Sword of the Valiant - The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1984)

Green Knight

This movie is best enjoyed with small children or drunks. The premise: A slightly homo-erotic-tailored Sean Connery as the green knight (think armored Zardoz) decides to challenge the nearby king's court to a game of wits and bravery. The challenge is answered by Sir Gawain, Miles O'Keeffe, whose ridiculous 80's hair stretches credulity more than the unicorns and witches. If you're prepared to laugh and enjoy the great overplayed soundtrack this film has to offer, like so many funnier repeats of the 1981 Excalibur, this is a movie for you. June 3, 2008

Green goes the Knight

I first saw this production about twenty years ago, more or less. I like the nod it gives to the celto/pagan elements of the tale. The armour, while not probably what Arthur and his men may have worn, assuming they existed, and they may have, it is still in keeping with the traditional vision of what a knight looked like. There is an interesting mix of romantic knighthood vs the bully-thug with the sword. The behavior was, perhaps somewhere in the middle. The sound effects and special effects are a little dated, but, well, it is about twenty years old. The Green Knight's axe looks sharp and deadly, but the effect is ruined by the jetcraft sounding noise which whirrs as Connery swings it about. I recommend this for any language arts instructor teaching the Arthuriad or mythology.
Gilbert Sarabia March 28, 2008

Silly movie. Bad DVD

This is a very silly but somewhat enjoyable fantasy movie, starring Miles O'Keeffe (in a very bad wig) as Sir Gawain. Muscle man O'Keeffe is helped by a strong supporting cast, including Sean Connery (in a smaller part than you'd expect from a title character, and an even worse wig), Lila Kedrova, Peter Cushing and John Rhys-Davies. The movie has a paper thin plot and bad special effects. Don't expect a quality movie, but seen as campy entertainment, it almost works.

The DVD is very bad. From a major studio like MGM, I would have expected better. The movie is meant to be shown with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, but this release (except for the opening credits) is badly pan and scanned, and there's very few scenes that don't suffer greatly from it. The action scenes are especially bad but also some dialogue scenes look awful, with half of each characters head cut out. I found this cheap and I would not advice anyone to pay the full price for such a bad DVD. But if you really want to see the movie, try to see if you can find a cheap copy. February 6, 2008

Sword of the Valiant- everything satisfactory

DVD, the Sword of the Valiant arrived well before Christmas and when expected. DVD arrived in great condition and everything was satisfactory. Thank you for great service! January 16, 2008

Camp

This is so camp its funny. This is a great story and I got the movie for my class. The movie is so awful its funny and the kids did have a great time commenting all through it. Everyone had a great laugh. Not really what I wanted but they enjoyed it. December 8, 2007

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