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Wednesday, March 05, 2008Dharam-Veer Release Year: 1977Country: India Starring: Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman, Jeetendra, Neetu Singh, Pran, Sheroo the Wonder Bird, Jeevan, Indrani Mukherjee, Dev Kumar, Azad, Ranjeet Writers: J.M. Desai, Kader Khan, K.B. Pathak, Prayag Raj, Pushpa Sharma Director: Manmohan Desai Cinematographer: N.V. Srinivas Music: Laxmikant Shantaram Kudalkar, Pyarelal Ramprasad Sharma (Laxmikant-Pyarelal) Producer: Chandan Desai, Subhash Desai, Chandrika G. Shah Once you're done with the knowledge-based cherry picking, there are a wide variety of factors that come into play in deciding which are the potential gems among the selection of five dollar Bollywood dvds at your local Indian grocer or favorite online vendor. Familiar names or faces in the cast or crew of a film are always helpful, but there are also certain thematic or conceptual lures that might serve to tip the scales. In the case of Dharam-Veer, for instance, it certainly didn't hurt that the cast included the stunning Zeenat Aman--and while its male lead, Dharmendra, isn't one of my favorite actors, I do harbor a lot of good will toward him thanks to his co-starring role--with Amitabh Bachchan--in the classic Sholay, as well as his appearance in other highly enjoyable films such as Ankhen and Alibaba aur 40 Chor. But what really closed the deal for me with Dharam-Veer was the fact that its action was described as taking place in a vaguely mediaeval "mythical kingdom". This aroused in me fevered hopes that Dharam-Veer would be some kind of mind-boggling ahistorical period piece--something, in other words, along the lines of Mard, the 1985 classic whose depiction of hero Amitabh Bachchan's battle against the British Raj managed to include MTV-inspired eighties fashions, gladiator battles, and women in frilly Victorian garb strapped to the front of Sherman tanks. These hopes of mine would have been even more fevered had I realized at the time that Dharam-Veer's director, Manmohan Desai, was also Mard's director. And, though my expectations would have no doubt bloated accordingly, I probably still would have come away from Dharam-Veer satisfied. The mythical land of the film's setting is indeed a gumbo of anachronisms--a greedy mash-up of mediaeval Europe, ancient Rome, and the 1001 Arabian nights that also manages to contain, along with its jousting matches and Roman chariots, gypsies, pirates and a climactic battle at sea involving canons--which I'm fairly sure had yet to be invented in the respective eras of King Arthur, Caesar and Scheherazade. This freedom from the constraints of history not only emboldens Dharam-Veer's art direction, but also allows its costumers to follow their muse wherever it may take them, a creative liberation that results in such singular sights as Zeenat Aman's Mediaeval gauchos and black nylons, black leather assemblages that put the "glad" in gladiator, and Jeetendra in some almost indescribably flamboyant flamenco dancer outfits (and, in those instances where the reach of the clothiers' imaginations exceeds that of their budget, baggy white long johns to fill the gaps).     I want to describe Dharam-Veer as a visual feast, but it's actually something less nutritionally balanced than a feast--more like a visual raid on the candy jar, given the candy jar is mostly full of Neco Wafers, Jolly Ranchers and Zots. The costumers render their otherworldly creations in a splashy comic book palette that, combined with the preponderance of brightly painted cardboard in the sets and backdrops, makes Dharam-Veer look like Prince Valiant by way of Flash Gordon by way of the Classics Illustrated version of Ben Hur. And, fittingly, all of this riotous display is in service of the type of over-heated, coincidence-dependent, improbably convoluted and cheerfully chaotic plot that seems to have been the exclusive territory of 1970s masala films. Whatever food metaphor you choose for the experience, you're bound to come away from it engorged - and, if you bring the right attitude to it, you'll be giddily satisfied as well. Dharam-Veer was one of four successful films directed by Manmohan Desai that were released during 1977, all of which dealt with the enduring Bollywood "lost and found"--or "separated at birth"--theme. The most successful of these was the blockbuster Amar Akbar Anthony, which starred Amitabh Bachchan, Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor as brothers who grow up separately, unaware of one another's' existence--one raised as Hindu, another Muslim, and another Christian--ultimately to be united in vengeance against the man responsible for shattering their family. Following this model, Dharam-Veer opens with a complex shuffling of the familial deck. Interestingly, however, thanks to a chain of coincidences, all of these elements manage to fall back into their proper place over the course of the film, and the final dramatic revelation simply reveals that everything is pretty much as it should be, despite it not seeming that way.     As the film opens, a line of young noblemen are presenting the King with marriage offers--as in of jewels and other forms of valuable exchange--for his daughter, the Princess Meenakshi (Indrani Mukherjee) . The Princess, however, is unable to witness this touching spectacle, because she--headstrong, independent girl that she is--is off in the wilds hunting tigers. Unfortunately for Meenakshi, a gang of thugs hired by her brother, Satval Singh (Jeevan), is also on the hunt... for Meenakshi. Satval Singh has been told by a seer that he will die at the hands of his firstborn nephew, and so has decided to cut off the whole nephew-birthing business at its source by having the Princess killed. Fortunately, Jwala Singh (the mighty Pran), a proud hunter who, we later learn, is "well versed in the ways of the Samurai" and who has at his side a super intelligent falcon, Sheroo (played, according to the credits, by Sheroo The Wonder Bird), happens upon the scene and rescues Meenakshi from her attackers. The grateful Meenakshi promises Jwala Singh anything he wants as a reward for saving her life, and Jwala Singh asks that she become his wife. Immediately. Proving that she is truly a woman of her word, she agrees, and the two are married in a ceremony that Jwala Singh performs himself. Sadly, Jwala Singh and Meenakshi's first night of marital bliss is interrupted when one of the tigers Meenakshi had been hunting shows up at their door looking for some payback. Jwala Singh takes off in pursuit of the animal and on his way comes across a local whom the tiger has fatally mauled. Covering the corpse with his own cloak, he continues on and is soon locked in a death struggle with the enraged beastie. Meenakshi, meanwhile, wanders out after Jwala Singh and, seeing the dead body wrapped in his cloak, doesn't bother to go in for a closer look before jumping to conclusions and plunging into a deep state of shock. Meenakshi is eventually discovered and returned to the castle, where she remains in a wordless trance. Even so, the King still needs to get her married off. So when a nobleman with suitably diminished expectations comes courting, the deed is hastily done. This leads to the film's best line of dialogue, when Meenakshi finally awakens from her stupor in the presence of her new husband and he, in explaining the situation she finds herself in, says "You were not conscious when we got married".     Fortunately, Meenakshi's new husband, despite being willing to marry an unconscious woman, is a true gentleman. So when she informs him that not only is she married to the hunter Jwala Singh (whom she now believes to be dead), but also now with child as a result, he stops short of making the demands of marriage upon her. Rather, he agrees that the two of them should live separately under his roof, raising the child as man and wife, while not taking part in any of the carnal activities that such a union might imply. Though in return he asks that she promise to never reveal the true nature of the child's parentage (and we've seen how Meenakshi is about keeping promises). After the required interval, Princess Meenakshi gives birth to twin boys, a circumstance which is of no small concern to the craven Satval Singh, who is still determined to avoid the destiny the seer has laid out for him. Luckily for Satval Singh, his wife has also given birth--at exactly the same time as Meenakshi. Seeing an opportunity to serve two ends at once, Satval Singh switches the second born of the Princess's twins, Veer, with his own child, then takes the first born twin, Dharam, and drops him off a parapet. As the gods would have it, Sheroo The Wonder Bird is flying by at precisely that moment and, unwilling to tolerate infanticide on his watch, scoops Dharam up in his beak and flies off into the sunset. (It must be said here that most of Sheroo's wonders are performed by either a puppet or by Sheroo with a clearly visible tether tied around his midsection.) Meanwhile, Satval Singh's wife has had a crisis of conscience and has, unknown to him, switched her child back with Veer.     Sheroo The Wonder Bird deposits baby Dharam with the kindly blacksmith Lohar and his wife Dhano. As fate according to Dharam-Veer would have it, Lohar and Dhano just happen to be nursing back to health the wounded Hunter Jwala Singh, who has been in a coma for the entire nine months since getting on the wrong end of that tiger, and who awakens from that coma at the precise moment that Sheroo makes his baby delivery. Of course, Jwala Singh has no way of knowing that the baby is his--or even that he has fathered a baby--so all he can say is, basically, "Nice baby you've got there". Twenty or so years go by, during which both the King and Meenakshi's husband somehow manage to die, leaving her Queen of the realm. Because Satval Singh has believed all along that his son, Ranjeet (Ranjeet), is actually the child of Meenakshi, he has beaten and verbally abused him constantly, and so the boy has grown up to become a resentful lout much like his father. Veer (Jeetendra), on the other hand, has grown up to become a somewhat exuberant young man with a taste for big puffy sleeves with frills--and Dharam has grown up to become forty-two year old Dharmendra. Lohar has raised Dharam to be strong like the bull, and in an earlier scene we see him showing a younger version of Dharam how to split wood with one swing--that younger version of Dharam played by Dharmendra's actual son, billed here as "Bobby Junior Dharmendra", but better know today as the Bollywood star Bobby Deol. (For those who don't know, Dharmendra is also the father of the actor Sunny Deol.)     The class boundaries in Queen Meenakshi's kingdom are obviously considerably more porous than those of mediaeval England or ancient Rome (or even modern India, for that matter), because Prince Veer and Dharam, the poor blacksmith's son, have somehow, over these twenty-some years, become inseparable friends. As such, they spend their (by all appearances considerable) leisure time dancing across the kingdom's lush hillsides, proclaiming and demonstrating their love for one another with a homoerotic intensity that almost threatens to eclipse that of even Feroz Khan and Vinod Khanna in Qurbani. Somewhere in the course of their frolicking, they encounter Pallavi, a mean princess played by Zeenat Aman--an occasion which the two men commemorate by singing a charming song about how one must keep one's woman on a short leash in order to prevent her from developing a haughty attitude like Pallavi's. Dharam declares that Pallavi, despite all appearances to the contrary, will ultimately be his, and so begins a strange courtship in which Pallavi shows her affection for Dharam by forcing him to perform in life and death struggles in her personal coliseum, locking him in cages where he is poked with spears by midgets, and having him bound and whipped. Finally Dharam convinces Pallavi to come away with him, and what follows is a jaw dropping musical number in which a singing Dharmendra leads a bound Zeenat Aman around on a rope while forcing her to do menial tasks. It appears that Pallavi is beginning to enjoy this treatment, but then she takes the first opportunity to stab Dharam in the gut, leaving him to bleed to death as she hightails it back to her castle. AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, who should come upon Dharam's wasting body but the hunter Jwala Singh himself. Jwala Singh nurses Dharam back to health, and Dharam, impressed by the remarkably out-of-shape looking Jwala Singh's mastery of the Ways of the Samurai, asks to become his pupil. Pallavi, meanwhile, has had an attack of conscience over her gutting Dharam like a stuck pig and returns contritely to his side. Ultimately, she realizes her love for Dharam and, in so doing, becomes virtuous and kind. This is an unhappy development for Sujan, the man to whom Pallavi has been promised in marriage, as well as for Pallavi's brother, Dev Singh (Dev Kumar), and the two quickly become part of the growing list of Dharam and Veer's mortal enemies, which also includes Satval Singh, Ranjeet and, for reasons I won't even go into, Azad, the leader of a band of gypsies. Ultimately this axis of evil will conspire to turn the two BFF's against one another, a plot which will lead to Lohar, Dharam's adoptive father, being framed and punished in the Queen's court for a crime that he didn't commit, and ultimately to the murder of Dharam's adoptive mother in circumstances that place suspicion upon the royal family. Despite the Queen's assurance that the family is innocent of these crimes, Dharam asks that in recompense she leave her castle and come to his hovel to take the place of his mom. As demonstrated before, Meenakshi is honorable to a fault, and so acquiesces to this demand, spending her days from that point on cleaning up around Dharam's hut, feeding him food with her hands and giving him foot rubs.     And so, as mentioned earlier, those familial bonds that fate conspired to break at Dharam-Veer's outset manage to, despite all obstacles, reassert themselves by its final act. It is the purpose of the "lost and found" films to serve as a testament to the strength of these bonds, and dramatize how, as an expression of God's will, they exert a magnetic pull that no barrier of class, character or simple geography can resist. In the case of Dharam-Veer, this means that everyone ends up having the relationship with one another that they're more or less supposed to be having (though admittedly with some markedly creepy overtones), even though they don't know it--until, of course, events lead to a round of startling revelations... and battles at sea involving pirates and lots of swinging back and forth from the masts of long ships. Now, I have spent a lot more time than I normally would summarizing the story of Dharam-Veer (even though, believe it or not, I haven't come close to giving everything away). The reason for this is that the insane convolutions of Dharam-Veer's plot are such a large part of its appeal. As with many of the best masala films, in between marveling at its many visual delights, one can't help sticking with it just to see what preposterous turn of events it will throw at you next. And just when you think you've got a handle on what type of cards the film has up its sleeve, it comes at you from a whole different angle, blindsiding you anew by way of some extremely bizarre primitive special effects or absurd action choreography.     Those above mentioned special effects largely consist of shots--shots that are none too seamlessly integrated into the sequences in which they feature, I must add--in which horses are made to perform leaps that said horses either wouldn't or couldn't do by means of what appears to be animation using cut out photographs against a still background. The result is actually quite arresting visually, in a surreal sort of way, if you disregard that you were actually intended to accept it as reality. As for the fight staging, the defining philosophy appears to have been "You can never have too many back flips". People perform this move in response to even the slightest bit of physical force--and in defiance of all known laws of physics--and also incorporate it into their attacks, forcing their opponents to wait until they have spiked their landing before running them through. Given its vintage, the one thing that really would have put Dharam-Veer over the top for me is a seriously funky score. However, the score by the team of Lamikant-Pyarelal is actually quite conservative, depending a lot on relatively traditional Indian rhythms and instrumentation. This is still not a bad thing, and the songs are pleasant overall, if not exceptionally memorable, and always manage, at their most lively, to get the head doing that little sideways bob that any good Bollywood soundtrack should. Of course, it's often hard with these movies to separate the songs from the production numbers--or "picturizations"--that contain them, and many of those here are top notch. The sequence for "Hum Banjaron Ki Baat Mat", in which a literal army of floridly garbed singing and dancing gypsies overwhelms Princess Pallavi's amphitheater of pain, is without question the moment when the picture is at its most excruciatingly colorful. But it is another gypsy themed number, the climactic campfire rave-up "Band Ho Mutthi To Laakh Ki Khul Gayi To Phir Khaak Ki", that was the clear standout for me--though it was less characteristic of Dharam-Veer in that it is merely dazzling, rather than overwhelming, in its use of color.     On the acting front, Dharam-Veer's cast does a good job within the constraints of the comic book world that the film creates. Dharmendra is a performer who's very good at standing on top of things, puffing out his chest and booming out defiant proclamations - often while pointing - to the corrupt powers that be, and he gets to do a lot of that here. Zeenat Aman, who has shown elsewhere that she is an actress of considerable range, spends the first half of the film pouting and scowling, and the second half winsome and starry eyed. Jeetendra, by far the most abused of the celebrity clothes-horses on display, does perhaps the most admirable job by managing not to be completely eclipsed by his wardrobe. Lastly, Jeevan, thanks to a spirited commitment to shaking his fists and hissing the heroes' names through clenched teeth, makes for a fine two dimensional villain, though he's no Amrish Puri. Dharam-Veer is a movie designed to thrill, and it succeeds on all of the intended levels, as well as on many levels that probably weren't so intentional. In addition to the thrill of watching its spectacular musical numbers and beautiful stars, there is the singular thrill that comes from seeing combinations of color and fabric that will likely never be repeated in human history. Adding to Dharam-Veer's singularity is the fact that it's pretty much guaranteed to be the only place where you can see a special effects shot of a horse jumping over a castle wall that is at once so patently phony and so hauntingly compelling. Even if you could find any of these elements in another film, the chances of that film also starring Sheroo The Wonder Bird are slim to none. Perhaps, then, Dharam-Veer can be said to be a film that exists against the odds--and perhaps even in defiance of reality itself. And given that it comes to you, in spite of all probability, with all these many gifts in store, how can you refuse it? Especially when it's only five bucks. Labels: Bollywood, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Stars: Dharmendra, Stars: Zeenat Aman, Year: 1977 posted by Todd at 9:38 AM | 3 Comments Monday, January 21, 2008Sinbad of the Seven Seas Release Year: 1989Country: Italy Starring: Lou Ferrigno, John Steiner, Roland Wybenga, Ennio Girolami, Hal Yamanouchi, Yehuda Efroni, Alessandra Martines, Teagan Clive, Stefania Girolami, Melonee Rodgers, Cork Hubbert, Daria Nicolodi. Writer: Luigi Cozzi and Enzo Castellari Director: Enzo Castellari Cinematographer: Blasco Giurato Music: Dov Seltzer Availability: Buy it from Amazon  I can anticipate a lot of things that would potentially show up as the first shot in a Sinbad the Sailor movie (as opposed to Sinbad the Comedian movie, though I can also imagine the first shot in that movie as well, and it's Sinbad making an exaggerated screaming face and running away in fast motion from a poopy baby diaper), but one thing I never expected was a still shot of Edgar Allen Poe. It's that same one everyone uses when they need a photo of Edgar Allen Poe. Maybe that's the only one. I don't know. I also didn't know why Poe would be associated with the opening of a Sinbad the Sailor movie, though I could understand it in a Sinbad the Comedian movie, what with the macabre and all. Luckily, this film begins with a text crawl that explains to me that Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called " The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade," and it is upon that tale this movie is based. Within the first few minutes, I found the claim that this movie was based on a story by Edgar Allen Poe to be somewhat, for the sake of tact, let's say "dubious." Luckily, we live in the future, and while the future has let us down in so many ways -- no jet packs, no flying cars -- it has made one important concession to mankind, and that is the ability to go to the internet and instantly look up information on whether or not Edgar Allen Poe wrote a story called " The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade," and if so, if that story featured Sinbad the Sailor in a heart-to-heart gab session with a misunderstood rubber cobra.
It turns out that Poe did, in fact, write a story called "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade." And thanks to the future, I was even able to read it without having to go down to the library and verify that it exists, then find the book, then deal with either all the crazy hobos at the public library or all the hobo-esque sleeping students at the local academic library. I am by no means a Poe scholar, and of his works, the only ones I have actually read are the ones that were eventually made into movies starring Vincent Price. So perhaps I am not one to judge the particular merits of "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade." I hear Poe himself was rather fond of the story. I thought it was pretty dreadful, and it seems many critics agreed. The basic idea of the story is that the narrator has found a book wherein he discovers the final few pages detailing the life of Scheherazade, the woman who spun the 1001 Arabian Tales to stave off execution at the hands of her sultan husband. Poe's story is set on the night after the sultan has canceled his decree that Scheherazade be put to death. She then explains that there is more to the story of Sinbad, and proceeds to relay a rather uninspired story that has Sinbad and his crew basically traveling from one crudely sketched fantastic location to the next, with no particular point to things. This story is punctuated from time to time by grunts of disbelief from the sultan, who eventually pronounces the whole story so preposterously awful that he reinstates the execution of Scheherazade. The end. I was hard pressed to disagree with him. I'm not sure what Poe was attempting to accomplish with this story. If we are supposed to be enthralled by this final adventure of Sinbad, then the story is an obvious failure. As adventure fare, it's terrible. Poe was a lot of things, but Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard he wasn't. If, however, Poe was attempting to somehow satirize the genre of fantastic adventure fiction, well then reading an awful story isn't made better if the last paragraph is a guy exclaiming, "That story was crap! Awff wif 'er 'ead!" Because I assume all sultans spoke with a thick Cockney accent, or at least that the sentence "off with her head!" must always be pronounced as such. Having Poe himself explain that the story was bad is cold comfort for the time I just spent reading it, and it forgets that the golden rule of satire is that you must first be an excellent example of that which you are satirizing. As potential satire, "The Thousand and Second Tale" is less Hot Fuzz, more Epic Movie.
This opinion thusly entered into the public register and scheduled for debate at the next meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Turn of the Century Works of Fantastic and Speculative Literature, where I regularly hold court whilst smoking my pipe and discussing my latest expedition to the steppes of Mongolia, let me then say that if, perhaps, Cannon films were to come along some hundred or so years later and wreak havoc with the contents of Poe's Sinbad story while, at the same time, claiming to be an adaptation of it -- well, let's just say that I don't feel any great crime against art has been committed in this instance. Sinbad of the Seven Seas will commit many crimes against many things, but playing fast and loose with "The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade" is a misdemeanor, at worst, and given the quality of the source material, it's more like the sort of offense where a good natured 1930s cop just musses an impish kid's hair and says in his lilting Irish brogue, "Go on, lad, get a move on. Ahh, lovable scamp! I was that way when I was his age." And then, of course, he would belt out "Galway Bay," because that's what cops do, right? Anyway, if ever there was a perfect storm of awful, it's this movie. First of all, it comes to us courtesy of the illustrious Cannon Film Group, brainchild of Israeli producers Golan and Globus. This is the studio that brought us everything from Sho Kosugi ninja films to Chuck Norris drivin' airboats for freedom. Second, it was written by Lewis Coates -- also known to many as Luigi Cozzi, the Italian exploitation writer-director who gave us the classic Star Crash and the less classic Alien Contamination. Third, it was directed by Enzo G. Castellari, the man who brought us a number of classic gritty 1970s crime films and less classic 1980s post-apocalypse sci-fi films. And mixing these ingredients into a deadly stew is star Lou Ferrigno, former star of The Incredible Hulk and, more recent and related to this film, two mind boggling Hercules films -- also courtesy of Cannon -- in which Hercules did things like fight giant robots sent down by sexy female inventor Daedalus from the home of the Greek Gods up on the Moon. Turning this lot loose on the Arabian Nights seems like a can't win must-lose situation. Sinbad with a laser gun or a curved lightsaber scimitar? Bring it on! Unfortunately, Sinbad of the Seven Seas fails to live up to the high standards set by the two Hercules films, and if you've seen either of those, then you know what that means. This is likely due to the fact that, while the Hercules films were released in 1983, when The Cannon Group was at the apex of its Chuck Norris-fuelled power, Sinbad of the Seven Seas limped into production in 1989, at a time when personal conflict, lawsuits, and massive dollops of corruption had ripped apart the empire Golan and Globus built on the backs of ninjas, forbidden dances, and cut-rate Indiana Jones knock-offs. The halcyon days of crap cinema the likes of which Cannon excelled at were over, and while a few more Cannon productions found their way to the theaters (most notably, Albert Pyun's Cyborg starring Jean-Claude Van Damme -- more or less the last breath for Cannon), movies like Sinbad of the Seven Seas ended up going direct to video when previously they would have been shown on the big screen much to the delight and/or confusion of children standing hand-in-hand across America and demanding more Lou Ferrigno action. With no prospect for theatrical distribution, and with the studio itself in tatters, Sinbad of the Seven Seas ends up feeling like a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery. Oh wait, that describes pretty much all Cannon films, doesn't it? Well then imagine that instead of watching a movie that is a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery, you are watching a movie that is telling you about a movie that is a cheap, hackneyed bit of half-assery.
Because that's what Sinbad of the Seven Seas does. It tells you what is happening and how thrilling it all is, in order to not have to show you. The film, inspired no doubt by the success of The Princess Bride, is contained within a framing narrative in which a bored mother (Dario Argento's muse, Daria Nicolodi) reads a bedtime story to her equally bored daughter. Usually, when a film uses this framing device, the narration fades out and the movie of the story being told kicks in pretty quickly. But not here. Even though we expect it to end when it triumphantly announces, "And so our sotry begins," it doesn't. The narration -- which, mind you, is dubbed throughout by a voice actor even more bored than Daria Nicolodi -- continues for the entire movie, and it tends to be in the flavor of, "And then some things happened and Sinbad had wondrous adventures," without the movie actually showing most of those adventures. Even dialog scenes are voiced over by the narrator telling us what Sinbad and his pals are talking about, probably as both a money saver and as a way to cover for the fact that the cast probably spoke half a dozen different languages. Not that the movie is totally without action. In fact, if you get over the annoying and persistent narration, this movie, while certainly not attaining that rarefied air that is the domain of Cannon's Hercules films, is a clumsy but fair adventure and fond farewell to the days of Cannon. Sinbad's crew is one for the ages, consisting of Sinbad himself in glorious purple pantaloons or a loin cloth, depending on how the mood strikes him on any given day, and his trusted friends the Viking named Viking (Ennio Girolami, an old Enzo Castellari hand), Prince Ali, a bald guy named The Bald Cook, Poochy the Dwarf, and the Chinese Soldier of Fortune, who is played by a Japanese guy and dressed like a Thai ladyboy on his way home from a particularly colorful Siamese gay rights parade and martial arts demonstration. Sinbad and the boys have returned to lush, beautiful Basra after many adventures we did not get to see, so Sinbad's buddy Ali can settle down with his sexy bride to be, Alina (Alessandra Martines). Unfortunately, Basra and its wise and kindly king have fallen under the spell of the king's cruel adviser and wizard, Jaffar (John Steiner). You know, you'd think that if these kings were really so wise, they'd stop picking the black-clad, giggling fiend with a penchant for maliciously twisting the ends of his dastardly handlebar mustaches to be their advisers. No sooner does Sinbad arrive at the palace than Jaffar shows up to roll his eyes, point, and trap everyone.
If there is a highlight in this movie, besides the threadbare synth score and the inevitable island of sexy Amazons, it is John Steiner's performance as Jaffar. Think of the most ridiculously over the top, cartoonish, hammiest performance you have ever seen. Now times it by infinity. That's getting close to comprehending the deliriously over-the-top histrionics of Steiner. It's like the man mainlined pure essence of William Shatner, Jack Palance, Vincent Price, that black guy who was always scared in 1940s movies, Doctor Morpheus, and Bruce Vilanch. Every single sentence is shouted, and not a second goes by that Steiner isn't pointing, clutching at the sky, bugging out his eyes, and traipsing about in the most insanely delicious style imaginable. He is absolutely off the charts here, and as lackluster and bereft of energy as the rest of the film may be, Jaffar alone is worth the price of the movie. Anyway, while Jaffar is busy being diabolical, Sinbad rallies his men to fight back. This involves, among other things, a long scene in which Lou Ferrigno chats up a cobra in true "girl talk" fashion, only to tie all the cobras together so that he might use them as a rope to escape the dungeon and rescue his friends, who are being menaced by out-of-shape S&M dudes and sock puppet piranhas. Oh man, I've been to that club before. It's OK, but it's not as good as it was in the 70s. During this and most subsequent fight scenes, Lou Ferrigno will showcase Sinbad's sophisticated fighting style, which is to draw his scimitar, look at his opponents, look at his sword, then toss the sword away so he can charge the bad guys headlong and throw them across the set. Why does he even bother to carry a sword? The one time he uses it is when he's fighting a rock man -- the one opponent most likely not to be harmed by a sword. Incidentally, Sinbad defeats the rock man by throwing a rock at him.
While Sinbad is doing that, we pay another visit to Jaffar, who is...OH MY GOD IT'S JON MIKL-THOR! It's Jon Mikl-Thor hanging out in Jaffar's rooftop laboratory! Oh wait, no it isn't. It's a teased-blond bodybuilder chick who looks and dresses exactly Jon Mikl-Thor in Rock 'n' Roll Nightmare. I have no idea who she is supposed to be or where she came from. She shows up out of nowhere, and then hangs out in the lab for the rest of movie making doubting comments about Jaffar's plan, which Jaffar responds to with lots of eye bugging, pointing at the air, and rolling of his R's. Jaffar's nefarious scheme, we discover via ample shouting and hissing and pointing, is to scatter a sacred gem to the far corners of the world, then hook the princess up to his H.G. Wells machine to...honestly, I have no idea. All it means is that Sinbad and his crew have to travel the world to collect all the pieces of the gem so that Sinbad can then...actually, I have no idea why Sinbad needs to reassemble the gem. It'll bring happiness to Basra or something. We've all seen how well that worked out. But what I do know is that this means Sinbad and his crew will set sail, fight some zombies, some rock men, undead medieval knights, and other monsters as they strive to free Arabia from Jaffar's wicked spell. I assumed at the end Sinbad will fight Jaffar and his bodybuilder girlfriend, but it turns out she just sort of wanders off in search of a protein shake or something, leaving Sinbad to face off against -- huh, what do you know? His doppleganger. Any film that features Lou Ferrigno fighting Lou Ferrigno has got to be pretty good, right? As cool as all that stuff above may sound, the sad fact is that much of it is pretty clumsy. Enzo Castellari was a pretty good action director, great from time to time, but with this material, he just seems to meander and have no idea what to do other than show it in slow motion from time to time (his signature). Maybe if Sinbad had been a tough as nails police inspector from Napoli, this would have worked out better for everyone. Instead, the movie lacks any real energy, and the constant bored narration saps the moments of action of the spirit they need to succeed. The final result is a movie that has the cheap look of a community theater read-through of a Sinbad movie written by one of the members. I blame...well, everyone but Lou Ferrigno and John Steiner. And that woman who plays the Amazon queen. Holy cow! Arabia is lucky I wasn't Sinbad, because given the choice between saving crappy old Basra from Jaffar and his bodybuilder girlfriend or spending a lifetime with a hot, scantily clad jungle woman prone to doing wiggly dances -- well, take a wild guess.
Castellari was at the end of a long career full of cool movies like Shark Hunter, Heroin Busters, and High Crime. After Sinbad of the Seven Seas, he was relegated to the backwaters of Italian television movies, though some of them must have been popular because he made like nine hundred TV movies in the "Extralarge" series. Similarly, Luigi Cozzi's days of writing and directing awesome films like Star Crash and less than awesome films like Alien Contamination were behind him as well. He cranked out a couple more films, but by 1990, he was pretty much done. In a way, it makes Sinbad of the Seven Seas a bittersweet picture for fans of exploitation in general and Italian exploitation in particular. I mean, here in a single film you have the sort of weak, exhausted last hurrah of Golan and Globus' Cannon Group. You have the same for writers and directors Luigi Cozzi and Enzo Castellari. They may not mean much but bad news to most people, but man alive -- I love these guys. The total number of entertaining hours given to me by these three sources is too scary to tally. And this is it. This is the swan song. Like battered survivors in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this is where they limp off into the sunset to be forgotten. It's a shame that there wasn't a way to make Sinbad of the Seven Seas into the completely bonkers, inept swashbuckling masterpiece these guys deserved. Everything is almost there, but the end product is less a celebration and more a world-weary sigh. This is the end of an era, boys. Sinbad of the Seven Seas is the group of battle-weary veterans realizing that their day has passed. Heck, it gets me a little misty-eyed, and that's probably why I like the thing and think it's worth checking out. I mean, there is still plenty of weird stuff. It may not be as good as the Lou Ferrigno Hercules films, but it has rubber snakes, zombie attacks, Jaffar's eye-bulging madness, that sexy Amazon chick, a fight with a slime man, and that random bodybuilder chick. Judging most of the acting at all is pointless, as everyone was redubbed for the final product. Ferrigno, former bodybuilder and permanent fixture at any convention that waxes poetic over The Incredible Hulk, is no master thespian, but he plays Sinbad with a laid-back affability that makes him impossible to dislike and impervious to meaningful criticism. John Steiner, of course, acts at a level that can't be contained by mere speaking, so you can judge his performance despite the dubbing (and the judgment is that he's awesome). The rest of Sinbad's crew is playing to character, so the Chinese guy who is Japanese and dresses Thai is stoic; the Viking is hearty; Ali is noble in a boring way; and the cook and Poochy the Dwarf are frequently terrified and confused. Princess Alina doesn't have much to do but lay back, let her bosoms heave, and look gorgeous, but she does that with admirable skill. A couple other people show up, including a pointless comic relief guy and his daughter (played by Castellari's real life daughter), but there's not much reason to discuss them. This show belongs to Ferrigno and Steiner. Sometimes the fights are OK, like the one with the zombies and the one where Sinbad storm the gay bondage club where his buddies are chained up and being dangled over sock puppets. The zombie one even has Sinbad punching through a zombie's chest and pulling out his heart -- which is a tiny Madball version of the zombie's face! This causes Sinbad to crush the head/heart, point directly into the camera (a taste of your own medicine there, Jaffar!) and exclaim, "Jaffar!!! You're next." When Jaffar views this event on his magic voodoo television, Sinbad is looking directly at him. This is the second or third time this happens in the movie. One expects that Sinbad would know Jaffar is watching him on a magic TV pond. That's what evil wizards do. But Sinbad's ability to know exactly where Jaffar has positioned his magical cameras is pretty impressive. unless, I suppose, Sinbad goes through the entire movie with a giant movie camera floating above him, in which case I guess it'd be pretty easy to figure which way to look when wishing to address Jaffar personally.
As for other aspects of the film...well, there aren't as many special effects as I'd like, but the ones that are there are about as horrible as I would want them to be. The rubber snakes and piranha sock puppets are a real highlight. And seriously -- those piranhas! Did the guy who made those never see a piranha before in his life? I find that hard to believe, given that this is the world of Italian exploitation filmmaking we're talking about, meaning that at least one special effects guy must have worked on at least one Italian cannibal film, and you know they love piranhas. Sinbad also fights a rock man and a slime guy, but neither of those are especially epic effects. Then there's the rockin' synth soundtrack! Nothing says epic old world adventure quite like a keytar! The soundtrack may be anachronistic, but given that this is a movie where the prince of Basra looks like that guy from Wham (you know, the other one), it seems strangely appropriate. Most of it sounds like something written for Lucio Fulci's Conquest but ultimately rejected for being too goofy. And of course, there's all the fun to be had with the homoerotic subtext... err, well... when a big, sweaty, muscular dude in leather chaps wraps a chain around a big muscular dude in purple tights, and then they proceed to rub against each other and grunt, and it's all filmed in slow motion -- that's, ummm... that's not subtext is it? Seriously though, as a guy who doesn't mind a little homoeroticism in his films, this is how I want all my gay films to be: manly men striking heroic poses, then wrestling with each other. When I heard Brokeback Mountain was going to be a gay cowboy film, I was overjoyed. I hoped it would be like The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly, only with dudes kissing each other. Instead, it was two hours of shepherds talking about their feelings and alienation. Forget that! When I watch a gay movie, I want to be tough guys blowing shit up, wrestling, leading revolts against Rome, throwing each other at sock puppets -- I want gay action movies. I think the time is right. Gay cinema will have made a tremendous leap forward when it starts producing films that aren't about being gay, but instead are about guys punching each other in the face, jumping muscle cars through the open boxcar doors of moving freight trains and throwing swords across the room, then they plant big wet ones on each other. Is it wrong for me to dream of this utopia?
Folks, when they say they don't make 'em like they used to, they mean movies like High Sierra, and movies like Sinbad of the Seven Seas. Just as it marks the end of one era -- for exploitation film, for Cannon, for Castellari, for sword and sorcery movies -- it marks the dawn of a new one, for this is the point at which the "direct to video" production really came into its own and would be dominated by another studio not entirely unlike Cannon: Charles Band's Full Moon Entertainment and it's many subsidiaries. Golan and Globus themselves would try to make the transition to the 1990s with separate and sundry production companies, but continued incompetence, personal conflicts, and uncontrollable corruption sunk pretty much all of their respective projects before anything substantial was ever achieved. Sinbad of the Seven Seas marks the point at which cheap, shoddy rip-offs could no longer be hustled onto actual movie screens, complete with a marketing campaign, television commercials, and actual interest. It marks the point at which those films were aimed instead at the home video market, which really came into its own during the 1980s. It marks the point where the only crap films being released to theaters costs hundreds of millions of dollars instead of hundreds of thousands (or maybe just thousands) of dollars. Fare thee well, Sinbad. Fare thee well, Stryker. And so long Arabian Adventure, which I recall liking as a child but remember almost nothing about as a grown man. Was Mickey Rooney driving a giant clockwork robot around in the desert or something? Wasn't Christopher Lee named Alakazam? How is that movie not out on DVD? I have a feeling it would make an excellent double feature with Sinbad of the Seven Seas, and by excellent, I mean it would be one of those things I would make people watch, and they would vaguely resent me for it for years. Given my druthers, I would watch Hercules and The Adventures of Hercules. That's Cannon fantasy from a time when the studio was flush with cash and drunk amid the Golden Age. Sinbad of the Seven Seas is the final gasp of a once mighty people, now decadent and wasted shells of their former selves. But you should still see it, because Jaffar is incredible and Lou Ferrigno fights Lou Ferrigno. The movie actually gets a little battier and more enjoyable every time I watch it. Perhaps some day, I will feel that it deserves to take it's rightful place alongside the Hercules films and Seven Magnificent Gladiators, thus forming a nigh invulnerable wall of Cannon-produced Lou Ferrigno sword and sorcery wonder. Plus, this movie would make an amazing stage musical. So all you people who thought Legally Blonde was worth a stage production -- your destiny is Enzo G. Castellari Presents Edgar Allen Poe's Sinbad of the Seven Seas: The Musical. Get crackin'! Labels: Director: Enzo Castellari, Fantasy, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Studio: Cannon, Year: 1989 posted by Keith at 10:56 PM | 8 Comments Monday, November 26, 2007Throne of Fire Release Year: 1983Country: Italy Starring: Sabrina Siani, Pietro Torrisi, Harrison Muller Jr., Beni Cardoso, Peter Caine, Dan Collins, Stefano Abbati, Roberto Lattanzio, Isarco Ravaioli, Amedeo Leonardi, Gianlorenzo Bernini. Writer: Giuseppe Buricchi and Nino Marino Director: Franco Prosperi Cinematographer: Guglielmo Mancori Producer: Ettore Spagnuolo Original Title: Il Trono di fuoco Availability: Buy it from Luminous Film and Video Wurks At my age, and with my experience, I shouldn't fall for it. And yet, on occasion, I'm still taken in by cool posters and cover art. At these times, I actually leave my body and hover above myself, screaming warnings but powerless to prevent my corporeal self from plunking down a wad of cash on a movie that has a cool looking cover. "You fool! You know the movie isn't going to be anything like the cover!" my spirit cries, but alas his words are unable to prevent the transaction. And so it is I end up owning movies like Throne of Fire, a dreary, slow-moving, largely uninteresting Italian sword and sorcery film with a cover that featured an illustration of a big-breasted nude chick swinging around a sword and wearing a little metal thong. "This looks pretty good," I said to myself, even as my other disembodied self was shouting, "Dude, seriously! That chick probably never even shows up in the movie! Didn't you learn anything from the cover of Hot Potato???" Well, I didn't, and true enough, Throne of Fire never features a sexy, naked Valkyrie type chick swinging around a sword. In fact, it's the rare sword and sorcery film that doesn't feature any toplessness at all. The whole thing plays out more like a really bad throwback to 1960s peplum than it does a 1980s sword and sorcery film. Once again, the jazzy, saucy poster art lured me in and let me down. And once again, I learned nothing from the transaction. I'd do it again, I tell ya! I'd do it again! Ha ha ha!
What Throne of Fire lacks in sexy, naked Valkyrie type chicks swinging around a sword it makes up for with plentiful scenes of people sitting around in poorly lit throne rooms discussing events that would be more interesting if they were actually happening on screen instead of just being described to us by bored Italians. Keep in mind that my capacity for liking even the absolute worst of 1980s sword and sorcery films is legendary. I like Barbarians. I like Conquest. For crying out loud, I like Hawk the Slayer and Archer: Fugitive from the Empire! Right now, I'm sitting here and thinking about how I want to watch one of the Ator movies -- and possibly all of them!!! And that seems like a good idea to me, and it's not something I haven't done before. This past weekend, Krull was on TV, and not only did I watch it, but I also watched it when they did the late-night replay -- and I already own that shit on DVD, man! So for a sword and sorcery movie not to get my easy-going seal of approval really has to mean something, I think. Throne of Fire is a bad movie. Not Yor, the Hunter from the Future bad, which is awesome, but regular old boring "is this asshole still explaining the plot to us?" bad. Taken at face value, the description of Throne of Fire's plot is as deceptively enticing as the lurid artwork. Satan wants a son so he can plunge the world into darkness, but instead of siring the kid on his own, he sends his messenger. When he becomes a man, the son of...well, the son of Satan's messenger will sit upon the throne of fire, thereby giving him power to -- honestly, I'm not sure, but it probably has something to do with more plunging the world into darkness type of business. Only a hero pure of heart and clad in naught but a loincloth and leather bicep tassels can stop the evil one's dastardly plan. Also, only the rightful heir can sit in the throne of fire without being set ablaze (something you'd think wouldn't bother the son of Satan, but since this is the son of Satan's errand boy, I guess it's important), so Satan's ward must also kill the proper king and marry that king's daughter. In time, you will learn that setting people on fire when they sit on it without permission is the sole power of the throne.
But really, I mean that doesn't sound so bad, right? Aside from the fact that Satan is too lazy to sire his own son. But then, I guess technically God didn't do the deed with Mary, so he didn't sire his own son, either. Seriously, you Christian gods and demons need to take a page out of Zeus' pick-up artist manual. Now there was a god who knew how to sow his seed. That cat could hardly find time to hurl his mighty thunderbolts, so busy was he getting busy and seducing fair maidens by appearing to them as a shimmering mist of impregnation or a horny silver-furred pygmy marmoset waving its hands wildly and yelling, "I'm king of the gods, baby!" I guess Satan was too busy tempting the souls of good men and pressing Slayer CDs to find time to bang some homely chick in a crappy Italian sword and sorcery film. Anyway, with a plot like the one possessed by Throne of Fire, you figure you're going to get some random scenes of villages being pillaged, and an old man or woman will probably talk rapturously about how the hero has come to fulfill the prophecy, and then since this is the devil's adopted son we're talking about, there will probably be scenes of sweating people being tortured, and there will be an orgy. Hell, that could be the entire plot, with the finale consisting of a plodding sword fight and probably some crudely animated magical ray beam effects. And you know what? I'd be pretty satisfied. But even in the admittedly modest realm of being "at least as good as Iron Warrior," Throne of Fire fails miserably. And while it does have the prophecy, the torture chamber, and random scenes of pillaging, there is no orgy (Seriously? The son of Satan isn't going to have an orgy? He isn't even going to litter his throne room with scantily clad maidens? Lame, son of Satan, lame!), and even the stuff that is present is so unimaginatively staged and so lacking in energy that it hardly even registered. I mean, dudes are pillaging a village and setting huts on fire, and I didn't even notice.
So where were we? OK, yeah. Satan sends his messenger to impregnate a woman, so that this child may sit on the titular throne of fire, a feat which seems to have absolutely no effect, positive or negative, on the powers of the people who sit upon it. Morak, the son of the messenger of Satan, grows up to be Harrison Muller, who spends his day sending gangs of killers out to perform the most boring acts of pillaging you're ever going to see. On the plus side, some of them have pretty cool eagle wing helmets. It seems like, given the free reign Morak has with sending around death squads, that he has already succeeded in conquering pretty much the entire crappy kingdom, but people are still talking about the good king on his throne of fire. It apparently never occurs to Good King Fire Ass to send out an army to stop Morak's band of brigands. Seriously, Morak's army has like ten guys in it. How can they possibly not be defeated? Maybe if the king spent more time attend to the affairs of his kingdom and less time worrying about his fire throne, he wouldn't be in this situation. The last time we had a fire king around these parts, he had armies of scantily clad barbarian dudes and was able to fend off attacks from a guy who could hurl icebergs at him. By comparison, Morak doesn't seem to have any powers at all beyond the powers of prolonged exposition, and still this fire king gets his ass handed to him.
The king eventually falls to Morak, but the princess Valkari escapes. Hey! She does look like the sword swinging chick from the cover, though she keeps what little top she has on through the entire film. Sabrina Siani plays Valkari, and she at least is a welcome sight for eyes that are fast becoming difficult to keep open. She was a staple of the Italian sword and sorcery industry during the 1980s, having appeared shortly before this film as the largely naked evil Ocran in Lucio Fulci's completely bizarre barbarian fantasy film Conquest, which would be a much more entertaining film to watch than this one. She also appeared in The Invincible Barbarian, Sword of the Barbarians, White Cannibal Queen, and Ator the Fighting Eagle -- all of which would be more enjoyable to watch. Yes, even Ator. I never thought I'd find a movie that would make me think, "Man, I sure wish I was watching Ator right now -- no, I really wish I was watching Ator III!" but I guess that's the thrilling part of this job: you always learn new things. Only one man stands in the way of Morak, the little gang he has, and his mad scheme to do whatever it is he'll be able to do by sitting on the throne of fire. That man is Siegfried, played by Invincible Barbarian star Pietro Torrisi. Pietro is a huge guy who gives off a sort of "Brad Harris with a perm" vibe, and his career in Italian exploitation was extremely long if unremarkable. He mostly filled uncredited roles, starting out as far back as 1963 with an appearance in The Ten Gladiators. In 1965, after a few more gladiator movies, he made the jump to Eurospy films, appearing in a couple pretty movies starring George Ardisson. Still, his roles were restricted to things like "Bodyguard." He continued this steady but minor work throughout the spaghetti western trend, the violent cop film trend, and the sexploitation trend. In 1982, after nearly twenty years in the business, someone finally decided that the post-Conan sword and sorcery boom was the right time and place for Pietro to step up to the plate and take on a starring role. And so he became Zukhan, king of the barbarians, in Franco Prosperi's Invincible Barbarian. He had another starring role shortly thereafter in Sword of the Barbarians, then was back to an uncredited role in The Iron Master, one of the few Italian sword and sorcery films that has eluded my prying eyes up to this date. And then it was on to the role of heroic Siegfried. At age forty-something, he still looks good, and if nothing else, he handles the action scenes with gusto. It's just too bad there are so few of them. He spends most of the movie getting captured, escaping, getting captured again, being taunted by Morak, escaping, then getting captured. And to make matters worse, Morak isn't even a very good taunter.
The movie threatens to pick up when Morak has Siegfried cast down into the Well of Madness, where he will be assaulted by all manner of ghoulish monsters and hallucinations. Unfortunately, the movie doesn't really deliver on the Well of Madness, and Siegfried is menaced by one guy with blobs of make-up on his face and some spooky underlighting before he is allowed to go about his business. While down there, he happens to find his own father, who has been imprisoned lo these many years by Morak. It turns out that Morak can't kill the old man because the guy knows the secret of the prophecy that prescribes by when and in exactly what manner Morak must sit upon the throne of fire. He imparts this knowledge to Siegfried, and then just for the hell of it also gives him a spell of invisibility and the gift of invulnerability to anything but fire -- which is kind of a lame gift when you are fighting a guy who is about to take over the fire throne. Anyway, there's a long bit where Siegfried and Valkari keep rescuing each other and then getting captured again, and the whole things finally boils down to the inevitable showdown between Siegfried and Morak. By the time this admittedly competent -- especially within the realm of Italian barbarian movies, where the sword fight choreography was often legendarily awful -- sword fight occurs, you will have stopped caring, fallen asleep, or coughed up your own skeleton in an attempt to relieve the mind-numbing tedium. So let me put this in perspective: there is a movie directed by Jess Franco called Diamonds of Kilimandjaro. Even among fans of Jess Franco, it is considered to be terrible and tedious. I am going to give that movie a tepidly positive review and claim that it's not as boring as, well, as Throne of Fire. Other than the fact that some of the sword fights are OK and the leads look good, I have almost nothing positive to say about Throne of Fire except to mention that Siegfried is a master of gymkata. I go into movies like this expecting to be entertained no matter how awful they are. And I almost always am. And when you put this movie in, and it's got that topless barbarian woman cover and the first thing you are greeted with is the Cannon films logo and a remarkably crappy synth score, well things seem to be headed in the right direction, at least to me. But it doesn't take long for you to realize that you'd be much better off watching one of Cannon's other cheap-ass barbarian films, possibly Adventures of Hercules. Anything would be better than Throne of Fire.
Although you can't fault Torrisi and Siani for their one-note but largely competent performances (relative to the performances one usually sees in these types of movies), there is plenty of blame to be spread around among the writers and director. By this point in his lengthy career, Franco Prosperi should have known better. Way back when, he helped write the script for Mario Bava's Hercules in the Haunted World, one of the very best peplum adventures and arguably one of the best fantasy films of all time. He was originally slated to be the director before Bava took over. He must have died inside the day Bava took on directorial duties for Hercules in the Haunted World, because shortly thereafter Prosperi settled into a career of churning out scripts and doing directorial duties on a slew of sleazy mondo exploitation films. By the time he was tapped to direct a couple sword and sorcery films in the 1980s, he must not have given a damn about anything. His direction in Throne of Blood is as listless and boring as the script, and while me manages to keep everyone in frame and in focus, he doesn't put much effort beyond that into things. Frankly, though, I guess it's hard to blame him. After Throne of Fire, he decided to direct and a write a couple Cannibal Holocaust rip-offs. Cannibal Holocaust rip-offs...think that one over for a few minutes. Complicit in the crime of boring me to tears are writers Giuseppe Buricchi and Nino Marino. Between the two of them, they had almost zero experience writing scripts, and their lack of ability shines through in every scene. There is no sense of pacing, not a single moment that generates even a spark of excitement. The dialog is dull and pointless and abundant. The entire thing is lazy. Why is the son of Satan's messenger doing all this instead of the actual son of Satan? Why does the son of Satan's messenger need a Christian friar to perform his wedding ceremony? Shouldn't he have his own devil-y friar? Why is the good king so easy to beat? Why do all the peasants killed in one scene show up again, alive and well, a few minutes later in another scene? OK, OK -- that one we have to blame on Prosperi. The only bright spot in the entire dismal affair is a single gag where Morak agrees to let Valkari's people free. He then proceeds to shoot them in the back with arrows as they try to leave. But hey, at least they were free. Still, a ten second gag in ninety minutes of undiluted dullness hardly makes for a film worth recommending. You know the worst thing about Throne of Fire? It's that I just finished watching the movie and writing a review about how boring it is and how much I hated it. And then I look over at the table and see the bad-ass cover and think to myself, "Hey, Throne of Fire. That movie looks kind of cool. Maybe I'll watch it..."  Labels: Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 5:09 PM | 5 Comments Monday, March 20, 2006Fire and Ice
1983, United States. Starring Randy Norton, Cynthia Leake, Steve Sandor, Sean Hannon, Leo Gordon, William Ostrander, Eileen O'Reill, Elizabeth Lloyd Shaw, Micky Morton, Tamarah Park. Directed by Ralph Bakshi. Written by Gerry Thomas and Roy Conway. Purchase from Amazon.com
 .OK, let's talk some Dungeons & Dragons before we dig into the film review proper. It'll help you understand the background which makes it possible for me to so love a film like Fire and Ice as much as I do. It's also one of those inevitable subjects, and it's best we get it out of the way now. Geeks and nerds will always bring it up. For us, D&D is sort of like heroin is to skinny rock stars. You go through a period of brief flirtation, end up heavily addicted to the point where it destroys your social life, and you sit around, all high on your drug, saying things that seem deep and philosophical to you but are really just idiotic, like, "Man, what if you put a Portable Hole inside a Bag of Holding?" or, "Man, wouldn't it be cool if Gary Gygax was here right now?" Then you go through a period of recovery, followed by a relapse, then finally get clean and spend the next thirty years talking about how you "used to do heroin" or "used to play D&D" to whoever has the misfortune of being in a position to have to listen to you. Possibly the only thing worse than people telling you stories about when they were stoned and stared at a wall for seven hours, or people reading you their erotic vampire fanfic, is crusty old farts telling you about how they used to roll the twenty-sided die -- and yeah, try sidling up to someone in a bar one night and asking them if they'd "like to roll the twenty-sided die." You'll be lucky if your potential mate-date doesn't yell, "Blee yark!" in your face and take you back to their keep on the borderlands to show you their collection of smoky crystalline dice that they store in a leather pouch they bought at last year's medieval festival. Speaking of which, when did it become acceptable to show up to medieval fairs dressed as an elf? Since when did that become an acceptable historic recreation of the times? I mean, a sprite or a kobold I could understand, but an elf? For that matter, when did camouflage pants and combat boots become acceptable attire? For God's sake, man, where're your jerkins??? I think if you're going to dress up for a medieval fair, you should have to meet some minimum standard of historical accuracy. At the very least, you shouldn't be able to wear a long Fruit of the Loom t-shirt with a belt cinched around it. It should be like dining at a fancy restaurant. You don't have proper attire? Well, sir, please don this complimentary King Henry VIII robe. OK, hoi polloi I can excuse, but the people who actively take part in the festival events? It just doesn't seem fair to me that some guy went out and forged his own full suit of plate mail armor, and then the guy next to him bought two rolls of Reynolds Wrap and a sheet of poster board.
But this is just one of those things, like how Paganism makes me mad because it's all fruity sweetness and light hippies flitting about and saying "Blessed be!" and "Goddess bless you," instead of doing what it was Pagans were busy doing before the sixties ruined it all, which was hitting people in the chest with giant battle axes then drinking blood from the cleaved skulls of their enemies. We didn't "drum circle" the Romans out of Scotland, people. I'm just saying that if you are dressing up for the Renaissance Festival, at the very least you should have to invest in a pair of those tan rawhide Robin Hood boots that were popular with the pickup-driving guys when I was a kid. Still, I suppose it could be worse. Anime fandom seems to have been overrun by fat guys dressed as cats, where all they do is draw whiskers on their face and throw on some cardboard ears and a pipe cleaner tail. You know what that outfit is, buddy? That's what the loser kid throws together for Halloween. Some people spend hours and hours crafted outrageously complex and detailed costumes to showcase their nerdiness. I think those people should be allowed to kick the ass of anyone who shows up dressed as a cat person, wearing normal clothes but with a cheap tail and ears taped to themselves. Likewise, the guy who makes his own authentic armor should be able to use his Morning Star of Clobberin' +3 on anyone who show sup to a medieval fair wearing their normal clothes, but with a cape thrown on. I mean, this is why Civil War reinacters don't give you guys no respect, man. So where was I? Sorry, I can get pretty worked up when a topic is this important. So yeah, like many other nerds, I dabbled in the black art of D&D. Funny, in retrospect, how hysterical people were over the evil of the game. If you remember, D&D was going to either turn us all into devil worshippers (also fond of just throwing cheap cloaks over their street clothes instead of going all the way and putting on red Danksin unitards) or it was going to cause the youth of America to become so lost in this amazing world of make-believe and fantasy that all concept of the real world would disintegrate, leaving us with a society full of people wearing fake elf ears and cheap cloaks. Hmm. I guess they were right, after all. My flirtation with this world full of dungeons and dragons began at an early age thanks to the fact that an old boyfriend of my mother's happened to be one of the early employees at TSR, so he funneled me a steady stream of the old basic and advanced box sets that came in the red and aquamarine boxes respectively. I guess I was in fourth grade when we put together our geeky little campaign, though back then D&D was considered less dorky and more dangerous, sort of like how video games were dangerous, then became dorky, and now are back to the point where thug kids host video-game related public access cable shows about them. For the most part, we'd gather at a friend's house, cheat on our character sheets for a while, consult various charts, then play the game for half an hour (usually Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, because we liked to equip our characters with lasers and such) or so before retiring to play outside or watch a movie. Four times out of five, the movie would be a barbarian movie not entirely dissimilar to the game of D&D we'd just abandoned in mid-campaign. Actually, there was a 97% chance that the movie would be Beastmaster. But we've covered that territory before, so if you need to hear jokes about Beastmaster and watching barbarian movies, go back and read one of our previous sword and sorcery movie reviews. Somehow, the animated Ralph Bakshi feature Fire and Ice managed to slip through the cracks, though I can't imagine it didn't make the early 1980s cable TV rounds. It's perfect late-night HBO fare. If I'd seen it back then, I would have embraced it whole-heartedly and probably proclaimed it the best thing I'd ever seen. Or something to that effect. Alas, it was never to be, and although Heavy Metal was inescapable at the time, Fire and Ice remained unseen by me until the recent DVD release allowed me to go back and see how Bakshi's sword and sorcery cartoon had aged over the years. In brief, Fire and Ice is the animated feature film equivalent of trying to buy saucy fantasy comic magazine Heavy Metal at age thirteen, praying that the B. Dalton check-out clerk doesn't realize that the magazine is a veritable horn o' plenty of naked chicks riding dragons around acid-trip landscapes that look like something the guy down the street would have airbrushed onto the side of his custom van. And then, if you do manage to score, you have to forever hide the torrid tome amongst your copies of Dragon magazine for fear that the big-breasted zebra-striped woman on the cover might otherwise arouse parental suspicion, resulting in them just happening to randomly open the magazine to one of the naughtier Guido Crepax stories. Ralph Bakshi is a director and artist who was at the forefront of a lot of innovative new ideas, but he was always at the forefront in a way that would only facilitate his ambitions crashing and burning, only to have someone else basically hatch the same idea a few years later with great success. Bakshi first made headlines by directing a raunchy cartoon for adults named Fritz the Cat, forever destined to be picked up by accident by aging vaudeville fans who mistake it for Felix the Cat. At the time of the film's release, the concept of cartoon movies for adults, packed full of cursing, drug use, and sex, was pretty alien, and it's likely that more than a few ill-informed parents took their screaming, crying broods out for a fun day at the cartoon movie only to discover after the lights went down that they were in a grindhouse theater full of guys in raincoats jerking off to anthropomorphic cat women (if you've been to an anime convention lately, you've seen that some things never change). Soon thereafter, Bakshi decided that what he wanted to do with his time was make an animated adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's epic Lord of the Rings trilogy. To realize his vision, Bakshi would rely on a technique called rotoscoping -- that is, filming live actors, then tracing the artwork over them. Bakshi's ambition was admirable, but it was a fair leap across the chasm from ambition to realization, and The Lord of the Rings failed to make the jump. The film is an uncomfortable mish-mash of questionable character design (ugly gap-toothed hobbits, Boromir the Viking, Aragorn the Navajo), impressive animation, and shocking lapses in the quality of rotoscoping that results in frequent shifts from animation to live-action actors who look nothing like their animated counterparts horsing around against heavily tinted backgrounds. It also didn't help that funding was a major stumbling block, and Bakshi ran out of time and money two books into the three-book adventure. Undeterred, Bakshi forged boldly forward, sticking to the fantasy formula for Fire and Ice, which was released in the immediate wake of Conan the Barbarian's success and the launching of the sword and sorcery trend that delighted us for so many hours when we'd grown tired of using our imaginations to slay trolls and other beasts lurking in the pages of the Monster Manual and beloved Fiend Folio. Where Lord of the Rings held the promise of Bakshi merging his adult-oriented artwork with the world of Tolkien, the hook for Fire and Ice was that it was an artistic collaboration between Bakshi and one of the most famous pulp artists of all time, Frank Frazetta. Frazetta rose to prominence as one of the most in-demand artists of the heyday of pulp fiction, gaining particular notoriety for his illustration of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, and while you can't exactly claim that he invented fantasy artwork, he certainly defined it for quite some time, up until the point when Haji Sorayama started drawing hot, naked robot chicks and Boris Vallejo picked up the fantasy art gauntlet. But Frazetta was The Man for decades, creating a style that showcased beefy, axe-wielding barbarians in furry loincloths and big-breasted, big-booty women in tiny, tiny magical bikinis. It would seem, at least in the early 1980s, that his artwork would be a good match for Ralph Bakshi's animation style. Something more adult-oriented, full of gibbering goblins, bare-chested barbarians, and buxom babes. Working from Frazetta character designs and the basic template of a fantasy tale as defined by decades of pulp fiction, and plagued as always by budget short-comings and a general lack of interest from audiences, Bakshi gave us Fire and Ice. Fire and Ice involves a clash of two cultures. First, there is the evil, skinny blue guy Nekron, who would be played by David Bowie if this was a big-budget, live-action film. Nekron lives in a land of ice and glaciers and dreams of making the rest of the world as dismal and bleak as his North Dakota-esque ice kingdom. Standing in his way is the king of Fire Keep, who has harnessed the power of the volcanoes that surround his kingdom. Nekron's scheming mother devises a plan to kidnap Teegra, the hot big-booty daughter of the king of Fire Keep, and thus force him to negotiate a surrender. But being evil, Nekron's minions are mostly sub-human goblins who don't seem to be very good at much of anything other than riding atop advancing glaciers while hooting and waving clubs. Teegra escapes (using the ever-effective "look at my nipples while I writhe about in the water" method of escape), gets captured, escapes, get captured, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, a hunky barbarian named Larn survives Nekron's attack on his village and takes to wandering the land, killing goblins whenever he happens to come across them. He and Teegra eventually hook up, and then a dude named Darkwolf, in a big wolfhead hood, shows up to do some damage as well. The whole thing ends with a wild assault-by-dragon on Nekron's icy fortress. It is by no accounts a perfect film. Bakshi relies once again on the technique of rotoscoping, realized here in infinitely better fashion than in the awkward Lord of the Rings. Although this is once again a film made by first filming live-action actors on a soundstage, then animating over the top of them, there are no points at which we just get tinted footage of the live-action actors. The actual animated look is consistent, and the rotoscoping provides for very fluid and realistic movement of the characters. Unfortunately, Frazetta relies heavily on moody shading and lighting, and in that sense, Bakshi's animation falls flat -- literally. There's no real attempt, save for one or two scenes, at creating a sense of depth or lighting. Bakshi just doesn't have the time and resources to achieve such detail, and thus Frazetta's characters look less like Frazetta creations and more like Bakshi's character designs from Lord of the Rings, but better looking. There's also a funny part in one of the DVD extras where Frazetta explains that he always assumed that somewhere out there were women who looked like the women he drew, at least up until the process of rotoscoping, and thus needing to find a real woman to serve as the actress base of his design for Teegra, the booty-shaking daughter of the good king of Fire Keep. Although it fails to capture the nuance of Frazetta's original artwork, Fire and Ice still boasts pretty good if standard artwork. It reminds me of how much I miss the look of hand-drawn animation. Computer-assisted artwork results in really smooth, really slick lines and shading. By comparison, something like Fire and Ice -- which was really a stylistic throwback even upon its initial release -- looks likes a series of animated sketches, with bolder outlines, rougher around the edges. But I really like that raw look, though I have nothing against the more refined lines of modern animation. The backgrounds are also highly stylized, almost impressionist, which means they look cool and were easier to draw. With more time and better technology, Bakshi might have been able to realize a more fully developed style of animation for this film, with more inventive lighting and shading, resulting in something that looks less like a bigger budget version of The Herculoids. But he didn't have those things, and the end results are still enough fun for me to forgive him. In fact, the entire film was completed by just a tiny handful of artists working from Frazetta's character designs and Bakshi's live-action stars, which makes the TV cartoon quality moments excusable and the more richly realized moments truly impressive. One of the artists was none other than Peter Chung, who animated the dragonhawk finale and would go on to create his own scantily-clad, impossibly-proportioned heroine some years later when he wrote and animated a little show called Aeon Flux.
The acting is, at best, workmanlike, but it suits the style of the film. None of the live-action actors were anyone especially accomplished, unless you count an appearance on Glen Larson's Buck Rogers to be an accomplishment. Steve Sandor, who provides the voice of Darkwolf, is probably the most experienced actor of the bunch, having logged countless hours working on pretty much every television show that was made from Star Trek on. Luckily, the dialogue doesn't demand much of anyone, so they all glide by pretty easily and without anything really sticking as a particularly bad acting job, though a few huffs and puffs during running scenes are looped in a little too loudly. The script by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas (the duo also worked on the script for Conan the Destroyer, and both together and separately, worked on a number of famous cartoon TV shows, including The Transformers and GI Joe) is pretty paint by numbers pulp fantasy. It doesn't do anything you don't expect it to do, and each of the characters depends on you recognizing a familiar pulp archetype. There is no back story for anyone. We have no idea who any of these people really are, or why they're doing what they do. We don't know who Nekron really is. We have no idea why Darkwolf shows up and joins forces with Larn. The extras tell us that an original draft of the movie explained that he was Nekron's father, but that never shows up -- nor is it even hinted at -- in the finished product. The thing is, none of the characters really need a complicated (or even simple) back story, because the dependence on the target audience's familiarity with stock pulp characters gets the job done. Nekron does the things he does because he's bad. Larn is good. Darkwolf is cool and mysterious. Teegra is scantily clad (even for a fantasy film princess) in a thong and flimsy bikini top and has jiggling boobs and booty cheeks. If you need any more information than that, then you've missed the point of this type of throwback story, which is to show guys in loincloths beating up goblins, intercut with leering shots of Teegra's ass as she crawls through the swamp. I would imagine a movie like Fire and Ice appeals to a very select population of people. It was a failure upon its initial release, though like most Bakshi films it built up a cult following after the fact. Measured against modern fantasy films that take advantage of cutting edge computer animation (Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy being the benchmark), something as modest as Fire and Ice can't really measure up, but you're sort of making a mistake if you pit a small-budget pulp fantasy movie from 1983 against something of that stature. Older fantasy fans, however, will probably find a lot in Fire and Ice that appeals to them, especially if they favor old-style pulp storytelling and artwork. I thoroughly enjoy Fire and Ice, beginning to end, and find it consistently entertaining and fascinating, not to mention beautifully realized despite the typical Bakshi-project budget constraints. It's a lot more enjoyable and successful as a piece of animated filmmaking than Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, and the influence of Frazetta, while not completely realized, adds even further to the old-fashioned pulp novel feel of the movie. Labels: Anime and Animation, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Netflix Diary, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 4:37 PM | 4 Comments Wednesday, January 11, 2006Yor, the Hunter from the Future Release Year: 1983Country: Italy Starring: Reb Brown, Corinne Clery, John Steiner, Carole Andre, Luciano Pigozzi, Ayshe Gul, Aytekin Akkaya, Marina Rocchi, Sergio Nicolai. Writer: Robert Bailey and Antonio Magheriti Director: Antonio Magheriti Cinematographer: Marcello Masciocchi Music: Guido and Maurizio De Angelis Producer: Michele Marsala Original Title: Il Mondo di Yor Promote It: Digg | del.icio.us Not too terribly long ago, I wrote a piece on movies dealing with time-traveling barbarians. I went back and read it yesterday, because I like to reel about in my own filth from time to time, and I was shocked by how shoddy the craftsmanship of the article was. Not just the number of typos and sentences where I seem to lose my train of thought half-way through, allowing whatever I was writing to simply trail off into an incomplete and incoherent mess; those things are a given whenever I sit down to bash out a piece on my keyboard. Honestly, you'd be surprised by the accuracy scores I got in typing class back in high school, and you'd be even more shocked by my ability to catch and correct poor grammar and typos in a first draft when I bother to do such things. But like I said, it wasn't just that. The article just wasn't very good. And while there is plenty of stuff that isn't very good on this site, most of what really disappoints me is now seven or eight years old, and I can dismiss its weakness as mere youthful inexperience and put whatever title was subjected to such embarrassing writing onto my lengthy list of things to rewatch and rewrite. Because, with some six-hundred or so titles in my queue waiting to be reviewed, what I really need to be doing right now is taking movies about which I've already written and adding them back into the mob. But this time traveling barbarian movie article was only written a year or two ago, at a time when I thought my game had been somewhat elevated. It was disappointing to me, and I can't help but assume that at the time I wrote it, I must have been sober and possessed of ample free time that would afford me the chance to do a good job. When I find myself under those desirable circumstances, I generally tend to half-ass it. OK, not as if Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time or Time Barbarians really deserves anyone's whole ass be put into the effort -- especially considering the fact that it's obvious the people who made the film put, at best, a quarter of their own asses into it. But still, it's my site here, and I should invest a little care in what becomes a part of it, seeing as how the Internet is a record of the sum total of human knowledge that will be preserved for hundreds of thousands of years.
What really bothered me though, and this is where things start to get sad and you should all hang your head in disappointment for me, is that the substandard writing I did for that article means that the movie Yor, The Hunter from the Future didn't get its just dues. Most people in the world will consider the just dues for Yor, The Hunter from the Future to be a swift kick to the groin of anyone involved in the making of the film. Doing a quick survey of Yahoo, Google, and the external reviews linked to from the Internet Movie Database will turn up a body of reviews almost unanimous in their disdain for the movie. Yor, The Hunter from the Future certainly isn't an unknown movie, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a single person out there, even among aficionados of bad movies, who doesn't feel that it probably should be an unknown movie. Sometimes it seems like the lone voice in post-apocalyptic wilderness is the guy who writes for www.antoniomargheriti.com, though even the film's own director has publicly stated that the film is awful. And this is precisely why my moderately positive review of the film is such a tragedy. Given that I am apparently one of the two members of the Yor fanclub, it behooves me to write a better defense and review of this maligned slice of early eighties Italian exploitation. So it is with the soaring heart of an eagle -- but not the soaring heart of Ator, the Fighting Eagle -- that I return to the prehistoric world of Yor to rework, rewrite, and revise my review in the hopes that, if better constructed, it will convince some impressionable and pathetic young person out there to gaze upon the visage of Yor with a glimmer of sympathy and pity for those of us who get all worked up and tingly every time we here that triumphant explosion of synth-rock that is the theme song for Yor, The Hunter from the Future.
The words "favorite" and "Yor" have, to my knowledge, never been uttered together before, not even on the internet where all things perverse and profane flourish. In a medium where you can probably find a website with pictures of people masturbating with donkey hoofs while a Nazi shoves live eels up their butt, you can't find many people who will say anything positive about Yor, The Hunter from the Future. But unlike almost every other critic and film fan in the world, I come not to bury Yor, but to praise him -- at least mildly. My initiation into the strange and exclusive cult of Yor came in the eighties, when a film like this would actually get released to theaters with a considerable degree of fanfare. Conan the Barbarian had just stormed on to screens, and the Italians apparently possess a magical ability to forecast which movies will ignite remarkable trends, then rush out scores of imitations mere days after the original inspiration is released. I suppose it has a little something to do with business acumen, and a lot to do with the fact that most of these movies had production schedules that closely resembled the gestation period of a fruit fly. These were heady days for young men with very little sense of decency in their cinematic taste. In a drunken run that began more or less with the release of The Black Hole and TRON, youngsters of the era were subjected to a seemingly endless parade of generally delightful bad films that was only made all the more intoxicating the day a friend got cable television. Whenever people bemoan the sad state of modern movies and complain about how much junk is getting dumped on the market, I feel I should recommend they take a step back and re-examine previous years. The problem with movie hindsight is that it is terribly myopic. Decades removed from any given year, we tend to only remember the exceptionally good (and in a few rare instances, exceptionally atrocious) films, thus giving that year an inflated position. Living in a year, however, we're exposed to every piece of crap that rolls out of the factory, and so the poor quality of our current time is much fresher and more evident than that of years past. It's the same phenomenon that makes it look like foreign countries make better movies than we do. Since we're only exposed to a select, hand-chosen few foreign films every year, we tend to get the cream of the crop. But as anyone who lives in one of these countries can tell you, they manage to make just as many wretched offerings as we do. We just get filtered content.
The big difference between now and then is the budget. It used to be that rotten films were confined to the ghetto of low-budget quickie productions, while films with a larger budget invested in them had shown some degree of merit. There are, of course, exceptions to the rule, and just because a studio and critics thought a big-budget film might be good doesn't mean it actually was. Things reversed sometime in the nineties though, and most of the good films had smaller budgets while the big-budget movies reeked of bloat, excess, and slapdash craftsmanship. Now we live in an era where people dump millions into films that previously would have been made on a shoestring. To tie this all together into a poorly wrapped package, the grandfather of providing A-list financing for B-list concepts was Dino De Laurentiis. It started for him in the sixties, working as a producer for cheap "sword and sandal" peplum films. Although Dino's films probably weren't budgeted any higher than their contemporaries, most of the ones that bear his name look and play much better than the rest of the pack. In 1968, he lavished French director Roger Vadim with a sizeable budget for the piece of psychedelic cheesecake sci-fi pop art known as Barbarella, and thus began the producer's long love affair with throwing tons of money at silly concepts. Now, what ties this in with Yor, The Hunter from the Future is the fact that De Laurentiis produced Conan the Barbarian. So yes, Italian moviemakers have a knack for latching onto a big trend and draining it mercilessly of its precious lifeblood. At the same time, most of the trends upon which they hop -- Westerns, peplum, zombies -- also have significant ties to Italy in the first place. A Fistful of Dollars may have starred Clint Eastwood, but it was an Italian film. Ditto Steve Reeves and Hercules. George Romero's Dawn of the Dead sparked the glut of Italian zombie films that shambled through the eighties, but it was made possible by the financial graces of Italian director/producer Dario Argento. And Conan was the fevered brainchild of Oliver Stone, John Milius, and a whole bunch of pot (one assumes), but an Italian made it happen. So in some twisted way, the Italians deserve to be able to rip these films off. Or, you know, something like that.
Anyway, none of us kids got to see Conan in the theaters, though there were few who didn't catch it on cable in between showings of Beastmaster. But we did get to see various, more family-friendly knock-offs, back in a time when family-friendly films didn't have to include spunky children but could include cannibalistic mummies and loincloth-clad women. Among those was Yor, The Hunter from the Future. Undoubtedly still reeling from the time she took us to the drive-in to see Treasure of the Four Crowns, my mom wasn't up for the challenge of taking a carload of kids to see Yor. I don't remember whose mom got suckered into Yor duty, but I'm sure she curses us to this day, assuming she hasn't completely blocked the memory. You know what, though? We loved it. We loved it more than modern kids love Harry Potter and Catch that Kid. You may have those movies, but we got to watch shit like Yor and Treasure of the Four Crowns, where people flew around on giant bats and had melting faces. Of course, we also had to endure our parents taking us to more acceptable kid-friendly movies, like that one where the kid from E.T. uses his BMX bike to evade trained KBG agents while soliciting cloak and dagger advice from Dabny Coleman. What was that movie called? Oh yeah, Cloak and Dagger. Yor, the Hunter from the Future is by far the most ambitious, and thus goofy, of all the Conan knock-offs. It's the only one with the audacity to rip off its shock revelation from Planet of the Apes while also ripping off the inferior Apes sequel Beneath the Planet of the Apes, with just as dash of Conquerors of Atlantis and Star Wars thrown in for good measure. You got a hero in a loin cloth, some technologically advanced mutant humans hiding away from the primitives, and a surprise ending (well, midway point anyway) in which we learn that the ancient land of cavemen and dinosaurs we're seeing is not the ancient past or another planet, but is in fact a post-nuke Earth. Not surprisingly, star Reb Brown is no Charlton Heston and Yor, The Hunter from the Future is no Planet of the Apes. It's barely even Goin' Ape. Yor begins as every movie should begin: with a peroxide blonde caveman bounding across a rocky terrain while synth-heavy prog rock screams madly in the background. Imagine how much better every movie would be with this opening. Kate and Leopold? Why not start it with a barbarian and thunderous prog rock, then move into the thing about the guy from Napoleonic times romancing Meg Ryan on the eve of her officially becoming a has-been? All those Mandy Moore films? Sure she's cute, but who can argue the fact that her sugary coming-of-age soap operas would be more palatable to everyone if they included a couple shots of a oily barbarian with Flash Gordon hair fighting dinosaurs while unintelligible prog-rock anthems roared on gloriously in the background? The whole movie doesn't have to be about that, because we already have that movie and it's called Yor, the Hunter from the Future. But maybe they could do something where, say, Mandy Moore is sitting in a malt shop (kids still go to malt shops, right?) or Meg Ryan is in a quaint upper west side coffee shop talking about relationships, and then they go, "Well, will you look at that?" And then we cut to a few minutes of a caveman using a giant bat as a hang glider or something, and then we can go back to the plot about finding romance and meaning in today's hurried modern world. I think it would fit thematically, because it illustrates how in earlier, more barbarous times, life had so much more significance because times were so tough. We had to live full and hearty lives filled with adventure and passion and synth-rock orchestration, because we never knew when a monkey-man mummy was going to leap down from a perch in the woods and hit us in the face with a rough-hewn stone axe. Removed from that sort of immediacy, Meg Ryan's life is less vital, less passionate, and thus she has a hard time forging a meaningful relationship with modern men who are too wrapped up in banking or computer programming to ever take time out of their busy schedule to love a woman right or shoot arrows into a rampaging dinosaur's eye. But as the cavewoman Ka-Laa notices as she watches Yor bound mightily from boulder to boulder one fine, sunny day, Yor is not like other men. Yes, Meg Ryan, now more than ever, as you see the roles you used to play being filled by younger actresses despite the fact that you are still "cute as a button," I think you have a little something to learn from the man called Yor.
Yor lives in "Barbarian Times," and comes from "the high mountains." I have a feeling Antonio Margheriti was pretty high in the mountains himself when he co-wrote this script. Yor spends his days scrambling over rocks and saving some cockeyed Jack Elam looking guy named Pag (Luciano Pigozii) and sexy cavewoman Ka-Laa from screaming, roaring, huffing, house-size dinosaurs that somehow manage to sneak up behind people in the woods. Most people can't sneak up behind other people in the woods without at least stepping on a twig, but what do I know? I've never been stalked by a dinosaur. Thankful for blond, loincloth-clad Yor's randomly showing up and saving them from a dinosaur (shades of Fire Monster Against the Son of Hercules), Pag and Ka-Laa invite Yor back to their village to eat "the choice meats" and watch women drape themselves in cargo nets and spin around. The difference between Yor and the rest of the inhabitants of this primal world is immediately evident. He has mastered hair bleaching and body-waxing; they possess tangled brown hair. He is clean-shaven while the rest of the men sport scraggly Mujahadeen beards. Only Ka-Laa's grooming prowess and hair teasing ability rivals Yor's. It is obvious he is "not like the others." Unfortunately for Yor's new friends, everyone is a musical theater critic, and a neighboring, even more primitive tribe of hairy blue cavemen pillage the village and put an end to the twilrling rope dress dance, fulfilling the basic requirement of any sword and sorcery film that someone's village get pillaged, preferably fairly early in the film. It's likely that Pag's tribe was slaughtered on account of their phenomenally stupid "twirling rope dress" dance, but even if not, there's no arguing with the notion that the world was better off minus a tribe full of people who were continuously sneaked up on by snorting, stomping, bellowing dinosaurs. Only Yor, Pag, and Ka-Laa survive the slaughter. Yor decides he wants to find out the origin of the strange metal medallion he wears, and thus discover the mystery of his own past. Pag and his big-haired daughter, Ka-Laa, join Yor on his quest. What else are they going to do? Their village was just destroyed. Along the way, they'll fight more dinosaurs, some monkey men, and Yor will grab a giant hairy bat-monster and use it to hang glide through a cave while the prog rock music screams out in joyous ovation to his heroics. Whenever Yor does something especially heroic, like hang onto a giant bat, we're treated to a thunderous explosion of prog rock glory that would be very much at home on Rick Wakeman's "Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table," the ice ballet for which was considerably less corny than Yor.
Yor eventually discovers a blonde woman living amongst the diseased primitives of the wasteland, and he is shocked to see that she possesses the same funky medallion as him. In her cave are other people, frozen in ice, and more clues to Yor's origins. As they quest about the prehistoric future, they slowly unravel the mystery of the disco medallion Yor wears, and they discover a group of advanced humans living in a space-age facility on an island. What mystery is this? As Yor draws closer to the truth, your mouth will be agape at the final, shocking revelation. These aren't prehistoric times at all! This is...the future! But who are these strange men in Ming the Merciless cloaks, and what manner of magic weapon do they possess that can issue forth a slow-moving neon pink dollop of light that kills a man? Gods, such sorcery! It turns out these are the last remaining survivors of a once-proud and technologically advanced civilization that was destroyed by nuclear war. All the pieces fall into place when Yor's medallion is revealed to be a recording of his family history. Why is Yor not like the other men? Because he is the child of one of the advanced survivors, a group of rebels who sought to overthrow the "Overlord" and were victims of a spaceship crash that left young Yor and that other blonde chick stranded in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. But Yor survived yet, and grew strong and heroic, and where his father failed, Yor shall lead another band of advanced survivor rebels in another bid to overthrow the Darth Vaderish Overlord, who seeks to obliterate all life and replace it with a new race, half-android, half-Yor. If you think a mad scheme like that is going to cause Yor to have to do all sorts of crazy shit that demands prog-rock synth ovations, then you've been paying closer attention to this movie than most people. Amid it all, various people get on the space-age facilitiy's loudspeaker and wax philosophic at great lengths on assorted points pertaining to topics such as the folly of man, the worth of man, the future of man, and overloading the atomic reactor. Yor's "message" is, needless to say, half-baked and completely ludicrous, but heck. How many other sword and sorcery movies from the time even made an attempt at having a message, however cliche it may have been? You know, I was all for nuclear proliferation, brinksmanship, and the whole arms race until Yor, The Hunter from the Future opened my eyes and really made me think about how man harbors a tendency to abuse power he doesn't fully comprehend.
Athough Yor isn't a time-traveling barbarian movie in the strictest sense of how the intellectuals and academics of the world define "time-traveling barbarian," it's close enough to lump it in with the little sub-genre that erupted in its wake. Hard to believe that Yor could start a trend within a trend, but as one of the early entries in the sword and sorcery genre, it gets the dubious credit of having inspired the other time-warp barbarians like Beastmaster II and the dreary Time Barbarians. Ancient warriors traversing the fold of the space-time continuum in much the same way Conan trod the sands of the earth beneath his sandaled feet may be historically questionable (it's more historically viable to have barbarians traveling into space, like in the Gor movies or the second Lou Ferrigno Hercules movie. Or was it the first one? Whichever one where he goes to the moon), but it made good financial sense. Most of the cheap barbarian movies that came out in the 1980s required little more than some fake swords, fake armor, and only a couple locations: usually, a forest, a rocky desert, and at least one castle chamber that could probably be rented cheap from Roger Corman. But you could save even more money by sending your barbarian forward in time, almost exclusively to modern-day Los Angeles. Then you only needed a few barbarian outfits and probably only one or two forest shots before you could throw a goofy "time portal" effect up on screen and spend the remainder of the film simply following your muscleman around the parking garages of LA. And there in lies the truly admirable - and I use that term loosely - thing about Yor. It isn't happy living within its means. Time Barbarians was cheap, and they knew better than to do much other than have some barbarians in the woods and then stage a fight in a rented warehouse. Yor, on the other hand, has dinosaurs, monkey monsters, bat hang-gliding, a city of tomorrow, mutants, messages about the folly of man, the twirling rope dress dance, laser battles, a robot army -- basically, enough stuff for the entire Star Wars series, all crammed into one cut-rate Italian fantasy/sci-fi action film. Almost none of these things are realized well. The dinosaurs are OK so long as they don't have to do much beyond swing their head back and forth. The fight choreography is sluggish and seems designed to maximize the number of times Reb Brown is shot from a low angle, jumping through the air to allow his loincloth to flap up and give the world a cheeky show. The city of the future (actually the past, I suppose) is about on par with the cut-rate "future city of the past" from the cheapskate Battle for the Planet of the Apes, which means there's some matte paintings, and then the whole thing was filmed in a pump factory somewhere, with some red and blue blinking lights attached to the pipes and metal railing. And don't even mention the laser effects, which result in an animated beam that moves about as fast as someone walking across a room. But that doesn't stop Yor, which was based on a comic strip I assume looked a lot like a comic out of Heavy Metal magazine, from pulling out all stops and attempting to serve up a visual extravaganza that is far beyond its hope of ever successfully achieving. It's a naive movie on many levels. Though Margheriti obviously knew he was making something bad (the original version of Yor is a four-part mini-series that rarely, if ever, aired), the film itself doesn't seem aware of this, and it never seems to think it's doing anything other than telling one of the most important stories of all time. The lack of wink-and-nudge self-awareness is refreshing from today's standpoint, seeing as how we're buried under an avalanche of self-referential "ironic" movies that think they're the first ones to ever be so clever. But Yor plods along with a blissful earnestness that makes it charming in a weird way. It's also naive in that it really is fairly kid-friendly. There is no nudity, unless you count the disturbingly frequent Reb Brown buffalo shots (I am not a man who is afraid of male nudity, but that angle just isn't appealing no matter how buff you are). There's a lot of killing but very little bloodshed. And Yor is a decidedly classical hero -- well, respective to the standards set by this film. Let's just say he's a nice guy who does the right thing, as opposed to the grittier, lustier anti-heroes that populated saltier barbarian fare. The acting is pretty bad, and there's a reason that Reb Brown never became a household name like Sam Jones. Still, it's not as if Reb is a total unknown, at least among the sorts of people who who would refer to Sam Jones as a household name. I mean, Reb Brown may not be Sam Jones, but at least he's not Dack Rambo. Reb starred in such direct-to-the-bargain-bin favorites as Strike Commando (yes, I own it), Roboforce (yes, I own it), and Space Mutiny (yes, I...oh, never mind). He appeared in another perennial sword and sorcery hit, Sword and the Sorcerer, though not in the lead. His brush with respectability came with an appearance in the film Uncommon Valor. He's probably "best known" for his turns in a couple abysmal made-for-TV Captain America movies and the film Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, which, oddly enough, I don't own even though it's one of my favorite awful movies. And just to ensure that no women ever want to talk to me again, his first film was, I believe, Sssss (give or take an "s"), and to tie this all in with Conan once again, he was in Conan director John Milius' 1970s surfing movie, Big Wednesday. What's really scary is that I am writing all this from memory, with no help from the imdb or any other source. So yes, with that amount of information, I believe I qualify as a Reb Brown biographer.
Reb has the sort of good looks you expect from a guy who isn't too bright (whether or not he's actually bright, I don't know, but he has managed to sustain a career). He's the good-hearted football player who falls for the cute, brainy girl with glasses and tries to impress her by making an earnest attempt to understand poetry (also an apt description of Yor the movie). He might never understand Longfellow, but he'll valiantly defend the brainy girl's honor against her nemesis, the mean football player with the catty cheerleader girlfriend. Since I mentioned the movie earlier, allow to once again make a connection only I would make: he's a lot like fellow bleach-blond superior caveman Reg Lewis, star of the sixties caveman/Hercules peplum adventure Fire Monster Against the Son of Hercules. There's a good-natured, everyman goofiness about him that takes the edge off the muscles. Still, he's not an especially good actor, but he's not required to do much more here than look muscular (but not bodybuilder muscular) and hang-glide on a giant bat, so that's fine. His main squeeze Ka-Laa is played by one-time Bond girl Corrine Clery, who has a massive list of Italian film and television credits to her name (those, unlike Reb's, I had to look up) but is best-known for her turn in Moonraker as "that chick who flies James Bond around in a helicopter then gets killed." "Artful erotica" fans might remember seeing her naked in the title role of The Story of O, and less artful erotica fans might remember her from Lucio Fulci's Devil's Honey. It's hard to judge her acting here since she's dubbed, but she goes through most of the movie with a slightly dazed look, for which you can't really blame her. Completing the core cast is Luciano Pigozzi as Pag. For years, I thought this role was played by Jack Elam. Looking back, I realize that Pigozzi is more like Jack Elam crossed with Lucio Fulci. Whatever, he has more Italian genre credits than a sane man can count, including countless appearances in many of Margheriti's other films, often under his Americanized name Alan Collins. Margheriti himself was rechristened Anthony Dawson whenever his films came to America. As if anyone cared whether or not the director of Yor was Italian. Pigozzi has his "stooped old man" bit down pretty good, but like everyone else, he's dubbed and has pretty inane lines anyway, so judging acting is moot. At least he has more facial expressions than Reb and Corinne. Everyone else in the movie is either a caveman or a future man, and they're primarily there to die, be menaced by dinosaurs, get shot by slow lasers, or make monotone speeches about the aforementioned folly of man. The movie was made on location in Turkey, so there are quite a few Turkish performers sprinkled into the mix, including recognizable names like Aytekin Akkaya, who appeared in the beloved Turkish sci-fi kungfu extravaganza The Man Who Saved the World (aka "The Turkish Star Wars") alongside Turkish matinee superstar Cuynet Arkin, as well as playing Captain America (just like Reb Brown!) in the curious 3 Dev Adam, in which Captain America and Santo the masked Mexican wrestler team up to defeat the murderous, chain-smoking Spider-Man, who likes to shove women's faces into outboard boat motors (which is much better than what happened in Reb Brown's own Captain America movies). Akkaya also worked with Margheriti again on the decent Indiana Jones cash-in Ark of the Sun God, starring David Warbeck. So really, when you think about it, Yor is an amazing multi-national nexus point of exploitation movie talent.
Margheriti was one of the most prolific directors working in the Italian exploitation genres, and amid all the movies made so he could pay his bills, there are actually quite a few gems. Some are simply delightfully bad, while others are genuinely good. And his moody, atmospheric Gothic horror film Castle of Terror is a bona fide horror classic. His specialty eventually ended up being action, though like any Italian exploitation director, he's worked in pretty much every genre and scored a memorable (if not always good) film in each one, including science fiction (Wild Wild Planet), peplum (Hercules, Prisoner of Evil), Eurospy (Lightning Bolt), western (And God Said to Cain), and giallo ( Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye), but his specialty became cheap action films in the 1980s, often working with David Warbeck to knock off Vietnam war movies or Indiana Jones adventures. Even in his worst films, Margheriti infuses the proceedings with energy, and while his statements betray the fact that he really has no love for Yor (I think "No Love for Yor" might be the title of his autobiography), the movie still benefits from his touch. Special effects are bad, acting is bad, and the script is daft, but Margheriti is still professional enough to make sure he turns in a technically competent directorial job (decent lighting, no boom mics in the shot, etc). As for that theme song -- I loved it when I was young, and I think it's still thoroughly rousing and utterly absurd, boasting all the theatrical bombast of Queen's work for Sam Jones' Flash Gordon movie (a Dino De Laurentiis production!), but relying less on guitars and more on synthesizers. Years later and farther down the road of no return, I'm a little more familiar with the stable of guys who wrote music for Italian genre films. My first guess, given the vocals and the over-the-top synths, was that this was probably the work of Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis, one of the most prolific score writing teams in the Italian film industry. They always relied pretty heavily on synths. A quick check of the credits revealed that, yes indeed, the DeAngelis duo was responsible. This correct guess coupled with my disturbingly exhaustive knowledge of Reb Brown's filmography should really make me worry. Anyway, beyond the theme song, the rest of the score is pretty standard "future synth" stuff. They didn't have the money to try and mimic Conan's even more bombastic "barbarian brass" orchestration. Guido and Maurizio DeAngelis have written some spectacular scores for some spectacular films. This isn't one of them, but man! I wish I had a recording of that theme song. Most people list Yor among the worst movies of all time. It may have even won some awards to that effect. All I can say is that if this is the worst movie you've ever seen, then you haven't seen enough movies. I admit I have a soft spot for the hunk of junk, the same "saw it in the theaters" soft spot that makes me crack a warm smile even for a film like Treasure of the Four Crowns, and I still find myself enjoying Yor far more than I should. The revelation about the past being the future is not exactly as stunning as that first time you see Chuck Heston stumble upon the Statue of Liberty, but I don't figure anyone goes into Yor expecting stunning revelations. You go in because you want to watch cavemen do somersaults and have laser battles with robots. Just remember, next time some half-crazed man in a leather cape stops you on the streets and demands, "WHO is the hunter from the future?" you just crack a smirk, take a swig of tequila, and say, "YOR the hunter from the future." Labels: Director: Antonio Margheriti, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Science Fiction: Post Apocalypse, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 2:36 PM | 6 Comments Friday, August 27, 2004Flesh + Blood
1985, United States/Spain. Starring Rutger Hauer, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tom Burlinson, Jack Thompson, Fernando Hilbeck, Susan Tyrrell, Ronald Lacey, Brion James, John Dennis Johnston, Bruno Kirby, Kitty Courbois, Marina Saura, Hans Veerman, Jake Wood. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Buy it from Amazon
 .Ah yes, Paul Verhoeven. What a director. Before he became famous/infamous with big budget sci-fi hits like Robocop and Total Recall or the low-concept, low-intelligence Showgirls that has somehow managed to become a cultural icon, he was plying his trade in this grim, gritty, and sometimes awkward medieval adventure that showcases all his favorite traits: political commentary surrounded by tons and tons of gratuitous nudity and gore. It also continues his knack for directing movies that tell you exactly what the film is full of. Robocop was full of Robocop. Showgirls was full of showgirls. And Flesh + Blood is full of flesh and blood. It's also full of some entirely ludicrous scenes, awful "ancient meets modern" dialogue, and Rutger Hauer's strange '80s hairdo. But these things only serve to ingratiate the film to the viewer, while the greater portion of the film remains a taut if extreme experience. Rutger Hauer -- Remember when he was the coolest actor on the face of the planet. I mean, he was never as big a name as previous coolest actors, and frankly he was never really as cool as we thought he was, but he still etched out his little niche thanks in large part to a quality turn as the determined and occasionally murderous android in Blade Runner. Then what happened to him? He made some films that disappeared quickly, gave C. Thomas Howell a bag of fries with human fingers in it, and then apparently discovered pie and started eating a lot of it with Steven Seagal, who was never the coolest actor on the face of the planet at any point in his career, though he could make some headway if he gave it up and started doing comedy (and I don't mean The Glimmer Man). Men loved Rutger Hauer because he was cool and would eventually get big and fat like them. Women loved him because he was hot and weird and dangerous and they didn't realize he was going to eat so much ham later on down the line.
He's on and off, as he often was, in this film as the leader of a ruthless and dirt-smeared band of mercenaries and whores in 1501. After helping lay siege to a castle, Hauer's Martin and his men find themselves betrayed, cheated out of their pay and spoils, and cast out into the rain. A good rule of thumb for kings and conquerors is that if the strongest part of your army consists of mercenaries, and they're the only reason you win a battle, you probably shouldn't just go and cast them out a couple days after the battle is won because chances are they'll take it hard and make trouble. It's hardly worth retaining the few silver pitchers and baubles you'll save. And sure enough, Martin and the gang ambush the king and his son shortly after the caravan has picked up the son's bride-to-be, played by a very young and frequently naked Jennifer Jason Leigh. Martin's band hole up inside a keep while Tom Burlingson as Steven lays siege to the castle in attempt to rescue the bride he'd only known for an hour or so before she was kidnapped. There are plenty of adjectives that readily lend themselves to an accurate description of this movie. Depraved. Bawdy. Mean-spirited and offensive. These are leap immediately to mind, as they tend to do with most any Verhoeven film. But the film is also intelligent, satirical, and lyrically beautiful in a sick and twisted sort of way. Verhoeven does, after all, possess a wicked sense of humor to match his overall pessimism about the nature of man, best represented here by the "storybook romance" scene in which Steven and Agnes discuss love and flirt with one another in a rolling, lush green field. Only here, they're doing their flirting beneath the hideous, graphically rendered rotting corpses of two hanged criminals. The thing that has always kept Verhoeven as something of an acquired taste, or more accurately an acquired tastelessness, is the fact that he takes perfectly intelligent and well-written scripts and drapes them in overwhelming amounts of sadism and perversion. What brain there is behind Flesh + Blood is often obscured by all the raping, nudity, and gore.
But this is the Middle Ages about which we're talking, and such things were as much a fact of life as they remain today, only without as much of the added social sensitivity about them. Verhoeven wallows gleefully in the filth of the era, and if his film is not entirely historically accurate, it is at least successful in accurately creating the atmosphere of the 16th century. A film that was willing to indulge in the grim realities of medieval life and warfare was still a rare thing in 1985. Boorman's Excalibur tread there to a degree but was still a movie steeped in hypnotic and fantastic poetry. Flesh + Blood is just harsh, gory reality, a move in the opposite direction perhaps as extreme as Camelot was in the musical dandyland direction, a snapshot of a world in which people were hardened beyond compassion and would do whatever they had to do, degrade others or themselves, to stay alive. There are basically no likable or sympathetic characters in the film. Martin is a certifiable scumbag and rapist, as are his men, but the king who betrays them and the captain he forces to abet him in the treachery are equally despicable. And yet, all of them showcase moments of tenderness and bravery. They are, in effect, humans. Dumb, mean, kind, hateful, emotionally stunted, forgiving, and prone to acts of unspeakable cruelty. The captain who betrays Martin does so against his will and ultimately only because he wants to be over and done with the business of war as quickly as possible so he can retire to a life of peace and penance. Martin is callous and vicious, but something inside him is brought out that makes him yearn to improve himself, to become the more heroic man he wants to be. Circumstance simply never allows it to blossom. Jennifer Jason Leigh's Agnes fares better, though one can't help but wince as she submits to every one of Martin's sexual whims in order to win his trust and save her own life. As Steven, Tom Burlinson is the closest thing the film has to a good-guy. He's a man of science, disgusted by his father's betrayal of the mercenaries but also quick to forgive him. His obsessive pursuit of Agnes seems born less out of love (they don't even know one another) than out of the sense that something that belongs to him has been taken. Still, he's generally an agreeable person, a voice of Renaissance reason amid people who are still steeped in the superstitions and cruelties of the Dark Ages. Of course, when a man gets blown up by one of his inventions, he seems less concerned about the life lost than he is about the fact that the fuse burned too quickly. But then, I guess when you're standing in the middle of a siege, that sort of thing can happen. The other "main" character in this grotesque Shakespearian play isn't an actual person, but its presence is felt in every scene and motivates much of the action, and that's our old friend the Black Death. Bubonic Plague. Call it what you will, you just don't want hairy warriors flinging pieces of dog infected with it over your castle walls and into your drinking water. The Plague exists as a specter looming over everything that happens in the film and represents the gulf between the old ways (as represented by a stubborn doctor who refuses to acknowledge advances in plague treatment simply because they come from Arabic research) and the enlightened (as represented by Steven, who understands how simple it is to treat the disease if only people would stop being so superstitious). As he often does in this film, Hauer's Martin stands somewhere in the middle. He understands something of the plague and the realities of what causes it, but he's also not completely divorced from the old way of thinking if for no other reason than he has used it so many times to his advantage. Where as most people in this film are stupid, Martin only pretends to be stupid, but sometimes you can engage in the masquerade so long that it starts to become reality.
Verhoeven's two biggest enemies in the world seem to be corporate greed and religion. He has stated, I believe, that he believes in God but not religion, and it's religion that is on the skewering end of Flesh + Blood's awl pike of criticism. Religious men are seen as either backwards and "so Dark Ages" or as charlatans using religion as a means to enrich themselves. Martin himself is a grand manipulator of religion and the superstitions of those around him. His advising cardinal is a true believer in Christianity, but to such a degree that he fails to question anything at all that is invested with supposed religious significance. To him, everything is a sign. The direction is tight. Even if you're not a fan of Verhoeven's films, at the very least you have to admit him to be a tight and competent director. He knows what he's doing back there, and he manages to make Flesh + Blood poetically gorgeous, lush, and hideous at the same time. His pacing is good, and his action scenes are what I'd call solidly 1980s. They lack the "cast of thousands" grandness of the 1960s but also lack the over-directed, over-choreographed, "everything must look absolutely cool" sickness of the post wire-fu/CGI era in which we currently reside. Fight scenes are not epic in scale, but they are realistic. Instead of slick and polished, they seem awkward, confused, and brutal. In other words, a lot more realistic. This was the film that introduced him to American audiences, and it must have been quite a shock. Distributor Orion was so appalled by the movie that they shuffled it in and out of theaters without a peep. It hardly even ever showed up on cable and was more or less MIA fromt he home video market for years, and even then only in a badly washed out transfer. Their gamble would pay off later, though, when Verhoeven started becoming a blockbuster machine, but they just couldn't see trumpeting Flesh + Blood, no matter how good it was, at a time when even Conan was being kinder and gentler. Realism as I said permeates this film, so it is that much more jarring when Verhoeven's script slips up. From time to time, dialogue sounds a little overly modern, less for what's being said than for the way it's said. When Bruno Kirby says anything at all, I can't hear anything but "that squeaky guy from City Slickers" or "that squeaky guy from Good Morning, Vietnam." A lot of the cast members can't seem to make up their minds whether or not they have accents, even though acting jobs beyond those inconsistencies are generally "workmanlike" to "above average." However, script credibility really takes a blow when, in what seems like a day, Steven and a small crew of men with no scientific background erect a siege machine of a complexity that would dazzle Leonardo De Vinci himself. It's utterly fantastic and absurd and feels completely out of place in a film that otherwise strives to maintain a high degree of period accuracy. But then, this is a Verhoeven film, so you sometimes just have to roll with the eccentricities. Luckily, the surrounding film is good enough to help you overlook the improbability of such a machine. And it does succeed in further the film's ongoing theme of the Renaissance versus the Dark Ages while keeping Martin as a man with one foot in both worlds. He's not smart enough, like Steven, to conceive of such a device, but he is smart enough to use something else Steven tried out. Barring the occasional awkward accent (or lack there of) and bit of over-ripe dialogue, peformances are uniformly grand. Jennifer Jason Leigh performs admirably in what was surely a difficult role made no easier by the fact that she does about half her screen time completely naked. Hauer remains one of the most underrated actors of the 1980s, probably because he starred in so many awful films. But the thing is he made so many awful films watchable. This seems almost to be his answer to his role in Ladyhawke, another medieval film but with more fantasy and a much friendlier cast. I think Hauer has some off lines here but on the whole he carries the film admirably and conveys a man who is enchanted by the notions of enlightened society but ultimately unable to divorce himself from the crudeness of the Dark Ages. The supporting cast includes a number of familiar faces and character actors, all of whom perform well. Brion James will be the most recognizable of the bunch, seeing as how he's made eleven million films and starred alongside Rutger Hauer in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner -- another violent film, incidentally, that was reviled upon release but has since become considered a modern classic. I don't know if I'd consider Flesh + Blood a classic, but it certainly deserves more recognition than it receives. Flesh + Blood is a smartly written, well-paced, well-directed piece of period action. It's not really an easy film to like because of the cruelty and sadism on display in certain scenes, but if you can get over that and accept that these things happened (and continue to happen), then you'll find a sharp adventure tale with a lot going on. It's not perfect, but it's well enough crafted to set it apart from the crowd, especially if you figure the crowd was mostly dim-witted sword and sorcery barbarian movies. As long as you don't mind the blood, gore, rape, nudity, festering boil lancing, and bloody chunks of dog meat being flung around, Flesh + Blood is one hell of a good film. Labels: Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Historical Epics, Netflix Diary, Year: 1985 posted by Keith at 6:40 PM | 1 Comments Monday, February 18, 2002Conquest
1983, Italy. Starring Violeta Cela, Andrea Occhipinti, Jorge Rivero, Conrado San Martin, Gioia Scola, Sabrina Siani. Directed by Lucio Fulci. Available on DVD (Amazon).
After reviewing so many sword, sandal, and sorcery films, I thought I might be qualified to proffer an educated guess as to when "barbarian times" actually happened. Best as I can tell, they fall somewhere between the early neolithic era and the middle ages. The distant future becomes an issue in films like Yor, The Hunter From the Future, but using standard statistical methods means we can discount an isolated extreme event of time-traveling barbarians. Still that leaves us with a pretty big gap, and it gets only bigger when you also work in notions about the proverbial "ancient times of magick and dragynns" that play host to everything from Tolkien to Dungeons and Dragons. Taking all that into account, and knowing what I know about history and the migratory habits of nomadic tribes the world over, I feel I can safely say "barbarian times" happened in the late 1800s and involved Teddy Roosevelt in some capacity, that capacity being one of a guy who grins and exclaims "Bully!" a lot. You may feel like debating my conclusion, which is your right. Anyway on to movie reviews. When the whole "buff guy on a quest through ancient lands" genre was revived in the 1980s, it meant a lot of people were rushing to make barbarian films to cash in on the sword and sandal craze. And when it comes to bleeding a genre dry, we know the buck stops with the Italians. No one abuses a genre more. No one squeezes more films from a dried up lemon of a dying genre than the Italians. And at the same time, no one takes the respective genres to such mind blowing extremes. In the case of Conquest, a movie about fog and the things men do whilst enshrouded in it, not only do we get Italian exploitation at its weirdest, but we get it compliments of everyone's favorite film freak, Lucio Fulci. Though I'm often critical of Fulci and will always consider him and his films vastly over-rated, I also find a lot of his work intriguing, and I definitely find his vision and ambition impressive, even if the gulf between his dreams and his reality was often insurmountable. But for every crap horror film like New York Ripper that he cursed us with, he redeemed himself with films like The Beyond and City of the Living Dead, which while flawed, showcased a wonderful sort of mad genius at work. What I always liked best about Fulci, and what always keeps me loving his work despite its shortcomings, was his anarchistic attitude. When he was told something could not be done, he would do it. When he was told something had to be done a certain way, he would raise hell and refuse. Sure his films are inconsistent, but the man possessed a passion for his craft, and a vision of his art, that was unwavering, inspiring, and all too rare. When you take into account that Fulci labored away in one of the most crass, greedy film industries in the world, his commitment to his warped dreams becomes all the more impressive. His vision, of course, was to take film and make it surreal, hallucinatory, and fantastical. He wanted his films to have more in common with dreams and nightmares than reality, and he often succeeded. His style was frequently communicated at the expense of coherency, but how often are dreams coherent? What mattered at the end of The Beyond wasn't that it made no sense; what mattered was that it was such a striking, nightmarish image. Had Fulci become a painter instead of a filmmaker, I'm certain his work would have rivaled that of Dali and other surrealist masters. Surrealism in film is a double-edged sword. On the one side, it opens you up to criticism from people with minds too closed to comprehend what you are trying to do. On the other hand, it allows you to mask your more embarrassing moments behind the guise of "surrealism" and "invoking a dreamlike state." At the same time, Fulci had to contend with his films being criticized for weak elements that were not his fault. He could not control the fact that the dubbing was often atrocious, that scenes were cut out or re-edited back into the film in the wrong order, or that the video transfer of a particular film was dark to the point of worthlessness. Yet critics always seem to target the film itself rather than these individual, after the fact elements. How many times a day does someone refer to the bad dubbing of kungfu and Godzilla films as if they were made that way in the first place? Of course, Fulci was not always successful in achieving his vision, and this problem is apparent nowhere more than in his non-horror films. His forays into comedy are best left unmentioned, along with John Woo's early attempts at a career in directing slapstick. His westerns are average, and his one action/crime film, The Smuggler is a study in mind-numbing tedium until the final half hour. His science fiction film was marred by a low budget and cheap appearance. But how would the master fare in a genre that was actually connected, at least tangentially, to his home turf of horror? How would he do in a genre that thrived as much as, if not more than, horror films on images of the fantastic and grotesque? In short, what would a sword and sorcery film directed by Lucio Fulci look like? And the quick answer is that it would look misty. There's actually more fog present in this film than in John Carpenter's The Fog, and there was a hell of a lot of fog in that movie, primarily because it was a movie about monsters that hid inside a haunted fog bank. You can't really make a movie about haunted fog without a lot of fog, and Conquest has even more fog than that. Even when they are inside caves and secret lairs everything remains foggy. Sometimes they even pump the fog in just for the hell of it. The movie opens with a mail-order Zeus superimposed on a beach which is, of course, shrouded in mist. Other super-imposed characters loiter about, and one of them must be special because some women are strapping a leather vest onto him. There, now he can be one of the Warriors. The Zeus looking guy tells this guy, who is named Illyan, that it's time for him to become a great hero. Illyan doesn't look particularly heroic, so in order to pep him up a little, the Zeus type tells him a story about a great warrior who was fighting off some ne'r-do-wells with his bow, and when he ran out of arrows, the sun was so impressed with his valor that it offered up its own rays for him to use as fiery arrows with which he could fell his enemies. Illyan finds this all pretty cool, so he sets out on his quest. I have no idea what the hell his quest was. I guess it was just sort of a general purpose quest. You know, trod the earth beneath your sandaled feet, fight evil queens whenever you can, walk around in the mist a lot. That sort of thing. So Illyan is sort of like Charles Kuralt. While he is paddling around in the fog, we get a look at some cavemen types who are being hassled by some, ummm, werewolf looking things, or possibly the cast of Cats. The werewolf things are demanding monetary tribute from the cavemen, which seems like a pretty stupid thing to demand from people who haven't even figured out the wheel, let alone systems of money management and the use of QuickBooks. Pissed that the cavemen have yet to invent money to pay them off, the werewolf warriors squish the brains of an old man, then tear a naked woman in half while Fulci's camera lingers gleefully on the spilling guts in an evisceration scene that would be repeated in Demonia with even greater effect. Meanwhile, Illyan's first act of bravery after rowing his little dingy from one fog-covered realm to the next fog-covered realm (I half expected to see Goliath the gargoyle and his crew rowing along next to the guy), is to save a cute primitive woman from a snake. Not a big snake like Conan fought, just a regular snake. Sure, it was venomous, but as far as legendary acts of valor are concerned, "he shot a snake with his bow from a little ways off" doesn't really rank up there among the most impressive. Now if he shot the snake, then did that thing where he split his arrow by shooting another directly at it -- well that's a different story. Unfortunately for our somewhat weenie hero, who reminded me of disco Larry who lived above Jack and the girls in Three's Company, the girl runs off and he is quickly attacked by a gang of werewolf men. You know, it's bad enough to be attacked by a bunch of werewolves, but it's even worse when they are carrying swords. He fells a bunch of them with his arrows, but he runs out. Apparently, much like me, the sun was not all that impressed with Illyan up to this point, so no fiery arrows for him. He just gets his ass kicked. Luckily, another hero, this one named Mace, happens by and defeats the werewolf warriors by waving a rock at them and doing some caveman-fu. What Mace doesn't realize is that someone, possibly Charles Manson, drew a funny symbol on his forehead the last time he fell asleep. Mace looks sort of like a middle aged Miles O'Keefe, and he has a fondness for those big bulky fur boots that obviously date him as the more primitive man to Illyan's cosmopolitan uptown look. Well, he may be primitive, but at least he doesn't get his ass kicked. Meanwhile, in the secret lair of the sexy metal-head witch (as in her head is metal) who commands the werewolf guys, we find the witch nude and writhing all about. There's a lot of nudity in this film, even more so than in most sword and sandal films. The main witch woman, who I thought at first was named Okra, never puts a shirt on. This is fine with me, as it is historically accurate that in barbarian times, evil witches with metal heads and an army of werewolf men often did not wear tops. You can look it up in just about any history book, unless THE MAN has censored it. If you can't find the chapter I'm talking about, go up to your professor or your local bookstore clerk and demand the history book with the chapters dealing with nude barbarian witches. Okran's writhing allows her to see a vision, which I guess is easier than piercing your nipples with bones, dangling buffalo skulls from them, and running through the desert before you collapse of pain and exhaustion and finally get to have your little vision quest. In the greater scheme of what people have to do to have their vision, writhing around in the mist while wearing nothing but a feather duster over your crotch is pretty easy. In her vision, she sees a faceless man wielding a bow attempting to kill her. Predictably enough, she wakes from her vision and orders her monkeymen to find and kill this unidentified archer, which is probably what I would do in her place. At the same time, I empathize with any werewolf monkey man thing who gets the job of searching the entire realm for a guy with long hair. We, of course, know it's Illyan, who is currently sleeping with Mace. You know, in a manly sort of way next to the campfire. The two become fast friends as they learn about each other. Illyan teaches Mace how to use the bow and arrow, and in return, Mace tells Illyan about how much he loves animals. If you think this is an unfair trade off of knowledge, keep in mind that Mace is a lot better in a fight than Illyan. So if he wants to talk about how much he loves animals, you have to listen. Plus, his name is Mace, and you would be advised to never screw with a guy named Mace. Things really start to get confusing here. Mace and Illyan hang with the cavepeople, which allows Illyan to do a little breast grabbing on that cute woman he saw back at the beginning of the film. Mace falls asleep or gets stoned or something, and then the werewolf guys invade. Illyan gets his ass kicked, as usual, all the cave people get slaughtered, and Mace sleeps through the whole damn thing. Or maybe he was knocked out or something. Whatever the case, everyone is dead by the time he wakes up. If you're beginning to get the idea that these two aren't exactly the greatest heroes in the land, you are right. Remember that up until this point, the only thing Illyan has actually bested in combat is a small snake. Mace seems tougher, but a lot of his ass kicking seems to depend on his enemies jumping really high up into the air so he can sort of guide them over his head and into a rock or something. Well, Mace has to go save Illyan while Okran cooks her general as punishment for his failure. She summons up Zora, a guy in a metal bodysuit, who promises to rid her of Illyan. Mace and Illyan trek around a little, with Illyan constantly trying to get Mace in on fighting the evil Okran. Mace is either a Taoist or smart enough not to want to be saddled with a load like Illyan. He says he does not involve himself in such daring-do. He agrees to escort Illyan to the shore, since about the only thing Illyan is competent at is rowing around his boat. Unfortunately, they are attacked by magic arrows, one of which wounds Illyan. While he rolls around breaking out in boils, Mace has to fight Zora and some other assorted demony type things. At this point, even a primitive like Mace has to be wondering why Illyan is the great hero if Mace is doing all the work. Illyan sort of reminds me of Ivanhoe, the medieval knight who got a whole book and mini-series named after him, but as far as I can remember, spent most of his time being wounded and sitting in a tent while everyone else had to fight and John Rhys-Davies bellowed "Saxon dogs!" Mace gets a magic plant that cures Illyan, and it seems to also make Illyan smarter because he realizes what a complete failure he is as a crusading hero. He decides to pack up and paddle his sorry ass back to his own misty land, where they will no doubt be disappointed that he has returned to annoy them further. I'm pretty sure they picked him to go on the quest just so they could get rid of him, and I'm also pretty sure that they spent the interim period packing up the village and moving somewhere else so he would never find them. After all, you may remember they sent him on his way without actually having any particular quest in mind. They just wanted to get rid of him. Illyan sails off into the mist, and Mace is immediately set upon by some pretty cool cobweb creatures who want information about Illyan. Mace can't tell them much other than the facts that he just ran for home with his tail tucked between his legs, and he pretty much sucked to begin with, but he sure knew how to bully a snake. They crucify Mace, mostly because it looks cool to strap a barbarian to a big wooden X on top of a cliff. But just when things seem lost, Illyan triumphantly returns! Boy, that must be a relief. His attempt to rescue Mace involves Mace accidentally being knocked off the cliff and into the ocean while still crucified. Hey, way to go, Illyan! Luckily, and "luckily" has a lot to do with most of the things our heroes do in this film, Mace uses his special Aquaman powers to summon a school of dolphins. No, I swear. Since they all know he is an animal lover, the dolphins rally around Mace, free him from his binds, and make sure he gets ashore, at which time Illyan takes credit for the rescue. Later that night, or possibly some other night, Mace and Illyan are asleep in a cave. Illyan is pulled down into a conveniently located pit of hell, and despite his shrieks of horror, Mace doesn't wake up. Or maybe he was awake anyway, and just hoping this would be the last he saw of Illyan. You know what they say. Waking up a man who is asleep is simple. Waking up a man who is pretending to be asleep is much more difficult. Is it coincidence that Mace has now slept through two battles, each one resulting in the capture of his tag-along, Illyan? Eventually, Mace wakes his lazy ass up and realizes he must once again go save Illyan. The hell? Is this guy gonna get captured every time Mace tries to get a little shut-eye? At this point, the film throws us a wild curve ball as Illyan's head is ripped away from his body. I wasn't expecting that one. Mace discovers the corpse of his little buddy, cremates him, and in doing so, absorbs the power of the magic bow. Ahhh! See, he was the hero all along! Mace storms Okran's lair, and the sun must think Mace is at least a better savior than Illyan, because Mace gets the magic fiery sun bolts to shoot out of the bow, which is especially impressive since they're in a cave and there isn't any sunlight to be had. Mace slaughters all before him, splitting open Okran's metal head to reveal her true face, a hideous ghoulie number. He then shoots her through the chest with a magic flaming sun arrow, causing her heart to explode. She transforms into a wolf and runs off into the wilderness along with that Zora guy, who also turned into a wolf at some point I can't remember. If you're getting the impression that this is one weird-ass movie, then you are correct. The whole dolphin rescue thing was strange enough, but now we got this wolf thing going on. If Fulci's dream was to make movies that were hallucinogenic in nature, then he certainly succeeded in this warped little fantasy film. Constantly shrouded in mist, set on landscapes that are saturated with pink and orange and blue like some crazy messed up Yes album cover, Fulci creates a truly alien, phantasmagorical world. This would be a pretty boss heavy metal video, too. It's an interesting juxtaposition to Conan the Barbarian, the movie that obviously inspired it. Despite a few things like a sexy witch and James Earl Jones turning into a snake, Conan created a more or less believable ancient world. There was nothing too terribly far-out to make us think that, with a few tweaks, this actually couldn't be a real ancient time. Conquest, on the other hand, is a complete fantasy realm full of purple glowing skies, cheap hairy monsters, cavemen, witches, magic, zombies, and lots of fog. It's serious van art territory. I also like how the film subverts the expectations we have of a sword and sorcery film. There must be about a thousand films featuring a weenie young guy who becomes "the chosen one." He seems an unlikely choice, but during the course of the film's action, usually under the wing of a more experienced hero, the young lad becomes a man and, by the film's end, explodes into a whirlwind of heroic daring-do and bravery, thus saving the universe from some dark lord or other. In this film, however, they set up the standard scenario, then quickly knock it down by killing the weenie guy and revealing that the bad-ass guy was the chosen one all along. It teaches us that you really should stop entrusting your fate to goofballs. It's an unexpected twist that caught me off guard, and that alone was reason enough for me to enjoy the film. Whether or not this subversion was intentional, or rather it's just the product of my pathetic attempt to justify my love of a rather stupid movie, is a decision you must make yourselves. This film is generally regarded as the beast that killed Fulci's career, and indeed, his output starting with this film is spotty at best. He had a lot of problems during the making of this film that caused him to start burning a lot of bridges and isolating himself from the rest of Italy's film-making community. The guy was always difficult and temperamental, and having to make a silly sword and sorcery film only made matters worse. Despite the many flaws, I like this film. It's definitely one of the best of the Italian Conan rip-offs, but being better than an Ator movie is not exactly impressive. The characters are mind-blowingly bland, a Fulci trademark. Mace is at least slightly interesting as the world-weary warrior and friend to all animals who has the role of savior forced upon him. Everyone else is pretty lame though. There's really no reason for Okran's evilness other than just being evil and naked. I mean, so your werewolves bully some cavemen. Big deal. It's not like their caves were nicer than yours. I mean, Okran's cave had cool disco lighting and a fog machine going. The cave people just had rocks and some fire. Sabrina Siani, who plays the nude Okran, had a pretty eventful career in Italian sword and sorcery films during the 1980s, appearing in such genre treasures as Ator and 2020 Texas Gladiators. Andrea Occhipinti, who plays Illyan, also worked with Fulci in the mean-spirited and shockingly boring slasher film New York Ripper. There are some slow moving parts, and the fights are not of the greatest quality since a lot of the attacking monsters have to set up their own stunts so Mace can throw them around. But for the most part, Fulci keeps things moving forward at a decent pace that is helped out by the sheer strangeness of everything we're watching. If the monsters are cheap looking, it's hard to tell through all the fog and crazy colors, so as it is, I thought most of them were pretty cool, with the cobweb zombies being the coolest. And Okran is, of course, a naked woman with a golden head, so that's always cool. If ya gotta fight an arch-villain, it might as well be a naked woman instead of an old man or Rosie O'Donnell. The soundtrack by Goblin member Claudio Simonetti is pretty annoying at times. It's about three notes on the synthesizer arranged in slightly different order from time to time. Generally, I expect better from Simonetti. While his work may often suck, it's at least original and complex. This sounds more like something Fabio Frizzi would have farted out. It gets a tad repetitive after a while, but I can live with that when the screen is filled with loin-cloth wearing barbarian men shooting glowing arrows at a naked woman and her army of werewolves in a magical realm of monsters and fog. So while a lot of people hate this film, I tend to consider it one of the more creative, puzzling entries into the sword and sorcery genre. We expect gore and nudity from these films, but Fulci goes gleefully overboard, as one would expect. The warp factor is so much higher in this film than in other films of the genre, that I can't help but like it. In a sea of plodding carbon copy films involving muscular guys walking through the woods, it's good to run across something this freaked out, weird, and fun. Fulci fans may ignore it, and Fulci himself may feel that the thing ruined his career, but I actually find it one of his most enjoyable, original films, and it's also one of the best of the sword and sorcery crop. Labels: Director: Lucio Fulci, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Year: 1983 posted by Keith at 5:20 PM | 0 Comments Thursday, January 24, 2002Conan the Destroyer
1984, United States. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Grace Jones, Wilt Chamberlain, Mako, Tracey Walter, Sarah Douglas, Olivia d'Abo. Directed by Richard Fleischer. Available on DVD (Amazon).
With the success of Conan the Barbarian, a genre was born. Nay, not a genre -- a lifestyle! Both Scott and I have fond memories of how these early 1980s barbarian movies shaped our lives, taught us the skill of pretending to be asleep so you can sneak in some cable TV watching, honed our talent for watching R-rated movies through the wavy lines of a scrambled premium channel. These days, they just blank it out entirely, which is sad. Where is the opportunity for victory, to meet the challenge head-on? How will kids these days train their eyes to filter out the flicker, to jiggle the switch on the cable box until you find a position that actually makes the channel come in relatively clearly? Gone are these days, blown away like sand by the winds of memory. They are, like the days of ancient barbarians themselves, merely things of the past. Gone is the thrill, the feeling of empowerment that came from being ten years old and figuring out a way to jeuryrig a cable box so that we could catch a glimpse of barbarians, boobs, and bloodshed. Damn the digital era! The days of analog were so much more adventurous. I'd like to point out that I grew up watching horribly violent and sometimes perverse films. I saw men run through on spears, heads lopped from their neck in great sprays of blood. I saw medieval orgies, monsters, and every form of brutality low-budget films could throw at me. And you know what? Not once, even during my days of punk rock persecution in high school, did I entertain the thought of killing anyone. Not once did I get the impression that it was okay to shoot my sister with a triple-bladed flying sword. Not once did I think anything at all in the movies was even remotely real. I don't want to get into a debate about whether or not violent films breed violent people, but I do want to point out that if you're not insane in the first place, and you learn the difference between right and wrong, strength and weakness, real and make-believe, it's generally fairly easy not to go on a killing spree as a result of a book, movie, or anything short of a Slayer record, which of course, always overpowers me with the might of Big Sugardaddy Lucifer. I also played Dungeons and Dragons in middle school and high school, which is why I know about Keep on the Borderlands and can reference it whenever the opportunity arises. And I never forgot that it was just a game and I wasn't really a dwarf with a magic hammer plus two. So as a public service announcement from Teleport City, let me tell all our young readers that movies are not real except for Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai. And if it is a movie based on a true story or actual person, then it's probably doubly untrue. Anyway, with the barbarian horde of imitators that followed in the sandaled footsteps of Conan, it seemed only natural that the makers of the first film would attempt a sequel. But right away, there were problems. For starters, the first film was so good because it had a huge budget (for the time) and a good director in John Milius. The guy helped write films like Apocalypse Now and Jaws. The first film also had the writing talents of Oliver Stone, who frankly, I think sucks as a director but does have some sort of writing talent buried deep within his drug-fried brain. For this sequel they scored director Richard Fleischer, whose last two movies were the lame Rocky rip-off Tough Enough (not to be confused with the Fabulous Thunderbirds song that was popular around the same time) and the abysmal Amityville 3D. There's no doubt that the man has fantasy film credentials, having done such films as 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Fantastic Voyage, but what do those films have in common that they don't have in common with Conan the Barbarian? That's right, they're Disney (or Disney-like) family adventures, not gory barbarian movies. Don't get me wrong, the man's done some good films, even some great ones, but it's all pretty tame compared to what people expect from sword and sorcery films. It's like hiring John Woo to direct slapstick comedies ... oops, they did that already, didn't they? Or how about Lucio Fulci directing a children's film ... oh yeah, White Fang. Or Roland Emmerlich to direct anything. Uh-oh. Okay, so the world is full of stupid ideas. Also working against the film was the taming of the barbarian genre. While the early days were highlighted by horrific gore, nudity, and brutality, by the time Conan the Destroyer limped onto the scene, things were settling down and expected to be PG-13. The days of high adventure were becoming complex and civilized. Bah! Since Arnold Schwarzenegger was becoming a household name no one could spell, he was interested in softening the brutality of the film as well. Face it, barbarians should not be family friendly. I mean, they storm your home and everything. They burn it down, dance on the ashes, and pillage your neighborhood. There's nothing family friendly about that. Of course, Arnold did make Commando a year later, which remains his goriest, most violent film to date. It also features the highest number of guys with automatic weapons shooting at a huge slow-moving guy in a wide open space yet still missing him by a Kentucky mile. Still, if you haven't seen Commando, as silly as it is, you should, because it's really one of the last over-the-top violent mainstream movies to have squeaked by before the days of censorship (or at least severe pressure) set in. In order to pull off family-friendly barbarians (and yes, I know that only a warped individual like myself would consider this movie family fare, but try to keep it in perspective based on what the first film was like), the writers decided to ditch the relatively serious epic feel of the first film and churn out a quick slapstick comedy that works more as a spoof of Conan than an actual movie. Gone are the cool sidekicks like Valeria and Subotai. In their place are a bunch of comic relief jokers lead by Tracey Walter, best known at the time as Frog from the short-lived television show Best of the West. The supporting cast also includes Grace Jones, whose popularity will forever be one of the great mysteries of the 1980s. Mako returns as the wizard, but he's played up for even more laughs than before. Gone too are the cool villains. There is no James Earl Jones with his booming voice leading an army of Spinal Tap looking warriors. It's actually uncanny just how much the two main warriors fighting for Thulsa Doom look like members of Spinal Tap. In their place we get a rather bland Wilt Chamberlain and a standard issue evil queen with a British accent. Wilt wasn't originally supposed to be in the movie, but when they couldn't find another bodybuilder with enough acting skill to stand against the might that is Arnold, they went with Wilt, which is certainly better than, say, Kareem Abdul-Jabar or Larry Bird. Wilt took time out from scoring 30,000 points in basketball and scoring with 20,000 women in bed to make this movie, and even though his character is dull as dishwater, he does a fair job with what he's given. What I want to know is why, with all the bodybuilders running around in loincloths during the early 1980s, they couldn't find one to be in this movie. I mean, sure they weren't good actors, but the Bambaata character has maybe half a dozen lines, and the rest is just swinging a big pick ax thing and wearing a nine-foot-long Bob Marley wig. About the only thing this film did right was cast Arnold in the lead role once again, and snag Basil Poledouris to do the soundtrack, though his work here, while good, falls leagues short of his majestic, powerful score for the original film. We begin with Conan and his comedy sidekick Malak (Walter) praying at the stone alter Conan built to honor Valeria, his one true love who was killed in the first film. They are set upon by a group of warriors who, of course, get soundly thrashed. The movie tips its hand right away, as this fight is a far cry from the blood-drenched, realistic fight scenes in the first film. Instead, it's a fight scene apparently choreographed by the same people who did a lot of the Monkees fight scenes. Of course, it turns out to be a test to "see if Conan is as good as they say he is." You know, people always have that test, and the guy is always as good as they say, and it results in like half a dozen guys getting killed just to test out a theory. They could do something like, "I need to know if you are as good as they say you are. Here, fight this gorilla in unarmed hand to hand combat," and if he can beat the gorilla, then he's probably pretty good. If he can't beat the gorilla, then kill him and let the gorilla go on your quest. The warriors are lead by a beautiful queen named Tamaris, and right away you can tell she's evil because she has an attractive but pointy face and speaks in a British accent even though no one else has a British accent. Conan has his Austrian accent of course, but that's not a sure sign of evil unless he also has a monacle. Queen Tamaris is played by Sarah Douglas, who has a pretty long career in cult films, appearing such hits as Quest of the Delta Knights, Puppetmaster III, Beastmaster II, and more recently as the snotty military woman in Return of the Living Dead III. She's probably best known for kicking Superman's ass while being much sexier than the hoarse-voiced, chain-smoking Lois Lane as played by Margot Kidder in Superman II. During the 1980s, if you needed a beautiful and treacherous woman, Sarah was your man. So to speak. Her primary henchman is Bambaata, played by the towering lover of ten thousand women, Wilt Chamberlain. Despite the fact that the two guys who played the main henchmen in the first film didn't utter a line (actually, I think one of them says, "You! Raaaaaarrrr!" at one point), they seem far more interesting and developed than Wilt's character here. She wants to hire Conan, the legendary king of thieves, to steal a precious jewel. How can you be known far and wide as the king of thieves? I mean, if everyone knows you're a thief, then you're obvious not very good at it. Shouldn't they not know who the king of thieves is? It's like if everyone knew you were an assassin, well then you wouldn't get very far in your profession. I don't know. I'm not really a king of thieves, so I am not sure how the whole thing works. Conan is a lot nakeder in this film than he was in previous films, relying primarily on his loin cloth over the old leather britches and furs from the last film. I know Arnold's buff and shiny, but strutting to and from in nothing but a nutsack doesn't give you many places to hide all the valuables you should be stealing as acting king of thieves ... unless those stories about what steroids do to your "manhood" are true, in which case I guess Conan has ample room in his loin cloth for a sapphire or two. But I'm not going to be the one to walk up to Arnold, no matter what he's wearing, and ask him if he has a shriveled pee-pee. Conan and Malek are to accompany Bambaata and the young Princess Jehnna on the quest. Jehnna is played by Olivia d'Abo. Devastatingly cute, of course, and best known for her role on the television show The Wonder Years as the wannabe hippy older sister, but about as interesting as, well, to be fair, the princess in the last movie. Beautiful young princesses were a dime a dozen back in the old days. The big difference is that in the first film, the princess wasn't a main character and only had about two-minutes of on-screen whine time. Olivia goes on for the entire film. Tamaris' real plan is to use the jewel to resurrect their god, Dagoth (an actual ancient god, by the way), with Jehnna serving as the virgin sacrifice along the way. Conan really isn't into the job, being a man of the world and all who likes to trod the lands of the earth beneath his sandaled feet, or something like that. But when the queen promises to reincarnate Valeria, Conan is snared. Hey, no one ever accused the guy of being a genius. he probably falls for that "watch me remove my thumb" trick also. "What sorcery is this that lets you take the tip of your thumb off?!?!" Conan's first order of business is to hook up with his old friend Akiro the wizard (Mako), who is about to be eaten by cannibals in yet another comedy bit that hearkens back to some of the finer jungle adventures of Betty Boop. This is pretty weird since Richard Fleischer is the son of Max Fleischer, the creator of such things as ... Betty Boop! Then it's off to a town where they pick up yet another member of the team, the warrior(ess) Zula (a scrawny Grace Jones). Jones, with all the muscular presence of a pipe cleaner, is a far cry from the warrior woman Valeria played by Sandahl Bergman in the first film. At least Sandahl could believably kick someone's ass. Grace Jones will forever be a waifish Stuio 54 loser puttering around on a Honda scooter with Adam Ant. Hollywood has a long history of wanting to feature a physically strong female character then casting a 90-pound model in the role. It looks goofy every time. Kylie Minogue as a street fighting bad-ass? Pencil-thin Milla Jovovich as a kungfu powerhouse? At least Lucy Lawless has a little meat on her to make the ass kicking believable. Maybe if they ever make a third Conan film, they can cast the WWF's Chyna in the lead female role. I already hear they're considering the WWF's Rocky Maivia for the role of Conan. Again, the entire entourage is there for comic relief. Sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's not, but it's certainly not as interesting or effective as the trio of Conan, Subotai, and Valeria from the first film. They were all developed and likeable. This time around Conan is almost a supporting character, and at the forefront of the action are a bunch of insufferably annoying comedy characters. The princess is grating, Malak is annoying, Wilt is just plain dull, and Grace Jones spends the movie shrieking like a wild woman. But maybe at this point I should just stop comparing it to the first film, because there is really no point. One is an epic adventure film, the other is a modest costumed comedy. Now that we have the children assembled, we can finally begin the field trip. Things immediately go awry when the princess is kidnapped by a wizard who turns into an animated bird made of mist. It's a pretty cool special effect, but it leads to the worst effect in the film, which we'll come to shortly. Conan and crew invade the wizard's crystal castle, which culminates in the wizard turning into one of the monsters from the Power Rangers. Seriously, this special effect looks on par with what I was pulling off at the time, and I was twelve years old. It looks like a halloween mask you'd buy at Wal-Mart. Part of what made the first film interesting was that the whole sorcery thing was downplayed and very much in the background. Sure, there was a weird sexy witch Conan had to sex up, and James Earl Jones did turn into a snake, but for the most part the movie drew its strength from the characters and the human bloodshed. This time it's a lot more fantastical and, as a result, a lot goofier. Anyway, Conan beats the monster in a very lame fight. Hooray. They snag the magic jewel from the wizard's castle, which Conan then learns will be used to unlock yet another treasure, a sacred horn. This is the point where Billy Dee Williams would go, "This deal keeps getting worse," but Conan's thoughts are more along the lines of, "Conan like peanuts," and "Hmm, fire hot!" When Conan is attacked by the queen's own elite guard in a nearby forest, he begins to get suspicious. Luckily, he's dumb as toast. While recovering from the battle, Conan gets drunk and utters one of the few genuinely funny lines in the whole film. Jehnna: "I suppose nothing hurts you." Conan: "Only pain." Okay, so they have their comedy bit and can now use the gem they took from the Power Rangers monster to get the sacred Horn of Dagoth. Akiro reads the writing on the wall (literally) and discovers that Dagoth is actually a right angry god who will destroy the world if brought back to life. Conan is only interested in reviving his lost Valeria. Some more sword fodder and another wizard show up to prevent them from taking the horn, resulting in another one of the funnier moments in the film, when Conan interrupts the philosophical debate between the wizards by shouting "Enough talk!" then throwing his knife into some guard's neck (bloodlessly, of course). Conan and company escape the wizard and his useless elite guard -- does anyone have an elite guard that is actually any good? -- but are soon betrayed by Bombaata, who grabs the horn and the princess (by all accounts, Wilt is well versed in the art of grabbing virgins and large sticky-up phallic things), then leaves Conan and everyone else trapped in a cave. Of course, Conan is this huge guy, so he doesn't really have a hard time moving the rocks out of the way. At this point, you can amuse yourself by pretending it's actually Conan O'Brian wearing the loin cloth and fighting Wilt Chamberlain. Or that it's Andy Richter. By this time, even Conan has figured out that Tamaris probably isn't going to actually bring Valeria back from the dead, so he and his merry band ride to Shadazar, the realm of Queen Tamaris, where they have some more comedy before finally having the big battle. It's a pretty big let-down for the most part, after the cool and gory battle that ended the original film. Oh wait, I was going to not compare the two, right? Okay, so anyway, Conan fights Bambaata, then has to fight the resurrected Dagoth, who is a pretty cool looking toothy monster. I guess they spent all the money on Dagoth, which is why that other monster looked so silly. Still, considering he is a two-legged monster that stands about fifteen feet tall and can only kill you by tearing you apart or chewing on you, I really don't see how he's going to plunge the entire world into chaos and darkness. Sure, you wouldn't want to meet him in a dark alley or a wrestling ring, but on the grand scale of things, it's going to take a single monster of average size decades to plunge even a single realm into darkness, let alone the whole world. It doesn't really matter that Dagoth will never actualize his goal, will never conquer the millions he was supposed to -- sort of like most internet companies -- because Conan is there to kick the god's ass anyway (if only Conan was present here in Silicon Alley kicking some stupid dotcom CEO ass). so he beats the monster, saves the princess, and kills all the evil people who were in need of killing. He manages to ditch his entire band of clowns by getting them posh government jobs with Jehnna's new, not evil regime. It probably makes Conan pretty happy that he can unhitch these jokers and get back to doing some serious trekking. Conan himself is offered a position of power next to Jehnna, but this is Conan, and he must trod the lands of the earth beneath is sandaled feet and all that. And as with the last film, this one ends with a promise of more adventures to come. We're still waiting. I've been pretty rough on this film, primarily because it was such a disappointment after the first film. There was really no reason to spoof the character and sell it as a sequel, but they did. Taken on it's own, the movie is a mildly amusing goofball adventure that fails to really generate much interest in itself. The characters are silly to annoying, the action is tame and uninteresting, and the music falters in many spots. It does have the same basic structure as an old sword and sandal film, but by the 1980s, we expected more blood and guts from our barbarians, and this film's attempts to be a PG adventure film undermine it. It's too "barbarian" to appeal to your average family, and it's too weak to appeal to heavy metal fans. Not everything in the film is horrible. There are a few funny moments, and the monster at the end is pretty cool, but for the most part, this is a sequel that shouldn't have been made. Still, it's much better than Red Sonja, but so is grabbing tacos out of a deep fryer. As you burn your hand beyond recognition, all you can think is why are there tacos in the deep fryer. Maybe they could deep fry has-been 1980s one-hit wonder Taco... Anyway, enough about deep frying tacos. Taken as a stupid comedy that has more in common with a Screaming Mad George film than Conan the Barbarian, Conan the Destroyer is a harmless way to waste ninety minutes of your life. Placed in the context of a sequel to Conan the Barbarian, this film is pretty miserable and cheap looking. Sure, it's not Deathstalker III miserable, and it's still a lot better than watching an Ator marathon, but the whole thing is just, well, disappointing. I hear it's mroe in tune with the kiddie-friendly Marvel comic book than the old pulp novels, and you can probably guess which one I prefer. I just don't think barbarian films should be family fare. I mean, kids have Pagemaster and all that shit. Leave our bloody barbarian movies alone! I don't watch the Disney cartoon Sword in the Stone and demand more orgy scenes. But I guess by 1984, the Reagan era was in full swing, wildly violent action films were fast dying off unless they involved the slaying of Commies. Rumors of a third Conan film are almost as persistent as rumors about a second Buckaroo Banzai film or a fourth George Romero living dead film. Given the downward spiral Arnold's career has taken with his last several movies, it might be easier now to entice him back into the role one last time. However, recent rumors about a third Conan film have the WWF wrestler Rocky Maivia taking on the role. This is all speculation as far as I can tell, but either way, it's unlikely that a third Conan film would be very good given the current trend of infusing 21st century in-your-face wit and "cleverness" into characters from times long ago. A new Conan film would be about as similar to the original as, say, the big-budget remake of The Mummy was to the original. Something about Conan battling tons of computer animation and probably doing that thing where they jump and are frozen in mid-air so the camera can rotate around them (when the hell are people going to get tired of that effect? You'd think after it showed up in a TGI Fridays commercial, it was over and done with, but X-Men seems to use it in every other scene) isn't pleasing. Perhaps Conan is best left trodding the earth and all that. Conan the Destroyer was silly enough to signal the end of the sword and sorcery genre, just as Conan the Barbarian was cool enough to signal the beginning. I guess in a way, that is fitting. Dozens more sword and sorcery films were made even after Conan the Destroyer destroyed the genre's coolest character, but those were stragglers that mostly ended up going direct to video, not unlike the legion of glam metal bands that came around in, say 1988, and just missed the boat. In a way, Conan the Destroyer is the Danger Danger or Enuf z'nuf of the sword and sorcery world. But that is another story... Labels: Director: Richard Fleischer, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Year: 1984 posted by Keith at 5:07 PM | 0 Comments Friday, January 18, 2002Conan the Barbarian
1982, United States. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, James Earl Jones, Max von Sydow, Sandahl Bergman, Ben Davidson, Cassandra Gaviola, Gerry Lopez, Mako, Valerie Quennessen, William Smith, Luis Barboo. Directed by John Milius. Available on DVD (Amazon).
I remember the scene as if it was yesterday, probably because not much has changed since it first happened. I was over at my friend Robby's house. Though we lived out in the sticks and couldn't get cable television yet, his family had a satellite dish and all the trimmings that came with such a device, like porno channels and movie channels. Ah yes, countless were the nights we stayed up 'til the wee small hours, reading his dad's monumental stash of porn magazines or watching movies like Angel of HEAT and Emmanuelle. With dry mouths and trembling bodies we'd lie in the floor and ogle Sylvia Kristel's boobs and watch all manner of perversions parade themselves in front of our young and eager eyes. We were members of an elite group who knew Laura Gemser before they knew Molly Ringwald, who knew about the existence of the Kama Sutra before they had read Are You There God? It's me, Margaret?. Sadly, none of this made me a smooth, suave Derek Flint style love machine, but I'm working on it. We would come to school and regale people with the tales of lust and nudity we had witnessed over the weekend. Like I said, few things have changed, including be witness far more than actual participant. I want to live the wild, funky life of a swingin', jet setting sex machine, but somehow, I usually end up at home watching Lina Romay videos and eating Bagel Bites instead. One of the greatest discoveries of those formative years was the barbarian boom of the 1980s. These films features lots of gore, lots of breasts, and lots of little weird demony monster thingies. I still remember the mind blowing night we stayed up and watched Excalibur, Sword and the Sorcerer, and Conan the Barbarian. Man alive, witnessing that carnage made me forget all about Sylvia Kristel, at least for a while. I was seeing heads roll, people torn limb from limb, wild orgies, wizards, and all kinds of crazy shit no one at school would believe. Conan has always been my favorite of the sword and sandal movies. It was the standard setter, the prototype all other barbarian movies would imitate. None would be as much fun, however. Well, Sword and the Sorcerer was close. But when compared to the films it inspired, abysmal junk like Death Stalker and that Barbarians movie with those two weird twins, Conan emerges so far ahead of the pack that it almost seems a shame it's associated with the rest of those films. It's no real surprise then that Conan features the only cast of characters to go on and do anything else with their lives after the barbarian craze died out. The lead, Arnold Schwarzenegger, went on to be the biggest action star in America, at least until years of steroid abuse finally caught up with him and he started smoking cigars and hanging out at the Kennedy compound. Lead villain James Earl Jones has starred in some of the best and some of the worst films around, yet continues to maintain respect no matter what he does, since his voice is so damn cool. The script was co-written by Oliver Stone, no doubt during his heavy drug phase. And Sandahl Bergman has gone on to a lucrative and prolific career as the star of many made for Cinemax erotic thrillers. Okay, so it's not a perfect record, but it's more impressive than anything the cast of Outlaw of Gor pulled off. When viewing the film, audiences will be met by the warning, "A Dino De Laurentiis Production." Depending on your taste, then could be either a blessing or something tantamount to the inscription above the gate to Hell. There's no denying that, for all the sleaziness associated with the De Laurentiis name, they gave us many of the biggest trends in film history. Ninja movies, Barbarian movies. No disreputable genre is without the name of Dino De Laurentiis upon its flagship vehicle. Conan has so much going for it that even being associated with Dino can't drag it down. The production is lavish and expensive looking. The sets are exotic. The music is extremely cool. And the cast is competent, and sometimes even good. The plot makes little sense, but not many people go into a barbarian movie looking for Woody Allen. Though I must admit, as no big fan of Woody Allen I wouldn't mind seeing him in at least one barbarian movie as a rolling head. Schwarzenegger, then a relative unknown whose only major starring role had been alongside Arnold Stang in the delightfully terrible Hercules in New York, stars as Conan, subject of a long-running series of pulp novels and a Marvel comic book. During his early days, Conan sees his family of nomads slaughtered by a warrior who looks just like James Earl Jones in a goofy wig. Wait! It is James Earl Jones! Jones plays Thulsa Doom, and up and coming bad guy who rides under the banner of two snakes. That image is burned into Conan's mind. Conan himself is sent to the "pointless toil" factory, where he has to turn a big wheel for like fifteen years. This turns him into the huge Arnold Schwarzenegger. He is later captured by some rowdy Viking looking guys who teach him to fight and tell him about Crom and the "Riddle Of Steel." Conan later becomes a wanderer, finding a sword of his own in the clutches of a dead warrior in a cave. He soon teams up with Subotai, a thief played by surfing star Gerry Lopez. For my money, Subotai is the best thing about the film. He's cool and is a much better actor than Arnie. Subotai and Conan trek. The trek and trek and trek. This movie is packed with trekking. The best reasons I can come up with for all this trekking is that 1) Dino is showing off the fact that he has the largest budget ever afforded to any barbarian film, 2) Subotai and Conan look really cool trotting over dunes and deserts, and 30 the music composer wrote some really great trekking music. On their trek, Conan and Subotai get to do many things, like laugh at a man screwing a llama, yell at prostitutes, and steal things. Conan is also interested in tracking down that old snake cult and getting a little revenge for having to turn that wheel all those years. Oh, and for the murder of his people. Although Arnold was no actor back then, and may still not be much of one now, he gets to deliver some choice lines. One of the best comes when a prostitute invites him into her bed, a warm bed to "protect him from evil." Conan grins and says, "But I am evil." While preparing to climb into a tower that is rumored to contain a valuable jewel, Conan and Subotai run into another thief, the tough as leather jerkins Valeria, played by Sandahl Bergman. It's nice that when faced with casting a woman who is supposed to be tough and strong, they actually picked one who was. Nothing annoys me about Hollywood more these days than when they have some super bad-ass female character and she is played by some 90 pound model. Milla Jovovich as a kungfu bad-ass in The Fifth Element? Please. Sandahl Bergman, though -- now her I believe. The three thieves infiltrate the tower, steal the jewel, get to witness a naked virgin, and kill a very real looking giant snake. Conan also discovers the mark of the two serpents and realizes he is getting closer to finding the men who killed his family. The trio become famous and filthy rich thieves, which causes Conan to fall asleep in his oatmeal. When a distressed king played by Max Von Sydow (a well respected actor whose work includes the Ingmar Bergman classic The Seventh Seal and the Dino De Laurentiis classic Flash Gordon) hires the three to kidnap his daughter away from the evil snake cult of Thulsa Doom, only Conan seems interested. Subotai and Valeria are happy to enjoy their wealth and comfortable lifestyle. But Conan has revenge in his heart. He sets out alone to trek across more scenery to cool music. Along the way, he runs into a desert dwelling wizard played by Mako, who would go on to star in all sorts of low budget films. Mako seems more con man than wizard, but so it goes. Finally, after much trekking, Conan finds a procession of pilgrims who want to become part of Thulsa Doom's snake religion. Conan has a bizarre somewhat gay scene with a priest of Doom, though you can never tell outright if the priest is all hot and bothered and hitting on Conan. Conan is hitting on him, though, but only with his massive fists. Disguised as a priest, Conan quickly ruins his disguise by flashing one of the stolen artifacts from the snake tower. He is beaten up by James Earl Jones' main henchmen, who many of you will also recognize as members of the British metal group Spinal Tap. They then tie him to the tree of woe, which means I can only imagine The American Dream Dusty Rhodes going ape shit and yelling, "They done taaaahhhhd him to da twee ah woe!" Conan is left to bake in the desert and battle with vultures who just want a little taste. But then the cool exotic music starts up. Who is it? Kevin Sullivan? No! It's Subotai, in one of the film's simplest but coolest moments. He, Valeria, and the wizard struggle to bring Conan back from the brink of death. They cover him with sacred symbols that make him look like the guy from one of the stories in Kwaidan, and the wizard does all sorts of spells. In the end, though, the magic is useless and Valeria and Subotai simply have to get in fist fights with the cool little orange Mr. Clean looking spirits that come to carry Conan away. It's actually something of a theme in the movie, if movies such as Conan the Barbarian dare have themes. In the end, faith and magic are useless shields we use to insulate ourselves from real life and real action. When you want results, you have to come out from behind the aegis of religion and pose mightily in the desert with your broadsword. Conan eventually recovers enough to strike cool barbarian poses against a sweeping backdrop of desert dunes before he, Subotai, and Valeria paint themselves up to look really cool and invade Thulsa Doom's Mountain of Power, which I believe is also the name of a ride at Six Flags. Once again their actions are set to really great music as they sneak around, witness an orgy, some cannibalism, and finally find the king's daughter and Thulsa Doom, who turns into a giant snake and escapes! Conan and company set to wreaking havoc on the party, including another showdown with the members of Spinal Tap. They get the king's daughter, but as they are fleeing, Thulsa turns a poisonous snake into an arrow and kills Valeria. In the end, Conan, Subotai, and Mako must face off against Thulsa Doom's forces in a very cool, very gory final battle amid some desert ruins and burial mounds. Conan makes a priceless prayer to Crom, his god. I like Conan the Barbarian a lot. It's lush and has an epic feel. It's full of gore and action. The music really helps make the film. It's what I like to call "barbarian brass," and would be the musical style adopted by the genre as a whole. Lots of heroic thunderous brass and kettle drums, with chimes and woodwinds for the more exotic parts. Really great stuff. I used to work at a movie theater with this weight lifter named Marcus. Very cool guy. Every day, he would arrive for work crammed into his tiny car like some Rat Fink character, blaring the Conan the Barbarian theme song on his stereo. His two favorite songs were "Anvil of Crom," which is the theme song to Conan the Barbarian, and Color Me Badd's "I Wanna Sex You Up," which was the theme song for him and his very cute, very friendly girlfriend. Conanis more than just a nostalgia trip for me to a time when I had to work for my cult films. I had to travel and evade parents and guardians, sneak into theaters, things like that. Now I can just go down to Mondo Kim's and rent Immoral Tales and Cannibal Holocaust. But back then, it was a challenge. It was a quest, a trek just like Conan's. I still get a huge kick out of Conan the Barbarian and think it's Schwarzenegger's best film, and as I said earlier, the best barbarian film of them all. The music makes me want to trek a little myself. A sequel, Conan the Destroyer, was made, but it just doesn't do it for me. It abandons the dark and gory, more or less serious tone of the original (not to mention all of the cast except for Arnold and Mako)and plays itself out as an action comedy with none of the excitement or drama of the first film. It's not bad, it's just too different to be as satisfying. And it had no Subotai. Conan the Barbarian may not have the most logical plot, but it's as logical as things get in the world of barbarians and James Earl Jones turning into a snake and members of Spinal Tap wielding giant stone hammers. It's good stuff full of everything we demand from barbarian films, if you are the type of person who demands things from barbarian films. I know I am, and Conan the Barbarian satisfies me every time. Labels: Director: John Milius, Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Stars: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Stars: James Earl Jones, Stars: Max von Sydow, Stars: Sandahl Bergman, Year: 1982 posted by Keith at 5:03 PM | 1 Comments Tuesday, August 14, 2001The Sword and the Sorcerer
1982, United States. Starring Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale, George Maharis, Richard Lynch, Richard Moll, Anthony De Longis, Robert Tessier, Nina Van Pallandt, Anna Bjorn. Directed by Albert Pyun.
Like all the innocent youths who succumb to the allure of promises about a dark world of indulgence and pleasure, we had our rituals, our unspeakable acts punctuated by arcane chatter regarding vorpal blades plus two and the unexplained mysteries of what would happen to you if you swallowed a portable hole, or put a portable hole inside a bag of holding. It was nightmarish talk the likes of which would enrage even the benevolent Jesus himself, causing him to immediately commission a new series of Jack Chick comic tracts dealing with those of us who giggled like demons gleefully licking the maggots from the cloven hoof of Lucifer as we reveled in our Sabbath feast of Chee-toes and Stouffer's French bread pepperoni pizzas. For us, as it was for many a wayward babe lost in the woods and destined to walk not down the path leading away from their menacing gloom, but instead to walk down the dark path of the left hand, Dungeons and Dragons was our gateway to the other realm, a fantastical land where elementary school geeks could slay dragons, or at least kobolds, and scream "Blee yark!" during dodgeball games seconds before the gym teacher made up for years of failure and feelings of inadequacy by beaming some scrawny ten-year-old in the back of the head with one of those little red rubber balls. No doubt one of those foaming-at-the-mouth "If you fail to prepare, you better prepare to fail" speeches would follow as he swaggered back and forth in his two-sizes-too-wee nut-hugger shorts. The hell of role playing games is an enticing one indeed, and it is one from which a damned soul never fully emerges, as Bob Larsen would no doubt point out. Oh sure, you can swear the games off or even claim to outgrow them, but years after you sold off your last copy of the Monster Manual, Expanded 12th Edition you'll still catch yourself glancing at a piece of graph paper and thinking, "Damn, I could design one kick-ass dungeon on that." Yes, years after your final campaign, you'll still catch yourself making passing references to The Keep on the Borderlands. In your darkest hours you will be assaulted by the guilt, by the terrible burden you are doomed to shoulder for the rest of your pathetic mortal existence. You'll wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, shivering, clutching at your tattered rag of a blankie as you wrestle with the fact that you did not, in all fairness, roll an 18 strength, 18 intelligence, 17 wisdom, 18 dexterity, and an 18 constitution. You weep, weep like a child, as you realize that your token low score of a 12 charisma probably didn't fool anybody. Don't even get started on how your character ended up with all those psyonics. Aye, we all had our rituals, but unlike a young and impressionable Tom Hanks, our rituals did not include wearing a burlap sack and requiring Christopher Makepeace to talk us down from our lame-brain scheme to jump from skyscraper to skyscraper with the help of our elven boots of jumping. Nor did we sit in the back of the classroom clad all in black, muttering incomprehensibly under our breath (well, not very often) as we attempted to summon Bigby's Crushing Fist. Instead, our rituals consisted mainly of meeting up at our friend Robby's house on Saturday afternoons. The candles romantic notions of gaming called to be used as lighting were replaced by the living room track lighting, and mystical new age and medieval music was often passed over in favor of "Eye of the Tiger" and the soundtrack from Flash Gordon by Queen. Like just about all the people I've ever met who were into role playing games, we weren't exactly the media stereotype of long-fingernailed Satanists in the basement thinking we actually became our characters as we sacrificed a cat to Gary Gygax. Instead of blood sacrifices and emotion-charged readings from Anton LeVay's Satanic Bible, we spent most of the day setting up DM shields, defending the cheating on our character sheets we'd done throughout the week ("When did you get a weightless folding catapult of guaranteed foe destruction plus seven? You didn't have that last week!"), making up variations of that whole "crushing fist" thing (like Bigby's Glancing Blow and Bigby's Annoying Ear Flick), and of course flexing our pre-pubescent muscles by pulling out and comparing the size of our dice collections ("You got the smoky crystalline 20-sided die? No way!"). Indeed the bulk of our gaming experience involved eating frozen food and doing the most transparent, obvious cheat jobs on characters. In fact, the more obvious the fact that we'd been cheating, the more vehement the defense and denial. It was, as I said, a ritual. If we were disciplined or lucky, there was maybe an hour or two of actual game play and kicking of much orc ass before we'd tire of hassling make-believe elves and retire to the outdoors to go explore the woods or play in the creek. If it was rainy outside, we'd while away the day playing TRON by throwing racquetballs at each other in the living room. We would never ever amuse ourselves by sneaking peeks at the rather massive Playboy collection we had no idea was hidden in the closet of the master bedroom. Whatever the day's adventures and discoveries may have held, regardless of whether or not our resident nutcase Larry broke yet another bone while showing us something like how Rambo fell out of a very tall tree and hit every branch on the way down in order to slow his descent, when the sun went down out came the sleeping bags in the living room. It was time for the barbarians. In rural Kentucky at the time, cable television was still little more than a fanciful fairy tale, something we'd hear about at school from kids who caught glimpses of the wonders it held while they were staying at their grandparents' house in Louisville. We would stand around the monkey bars and listen, half in doubt, half in awe of these wondrous tales, these cinematic sasquatches full of gore and nudity and action that would have us sighing and saying, "Wow! Ninjas?" But alas they remained just beyond the grasp of our greedy, ready-to-be-corrupted little fingertips, at least until that fateful day when Robby's dad officially began his midlife crisis by purchasing one of those giant NASA-sized satellite dishes. The gates were flung open, and like the barbarians of old descending upon Rome, we galloped forth into the waiting jungle of exploitation, sleaze, and good, wholesome fun. Like alcoholic scientists manning a distant Arctic research facility, the satellite dish was our link to another civilization beyond the drab and endless nothingness of our homes. It was a keyhole through which we could peer into a world populated by murderous madmen, gruff cops, vengeful ninjas, and the oft-naked Sylvia Kristel. It's likely that without the satellite dish in those early days, my taste in film would never have evolved into the finely honed blade of refined sophistication I now wield. I would be sitting here right now doing an in-depth analysis of the heart-warming Cocoon as I lamented the passing of that delightful Steve Guttenberg's career. Luckily, the satellite was in place at the right time, and instead of wasting everyone's time with crap, I can do the world a service by spending inordinate amounts of time reviewing Maurizio Merli films and debating important questions like who would win in a fight between Hammer and that man Bolt. We saw many wonders on those long nights, and slept nary a wink. Of all the amazing things we witnessed in the wee small hours of the morning, however, none enthralled us more than the bloody parade of live-action Dungeons and Dragons that was the 1980s sword and sorcery boom. We would sit in quiet, rapturous joy as we watched some greased-up dude in a loin cloth cleave monsters and evil wizards in two. It was we, then, who could go to school on Monday full of stories about how "the zombie sorcerer made the witch's chest explode, and then he caught her liver!" Sword and sorcery. Ahh, yes. though I've always enjoyed these films, I've never quite understood at whom they were aimed. On the one hand, they are lovingly packed with gratuitous nudity and violence (the best kind), firmly planting them in the "R" category and theoretically making them off-limits to young folk such as we. On the other hand, just about everyone I know first saw these movies when they were ten years old and just beginning to master the sneaky trick of going to the bookstore and hiding a Penthouse inside the cover of a Dragon or Newsweek magazine so you could get a glimpse at some nekkid flesh without too many people being suspicious or thinking you were taking a peek at anything other than Newsweek's expose on "sweaty asses." You lived in constant fear of the Waldenbook clerk who would glance your way, catch you staring at nudie mags hidden inside other magazines, and suddenly shout, "Hey, that's not Snarf Quest!" Of course, there was always the photography section with its many illustrated tomes on nude and glamour photography... It was a transitional time a few years before any of us worked up the courage to try purchasing an issue of Heavy Metal in hopes that the person working the counter would think it was just another comic book or music magazine rather than a precious tome full of weird stoner sci-fi stories and sexy Guido Crepax drawings. We were learning things, important things, important lessons about life, at least life as it related to space cabbies and buxom women in (and out of) metal bikinis and guys with triple-bladed projectile swords. Looking back upon that time from my vantage point here in my elder state, I can now say that despite all the gore and sex, sword and sorcery films were indeed meant for sly young kids as well as the guy down the street who had what could only be described as a "boss van." Although the pioneers of the trend were John Boorman's bizarre retelling of the myth of King Arthur, Excalibur, and Disney's surprising dark and violent Dragonslayer, the sword and sorcery boom hit its stride in 1982 when our friend Dino DeLaurentus released the big budget barbarian extravaganza Conan the Barbarian, which starred a relatively unknown Austrian bodybuilder by the name of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, he was unknown to you unless you were the kind of person keeping up with the Austrian bodybuilding circuit or were one of the twelve fans of the movie Hercules in New York. Conan launched a veritable missile attack of sword and sorcery fantasy films full of all the good stuff people demand: nekkid people and violence. Dozens of loin-cloth clad young men would smear on the baby oil for that fresh-off-the-battlefield look and take to running around waving swords in the faces of out-of-work has-been actors looking to pay the rent by slumming it as an evil wizard or would-be conqueror. It should not shock anyone that in the wake of Conan's incredible success, a whole genre popped up seemingly overnight. Producers were stumbling over themselves in rushed attempts to get something, anything out that could take advantage of this sudden surge of sword and sorcery popularity. One of the first films out of the gate was 1982's Sword and the Sorcerer, the movie that would lend its name to the genre created by Excalibur and Conan the Barbarian. While a mild hit at the theater, the film really found legs on cable television, where it seemed to play nonstop, much to the delight of young boys camped out in the living room of their friend who had satellite television. Although we loved Conan, the slightly trashier Sword and Sorcerer was a staple of our diet in those formative years. We must have watched the thing a dozen or more times on tape or any time it played on one of the movie channels. I still have vivid memories of having my young mind blown during one slumber party where we were treated with a late late night parade that included Sword and Sorcerer, Revenge of the Ninja, and Angel of HEAT starring Marilyn Chambers. Bankrolled by Brandon Chase, the man who also produced the genre classic Alligator, and directed by newcomer Albert Pyun, Sword and the Sorcerer attempted many of the same things Conan did, only with a lot less money. Like Conan, the timeframe of Sword and the Sorcerer is the ever-convenient "time of myths and legends, of magic and mysticism," which is the generic prologue way of saying that the film pretty much throws a dozen different periods against the wall and calls it an era. Where this worked amazingly well in Conan thanks to a wealth of research, funding, and painstaking art direction, it works slightly less well in this film, a hodge-podge of medieval Europe, Japan, and generic "barbarian" times stolen from Conan. One minute, everyone is prancing around in all that kingly garb and the pointy princess hats, and the next minute everyone is in furs and barbarian outfits. Sword and the Sorcerer also delights in sex and violence, providing plenty of gratuitous shots to insure young viewers sneaking a peak will be instant fans. Chests explode, bosoms are bared, and the hero shoots people with his triple-bladed projectile sword. Yep. That's the device that really sets this film apart from Conan, which was a fairly somber, serious film that never acts as if it's doing anything other than telling you the greatest legend ever told. Sword and the Sorcerer, on the other hand, is pretty damn goofy. For starters, there's the sword. As stated, it has three giant blades, and two of them shoot off to impale slow-moving attackers. The sword is amazingly unwieldy and difficult to deal with. Rather than instilling fear into your opponent, it just sort of makes them stand there going "...the hell?" which is good, because you'll need that delay to set up your shot. The movie also focuses far more on magic, as the title suggests. While sorcery was present in Conan, it was very much a background element, never part of the main story, and never so pervasive as to undermine the sense of realism the film achieved. Sword and the Sorcerer begins with an evil warlord marching into a cave with a writhing witch who resurrects a zombie-faced wizard who will put his magic powers to use in the name of the warlord. No sooner is this done than the warlord, a certain Titus Cromwell (b-movie staple Richard Lynch), stabs the sorcerer in the back and pushes him off a cliff. He then goes on to slay the good king who had everyone dressing well, and the good queen, but fails to slay any of the children. Two grow up in the city under the thumb of Cromwell, while one, Talon, uses the really stupid triple bladed projectile sword to escape. Years later, he returns with his rogusih band of mercenaries and, keeping his identity secret for no good reason, reunites with his younger sister, Princess Alana, who has grown up to be the gorgeous, buxom Kathleen Beller. Cromwell's plan is to marry her and thus solidify his claim to the throne of the kingdom, which you'd think he would have done when she was young instead of waiting until she was old enough to get all sassy and defiant. It's not like the Middle Ages weren't jam-packed with old farts marrying eight-year-old girls for political gains. Alana and her brother, Prince Mikah, are of course conspiring with various local dissidents to lead a revolution against the oppressive Cromwell. It's just too bad that their right hand man is also secretly the right hand man of Cromwell, who dutifully fills in his master with all details regarding the plot. Talon rides into town doing his best Han Solo impersonation, and before too long is doing his best to bed Alana, which quite frankly, is sort of creepy. At first, I missed the throw-away line that explains Talon isn't her actual brother, just one of those "adopted son" types. So technically, he's not doing anything perverse. But still, she might as well be his sister what with the way the two grew up. But who am I to judge a man in a big furry barbarian outfit? Obviously, Talon is there not just to fondle his sister but also to involve himself in affairs of state by becoming the roguish, impish rascal the rebels need as their leader. When Mikah is captured and stripped down for some old-fashioned torture, Talon saves him and acquires a band of loyal local followers who are about as useful as the Keystone Cops. The remainder of the film, of course, involves Talon engaging in various feats of daring-do punctuated by lame one-liners. Anyone who saw this film under the same circumstances I saw it back in the wild days will admit that the one thing they remember more than anything is Talon swashbuckling his way through an orgy, or at least a female bathhouse full of nude women rubbing against one another. The orgy scene is a time-honored tradition in the sword and sorcery genre. Even the PG-13 films managed to get an orgy in there somehow. It's what the kids demanded. Exploding chests and orgies. Eventually, Talon and Cromwell face off in a rather lame battle that ends up with Talon being captured. Her brother in exile, her dashing hero crucified to one of those wooden X's, Alana finally gives in tot he pressure to marry the treacherous Cromwell. Luckily, all the rebels led by her brother show up to spoil the wedding, and a big fight ensues that results in Talon finally getting his old triple bladed sword back. Meanwhile, the deceitful right hand man kidnaps Alana and reveals himself to be the sorcerer from the start of the film. All along, he's been playing both ends against the middle in a bid to gain the power, glory, and women for himself. After dispatching waves of worthless palace guards, Talon and Cromwell face off and end up falling into the subterranean caverns where the sorcerer Xusia is amusing himself by watching a snake crawl around on the scantily-clad Alana. Talon and Xusia squabble over who gets to kill Cromwell, and eventually they get tired of that and Talon just hauls off and shoots the wizardy old freak with that sword. Then it's back to Cromwell for the final duel, which is much better than their first. Of course, we all know who's going to win. One of the guys is an evil king and the other is a wisecracking guy covered in chest grease and wearing a loin cloth. Considering that the sorcerer hated Cromwell and wanted nothing more than to punish him for the attempted murder, you'd think the sorcerer would have been less helpful to Cromwell than he was during the film. But what do I know? He was an undead sorcerer living in a cave along with a sexy nude henchwoman, and I'm an unemployed writer and website builder sitting here in a Brooklyn slum. Truth be told, I was somewhat hesitant to go back and watch this film, having not seen it since those glory days back in 1982 and 1983. Since just about all the movies I thought kicked major ass back then really seem lame to me today, I was not looking forward to what I thought would be my inevitable disillusionment with one of the great pillars of my early cinematic career. While Sword and the Sorcerer isn't nearly as cool as it was when I was still an avid reader of Dragon magazine, it has certainly fared better than Magic. It's still a decent fantasy action film. The sword fights and swashbuckling are well-staged compared to the bulk of what the sword and sorcery genre would offer us, and the pace is brisk. Albert Pyun is usually a dreary director whose main talent seems to be augmenting any potential dull moments in a film by a hundred. Here, however, he was green enough to get bossed around by people with more of a sense of pacing, and the result is a fairly dumb, but fairly fun fantasy adventure. The acting is good, certainly better, once again, than most of what would be on display in later sword and sorcery films. Lee Horsely is a charismatic rogue of a lead, and Richard Lynch is venomous and evil without being over the top. As he would in many other roles, he brings an actual sense of humanity to his superficial character that results in it being far less cartoony and one-dimensional than it would have been with a lesser actor. Kathleen Beller, apart from being very easy on the eyes, also acquits herself well in the acting department, as does Simon MacCorkindale as Prince Mikah, looking like a bulked-up Bronson Pinchot. The supporting cast is there to yell, "Get him!" and "We will fight by your side," and they all do it well. The sorcerer Xusia is played by television's lovable Richard Moll. Amuse yourself by pretending that instead of hulking zombie sorcerer Xusia, the villain is actually Mexican sexpot children's show host Xuxa. Although Conan was the film that would kick start the trend, it was Sword and the Sorcerer that would serve as the template for most of the movies to follow (including the sequel to Conan). It was heavier on humor and lighter on budget, a recipe subsequent film makers found a lot easier to reproduce than the big budget epic romance of Conan. It's not as if this is a great work of art or anything, but as far as relatively brain-dead adventure cinema goes, Sword and the Sorcerer has a lot more charm and warmth to it than any of today's overblown blockbusters. I was happy to see that either the movie aged well and was still entertaining, or my standards haven't changed since I was ten. Labels: Fantasy: Sword and Sorcery, Year: 1982 posted by Keith at 6:01 PM | 0 Comments |
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