THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER [1982]

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)
Directed by: Albert Pyun
Written by: Albert Pyun, John V. Stuckmeyer, Tom Karnowski
Starring: Kathleen Beller, Lee Horsley, Richard Lynch, Simon MacCorkindale

USA

AVAILABLE ON BLU-RAY [Region A only], DVD and DIGITAL

RUNNING TIME: 99 mins

REVIEWED BY: Dr Lenera

MINOR SPOILERS!

King Titus Cromwell employs the services of ancient sorcerer Xusia to help him take the kingdom of Ehdan. Ehdan is soon nearly conquered, but Cromwell fears that Xusia will turn against him, so he tries to kill him then chases him off a cliff. Ehdan’s King Richard tells his son Talon to avenge his death should it occur, but, despite his efforts, Talon fails to prevent both his father and mother from being killed and evades capture to flee the kingdom. Eleven years later, the still alive Xusia vows to repay Cromwell for his treachery and Talon returns as a seasoned warrior to Ehdan where a rebellion has begun under Prince Mikah, son of King Richard’s closest adviser, who many believe to be the rightful heir to the throne….

The Sword and Sorcery phase of the early 80’s was cool to us folk who were into playing ‘Dungeons And Dragons ‘at the time, though we were also a tad disappointed in that the fantasy side of things seemed diminished; a few years later Willow was much closer to what we were doing, except that many of us had grown out of all this role playing malarky by then. Today, while I’d consider Conan The Barbarian to be a genuinely good film and Excalibur to be a outright masterpiece, the others play more like guilty pleasures; okay, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen The Beastmaster and Hawk The Slayer but I reckon that I’ll be amused more than thrilled today, though of course there’s nothing really wrong with that if you just want to be entertained. Back in the day, The Sword And The Sorcerer was one of my favourites of the bunch, so when an extras-filled Blu-ray release came out, I just had to bite. It’s certainly hampered at times by its low budget, especially during its early section, while throughout much of the action noticeably takes place in corridors, dark rooms and nighttime, but things do soon settle down to a real solid adventure, with an nice, almost innocent swashbuckling feel despite there being plenty of blood and even a bit of horror. There’s a moment which summed up for me what cool derring-do was all about when I was lad, and actually it still does really even though the PC lot probably don’t like it. Our hero is fleeing from soldiers and crashes through a window into a room populated by topless ladies whom I assume are our villain Cromwell’s concubines. He falls on top of one so he’s astride her, plants a smacker on her and says “I’d love to stay but….” before running into the next room. The moment is pulled off perfectly by Lee Horsley, not an actor I think I’d encountered anywhere else [and better known for TV work] before good old Quentin Tarantino put him in his two westerns.

The legend goes that this was rushed into production to beat Conan The Barbarian to the box office, though writer/director Albert Pyun had been touring various incarnations of his script, plus storyboards, around studios for four years. Eventually the independent producing couple Brandon Chase and his wife Marianne, after having turned it down several times before, said they’d finance the project if Excalibur was a box office success, which it was. Unfortunately it was a nightmare for Pyun, who was stopped from walking off set several times by Horsley. Worried by a quickly escalating budget, and perhaps annoyed that their choice for the lead role David Hasselhoff [can you imagine?] was vetoed by Pyun under advice from the costume department, the Chases ensured that assistant director John Ross Bush was as much in charge as Pyun, while cast and crew were soon divided into those who supported Pyun and did their best to help get the film made, and those who only took orders or even suggestions from the Chases. Pyun felt he could have been replaced as director at any minute, but tried to hold this off by shooting really fast. Part of a shattered sword hit Horsley’s scalp, while a contact lens worn by Richard Moll [Xusia] got stuck to his eye and had to be surgically removed in hospital – and then stunt man Jack Tyree died when he jumped off a cliff and missed his landing mat by two feet, even though he’d previously done exactly the same stunt in exactly the same place. He slipped as he jumped, which means that he probably knew he was meeting a nasty end while he was falling. Tyree’s family said the footage could remain in the film. Trouble still wasn’t over; Oliver Reed was to do the narration but turned up drunk [big surprise], got angry at having to do retakes and even smashed things, so was replaced by Simon MacCorkindale was played Mikah in the film. Pyun didn’t get final cut and was locked out of the editing suite. Despite all this, The Sword And The Sorcerer was the most commercially successful independent film of its year.

We open with a really well handled scene of horror which is in a way misleading because it suggests that it will set the tone for the rest of the film. After our narrator Simon [whom you’ll soon get sick of] has set the scene [a la “it was the days of high adventure” in the Conans], we join Cromwell leading a bunch of men, plus a witch, to Tomb Island where they break into a tomb. The witch does some chanting, the room is enveloped in red [this will happen again] and the demonic faces on the side of the coffin come alive quite scarily before Xusia rises up from the bubbling pool inside his tomb to demonstrate his power to one of Cromwell’s sceptical men by physically hurling the witch across the room then ripping out her heart from afar. I thought that sorcerers were still human despite having special powers, yet this one is really a demon, but hey. Cut to a pretty flowery garden in Ehdan where the king and queen are walking about, but not for long, because Xusia uses his sorcery to ensure that Cromwell’s army takes nearly all of the kingdom and wins every battle. However, we don’t see any of this, just a few dead bodies while the narrator informs us what has happened. Big battle sequences would have been out of the question considering the low budget, but we could have seen something. Anyway, Cromwell turns on Xusia when Xusia’s weak from his conjuring, stabs him and pushes him off a cliff, but we know that’s not the last of him don’t we? Then we have poor young Talon suffer seeing both his parents slain by the murderous Cromwell, despite doing his best with his father’s special sword. Yes, it sure is special. It has three blades, two of which can be fired. Sadly it doesn’t then reappear till near the end of the film, but then again it’s a pretty impractical weapon if you think about it, because presumably you have to retrieve the fired blades unless you carry a load of spares with you – unless the sword just magically reloads.

Eleven years pass and that narrator thankfully speaks his last as he tells us about rumours of a mighty warrior who is “buccaneer, slave, rogue, general”. A rebellion is brewing, and the still-alive Xusia is glad to hear it but has plans of his own for Cromwell. It’s quite an interesting dynamic; instead of having a hero and a villain after each other, we get a hero and a villain who are opposed, plus a second villain who’s after the first. Talon enters a saloon – sorry bar – in typical western fashion, in a town where Prince Mikah, once Richard’s advisor and maybe the rightful heir to the throne, is leading this uprising. But, just after he relays some news to his sister Alana, Cromwell suddenly bursts into their hideout and Mikah is captured, seemingly because of Machelli, Cromwell’s war chancellor but a person who seems to be playing off both sides because he’s after the throne too. Alana flees through the city streets and is eventually cornered by three of Cromwell’s men with rape on their mind, but is then rescued by Talon wielding a chicken bone. His first appearance here is a real doozy, but then Talon is given several dramatic entries, usually set to very heroic music, which are either cool, cheesy or both at the same time. At a nearby tavern, Alana learns of her brother’s imprisonment and asks Talon to rescue him, along with a faction of rebels who have been recently trapped by Cromwell’s forces. Unable to bribe the lustful mercenary with gold, Alana reluctantly offers herself to him for one night. Satisfied, Talon departs on his mission, but Cromwell’s men arrive shortly thereafter and capture Alana as well. From here on it’s largely a series of captures, rescues and chases, with plenty of swords but very little sorcery, though we know that eventually Xusia is going to get more involved and our three main protagonists are going to confront each other face to face, hopefully all at once.

The fight sequences aren’t particularly well staged, but things move so fast it’s hard to get too bothered by this, and there’s a guaranteed bit of extreme violence every now and again, though the high point action-wise is right out of a ’40s or ’50s swashbuckler, as Talon is chased all over the place and runs, jumps and swings to evade his pursuers as well as fighting them off, set to rousing music that must have seemed almost on the edge of parody even in 1982. Horsley is no Errol Flynn, he’s not even a Tyrone Power or a Stuart Granger, but he has a kind of confidence, even a swagger, that just about pulls this stuff off. We eventually get a pitched battle inside a large room, just after a wonderful piece of insanity. Conan was able to bite to death a vulture with his teeth while crucified which truly showed how hard he was, but he still had to be freed by someone else. Talon frees himself from crucifixion all by himself, something reprised in Ninja Assassin. Now that’s tough. Then then there’s the romantic element which isn’t – hero fancies heroine who agrees to sleep with him [but only for one night] if he’ll do what she wants – yet we still get loud strings on the soundtrack whenever this aspect rears its head. Yes, I keep on mentioning David Whitaker’s score, but it’s so insistent and prevalent, enhancing the near-parodic feel though certainly with its menace in the appropriate moments, that I have to. Kathleen Beller’s Alana often needs to be rescued, but is no pushover and likes to knee lustful men in the groin. A secondary main female character, Elizabeth, who the credits tell us is “Cromwell’s whore” though she’s really working for and loves someone else, is a bit vague and the part seems cut down. Richard Lynch, as usual, makes a great villain, his scenery chewing here enhanced by cocaine. Earl Maynard makes a good impression as one of Cromwell’s men named – Captain Morgan – and gets to fight Robert Tessier again after The Deep.

Despite the low funds available there are some good special effects, the highlight probably being Xusia’s emergence out of a human body. Pyun and Margine certainly try to make the production look as good as possible; many of the underground scenes actually look quite lovely with strong use of natural light. Slow motion turns up sometimes and when Talon is doing slowed down heroic poses as he’s fighting loads around him while the air is red again, you don’t really know if Pyun is having a laugh or not – but then there’s also that bit when some rebels are entering the castle yet again and we suddenly cut to them behind bars and one saying “we should never have followed that bitch in here”. Said afore-mentioned slow-mo fight and the silhouettes that follow are certainly evidence of a visual flare that, in this movie, sometimes attains a look similar to that of the great fantasy art of Franz Frazetta, especially in the climax. I haven’t seen many of the movies Pyun made afterwards, but I’ve seen enough to get a sense of a talent which never properly bloomed and sometimes wasted itself on material which few could have really made much out of. But he has absolutely nothing to be ashamed of with The Sword And The Sorcerer. I’ve read some of Robert E. Howard’s Conan tales, and Pyun’s movie actually has much more of the Howard spirit than the Conan films, not to mention borrowing a few things here and there. When, at the end, Talon is about to ride off to further adventures with the words “We’ve battles in the offing, kingdoms to save and women to love”, it’s quite rousing, the schoolboy in me feeling like he wants to get up and do the same. A quick glance around at some other reviews indicates that I’ve rated this movie way higher than most. Oh well.

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