Connie's Warwick Davis Fanpage and Leprechaun Center

Prince Valiant

Prince Valiant
Released 1997
Directed by Anthony Hickox
Starring Stephen Moyer, Katherine Heigl, Thomas Kretschmann

Prince Valiant is loosely based on the old Hal Foster comic strip. In this movie, King Arthur's sword Excalibur is stolen, and a page named Valiant sets out to get it back. He succeeds, of course, and along the way finds true love and discovers that he's really a prince. He also meets a short, swashbuckling new friend. This movie was released theatrically in Germany under the name Prinz Eisenherz, and also was released in a couple of other European countries (Portugal and Greece, I think). It went direct to video in the U.S. in 1998.

This movie has one little flaw: it's really, really bad. The storyline and the acting are flat and lifeless. The staging is so poor in the fights and other action that you frequently can't tell what's happening. And when you can see what's going on, it's sometimes so ludicrous that you have to sneer or laugh. The movie seems to have been made with an eye to distribution in very conservative countries. The romance is ultra-chaste, and the fights are bloodless with a tendency to not show successful swordthrusts.

The one bright spot in this mess is the performance of Warwick Davis, in a part that was written especially for him. His character's name is often misspelled on the Internet as "Petchet." The correct spelling is "Pechet," and it has a French pronunciation (pa-SHAY). Pechet is a bold and daring adventurer, except in his first scene where he's timid and oppressed so Prince Valiant can rescue him and become his friend. The movie is not deeply concerned with logic.

As fans of the Leprechaun series know, Warwick Davis is very skilled at turning a really bad movie into a cult classic. He could have done it with this movie, too, but they didn't give him enough screen time. With his dry humor and nonchalant heroics, Pechet is the only fun character in the whole movie and it's a shame they didn't do more with him. But he doesn't appear until the movie is half over, and isn't given a whole lot to do after he finally shows up.

The makers of this movie wanted a PG-13 rating for the U.S. market, and they gave Warwick the job of earning it. He does this by uttering a naughty word at a strangely chosen, but easily censored moment. Since the rest of the dialogue is squeaky clean, this comes as quite a surprise to the viewer ("Did he just say sh#t??!!? I don't believe it - run the tape back!").

Since this movie takes place in King Arthur's time, it has a medieval setting. Willow also had a medieval-looking setting. Apparently the makers of the movie didn't want Warwick to look at all like Willow in this film, and they succeeded very, very well. They dressed him in an eyepatch, a handlebar mustache and an oversized hat, and his clothing is more appropriate for a Three Musketeers movie than for King Arthur.

This seems to be Warwick's first movie in which he gets to play a simple, straightforward human being. His character does not seem to belong to a separate race of little people (as in Willow), and he certainly doesn't belong to a race of giants (as in Gulliver's Travels). Of course, with all the magic and monsters around, he's not exactly performing in the real world.

Reviews are hard to come by and most are unfavorable. There's a 1998 Cinefantastique article here that barely mentions Warwick, but it does provide an upbeat description of the movie and has pictures of some of the other stars.