An old enemy of Skullmaster awakes in the depths of the underworld, and Max finally faces his destiny and returns to Skull Mountain to destroy Skullmaster once and for all. I love the little images that come with the title card of each episode, they have a really cool style to them that makes it look like they're taken straight from the pages of the old-fashioned macabre comic books, and this one features a picture of Max releasing Skullmaster like an evil genie from..well, Pandora's Box! And that is precisely what for all intents and purposes, happens at the end of this excellent two-part story. It begins pretty much where "The Maxnificent Seven" left off, with Skullmaster still seething at the loss of his precious Crystal of Souls, and as an added unexpected consequence of which, the evil Lava Lord, the original ruler of the Hades-like fiery underworld and master of the lava beasts, whom Skullmaster battled and imprisoned millennia ago in a tomb of solid rock with the power of the Crystal, is released and is hellbent on seeking his revenge. Now Lava Lord's character design is quite awesome and powerful-looking, but the voice as provided by Frank Welker, is to me just really dumb and one-dimensional sounding. It's so scratchy, every time he laughs it sounds like he's gagging or something. He's not nearly as interesting a villain as Skullmaster, but he's still kind of different because he uses technology rather than magic to battle his enemies, and the animation of his prized creation, the lava-powered juggernaut Magus, is brilliant and every moment of it is extremely well done. And I'd like to mention that the battle robot is based upon the action figure play-set "Mighty Max Blasts Magus", which I think they brought to life amazingly well and used in a fantastic and thrilling way for the show. Back to the plot, the wise old fowl Virgil has the not-so bright idea of launching a surprise attack on what he foolishly believes will be a weakened Skullmaster, and ends up getting himself captured. If you ask me, they'd have been way better off just leaving his evil pasty ass down there to rot and duke it out with the vengeful Lava Lord for a while, but they didn't know about him so I guess that explains itself, whatever.. My favourite parts of this episode are the absorbing scenes where Skullmaster matches wits with a captive Virgil. It soon gets old the way he constantly refers to Virgil as "Old friend." It's scholarly and gothically logical Tony Jay against Tim Curry's deliciously diabolical wrath, and it must have been such a thrill to watch these two voice masters, each an expert of his chosen craft, just play off each other in the recording studio. This show really was character and dialogue driven, and it was voiced by some of the greatest. Love this one, and part two's even better. See ya soon!
Makynfabr replied
378 weeks ago