A series of disasters have sent a group of people through a trans-dimensional portal to a fantasy world. They go on a quest to find the inventor of the device so they can go home. There's just one problem: A warlord has decided to pursue our heroes, and he has an unusual affinity for Earth technology!
This film contains examples of:
- Accidental Pervert: While trying to climb up a cliff, Dan's hand ends up in an unfortunate spot, as he supports her up.Carrie: Will you please get your hand off my butt?
- Aerith and Bob: Not done with aliens, but with the human-like inhabitants of the lost universe. Kleel is obviously not any name, but yet the dwarf is named Malachi, which is a name on Earth, so this trope counts.
- Aliens Speaking English: Justified; There's a language in the Lost Universe that sounds identical to English.
- Alternate DVD Commentary: Received a comedic one by the guys at RiffTrax in 2012.
- Attempted Rape: Poor Carrie is dragged off by one of Kleel's henchmen, but luckily Kleel gets wind of it and dispatches the guy since he captured her for his own enjoyment, not that of his men.
- Audience Surrogate: Carrie in the beginning when she interviews the scientist responsible for trans-dimensional or universal machine.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: The film attempts this with Dan and Carrie, but considering he threatens to punch her for accidentally driving him off the road, it rings quite hollow. Dan is an overt jerk the entire movie through, yet they just seem to randomly have sex while in the lost universe with no prompting or even just bonding before it happens. It's readily apparent this relationship was modeled after Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Big Bad: Kleel, a barbarian warlord. He sets his sights on Carrie and is determined to break her spirit and turn her into a Sex Slave. He has also subjected pretty much everyone in the land to his very cruel reign.
- Cute, but Cacophonic: Carrie's shrieking can grate on the nerves rather quickly, despite the fact that the actress is rather pretty.
- Clarke's Third Law: The denizens of the Lost Universe are so low-tech that they think a handgun is dark sorcery.
- Contrived Coincidence: Dan just happens to be driving on the same road as Carrie during the earthquake that accidentally makes her drive him off the road and the only house within walking distance is the same house where she is going and consequently gets them both sent to the lost universe.
- Damsel in Distress: Carrie, nearly immediately after they arrive in the lost universe. She's captured to be turned into a sex slave for Kleel.
- Disposable Woman / Disposable Sex Worker: One of Kleel's sex slaves angers him, so he starves her and ties her to a tree. Dan and the others free her and so she comes along, but then in the climax, Kleel shoots her to death in front of them and they basically don't even react to it. What's worse is they don't attack until after he already shot her, which makes them all look insensitive for not even attempting to save her life and just idly stand by while he murders her.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Downplayed, but Kleel does mention that Carrie's blonde hair is favorable over his sex slaves with brown hair.
- Face–Heel Revolving Door: Malachi. He's a petty thief among other things and only assists Dan so long as he can have his seemingly gold watch. He quickly betrays them when he gets a chance, then rejoins when it falls through and Dan survives the betrayal. However, he is left with nothing when Dan and Carrie stumble onto the spot where they were beamed down and return to Earth or their own dimension/universe.
- Forced into Their Sunday Best: Overlapping with "bathe her and bring her to me," Kleel forces Carrie into an outfit of his liking and attempts to seduce her, but naturally she hates his guts and won't hear a word of it since he kidnapped her.
- I Have You Now, My Pretty: Kleel immediately starts in on this behavior as soon as he drags Carrie back to his kingdom. She resists, so he gets angry and starts starving her to force her into cooperating.
- Jerkass: Dan is pretty much a jackass. An earthquake makes Carrie accidentally run him off the road. He gets out of his truck and starts screaming at her over crashing his truck and and breaking his kendo stick even after she apologizes for it and offers to pay for the damage. He also insults her TV show and tells her "you looked thinner on the box," despite the fact that Kay Lenz couldn't possibly even weigh 100 lbs. in the film. The butt-grabbing scene when they climb also doesn't paint him in a favorable light as there is no way he did that on accident. Then they just randomly have sex and decide they're inseparable once they both accidentally arrive in the lost universe.
- Carrie is only marginally better, as she screams at Dan about as much as Willie screams at Indy in Temple of Doom and her voice is quite shrill.
- Just a Flesh Wound / Major Injury Underreaction: Overlapping with the movie's many plotholes or just outright unexplained things, when they first meet Kleel shoots Dan at point blank range. Dan falls over and Kleel takes Carrie away. Dan then wakes up thirty seconds later with no bullet wound at all. So we have no idea what knocked him out since there is zero wound, unless it's implied that it's a stun gun of some sort.
- Meet Cute: 100% averted. They meet after nearly crashing into each other during an earthquake and he flatout screams in her face and threatens to hit her and implies that she's
somehow fat. Charming. - No Ending: Through sheer dumb luck, Carrie and Dan get back to the exact spot that the scientist's machine brought them to, which sends them back. There is nothing else resolved in the entire film.
- Pet the Dog: It is very apparent what an evil piece of shit Kleel is, but he does bother to make one or two nicer gestures towards Carrie in an attempt to seduce her. It doesn't work at all, naturally, but at least he bothered to try.
- Plucky Comic Relief: Malachi is intended to be this, but he's so annoying and never shuts up so he really just comes across as The Scrappy.
- Protectorate: When she comes through to the new universe alone, Carrie stumbles across a completely silent caveman who is seconds from dying in quicksand. She gives him something to pull himself out and for the rest of the film, he sort of distantly follows her around trying to repay her kindness by protecting her. He's mostly successful, but she does still end up kidnapped and subjected to Kleel's gross intentions for her.
- Running Gag: Mind you, not a funny one, but a gag nonetheless is Dan telling Malachi to shut up. At one point, he gets angry enough to simply put his hand over Malachi's mouth so he can continue a conversation. That's how much Malachi runs his mouth in the film.
- Sex Slave: Kleel takes the main heroine Carrie as his slave.Kevin Murphy: Oppressed lllllladies!
- Speaks Fluent Animal: One member of Dan's party can call horses through a flute song.
- Storming the Castle: Subverted. Dan, Malachi, the elf-like guy, the caveman, and the former sex slave all infiltrate Kleel's castle to rescue Carrie and since the scientist created gun powder, they rig the castle to blow up on their way out. Kleel catches them, but they manage to get away and blow his kingdom up.
- They Called Me Mad!: Hartmann is in a very bad mood at the start of the film due to the rest of the scientific community thinking his interdimensional transport idea is nuts.
- Tonto Talk: The elf-like guy Dan and Malachi stumble across mostly talks this way, as he seems to be a cross between a Lord of the Rings elf and a Native American warrior.
- Unskilled, but Strong: This trope is sort of a Hand Wave for why Dan is able to hold his own in the fights with Kleel's henchmen. He mentions kendo, but we don't know to what extent he has trained, so that kendo mention is meant to explain why he can fight them in the final castle assault.
- Would Hit a Girl: Two examples. The first is Kleel. He's an evil bastard and abuses women all the time. The alarming one is possibly Dan. After the car crash, he threatens to hit Carrie and when she argues with him, he lunges towards her threateningly and she runs back to her car and drives off before finding out if it's an idle threat or not. The problem is it truly was an accident caused by the earthquake, so Dan majorly overreacts offering violence at a woman for something that wasn't within her control. It really makes him look like a jerk and that's in a movie where he already comes across as a Jerkass.
- The X of Y: The title "Prisoners of the Lost Universe".
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Four seconds in our world is a week in the Lost Universe.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Carrie gets the jump on Kleel at one point and points the scientist's version of a handgun at him, insisting she will shoot if he comes closer. Of course she doesn't and he just snatches the gun back, rendering the scene pointless. It's like the movie couldn't even muster up one aversion of the many clichés in its Cliché Storm for once.
