The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

Lean, lanky Lee Horsley (TV's Matt Houston) is hardly the iconic image of a medieval warrior, but in this cheesy Conan the Barbarian knockoff he makes his swaggering, mercenary Talon a genial smart aleck of a barbarian hero. The plot is pure pulp cliché: evil Cromwell (Richard Lynch) raises a demon to conquer a peaceful kingdom, kill the rulers, and imprison the royal heirs, and the son of a murdered patriot returns to take his righteous vengeance with a projectile-loaded, three-bladed sword. First-time director Albert Pyun apprenticed under Akira Kurosawa and brings with him an eye for handsome images and a fluid sense of action that helps overcome B-movie dialogue ("Unlock this door, wench, and leave that to us!"), scenery-chewing performances, and bargain-basement budget. In one fight sequence a guard punches a rock wall--and dents it! Kathleen Beller (the dark-eyed beauty of The Betsy) is the rebel princess who enlists Talon to the cause, Route 66's charming wanderer George Maharis is a conniving traitor under an unflattering mop of greasy hair, and Richard Moll dons a latex monster mask to play the double-crossed demon. It's utterly silly and often awkward, but it does have energy to spare. The sequel promised at the end of the film was never produced and Pyun went on to direct some of the best straight-to-video action films of the 1990s, including Nemesis. --Sean Axmaker Amazon.com

Trashy entertainment!

Yes, it's goofy. I love Richard Lynch. He can play really ugly characters and not need special makeup (kinda like Ron Pearlman). Lee Horsley ... did this son of a gun fall off the earth? In a minor part as one of Cromwell's villanous hordes is Robert Tessier. Best remembered for his cage fight in HARD TIMES (where old Charlie Bronson beat on his pointy-bald head like a drum). If you don't ask for much thsn this film delivers. July 28, 2008

Not good as Beastmaster and Conan! :(

This movie is not exciting and action-packed as Beastmaster and NOTHING interesting as Conan. The storyline is VERY slow, there are many silly dialoges, poor acting, BAD battle choreography, no exciting adventure scenes, no particular monsters, and it has some few cool action scenes.

The reason that I gave this movie 3 stars is because of the FREAKING COOL THREE-BLADED SWORD, the dark settings, bloody killings, production desings, and the last 15 minutes of the final battle that finally became interesting and exciting.

P.S: I don't care if this movie is low budget because Conan and Beastmaster were also low budget, but they were COOL! This one failed. If you are looking for a fantasy movie with a cool conclution then maybe this one is for you, but if you expect to be glued to the screen for 99 minutes then pass on this one.

Adios.
July 15, 2008

Deserves a Re-release!!!

I almost forgot about this gem of a movie because I never see it for DVD purchase in any stores. It was my favorite fantasy film of the 80's. I used to watch it with Clash of the Titans almost everyday. Please re-release this film!!! It is unfair that the only way to own it is to pay $44.99 or higher from sellers who are not all 100 percent trustworthy. Plus it's so so funny!!! August 25, 2007

The Sword and the Sorcerer

This is a fun fantasy - the good guys are smart, witty and handsome and the bad guys are so so evil. The bad guys solicit help from an evil sorcerer to take over a kingdom. Years later a band of mercenaries agree to help the rebellion regain the kingdom. Includes the classic story - bag guy steals girl, good guy(s) save girl and the kingdom....
This film doesn't take itself seriously and there are a lot of funny lines buried throughout the story. A fun movie to to watch when you want to sit back, have a few laughs, cringe at the evil doings and cheer for the good guys. Enjoy an action filled film with beautiful, scantily clad women and hunky men swinging swords. The banquet scene with the crucifixion will make you 'WOW!' August 13, 2007

Uninspired, silly, and needlessly bloody fantasy dreck.

Fantasy movies from the early 1980s, with few exceptions, varied mostly from run of the mill mediocre to painfully bad. Albert Pyun's THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER, a bargain-basement budgeted, uninspired, and messy bloodfest from 1982, falls among the lowest end of the spectrum. Clocking in at a seemingly neverending 100 minutes, it starts out when medieval tyrant King Cromwell (Richard Lynch), on a quest for world domination, resurrects a centuries-old sorcerer, Xusia (Richard Moll, in heavy lizardlike makeup) to conquer the tranquil kingdom of Eh-Dan. Ten years later, Talon (Lee Horseley), a prince who escaped the invasion, leads a band of mercenaries to liberate conquered kingdoms. In the process, he returns to his old home of Eh-Dan, where rightful heir Mikah (Simon MacCordinkale) and his voluptuous sister Alana (Kathleen Beller), are plotting to overthrow Cromwell, who, incidentally, has plans to marry the lass. When Mikah is kidnapped, Alana desperately hires Talon to rescue him; he agrees to do so on the condition that they have a lovemaking session should he succeed. Oh, and incidentally, Xusia (who had been betrayed by Cromwell) is also planning to settle the score with his former ally, spending about a good portion of the last third disguised as a shady court advisor, Mahelli (George Maharis). (This last plot development is handled clumsily and in a groanworthy way, as is much of the movie.)

Taken as a plot concept, THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER sounds fairly uninspired, but it's even worse in its execution. The simplistic plot becomes needlessly convoluted as it bounces all over the place, throwing in lots of unexplained and abrupt developments that come from nowhere--if Cromwell needed Xusia to conquer Eh-Dan, then why does he stab and then throw him over a cliff shortly after smashing a few armies? There are lots of unexplained stupidities, too, particularly in the hero's weapon, which, at the touch of a button, can send one of its *three* blades spearing through an enemy like a projectile; furthermore, at the laughably choreographed final showdown between the villain and the hero, we discover that the sword can opt as an alternate dagger in the event that it is shattered in close combat. That is only one of the many scripting problems contained in this movie.

It's poorly edited, too, particularly the hero's first combat scene with two villains. All the shots in that moment are spliced completely out of order, making it a very choppy and confusing flow. Another particular example of bad editing occurs when a group of rebels makes plans to invade Cromwell's castle, and the next shot shows them all in prison! This is done with no transition or explanation, that it makes it mystifying how they got there.

What ultimately works against THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER overall, however, is the excess of gory violence (one person's face is sliced in half with bloody results, another's heart is ripped out of her chest, and a tongue is cut out) and occasional nudity (the hero swings into a room with topless babes, and in another scene the leading lady is given an oil bath). These two controversial elements can be put to effective use in masterpieces like PAN'S LABYRINTH (lots of horrifying violence, but done in a meaningful way) or, perhaps in CONAN THE BARBARIAN (par for the course with the original pulp novels it was based on). Here, however, both are slapped onto this film for no other apparent reason than just violence and nudity for the mere sake of it. In one particularly distasteful sequence, we see the hero spiked onto a cross, bleeding painfully during the main villain's wedding. Not only did I find this a blasphemous and tasteless echo of Christ's crucifixion, I found it even more ridiculous (and sickening) that Talon would have the gall to yank himself free of the device.

Even without these problems, there's hardly anything to recommend about THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER. The characterizations are mono-dimensional and uninteresting, the acting and the dialogue are terrible (Moll does get some points for being at least scary, even though he has little to do in his surprisingly scanty role, as does MacCordinkale, who does a decent job), and the direction is very amateurish and clumsy. The special effects are also pretty cheesy, particularly the aforementioned sword and especially in a corny transformation scene toward the end of the film where a character literally pulls apart his human skin to reveal a demonic creature. The only thing to come clean out of this dreck is a lively musical score by David Whittaker as well as Moll and MacCordinkale's performances, but otherwise, the movie as a whole is little more than standard junk for undemanding fans of this kind of trashy fantasy.

When it's all over, just before the credits roll, there is a comment made that the hero will have further adventures in an upcoming film called "Tales of the Ancient Empire." Successful as THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER was financially, it's not really all that surprising that audiences were never treated(?) to such a sequel. It never got into production, and probably never will. July 5, 2007

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