A blog I'd never heard of before today has a two-part series (one and two) on 1980s Sword & Sorcery movie posters. The artists involved are sometimes good, sometimes bad, as are the movies.
I have seen many of these, partly because I love sword and sorcery as a literary genre and always hope to find a movie that isn't terrible to go with the stories that are often great; but also because I grew up watching Joe Bobb Briggs Drive-In Theater, and developed a taste for quite bad movies of that sort.
After the jump, brief reviews of the ones I have seen.
Excalibur is not a drive-in style movie at all, but a real Hollywood production. I understand the armor was originally designed for a Lord of the Rings movie that never actually happened, so it was repurposed for the film. (The sword that is the model of Excalibur was made for the movie, and is currently in the possession of King Arthur Pendragon, the well-known motorcycle club leader cum druid). This movie is very much worth your time, especially for the portrayal of Merlin by Nicol Williamson.
Dragonslayer is a Disney movie, with very high production values and a remarkable animatronic dragon. It also has a great wizard, and a plot with a few good twists. It's late in the period in which damosels were sometimes in distress, and is already thinking about them adopting strategies to take control of their fate: sometimes to dodge doom, and sometimes to embrace it.
Conan the Barbarian has been covered more than adequately in this space.
The Beastmaster is kind of a neat film in spite of its flaws. I definitely would recommend it if you like the genre and haven't seen it. The handling of the mental link between the hero and the various beasts is well done.
Fire and Ice is highly recommended. Frank Frazetta did the poster, which you can see at the link, but also much of the writing. It is a classic of the genre.
Deathstalker is solidly in the drive-in movie class, but highly enjoyable in spite of (or because of) that fact. It is the first film on the list to be sexually explicit; the sequels are even moreso. If you don't mind that, and don't take the films too seriously, it can be a fun evening for a "Mystery Science Theater" kind of evening. Boris Valleo, who with Frazetta did many of the classic Conan-style illustrations, did the movie poster. Deathstalker II and Deathstalker III are also on the list; Deathstalker IV is on the second list.
Red Sonja is really pretty good. Like Conan, she is a Robert E. Howard creation, although the chainmail-bikini comic book character that was apparently much more famous is not Howard's fault. It may be the only movie featuring Arnold, certainly from the era, in which he is not the lead. He plays supporting actor very well, and in fact is more personable in this than he often was in his early films.
Ator, the Fighting Eagle I have not seen, but I did see the movie variously known as The Blade Master and The Cave Dwellers, by the latter of which name it really was a Mystery Science Theater 3000 movie. That movie is terrible, but definitely watch it anyway in the MST3K version. I laughed until I couldn't breathe at parts of it, once until I nearly passed out.
Sword of the Valiant is surprisingly bad for a film featuring Sean Connery.
Krull is not a great movie at all, but when it was first out I badly wanted to see it and didn't get to go for some reason. It was so bad that it didn't even make it to video release for a long time, at least if it did no Blockbusters or similar places ever bothered to own a copy, so it was decades before I actually got to see it. Sadly, it did not live up to my youthful hopes.
The Warrior and the Sorceress is a David Carradine flick that blatantly steals the plot, to the beat, from A Fistful of Dollars. Instead of guns they have bad swords, and the Spaghetti Western acting is even worse in the derivative film. Watch the Eastwood classic instead.
Barbarian Queen is not, alas, about an equal to Conan in the age of Hyboria. It's a forgettable film that I don't remember enjoying a great deal. [UPDATE: I looked this one up because I couldn't remember much about it, and now I think I have it confused with another B-movie that was about Roman-era 'barbarians' fighting against the Empire. I don't think I've seen this one at all.]
Sorceress! Now this is a movie of distinction. Specifically, the distinction is that it is without question the worst movie I have ever seen. First of all, there's no sorceress. The flying lion on the poster? Also not present. What is present are two Playboy playmates pretending to be twins raised so completely removed from contact with men that they lack any conception of sex or reproductive function; a satyr, who definitely does understand both of those things; a horned-helmet wearing I'm-not-sure-if-he's-a-Dwarf-or-a-Viking; and a completely absurd plot. It's worth seeing if you wanted to view the limit case for how bad a movie can really be.
8 comments:
Beastmaster is a good movie IF you don't compare it to the Andre Norton novel by the same title. The novel goes in some different directions from the movie, and a lot of the complaints about the movie were from fans of the novel.
LittleRed1
sword and sorcery as a literary genre
Heh. Good one.
Eric Hines
I'm seeing some similar elements, poster to poster
Good one.
If the genre went no further than Howard and Leiber, it would be worthy.
I'm seeing some similar elements, poster to poster
That is because it’s a genre. :)
Red Sonja started as a character in an R. E. Howard story, "The Shadow of the Vulture," which is not fantasy at all. It's a historical adventure about the Siege of Vienna in 1529. The hero was not Conan, but a drunken old soldier whose name I've forgotten. The comic books moved Sonja into Conan's universe.
I wonder if the whole dual wielding sword (metal) and sorcery (elemental magic) came from the Khem/Alchemy/Egyptian mystery school of the athame + the altar ritual using elemental essences.
This is related to orgone energy, in which metal disperses biological life energy while rock, crystal, or biological materials attract orgone energy. The athame is used to "cut" the life threads that is woven by the leylines, and the hand (biological) is used to attract and concentrate the power. The athame was not a wand per say, in that it was not wood but a metal dagger, used not for physical conflict but to create different spiritual zones.
For those interested in modern spiritual and ritual magic (vs the modern illusion magics of Copperfield), look up Crowley and Madam Blavatsky's Theosophical Society.
Btw, Castalia house is the independent publishing house created by Italian (former American) based VoxDay, of the SJW book fame and one of the original founding leaders of the Alt Right movement (which is an anti Left movement inherently composed of several different ideological factions welded together by fear of the Leftist alliance and now Deep State).
VoxDay is an interesting character in and of himself. He wrote that I was an ignoramus for writing that his followers were Democrats now turned pro Trum or pro Alt Right, so I looked up his archives and found a completely different kind of emotional energy in his post about Rush Limbaugh, of all person's, drug addictions. The tone and energy in that post was much softer, and truer to his spiritual origin. Now he has adopted the Leftist/Alinsky model of behavior and that energy is far more offensive in nature. But back in the day, this pro Sarah Palin, pro Rush/Christian forgiveness/softness, was definitely why his supportes back then weren't Demoncrats... and he did not like me bringing that memory up most likely cause he had forgotten or rationalized it away. He could not reconcile his past American conservatism with his new anti Left movement that gathered many former Demoncrats, with the attendant soul crushing energy allegiance.
His Vedic chart has successfully allowed him to do the publishing house, cause he gets stuff done when he is laser focused on it. This was partially why he incarnated here to begin with, but I doubt his spiritual regression was part of the plan. In that field, at least, he has failed his spiritual pre plans for life on Earth.
It will be interesting to see where he goes and where his work takes him, in the 1000 year phase.
A blog I'd never heard of before today has a two-part series
Heh. Come on Grim, I know you have more intel sources than that. Perhaps being too military focused, creates gap in your coverage, but as an intel analyst for my faction, it is useful to gather ALL the details of various previous events. Not just the surface details.
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