Written by Jonathan Wojcik
REVIEWING THE EVIL HORDE!
Stop EVERYTHING you're doing and watch this clip immediately:
(DOWNLOAD IF IT DOESN'T WORK)
I was born smack dab in the prime of the "Masters of the Universe" phenomenon...but I was small. So small that I wasn't really "allowed" to watch scary, intense, violent and frightening Big Kid cartoons like this masterpiece. Can you believe even children managed to take He-Man and She-Ra almost dead seriously at the time? That even adults raised a stink about the supposed "violence" and "occult mysticism" of these cartoons?
When I finally saw either of these series as an adult, I was immediately struck by the fact that The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh had scarier, more intense, more violent and frightening moments than anything in Filmation's Masters of the Universe continuity, and subsequently struck by just how much I was sincerely loving each and every wholesome, innocent, ridiculous second of it.
WHO ARE THE HORDE?
By now, memes have taught almost everyone that He-man fights a hilarious skull headed man named Skeletor, but in classic children's cartoon fashion, the stakes never felt all that high. No matter what schemes Skeletor might have cooked up, he was still an exiled loser trying desperately to break into somebody else's castle and failing catastrophically again, and again, and again. Somebody else's skull themed castle, mind you. Skeletor didn't even get the place with his face on it. Skeletor's lair wound up being "Snake Mountain," and we eventually find out that Snake Mountain really belongs to another villain entirely, who didn't even know Skeletor was squatting in his pad. Skeletor is a lovable villain, but in the same cute, sympathetic way as Robbie Rotten or Team Rocket.
He-man's sister, meanwhile, contends with a villain who won before the series ever began. The empire of THE EVIL HORDE already occupies the Planet Etheria when we first encounter She-Ra, who was even stolen as a child and raised as one of the Horde's highest-ranking officers, somehow oblivious to the fact that a bunch of cyborgs and demons screaming at each other in a smoldering black fortress are actually the bad guys.
We even learn soon enough that poor, poor Skeletor himself was a member of the horde before he set out to make it on his own, at one time the top ranking apprentice of...
HORDAK!
The leader of the Horde, or at least its Etheria division, actually raised She-Ra as a father figure for most of her life, and spoke with a friendly Santa Claus voice until she finally betrayed him, and their father/daughter relationship was oddly enough just never acknowledged ever again.
Hordak wasn't a character I initially found as cool or interesting as his ex-apprentice with the skull head and I'm still not entirely sure what his theme is supposed to be, but he grew on me pretty fast. His action figure design (see above) looked more like some sort of ominous, black and grey vampire count, while his bright blue Filmation design and sharply angular face evoked some sort of biomechanical orc, and the cartoon actually gives him the power to shape-shift into machines.
Stupid looking machines.
Here is how that pans out for old Hordak:
(DOWNLOAD IF IT DOESN'T WORK)
God. He may have enslaved most of an entire planet, but when this is the response of the one person ever that Hordak thought might still be his friend, don't you just want to give him a big hug? Or at least bake him a non-cursed pie?
In case you're wondering, it ends up being She-Ra who finally cries, though not necessarily on purpose. She's simply brought to tears by, in her own words, the thought of "a life wasted" so severely. OUCH.
IMP
It's surprising that even Imp didn't so much as sniffle at the prospect of Hordak's impending doom, because Imp and Hordak are basically the only two villains who consistently get along with each other. In fact, Hordak downright LOVES this nasty little goblin, scolding anyone else who's mean to his "precious imp" and allowing him to get away with much, much worse than any of his other minions.
This is really quite the departure from other animated villains I grew up with, who were often totally devoid of affection for anything just so we never forgot who the Bad Side was. Imp's not especially cool or creative as a concept, but he's pretty fun as a character...and he can shape-shift!
With our big boss and his sidekick covered, we're going to go over the rest of the Horde's most prominent or interesting members in an order that probably only makes sense to myself.
GRIZZLOR
I have to say that, sadly, Grizzlor is my least favorite Horde member. There isn't much to him besides a very hairy, very strong monster man with fangs. He's still cool, sure, his action figure had REALLY long shaggy fur that made him look even cooler, but I remember nothing about his personality other than that he was supposed to be the "dumb" one of the core villain team, and that doesn't mean much when almost every single member of that team is either dumb as a brick or dumb as a post. Take your pick.
CATRA
She-Ra was originally created as a "girl's" counterpart to He-Man, and her original wave of toys had exclusively female villains, with Catra here as the original main villain! Able to transform herself into a panther-like creature, Catra is otherwise just what you might expect from a mean, evil cat-themed lady. She's got claws, she's allegedly very cunning (like I said...bricks and posts) and she speaks in a hilariously goofy "cat like" pattern.
ENTRAPTA
Another of the original villainesses, there's unfortunately not much to Entrapta besides the fact that she can manipulate her hair like a bunch of tentacles. I guess that's why they never use her too much; she's just Sedusa from the Power Puff Girls but with worse fashion sense and what we can assume is probably a worse love life, given what she has to work with.
RATTLOR
Remember when we said that Skeletor's snake-themed lair originally belonged to a different villain? That villain was "King Hiss" of the "Snake Men," and not only did Skeletor take over his crib while he was gone (presumed dead, or something) but a few of his reptilian minions wound up under Hordak's command. That's about as interesting as Rattlor gets, sadly; he's really just a big brute with a snake head.
TUNG LASHOR
This one's a little more fun than his snakier pal, a minion of King Hiss who seems curiously more lizard or even amphibian-based than serpentine. His action figure, which debuted first, was even a straight-up frog man, a lot more striking than his dopier, more lizardlike animated counterpart. As you might have guessed, his tongue is his main weapon, seemingly capable of stretching as far he needs for use as a rope, a whip or a tentacle.
One thing that makes Lashor and Rattlor more endearing is the fact that they almost always hung out together, presumably due to their past working for King Hiss, but maybe they were just dating.
DYLAMUG
This evil robot is a fan favorite, partially because he was clearly designed to be a pretty interesting, face-changing action figure but was never originally produced, and appeared only twice in the cartoon show. In his first appearance, he was a cold and menacing robot. In his second, he was another bumbling oaf with a goofball personality. Obviously, I prefer the giant robot face man as a grade-A dingus.
MODULOK
Considered one of the "original" Horde members, Modulok appears in the show as the Horde's resident mad scientist and inventor, seen here creating what he once intended to be a second head for himself with the brain of one of He-Man's closest friends, by far one of the most messed up evil villain plans I've probably ever heard. Sadly, there was nothing more to his biology in the show than having four legs, despite the fact that his character was conceived and marketed as...this:
LEECH
Monsters and villains themed around our favorite blood-sucking annelids have always been tough to come by, so I have pretty mixed feelings about Leech here, because he really doesn't look leech-like, or even like the usual cartoon impression of a leech. His original figure and artwork put more emphasis on his mouth as a circular, toothy sucker, but the cartoon gave him huge, uncanny human lips and basically made him into some kind of fanged toad guy with sucker hands. I like the "abstraction" of this design for a leech guy, kind of symbolically leech-esque, but I'd have still preferred at least a rounder mouth for this "energy sucking" parasite.
MOSQUITOR
Speaking of bloodsucking creatures...here's a video I just took that tells you all you need to know about MOSQUITOR. Isn't that action feature amazing?! Sadly, the Horde's second known parasitic member never got an animated appearance, perhaps because they thought he would be too grotesque, or perhaps because the action figure came out a little later.
What's really interesting about him is how his entire "energy draining" apparatus appears to be cybernetic, as though he was made into a mosquito creature, and in fact, his 2002 "staction figure" (a line of non-poseable figures in response to an odd copyright ruling) had a stunted, organic fly-man head secretly molded underneath the helmet!
SCORPIA
The third of She-Ra's earliest lady nemeses, Scorpia has tiny little pincer hands, an actual scorpion tail, positively supreme eye makeup and one of the absolute best characterizations in this entire show, like, OH my god. If you've never actually watched She-Ra, I want you to tell me in the comments what kind of voice and personality you would expected from this character before you saw the following with your own two eyes:
(DOWNLOAD IF IT DOESN'T WORK)
OCTAVIA
BUT WAIT! Did you think that was at once one of the most lovable and hilarious things you could have possibly seen and heard from what should have been a relatively terrifying, cybernetic scorpion-woman?
Well, here's Octavia, Horde naval officer and muscular Amazonian squid-woman to show you some real voice acting. Voice acting I don't think even Scorpia could have prepared you for.
(DOWNLOAD IF IT DOESN'T WORK)
God. GOD. The first time I saw Octavia, I knew I loved her. One can't simply not love a green woman with tentacles and Juggalo eyeshadow. Then I heard her speak, with the voice of the purest of all God's angels.
SHADOW WEAVER
I'm not gonna lie. This would easily be among my picks for the most attractive animated characters of all time.
...And Shadow Weaver's not bad either!!!
But no, really, it's not even because of the supermodel figure or anything. Everybody has a chiseled bod in this show. Even Mosquitor is an Adonis. It means nothing. What makes Shadow Weaver the show's #1 babe is as follows:
• Rare example of the black void face on a sorceress.
• Slitted, glowing demon eyes in said void face.
• Green witch skin with long fingernails.
• Slurred, hissing voice like they'd give to a cartoon snake.
• True face canonically too gruesome to show the viewer.
• Has her own evil lair called Horror Hall.
• Horror Hall looks like this.
• Tended to by servants she transformed into rat creatures.
• SERIOUSLY LISTEN TO THAT VOICE:
(DOWNLOAD IF IT DOESN'T WORK)
Shadow Weaver is only second in command to Hordak, but she far exceeds him in threat level and dramatic presence. It is NEVER any incompetency or ignorance on Shadow Weaver's part that ruins her plans. She never displays weakness. She's never used for comic relief. She has no soft side, no whimsical quirk, no one-liners. If all this sounds like any typical villain in a more serious work, that's exactly it: in a series where EVERYONE else, even our main bad guy, is campy and lighthearted at least some of the time, Shadow Weaver is pure undiluted malice and comes across as downright terrifying.
BONUS MENTION: THE SLIME PIT
While not a "character" in its own right - and never properly featured in the series, either - the Evil Horde Slime Pit was once one of the best-selling and most famous action figure playsets of all time, and set off a wave of slime-based toys that reached their peak with dozens of entries by The Real Ghostbusters and a few from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I gotta say, though...this thing is fetishistic as hell. A giant skeleton hand holds you in place by the crotch while you get drenched in ooze, and the whole point of it is that it transforms you into a mindless "slime creature" slave.
MANTISAUR
So every major character in this franchise had a designated mount. He-Man had Battle Cat, Skeletor had Panthor, She-Ra had Swift Wind, and Hordak, apparently, had a giant, cybernetic preying mantis! It appeared only momentarily in the cartoon show with a very different, all-green design and crab claws for whatever reason, so the toy and a few comic appearances were all we ever got of the "real" Mantisaur. It looks more like it should be ridden on by Mosquitor of course, and I'm really surprised that little kid me managed to miss the existence of a great big toy mantis at the time, which I know I would have INSISTED on having even if I didn't watch the show. Mantises actually felt kind of obscure back then. I never saw them in cartoons!
MANTENNA
And now, not just my favorite character between He-Man and She-Ra, but one of my favorite character designs of anything, ever, regardless of which interpretation we're even talking about. I know I showed you the Filmation cartoon versions of all these dorkos first, but for Mantenna, it's important to get an impression of the original action figure design (front) that the world encountered first, well before the television premiere of She-Ra. Referred to as "The Evil Spy With Pop-Out Eyes," Mantenna was supposedly armed with such heightened audio-visual perception that he literally functioned like a living "antenna," and those pop-out eyes could emit a wide variety of dangerous energy beams.
Between these indispensable powers and his maniacal, truly alien appearance, most kids assumed he'd be a pretty threatening figure in the world of She-Ra, and grew up to literally make pretty threatening figures of him in 2001 (right) and 2013 (left).
Filmation, however, would have none of it.
Blessed with exactly the same voice used for Orko, animated Mantenna was a sensitive, cowardly doofus whose biggest role in the series was to be repeatedly dumped down a hole, and we've even got another instance of a toothy, sucker-like mouth translated by this studio into disturbingly luscious lips.
There were many who were, and still are, disappointed that the Evil Spy With Pop-Out Eyes basically turned out to be a comic-relief sidekick even by the standards of a cartoon where almost everybody matches that description, but I said I loved Mantenna in every incarnation, and I meant it. Do I love him with terrifying, bloodshot eyeballs and a lamprey maw? Of course! Do I love him as a little weiner with a face more like a shaved bushbaby? Absolutely!
MORE HALLOWEEN FEATURES:
