Cinapse Movie Of The Week — Exactly what it sounds like, the movie of the week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the movie of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Movie Of The Week…
I’m proud to have the honor of presenting the first “staff pick” Cinapse Movie Of The Week, following our illustrious founders. For this first among firsts, I really wanted to select something I genuinely, enthusiastically love that’s accessible yet underrated, and that I personally wanted to revisit. Turns out it was an easy choice.
The Sword And The Sorcerer is the debut from Albert Pyun, a director generally associated with a mile-long filmography of B-Z-grade action flicks, though he also has a few relatively well-known credits to his name including Cyborg, Dollman, and Captain America. (Check out our own Ed Travis’ heartfelt tribute to the director). He’s always had a rough time getting decent budgets for his films, and some are pretty bad. The Sword And The Sorcerer is far and away his best film that I’ve seen, the cinematic equivalent of a McRib Value Meal and a 5 pound bag of gummy bears. It’s a free-spirited hybrid of adventure, horror, fantasy, and epic cheesiness, and brimming with art design and practical effects that range from super-impressive to charmingly hokey. This is going to be an absolutely spoiler-riddled review, but I promise here and now that they’re the fun sort of spoilers that will just make you want to see the film even more. This is a supercharged, cornball adventure flick. There’s no question the good guy will win, kill the bad guys, and get the girl. The fun is in watching it unfold.
This is… The Sword And The Sorcerer.
If this Red-Band trailer doesn’t make you want to watch this now, right now, immediately, just what the hell is wrong with you?
I often hear the film casually referred to as a Conan ripoff, but this is wrong on at least a couple of levels. While there were indeed a lot of terrible sword-and-sorcery epics in the wake of Conan The Barbarian , this was not one of them. It actually beat John Milius’ Schwarzenegger epic to theaters by a few weeks, so there. Additionally, its setting is a bit more medieval and vaguely European than Conan’s exotic and Eastern-flavored World of Cimmeria. If The Sword And The Sorcerer is ripping anything, it’s John Boorman’s Excalibur (another movie I absolutely adore).
Have you ever had a movie that absolutely blew your mind as a kid, but you never actually knew what it was? For me, THIS was that movie (actually Ghoulies too, but one at a time). I was probably about 8 years old when I caught the latter half of this as an afternoon movie on TV. For a kid who wasn’t usually allowed to watch R or even PG-13 movies, it was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen. There’s some extremely iconic and memorable stuff that seared itself into my brain forever: people with their tongues cut out, a Jesus-looking guy crucified (not knowing the story, I thought maybe he was Jesus), a bad guy’s head getting splattered against a medieval grinding wheel, a scary transforming monster man, and most of all that sword. If you’ve seen the film, you know exactly what I mean. That massive, absolutely incredible three-bladed projectile sword that can shoot blades, and also has a secret fourth blade hidden in the handle. The coolest sword in the entire history of cinema.
Years passed, along came the Internet, and eventually I realized I should put it to good use in determining the identity of that old three-bladed sword movie. A little Googling answered that question, and in 2010 I finally bought a used copy of the hard to find DVD on eBay. OK, so I’m clearly hemorrhaging an excessive amount of nostalgia here. Does my childhood favorite actually hold up? You’d better believe it. Would it help to imagine you’re 8 years old while watching it? Well, it sure won’t hurt.
The movie starts interestingly enough, even if the setup is a bit laborious — it has to establish a lot of history. The evil King Cromwell (Richard Lynch) uses witchcraft to resurrect the long-dead sorcerer Xusia of Delos (Night Court‘s Richard Moll). It’s a pretty horrific scene with some nasty, gore-soaked set design. The sorcerer is a vaguely Freddy Kruegerish fiend, although it would be technically be another couple years before that comparison existed. Despite being an abominable negotiator, Cromwell convinces Xusia to aid in his quest to conquer the world.
The plan goes pretty well for them for awhile, but as the goal of world domination starts to come together, Cromwell decides he doesn’t need Xusia anymore and sends him hurtling over a cliff to his death, or so he thinks. The sorcerer survives and plots his revenge — wonder if that’ll become an important plot point later. Cromwell goes on to conquer the kingdom of Ehdan, murdering both king and queen. Somewhat hilariously — er, tragically, young Prince Talon rides in and arrives just too late to save Dad, then repeats the exact same sequence with Mom. On the bright side, he does get to kill some bad guys with his newly inherited blade-shooting sword. He swears revenge on Cromwell, and the years pass. Like I said, there’s a lot of history to establish. But we’re finally getting to the story’s main plotline.
Flash forward to a grown up Talon (Lee Horsley), a charming, roguish, and somewhat dopey sword for hire with plenty of fighting experience under his belt. A beautiful revolutionary, Alana (Kathleen Beller), hires him to rescue her brother Mikah, a political prisoner in Cromwell’s dungeon. He finally agrees to an unorthodox price: one night with her, in a negotiation that includes some hilariously awful sexual banter and a table-raising boner gag that I somehow missed at least twice before catching on a rewatch. (This is not a very politically correct movie). Talon succeeds in rescuing Mikah, but in his signature fashion manages to get caught himself. You’ve really gotta love that he’s not a perfect, invincible hero but more of a self-centered doofus. A party of his mercenary friends mounts a rescue for him, but they get caught too. Somehow mixed up in all this is Machelli (George Maharis), Cromwell’s grand vizier who plays both sides as a double or possibly triple agent, and whose actual motives are unclear.
Right about here is where I picked up on the story as a kid, which is perfect because I missed all the setup stuff and just got right to the payoff. The second half of the film is a relentless stream of memorable moments and movie magic.
The bad guys, who by this time have also kidnapped Alana, literally crucify Talon and prop him up, still alive, as a decoration in the king’s banquet hall. It’s a rather on-the-nose reminder that he saved Mikah and sacrificially took his place, but at the same time it’s really quite iconic and unique. How many protagonists have you seen crucified that weren’t Jesus? OK, probably two, but besides Spartacus and Brian, how many others?
As if getting crucified wasn’t bad enough, Cromwell decides to add insult to injury by marrying Alana on the spot. But in fiction’s greatest example of wenches ex machina, the King’s unfaithful harem, who have taken a liking to Talon, release his friends from the dungeon and they storm the castle from within. Meanwhile Talon tears himself off of the cross and it’s battle time! A faithful friend hoists Talon’s massive three-bladed sword into the air, and he catches it whilst leaping from a table onto the balcony above, and in short order shatters the swords of a crowd of surrounding enemies in a single swing. I don’t care how jaded your critical soul is — if this sequence doesn’t make you want to stand up and cheer, you have no business watching movies.
Machelli takes Alana down to the dank crypt below the castle, with Cromwell and Talon following close behind. What follows can best be described as a video game boss battle.
Machelli tears his face off, revealing that — Surprise! — he was the vengeful sorcerer the whole time. I’d almost forgotten about that guy! So we get an absolutely epic three-way battle with an absurd level of gotchas and one-upmanship. These guys get taken out, rise again, and have a seemingly infinite stash of secret blades squirreled away on their persons. But you already know who wins, right?
The tale ends with Talon hoisting Alana over his shoulder like a sack of Russet potatoes, grabbing a hanging banner, and swinging from a high balcony to his cheering friends below. It’s goofy and chauvanistically idiotic, but so incredibly fun.
The Sword And The Sorcerer has an adventuresome score in which composer David Whitaker goes into full John Williams mode. It’s totally reminiscent of contemporaries like Indiana Jones and Star Wars, and really does a tremendous job of setting the right tone for the film — bold, brassy, and not too serious.
Unfortunately not everything ends happily. The last thing we see before the credits roll is a promise that Talon will return soon in a sequel, but it didn’t materialize despite any amount of wishing from die hard fans.
Against all odds, Pyun eventually did return to the well, and thirty years later the long promised follow-up finally came to DVD…. and I wish it hadn’t. Tales Of An Ancient Empire is among worst sequels — and movies — I’ve ever seen. But we’ll always have the original! [Update: In defense of Pyun, it’s come to light that he had an extraordinarily difficult time of getting this sequel made against numerous production obstacles. It’s certainly not a fair representation of his work as a director and that it was made at all is something of a miracle.]
I wish I could tell you how to watch this amazing movie, but it’s not so easy. The Region 1 DVD published by Anchor Bay, which isn’t a particularly great release to begin with, is long out of print and often commands a high price if you can find it. Let’s hope that someone — Anchor Bay, Shout Factory, Blue Underground, Dark Sky, whoever — nabs the rights and puts out a remastered Blu-ray sooner than later. Send ’em your (politely worded) demands and tell ’em Cinapse sent ya.
[Update: Eight years after this article, The Sword and The Sorcerer was finally upgraded, jumping directly to 4K UHD Blu-ray from Shout! Factory]
Watch for Austin’s Next Review
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS
coming soon
Get it at Amazon:
The Sword And The Sorcerer – [DVD]
