Barbarians, swords, sorcery and sandals - Part 1

I needed to watch some barbarian and sword & sorcery movies for a project I'm working on, so I bought 11 more or less classics from the genre. That being the 80's Conan copies and of course the Conan movies themselves. Here's my thoughts on the first six of them in no particular order. As a warning for the fans of this genre, I must say I'm not a big fan of them so don't hold it against me if I fail to see the greatness of some of these movies.













Red Sonja (1985)

Brigitte Nielsen is Red Sonja, a master sword swinger who seeks revenge on the evil queen who killed her family. The queen has also stolen a magical orb with destructive powers and Red Sonja tries to retrieve it. Joining her in this adventure is Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor, a warrior on a quest to destroy the orb. They are also joined by an annoying kid prince and his servant, serving as the comic sidekicks I guess. This movie follows very predictable paths, bit of sword swinging and adventure with of course a bit of romance in there as well. The acting is quite bad most of the time, but then again the cast is there for their looks not because of their acting talents. I guess the real reason this movie was made was that Brigitte Nielsen looked hot in that tight warrior outfit. Highlights of this movie was Ennio Morricone's music, but unfortunately not much else. At parts the movie gets so bad it becomes funny, but then it just becomes bad again, so can't really recommend it as a campy fun movie either. Anyway it had it's moments and kept me somewhat entertained despite it's flaws.
40%

The Blade Master (1984)

From a barbarian movie by Joe D'Amato you'd expect quite a bit of sexploitation. Much to my surprise there was basically none, if you don't count the nice outfit of Mila. Well anyway, this is a bad movie and unfortunately it's not the kind which turns into great comedy for being so bad, so I won't waste much time for it. Apparently this is a sequel for Ator the Fighting Eagle (1982), though absolutely nothing is this one made me want to see what the first, or the third for that matter, are about. Ator (Miles O'Keeffe) is this some sort of a great warrior who is living at the far edge of the world which seems to be about a day away from everywhere. One day Mila (Lisa Foster) brings bad news about his mentor who is captured by a bad guy named Zor (David Brandon). So off they go with their mute Asian sidekick, funnily named Thong (Kiro Wehara), to rescue the mentor. Bad effects, horrible acting and a nonsense plot follows. A few scenes cracked me up in laughter, like the snake fight and the hang gliding scene with those hand grenades for example, but mostly the only excitement this movie offered was watching the incredibly short skirt of Mila. So it's not really anything more than just a bad movie. I'm just wondering why did someone make this in the first place? Why did someone finance this horrible excuse of a movie? Why did someone release it as a DVD? And most of all why did I buy it? Well luckily it was cheap, but I'd still rather have my 3.95 back and most importantly my one and a half hours back.
10%

Ironmaster (1983)

Umberto Lenzi is more known from his violent crime movies and cannibal films, but like most Italian exploitation directors, he too wanted to cash in with the success of Conan the Barbarian (1982) and this is what he made. It's basically not a barbarian movie as it's a story about cave men who discover iron, but the themes are quite barbarian. Vood (George Eastman) kills his tribe leader and the hero of the movie, Ela (Sam Pasco), drives him out of the tribe. But Vood discovers an iron blade and comes back to claim the leadership of the tribe by force. Then Ela is cast out while Vood decides to take rule over all of the neighboring tribes. Ela then joins forces with a peace loving tribe of hippies and they of course have a bloody battle. That's the story in a nut shell, but there's plenty more than that. There's lions, men in monkey costumes, disease ridden people who look like zombies and of course the horribly bad acting. The fights are clumsy as usual but this time, this one being an Umberto Lenzi movie, there's some gore effects to spice things up a bit. The music was quite horrible and annoyingly repetitive. For most parts this was just a bad movie, but there were quite a few absolutely brilliant moments that were so horribly bad they were great comedy. So I must say I was surprisingly entertained and in the end this was quite an ok campy trash movie.
48%

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

This is the first feature length movie of Albert Pyun, the self proclaimed master of cheap b-class action movies. True to his filmography and the genre in question this movie is not good either. The story in this one goes something like this, an evil guy called Cromwell (Richard Lynch) resurrects an evil sorcerer just to kill him moments later. Then Cromwell goes on to kill the king and become the king himself. The son and the daughter of the king escape and years later try to take over the kingdom from Cromwell. There's some twists I guess I shouldn't mention in order to not spoil it, even though I wouldn't really recommend watching this movie in the first place. It clearly shows that Pyun is trying to go for the feel of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) with the hero, the music, the dialog and the action, but of course missing the mark by a mile. Though I must say the hero, played by Lee Horsley, was by far the best thus far out of these movies, well at least he tries to bring some comedy into it if nothing else. There are some scenes which were absolutely brilliant in how idiotic they were. For example a scene where an evil jailer gets his head slowly pushed into a grinding wheel which is powered by his own legs. Still makes me laugh to think about it, I mean if your head is about to get grinded out maybe it would be wise to stop pedalling the damn thing. Anyway that's just one example, there are more of those, but unfortunately they are few and far between. So in the end this is not really worth watching, unless you want to waste your time on garbage for a few hilarious scenes.
36%

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Thus far this is the only movie I might consider leaving to my collection out of this bunch. Don't get me wrong, this is a bad movie, but it's so bad it's simply hilarious. The story is basically a copy of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961), this time set on planet Ura. Two groups are fighting over the control of a village's only water well, in comes a strange warrior called Kain (David Carradine) who has other plans for the village. You can guess the rest. Anyway, the fighting was bad, the tits were plenty, the acting horrible, the creatures were oddly cute, the effects hilarious, the dialog ridiculous and did I mention the tits already? The movie is horribly edited, it looked like someone did some cuts to the final print of the movie as even the music cuts from time to time and not only between scenes, but within a scene as well. Though that only helped the goofy feeling of the movie. I must say I wasn't bored and I did get some nice laughs, even though I kind of doubt I'll be watching this one again any time soon. Maybe I'll save this one for some hangover morning in the future.
65%

Can't find a linkable trailer for this one, so here's the opening credits, for what ever that's worth...

Deathstalker (1983)

Deathstalker (Rick Hill) is a sword swinging warrior whose goals in life are to have sex with as many ladies as possible and to obtain the three powers of creation. He gets one power, a sword, from an old witch, the other two are held by an evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) who just so happens to arrange a big tournament where the winner gets them. So Deathstalker heads to the tournament and is joined by Kaira (Lana Clarkson) a warrior woman in probably the most ridiculous and sexist outfits I've ever seen. That's about all there is to the story, some sword swinging and plenty of tits to follow. I must say the entertainment values were quite high in this movie, especially during the first half, but unfortunately the second half focuses too much on the story and the sword fights, which of course are not much to go with. Apart from the outfit of Kaira there were quite a few hilariously weird moments, for example a funny sex scene which might give homophobes some very bad nightmares. All in all this was an ok bad movie, had some good laughs and it kept me entertained throughout. Though in the end there are so many better good bad movies out there that this one will just vanish in the vast averageness.
50%

That's it for the first part, the second part with the Conan movies and a few other 80's exploitation flicks, will follow eventually when I get the time and mood to watch them. Might end up watching the Conan remake as well, but don't hold your breath for it.

Not your everyday zombies

Nightmare City (1980)

Well zombies might not be the technically right term for the infected people in this movie, but they are undead, thrive for human blood and can only be killed by a shot to the head. But that's not all, not even close. They can also run, use weapons like knifes and machine guns, fly airplanes, set up traps, cut phone and power lines and fight rather tactical warfare. But only if it's convinient for the "plot", otherwise they are just reduced to those slow moving rather dumb kinds. So they most certainly are not your everyday zombies and this movie most certainly is not one to be taken too seriously. Even though the movie focuses on the raging zombies, there is a bit of a story behind it. A reporter (Hugo Stiglitz) goes to an airport to interview a scientist about a recent radioactive leak on a nuclear power plant. However the plane carrying the scientist is full of these infected people who are a bit of a mix between zombies and vampires because of their thirst for blood, lets just call them "zombires". These zombires plan to take over the city and the reporter tries to get his wife into safety. Another thing which probably comes from their vampire side is the fact that they seem to haunt some of the people, instead of just eating them like normal zombies. But I guess that self moving lawnmover looked so spooky that they had to fit it in somehow. So yes the plot is thin and I guess so was the make-up budget as the zombie masks are mostly rather bad. The acting wasn't any better, but then again it gave me most of my laughs so I guess it was fine for this movie. The score by Stelvio Cipriani was quite far from his best, but it wasn't that bad, I guess he didn't want to waste too much time on this movie. Which I guess the director Umberto Lenzi was thinking as well as he focuses the movie on the killing and tries to get the stupid plot over as quickly as possible. I have to mention the ending, which was something ingenious in stupidity, if that even makes any sense. It was just brilliant in a corny way. Anyway, this movie is trash, but it's quite funny, so I bet I will be revisiting it again and who knows maybe eventually it will grow on me. But for now it's among the average of it's kind, the bad movies which turn into good movies because they are so funny.
55%

Never trust the strangers you steal from

Oasis of Fear (1971)

Dick and Ingrid are two poor hippies who support themselves by selling nude pictures of themselves. Once they get money they spend it away as fast as they can and start all over again. One day they end up to a big mansion, or oasis as they call it, and end up stealing some gas from a car in the garage. The lady of the mansion, Barbara, catches them stealing the gas but decides to invite them in and offer them something to eat and drink. But things don't seem somehow right and soon the couple find out that Barbara had some quite different plans for them. Even though this movie is usually categorized as a giallo, I wouldn't say that. It's more of a Hitchcokian thriller with some small references to giallos. The cast was quite good, all three main characters did a good job and that was a great thing as this movie is very character driven. The pacing is a bit off and the movie has some tedious moments, mostly because of the somewhat shallow script. I liked the story but maybe the big twist should have come a bit earlier to get the real tension going sooner. I mean, I liked the fact that the characters are given time to develop, but still there were some quite boring moments before the real tension starts to build up. The cinematography was quite good and the music wasn't bad either, so nothing to complain on those parts. I actually liked the fact that this wasn't a typical giallo and that it was a character driven thriller, but it could have been done a bit better.
66%

Almost humane movie

Almost Human (1974)

A nihilistic story about the life of a scumbag criminal and a kidnapping of a wealthy man's daughter. This is one of the better eurocrime movies from Italy and has one of the best lead actor performances I've seen in it's kind. Tomas Milian is superb as the slimy small time crook named Giulio who basicly despises the human life. It all starts with a bank job gone wrong where Giulio's limited ability to solve problems leads to him killing a police officer. The gang he did the job with beats him up for it and things don't look good for Giulio. But then he finds two small time crooks who he himself can boss around and they set on a plan to kidnap the daughter of a wealthy businessman. The detective investigating the case, played by Henry Silva with basicly one expression, ends up facing a long trail of bodies in his search of the missing girl. Umberto Lenzi tells his story in a very straight forward manner keeping the focus on the criminal and not giving many moments of relief. This works brilliantly as Tomas Milian's performance is almost psychotic. Add to that Ennio Morricone's soundtrack and a great crime classic is born. It's not the best of it's kind, but surely in the top of the eurocrime movies.
89%