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%

The Bronx Warriors Trilogy

When movies like The Warriors (1979), Mad Max (1979) and Escape from New York (1981) hit gold at the box office, Italy was soon to answer the call for “post apocalyptic” movies. Enzo G. Castellari was the one who brought us this series here for what ever that's worth.

The Bronx Warriors (1982)

Well this movie is bad, but it's so bad it's actually not bad as it's so funny. The plot is pretty much nonsense, the idea is that in the near future, which was 1990, the Bronx has been turned into a free zone for the criminals where the gangs can roam free and the police rather stay out of there. One day a woman (Stefania Girolami) escapes from some corporate conspiracy into Bronx and ends up stirring things into an all out war between the different gangs. The main gang of this movie is The Riders, who are supposed to be this motorcycle gang and the ruling authority down there, but most of them look like your average office workers dressed in denim and leather. Apparently some of them were played by the real Hell's Angels and indeed some of the lesser characters look quite believable, but anyone with a few lines dialogue is most certainly not. Their leader is Trash (Mark Gregory). He's supposed to be this fearless leader, but he looks more like a gay kid who forgot the butt plug from last night still in his ass which makes him prance around like a fairy. And it didn't really help that he's also crying like a little girl. The other “gangs” are just as hilarious. There's the “gentlemen” gang, dressed in fancy clothing and who seem to be surprisingly wealthy for a slum like this. There's the roller skating hockey gang, which just leaves you wondering how do they get around this ruined city with their small skates. There's a tap dancing gang wearing flashy costumes and makeup who of course fight with only dance maneuvers. Then there's some pale faced zombie gang with with nothing but wooden planks as weapons. Not to forget the all leather wearing police forces in motorcycle helmets wielding flamethrowers while riding on horses. So yes, it's crazy. It's cheaply made which shows in many places, but then again that only adds to the camp values of it all. The acting is from crap to horrible and the fighting isn't much better. Luckily there were some nice gore effects to keep the entertainment values up. Even though I wasn't bored watching this as a campy fun ride, I must say it still wasn't a good movie. So as a proper post apocalyptic action movie it's just garbage and as a fun campy trash flick it's just ok.

52%

Escape from the Bronx (1983)

As the first part seemed to do a decent business on the box office, Castellari didn't waste time with the sequel and actually made two of them a year after the original. Even though the other one wasn't a direct sequel, it's still in the same category. Anyway, this time it's complete extermination as the corporate folk decide to clean up the Bronx, by killing everyone of course. Trash is unfortunately back, though this time he doesn't seem as feminine as in the first one, but it's not exactly a great improvement. His parents get killed so he decides to take revenge by kidnapping the president of the corporation tearing down the Bronx, in hopes of holding him hostage for the freedom of the Bronx. He's joined by a pre-school explosives expert and his dad. The story is ridiculous to say the least, but again that's not the main thing, it's the campy exploitative fun of it all. I must say the action was well in hand in this one, the body count must be close to 200 in this movie. So that combined with the horrible acting and the ridiculous plot ensure that the entertainment values are high with this one. The music was horribly 80's disco-like electronic beats which was rather annoying most of the time. Even though this was worse than the original I still enjoyed this more. Go figure...

63%

The New Barbarians (1983)

This is actually the only part which is post apocalyptic as in the previous two the “apocalypse” was merely a decay in the Bronx, but this one it's an actual nuclear winter aftermath. And to be honest it doesn't have much to do with the other two, except the general idea of ripping off these post apocalyptic box office hits. But as it's in The BronxWarriors Trilogy and done by Castellari, that's why it's here as well. The story in this one is like from any spaghetti western, the setting are just futuristic instead of the old west. A group of bandits, called Templars, are terrorizing the people who are trying to build another civilization after the nuclear apocalypse. Scorpion (Giancarlo Prete) is a lone wanderer with a righteous mind who gets mixed up in the mess and well you basically can guess the rest. But it's the little things that made me have a constant “what the fuck?” expression on my face. The costumes are ridiculous with their over the top shoulder toppings and especially the transparent armors were more than weird. The Templars, who are all men for obvious reasons, blame literature for the apocalypse and seemingly just want to kill everyone still alive. They also seem to be an openly gay society as raping a woman is not their ball park, but raping a man is a group event, good for them I guess. The props are just silly, the cars look like modified golf carts and the laser rifles are standard M-16's shooting fireballs. So it's clear the budget was small, luckily most of it went to the explosions and gore effects so the entertainment values are good. I must say I was quite disappointed in the soundtrack by Claudio Simonetti, usually his name is a guarantee for something good, but this time it was a miss. This movie has tons of unintentionally funny moments which made me laugh out loud. Especially the not so subtle hint at the end where the butt raped hero seemingly rejects a woman who fancies him but instead takes the hand of a young boy left me quite troubled. I really hope I misunderstood the meaning. I'd say this is the best out of the three, at least it's the funniest, though that doesn't mean it's a great movie no matter how you see it.

66%

Like always with these ripoffs, there's plenty of other unofficial sequels as well, like Endgame - Bronx lotta finale (1983), Bronx Executioner (1989) and others as well, but I'll leave those to another time, after all there's only so much I can take of bad movies at once.

Childhood traumas can be released by breaking a mirror

 










 The Boogeyman (1980)

Ulli Lommel is like the poor man's Uwe Boll, both of them do horrible movies but where Boll occasionally manages to get some big names in his projects Lommel seemingly uses people he finds from the street. This one here is one of his better movies and seeing how bad this one was you get the idea what the rest of them are. As a young girl Lacey sees her brother murder the seemingly violent boyfriend of their mother. Years later the "ghost" of that boyfriend comes back to seek revenge. The idea is that as the murder was witnessed through a mirror the soul of the victim got trapped inside it and years later Lacey breaks the mirror and the evil soul is set free, or something like that. I honestly didn't even care as the movie had already alienated me far enough to not give a shit about the plot. But that's part of the beauty of this movie, it really is so bad it starts being good. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time at a horror movie which at least seemingly tries to be serious. Pretty much every time someone gets killed it's funny in one way or another. Simply hilariously horrible. The effects are bad, the acting is horrible, the story is insane and the music is annoyingly loud. And yet it was quite entertaining. I didn't like the letterboxing on the DVD print, but I must say some of the shots in this one looked surprisingly good. Also need to give some props for the attempt to build suspense rather than just going for the gore shocks. So there was some effort in there as well, but too bad it's wasted with all the other nonsense. As a horror movie it's bad, as a trashy fun flick it was quite ok.
65%

The critter from the shitter

Ratman (1988)

Well this was a bad movie, but at parts it's so bad it's good. A scientist manages to create a creature that is a mix of a rat combined with a monkey, and so Ratman is born. While the scientist dreams of the Nobel prize for his efforts, the Ratman stalks around the Carribean town killing young and beautiful women. A woman travels to the island as the police think her sister is dead and she meets a writer on the way to the morgue. Well the writer decides to join her to the morgue to see the body (ye, go figure..) and it turns out the body is not her sister. Soon another body pops out and again the woman is asked to the morgue, with the writer of course, and again it's not her sister. Guess the police just call her to the morgue any time some woman ends up dead or something. Anyway the two start to investigate what's going on and soon they find out where her sister is and what the Ratman is all about. So the story is highly idiotic, but it's actually so crazy it's quite fun. The acting is horrible, so bad infact that the world's smallest actor, Nelson de la Rosa, playing the Ratman with a bit of fake hair and pointy teeth is the best of the lot. Luckily there is some nudity to keep the interest up and especially one shower scene is quite brilliant with it's sound effects. Despite this being some times a trashy fun ride, it still has it's weak moments where absolutely nothing happens and it tends to get quite boring. Fans of trahsy bad movies will get their share of fun, but the rest better skip this one.
48%

Not so mean and utterly boring mother

Mean Mother (1974)

Was looking into some blacksploitation movies and stumbled into this. As I couldn't find much info about it I decided to take the chance and ordered the DVD as it was relatively cheap. Turned out to be a bad idea. I must say this is the worst blacksploitation movie I've ever seen, most likely the worst exploitation film of any kind for that matter. It's so bad that it's almost funny, but not quite as it still just stays on the bad side. It's utterly boring, the "acting" is horrible, it's badly made and even the music sucked. There are a few scenes that made me smile, like the white men with a bit of brown face paint playing Vietnamese soldiers in a typical western countryside, trying to pass as the Vietnam War. Despite those couple of hilarious bits and one very nice set of boobs, I really can't recommend this for anyone. Not for blacksploitation fans, not for trash fans and certainly not for anyone who has even a half of a brain cell in their head.
3%

Horror in Psychovision!

Bloody Pit of Horror (1965)

The movie starts with a medieval scene of a guy called the Crimson Executioner being locked into a torture cabin and sealed in there forever. Jump ahead to present day 1965 and a group of trendy people in search of a castle for their photo shoot. They find a castle that looks empty but soon realise that there lives a man in isolation from the world. The man who lives in the castle just with his muscular bodyguards in tight sailor shirts, is not happy to see the visitors. But just as he has told them to leave he takes an interest to one of the women and tells them they can stay. And on we go to the dungeons where there are all sorts of wacky torture appliances which at first are in the liking of the visitors and their shoot. But then comes out the Crimson Executioner dressed in tights, hood and a superhero eye piece to make their lives miserable. One by one the visitors start to get their share of him spiced up with swinging soundtrack. The executioner seems quite obsessed about his body and he lets us know that every time possible. "Mankind is made up of inferior creatures, spiritually and physically deformed, who would have corrupted the harmony of my perfect body" while oiling his body is just one of the brilliant lines he's giving out. There are some absolutely brilliant scenes that you just have to see to believe them. The one involving a woman tied into a spider web while the spider and the rescue both racing to her is something indescribable in brilliance. And the part where the Executioner is running between his victims in various torture appliances giving out lines that are the mind work of a ture genius has to be one of the best I've seen. Haven't laughed this hard for a while. Everything in this movie sucks so bad that you just have to love it. A true camp classic and I would love to give it a 100 percent as it is but the start is so utterly boring before we get to the real juicy parts.
86%

Did the hell just freeze over?

Postal (2007)

Uwe Boll, the infamous worst director in the world, has turned a pile of shit into a gem. Holy crap this movie was just awesome. I don't know where to start, there's so much greatness in this one. The humor was just brilliant, when it actually worked it was fun of course, but when it didn't work it was so bad it was funny as hell. It's overly violent and everyone get their share of the carnage, mostly women and children thou. That's the point of this movie, things go postal. It has no morale at all and it makes fun of all of the "wrong" things. But then again as everyone gets their share it's actually quite equal in the end. The "actors" can't really act, but you just don't care about that. It's badly made, thou some of the effects are quite good, but that just adds the camp value to it. The first scene with terrorists pondering on how many virgins they get when they die on a suicide mission is just brilliant. One of the best openings I've seen. I don't want to give away too much details, but there's tons really brilliant scenes in it. For example it has the best ending I've seen in ages. Just beautiful. I dare to call it an instant classic. Don't take it too seriously.
96%

So lets look at some of the masterpieces this guy has done before. Haven't seen many of them as they're usually not really enjoyable to watch. I'm not going to spend a lot of time writing much about them as they really don't deserve it. But maybe I have to check out more of them as there might be another gem in there.



BloodRayne II: Deliverance (2007)

Can't write a complete review as I stopped watching after 40 minutes. I'm going to give it ten percent as there might be something awesome in the end that I missed. But I doubt anyone will get that far.
10%



BloodRayne (2005)

I just feel sorry for some of the quite good actors he has somehow managed to get into this. It's supposed to be full of action, fantasy and horror. The action you get from shifting your position restlesly as the movie bores you to death. The fantasy stayed somewhere in mr. Boll's head. And the horror is probably you counting the minutes you still have to endure it. Still I'm glad I saw this, it makes the usually bad movies feel a bit better.
5%



Alone in the Dark (2005)

This was just an insult. The game was quite brilliant with an awesome atmosphere. This movie, well there could be a place for it in film schools as an example of how to not make a movie. Horrible crap.
0%



House of the Dead (2003)

90 minutes of my life I'm never getting back. It did raise some emotions thou, mostly hate towards the makers of this crap, the theatre for actually showing it and my friend who dragged me to see it.
0%