film, yet once again it sounds ever so slightly muffled.

Overall
Lexx: I Worship His Shadow is the perfect opening to the series. Funny, well acted and unashamedly sick. However the disk is, well it's what you'd expect from a DVD to a show such as this. A good package, but nothing amazing.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age