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This was a murdered movie, cut to pieces by its own studio and all but abandoned. It has been brought back to life in a magnificent DVD edition that restores almost everything that was hacked out of it and brings it much closer to director Ridley Scott's original vision. This is still not quite the movie he wanted, but it is so far above and beyond any previous edition of the film it scarcely deserves to play under the same name.

Scott described Legend as "not a story of the past, or the future, or even a story of now." He wanted to make the same kind of leap as Star Wars had, into the collective imagination of the audience, and create a film using elements he found there. It opens in a landscape that looks like the illustrations in a storybook come to life, with bears licking honey out of beehives and birds darting through the trees. But all is not well: deep in his underground lair, the Lord Darkness (Tim Curry) simmers with rage. As long as two unicorns still live, his power is curtailed, and so he sends his goblins to find the creature's horn and bring it back.

Against the forces of darkness are two heroes: the fresh-faced Princess Lili (Mia Sara, in her first role), and the "wild child" Jack (Tom Cruise, forelocks a-dangling). As a promise to his love, Jack takes Lili to see the unicorns, and winds up being used as the bait for a trap to take the monster's horn. When this happens, catastrophe overtakes the world: everything is plunged into perpetual winter (a la Narnia), and Lili and Jack are separated in the wilderness.