Red Sonja (2025)

Having directed the surprisingly good Solomon Kane adaptation, MJ Bassett has some form with Robert E. Howard adaptations, though this, of course, is based on what Roy Thomas unleashed when he brought the historical adventure character of Red Sonya of Rogatino into Conan’s Hyborian Age in the comics, where she soon acquired a chainmail bikini, and many, many more adventures than her historical counterpart experienced.

It is also, alas, yet another damn origin story, so if you hoped for watching a movie featuring the character you actually like, you’ll have to make do with Sonja – adequately if not wonderfully embodied by Matilda Lutz - as an occasionally ultra-violent eco terrorist orphan with a horse buddy until the epilogue that promises a sequel we’re never going to get anyway. Our main villain (Robert Sheehan) consequently plays like the fantasy version of a tech bro, at least half of the time. The other, actually more interesting, half of the time, he has a tragic backstory that will turn out to be closely connected to that of Sonja, because contemporary scriptwriters (the credited guilty party here is Tasha Huo, though I suspect diverse hands being involved in about a thousand versions of the script) just can’t help but overexplain and overconnect.

More interesting is the villain’s unhealthy co-dependent relation with his main henchwoman (Wallis Day) who has her own trauma to carry – something the script decides is so important, it starts to get weird about it in the climax. Or really, what one calls a climax, for the film decides to put its worst battle at the end of the movie and to then peter out with endless amounts of dialogue and character business, some of which is at least vaguely interesting, all of which goes on way too long and sits at the wrong damn place for the kind of movie this is. But then, sensible structure really isn’t the script’s strong suit. The narrative timeline is a total mess – just try to understand how long the film thinks Sonja is with the gladiators – and there’s little sense the film understands how dramatic arcs work.

What saves this Red Sonja from being just an inconsistently and technically badly written movie and makes it one that’s actually still entertaining enough is mostly Bassett’s quality as an action director, if you can ignore that unfortunate final battle. In those scenes where they commit, there actually is the kind of thrill and excitement, perhaps even a bit of blood and thunder, I expect from a film about a Robert E. Howard, Rascally Roy character.

The Spine of Night (2021)

Having ascended a mythical mountain, the – always very naked – swamp witch Tzod (Lucy Lawless) converses with an armoured figure (Richard E. Grant), the guardian of the last bloom of a blue flower growing there. Tzord tells of the rather disturbing developments in the human world below during the last centuries, leading to flashbacks that start with her own kidnapping and eventual death and will lead into the rise of a near-godlike conqueror.

For its first fifteen minutes or so, Phil Gelatt’s and Morgan Galen King’s The Spine of Night appears to a be nothing more than a highly competent homage to the poster children of rotoscope animation, Fire & Ice and Heavy Metal. I’ve never been a true connoisseur of that animation style, though I do like these two core texts more than just a little. Frazetta and Sword and Sorcery, or the French school of comics art not beholden to the ligne claire are things irresistible, independent of the form they are presented in, after all.

So, I’d probably have been quite happy with it, if Spine had only been the violent and nudity-positive bit of animated sword and sorcery its beginning promises. It doesn’t take long, however, until it becomes clear these filmmakers have deeper and more complex interests than making a film in the style of things they clearly love and admire. Instead of the more typical heroic/anti-heroic tale that seems to be set up, the film soon broadens its scope to become a much more epic tale, spanning centuries, with characters that would be the heroes and villains of most other movies of this kind coming into and out of the plot as parts of the grand tapestry the film is weaving. Most of them have pasts and futures the film only hints at, suggesting a world full of interesting, mysterious and large lives in ways I find deeply satisfying. Worldbuilding by suggestion, by leaving out explanations to get the imagination of an audience going has gotten rather out of style these days, but when treated as carefully and thoughtfully is it is here, it does fire up at least this viewer’s imagination as little else does.

The Spine does take this approach not only to characters but the world it takes place in as well – the gorgeous and fantastic character and background design is highly suggestive, and manages to make rule of cool elements feel like more than just that – true parts of its world that don’t need to be explained.

On a plot level, this takes elements of sword and sorcery and the cosmicism/cosmic horror that has been an important part of this style of fantasy since its beginning and turns it towards the mythic. In a film that also features a creation myth in which classic rotoscope takes on the shadowy qualities of shadow puppet animation, this is rather obviously a conscious decision, a – successful – attempt at taking the outlook of the pulpier arm of the classic weird tale and emphasising its philosophical contents without having to lose the blood and the guts (there’s a lot of that on screen here as well), or the beauty and terror of existing in a cosmos that cares not one whit about you.

Philosophically, this is a film about the question of how to live with this idea of an at best uncaring cosmos, a place where human strife and achievement is essentially pointless, and where even gods are of no actual import in the greater scheme of things - of how to look into the void and not become it. Thinking about this does involve exploding a god-like wizard after he has been fought by armoured skeletons, so there’s a wonderful mix of completely unexpected thoughtfulness with the stuff the film sells itself on – no cheating the audience off what it came to see (or hear – the dialogue is perfect for what the film tries to do, as well) around here.

None of what I’ve just written, alas, quite captures how The Spine of Night actually made me feel watching it, the elation I got from watching a movie that’s sword and sorcery as imagined by Frank Frazetta covers, a fantasy tale that is as mythic as it gory, as much a part of the landscape of horror as it is of fantasy, and a wonderful bit of cosmicism with generously added trippyness. But that’s how it goes, sometimes.

In short: The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner (2020)

If there’s a documentary about a literary figure whose mere existence makes me a bit giddy, it is this love letter to the often grievously undervalued or ignored sword and sorcery, horror and weird fiction writer and editor Karl Edward Wagner as directed by Brandon D. Lunsford and Brian M. McKnight.

Formally, this is related to your typical talking head documentary in so far as interviews are the backbone of the film – but this is not a case of the filmmakers cutting together soundbites, and rather one of them editing parts of the extensive amount of interviews they made with Wagner’s family, friends and peers so they paint a chronological and thematical picture of Wagner. Some of these interviewees have died themselves in the meantime, so now their interviews here preserve a part of oral literary history that might otherwise have been lost to us completely. Apart from making a great case for Wagner – the availability of whose work is still spotty beyond his sword and sorcery anti-hero Kane, though the great Valancourt Books have at least republished his wonderful collection “In a Lonely Place” since the film was made – this is also a bit of portray of a small-ish circle of horror writers who were probably too idiosyncratic to dominate the field in the 70s and 80s, but whose stories certainly should have, and sometimes have, left a mark.

It’s not as if all of the material about Wagner used here were completely new – Stephen Jones’s forewords to those ridiculously priced and limited Centipede Press Editions that always bring out the socialist in me apparently mine comparable sources (I wouldn’t know, because I’m not rich) – but the interviews bring parts of Wagner’s personality to life in a more direct way than a foreword can. The film is doing its best to not only use the interview footage, but also a treasure trove of photos, book covers, as well thematically appropriate bits and bobs to illustrate some readings of Wagner’s prose.

The project doesn’t shy away from the alcoholic crappiness of Wagner’s later years, when the functioning bit of the functioning alcoholic seems to increasingly have gotten lost in Wagner. There’s certainly no attempt at prettying up the end of Wagner’s marriage and what came after, though there’s also no sensationalist wallowing in nastiness; this is clearly aiming to be truthful about Wagner. That The Last Wolf takes a sympathetic and sad eye to these last years instead of a judgmental one is a major strength to my eyes.

Which really should make this a great documentary for anyone interested in Wagner at all, and probably an interesting film to see especially after you’ve read the Valancourt reissue or one of the Kane books.

The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (1983)

Original title: I sette magnifici gladiatori

The narrative takes place in what I believe is supposed to be a fantasy version of Ancient Rome, though it could of course also be a very low effort secondary world. Evil bandit leader Nicerote (Dan Vadis) is making regularly raids on a small village, using the physical invulnerability somehow bestowed on him by his mother (whom he blinded as a thanks) with astonishingly little ambition and imagination. By now, the village is only populated by women, children, and the elderly. Fortunately, there’s a helpful prophecy concerning the village’s favourite relic, a magic sword only the true hero meant to save the place will be able to hold going around. So the rest populace put the sword in keeping of their most attractive women. They go to Rome and proceed to ask every random passers-by they meet to grab that sword. They do eschew any warnings that the weapons rather likes to burn the hands of the unworthy, because that’s village morality for you. Still, eventually, the blade ends up in the hands of gladiator-on-the run Han (Lou Ferrigno) who is apparently a proper hero and not burnable by sword. After some business with the crazy bug-eyes making emperor (Yehuda Efroni) I only mention because his performance is so spectacularly hammy, Han goes off to do some village rescuing, picking up enough gladiators, Sybil Dannings and rogues to make for the full titular complement of seven.

You really know the rest.

If you’re like me, you probably expect something mind-blowing and weird when going into an Italian 80s sword and sorcery movie that also wants to be a gladiator movie and Magnificent Seven rip-off, particularly one made by the terrifying/awe-inspiring duo of Bruno Mattei and Claudio Fragasso. Even better, one made on Cannon money, which must have felt like Marvel money to an indie filmmaker of today.

Alas, this is by far not as crack-brained as one would hope it to be. Sure, Fragasso’s script is as awkwardly structured as was his wont, and a lot of what happens is somewhat nonsensical, but there are only a few moments in the script that don’t feel comparatively competent and sane, at least for the kind of movie this is.

Mattei for his part even manages to create a series of perfectly okay looking scenes, though he is of course completely incapable of giving any of the copious character deaths any emotional weight, something certainly not helped by Fragasso’s messing up of the Magnificent formula by simply not spending enough time on creating characters with at least one discernible character trait. These Seven seem to consists of Sybil Danning, four beefcakes and three rogues, and that’s it. In general, one can’t help but think that Fragasso didn’t quite get why certain scenes like the training of the villagers are in practically all movies of this sort, including them just in case but trying to get through them as quickly as possible. This does rob the film of any of the emotional resonance it should have.

From time to time, the old, loveable, idiocy of the Mattei/Fragasso pairing does come through. I’m particularly fond of the fact that the magic sword isn’t actually, as you would think, magically able to get through Nicerote’s invulnerability the normal way when wielded by the proper hero, but really only kills him when he grips it himself. Which rather suggests that the whole rigmarole with finding the proper hero could have been avoided by simply presenting the sword to the guy as a treasure. But hey, what do I understand of these things?

Because many of the actors here are rather experienced in fake-hitting stuntmen with swords, most of the fights look rather more competent than you’d expect of a Mattei joint; I wouldn’t go so far as to call them exciting but they are certainly surprisingly watchable in a straightforward movie matinee way. The wagon race looks a bit as if Michael Bay had fashioned his car chases after it, though.

All of this makes for the more than a little confusing experience of watching a Mattei/Fragasso film that feels mostly competent – by the standards of Italian sword and sorcery fare - instead of insane. If you know the body of work of this duo, you’ll realize how mind-blowing the concept of competence is when applied to these filmmakers. Which does bring up the question who or what might have been responsible for this particular kind of insanity never before or after beheld in these men’s works. I, for one, blame Golan and Globus.

In short: Gor (1987)

Wimpy college lecturer Tarl Cabot (Urbano Barberini) finds his weird ideas about the existence of a “counter-Earth” you can visit with the help of a ring he inherited from his father proven very right indeed when he is sucked into the sword and sorcery without sorcery world of Gor.

Freshly arrived, he just barely escapes the clutches of the men henching for evil priest king Sarm (Oliver Reed) and runs into the local good guys. Sarm is on a bit of a rampage through various villages, slaughtering and enslaving their populations and stealing their “home stones”. Sarm’s rural enemies have hoped for a dimension traveller to arrive, apparently, but Tarl isn’t manly enough to pass muster, so has to go through a training montage.

To motivate him into helping out against Sarm, his new buddies – big-haired and big-breasted love interest Talena (Rebecca Ferratti) and characters I dub old guy and grumpy young guy – explain that their home stone is Tarl’s only way to get back home. Why everyone else is so fixated on some red plastic stones, the film never gets around to tell. So off our heroes go through deserts and more desert, visit a barbarian camp and wander through some caves in what appears to be the local equivalent of a quest, just without the adventure.

This is Fritz Kiersch’s Cannon version of the first of John Norman’s Counter-Earth novels. The books start as basically readable Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches but becomes increasingly misogynistic and unpleasant, espousing some pretty notorious nonsense about women’s supposed wish to be dominated, enslaved and violated; the film on its part doesn’t care about any of that stuff, and really just wants to be an Italian Conan rip-off. Alas, it doesn’t manage to achieve this modest goal.

Even the worst Italian sword and sorcery (or in this case sword and planet/scientific romance) movies try to keep their audience awake by throwing regular action scenes and cardboard and latex monsters at their audience. Gor’s action is as unambitious as it is infrequent, with the usual barely dressed guys and gals slowly going through motions Kiersch is either unwilling or unable to make look interesting. Apart from Tarl’s dimension hopping, there’s no fantastic or science fictional element here at all, missing out on quite a bit of what makes Sword and Sorcery or the best stuff by Burroughs (I can’t speak for Norman’s books, for I don’t have the stomach to delve deeper than the first two books there, and my reading of those has been a couple of decades ago) so fun – creatures, magic, and weird science as the base for fun and games.

It would be one thing if Gor had anything else to show its audience, but there’s really little happening here of any interest. Kiersch’s disinterested and unergetic direction doesn’t improve anything.

The most interesting thing about the film is how it manages to get such a bored villain performance out of Oliver Reed. For some reason, Reed mostly mumbles and angrily whispers his lines, with pauses that suggest he has to drag every single line slowly out of the script; from time to time, he laughs pointlessly. Oh, well.

Past Misdeeds: Solomon Kane (2009)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.


It's the year 1600. Mercenary captain Solomon Kane (James Purefoy) is a rather nasty man with a mean disposition, but of excellent talent in the killing arts. While on one of his plunder and pillage escapades with his men, Kane meets a large, faceless charmer of a guy wielding a flaming sword who introduces himself as "the devil's reaper", come to bring Kane's soul to where it belongs.

With luck, the mercenary survives his fight with the creature and escapes. One year later, the film finds its protagonist in England, where he is spending time in a monastery. Which is quite an achievement seeing that there were no monasteries in England at that time anymore; scriptwriters of period pieces should sometimes look into a history book of the era their movies take place in.

His encounter with the reaper has put the fear of the devil into Kane, and he has forsworn his wicked and violent ways and sworn never to take human life again. Alas, the monastery's abbot has had a vision. Seems like god told him to send Kane away to return to his childhood home.

Kane has some very unpleasant (noble) family baggage, though, and is not at all willing to go back to his ancestral castle. Be that as it may, the man obviously can't stay in the monastery when the abbot's imaginary friend says no, so he leaves and wanders the country, doing his best to be non-violent. On his travels, he meets the Crowthorn family, a handful of brave puritans on their way to America. Kane and the Crowthorns take a real liking to each other, and since this is a film with a redemption plot, this does not bode well for Pete Postlethwaite, Alice Krige and their children.

A horde of not completely human raiders under the leadership of a demonic masked fighter (Samuel Roukin) roams the land, killing many people and taking others as slaves. The Crowthorns and Kane have a run-in with one of the raider groups, an encounter that convinces Kane to take up killing again, if now for a better cause. Even with Kane's regained fighting spirit, the raiders kill the male members of the family and take daughter Meredith (Rachel-Hurd Wood) with them. Kane promises the dying Crowthorn to rescue his daughter whatever the cost, leaving Mrs Crowthorn behind alone in the deep dark woods to fend for herself. Very heroic.

Little does the ex-pacifist know that his way to redemption will lead him (after some adventures and detours) back to his family castle.

After the less than promising trailers and the not exactly excited sounding reviews, I went into Solomon Kane expecting the worst. As it turns out, the film isn't as bad as I had feared at all.

As an admirer of the Kane stories of Robert E. Howard this film is supposedly based on, I would not have been optimistic going into a film like this even under more promising circumstances. I was right with not being optimistic about the film in this regard: as a Howard adaptation, Solomon Kane isn't a success at all. Kane is more like an alternative world version of Howard's character than the one I know from the stories. Both Kanes might share their obsessiveness and their fighting prowess, but where the literary figure is driven by a sense of justice and adventure lust he can't admit to himself, movie-Kane is on a by-the-script-writers'-rule-book search for redemption, a search that a contemporary film script of course has to frame with family connections to the source of evil. A simple search for redemption just isn't personal enough anymore, and a hero just being a kick-ass demon-hunting adventurer is of course right out. In the tradition that has already annoyed me in more than one superhero movie, this is an origin story in which everything that is happening has deep connections with the protagonist's history, making his good deeds deeply solipsistic at their core instead of selfless and truly heroic.

This utterly predictable streak is the film's big weakness. Well, it and the tendency to lay the pathos on so thick that I suspect people have drowned in it during the production. I dare anyone not to giggle at the crucifixion scene; and yes, of course Kane rips himself off the cross, as is traditional in Sword and Sorcery films, in contrast to certain other crucifixions.

Having said that, I also have to admit that these shortcomings don't drag the film down as much I would have expected. The plot may be so bog-standard in its ideas more sensitive people will probably want to scream, but its execution is a lot more exciting to watch than you'd think. Director Michael J. Bassett manages to imbue his film with exactly the right feel for a pulpy, semi-historical Sword and Sorcery film. The film gets the needed mood of grimness and slight unreality just right, creating a world of fog, dirt and a bit of snow. It works on the part of the imagination that delights in Frank Frazetta paintings.

Another strength are the film's action scenes, at once grim and cool in a heavy metal record cover sense. They are even dynamic and thrilling enough to let one ignore the weakness of the CGI effects. Only the Grand Finale disappoints in this regard, but I'd rather put that on the boringness of the movie's big bad and Bassett's too conservative scriptwriting (again) than on his ability at directing good action scenes.

While there really isn't much room to do anything impressive on the acting front for anyone, I am still quite impressed with James Purefoy's performance. The actor does a fine job of deliberate, yet subtle overacting and treats his character's standard redemption arc as if it were Shakespeare. There's a seriousness about his approach to Kane that makes this one-dimensional character at times nearly feel like a charismatic person, possibly even someone whose redemption would be a good thing. Plus, Purefoy is also pretty good in the action scenes. One can't help but wonder how excellent Purefoy would have been as Howard's Kane.


Solomon Kane is a terribly flawed film. I would have wished for it to be either more imaginative or at least closer to Howard than it being generic historical pulp fantasy, to be a bit more willing to take risks with its narrative, but in the end, I can't say that it isn't fun, at times even exciting, to watch.

Past Misdeeds: Hawk the Slayer (1980)

This is a re-run with only the slightest of edits, so please don’t ask me what the heck I was thinking when I wrote any given entry into this section.

Welcome to some vaguely defined medieval fantasy period. Brothers Voltan (Jack Palance) – evil if the name isn’t hint enough – and Hawk (John Terry) – good if his lack of personality isn’t a hint for that – have been feuding for years, ever since Voltan tried to murder Hawk, killed the woman they both loved (Catriona MacColl on flashback duty), and murdered their father (Ferdy Mayne) because dear dad didn’t want to give him the family elf stone that turns a really awkward looking sword into the Mindsword (magical power: something about minds and a bit of telekinesis).

Now, Voltan, his adopted son Drogo (Shane Briant) and their henchpeople involve themselves in kidnapping an abbess for ransom. Though, if that sort of thing should attract Hawk for a bit of fratricide, all the better. Indeed Hawk does become involved. Happily, he’s already in the process of picking up his own team of, ahem, heroes by saving their lives: Ranulf, owner of a repeating crossbow who is also the guy responsible for informing Hawk of Voltan’s misdeeds; Crow (Ray Charleson), the last elf; Baldin (Peter O’Farrell), a not particularly small dwarf; Gort (Bernard Bresslaw), a not particularly large giant; and a blind good witch everyone calls Woman (Patricia Quinn) because name are for men. Together, they fight crime. No, actually, together they assault a band of slavers, murder (which is the word one uses when you kill your enemies when they are already disarmed and helpless, I believe) them and steal their money so the nuns can have some ransom money to hand if our merry band doesn’t manage to conquer Voltan.

Obviously, with our heroes coming up with plans this ethically accomplished, nothing can go wrong.

The British production Hawk the Slayer is a strangely fascinating film. Not because it is any good, mind you. It is, as a matter of fact, actually a pretty terrible movie all around, with shoddy production values, dubious to hilarious acting, and a script that always drifts off into stuff that just doesn’t make sense; why, it even ends throwing open the gates to a sequel that – perhaps thankfully, perhaps sadly if you’re of my somewhat perverse tastes – never came.

However, it is also a film absolutely ahead of its time. This is, after all, a low rent sword and sorcery movie made before any of the films that produced the sword and sorcery wave for the cinemas were completed, seemingly picking up its main influences from Star Wars. At least, Voltan’s helmet and demeanour forcefully suggest a whinier Darth Vader, while the cowled sorcerer or whatever he is supposed to be pulling his strings for reasons the film leaves open for that sequel that never came has a decided Emperor vibe. One might also interpret Hawk’s Mindsword as the low tech version of a light sabre, but then, a magic sword is a magic sword is a magic sword and not necessarily invented by George Lucas.

The film’s other main influence is obviously – at least to my eyes and ears – the Spaghetti Western, with half of the score built out of cues which carry more than just a passing resemblance to certain Ennio Morricone works, and many an early fight scene consisting of stare downs followed by short and rapid action. The latter could of course also be less inspiration by the Italian films as Terry Marcel filming around something he’s not very good at, namely the actual action in action sequences. This idea gets further traction when you keep in mind that Hawk’s two larger set piece battles both take place in conditions of visibility so bad, the audience can only guess at most of what’s actually going on in them, peering through the very artificial fog of the first one, and through what looks a lot like the insides of a slaughtered feather bed in the second one (all thanks to practical witch magic that seems to be based on the idea of movie heroes coping much better with not actually seeing their enemies than villains do, which doesn’t actually work out so hot in what I’m not going to call a nod to realism).

There’s something deeply perverse about directorial decisions like that one. But then a certain perversity fits the film, for there’s a lot about Hawk that’s awkward and dubious in a way that parallels the Italian sword and sorcery films of half a decade later to a degree I can’t help but imagine someone involved in the production was a Doctor Who companion socialized in the 1990s somehow stranded in 1980’s British low rent movie central. Seriously, the parallels are frightening, and there’s little on screen you wouldn’t later see in various Italian films.

Sure, there’s a total lack of nudity (appropriate to the mythical, meaning it being a myth, sexlessness of British culture) but otherwise we have everything I love and hate about Italian sword and sorcery on display here: the ethical flexibility of the heroes (which might obviously also be taken from the Spaghetti Western or even actual sword and sorcery stories); line delivery that suggests a cast of non-native speakers or a really weird bunch of post-dubbing actors giving the characters voice; acting that fluctuates between so dead pan it’s more dead than alive (hello, Hawk and monosyllabic, staring elf dude) and hysterically over-excited (hello, Jack Palance’s visible hunger for the chewing of scenery and possibly other actors, and double hello “Woman”’s loud melodramatic stage whispering of every damn line she speaks); production design that makes little sense culturally and looks in turns shoddy and hypnotically weird; oh so very special effects like the emulation of Crow’s supernaturally fast arrow shooting skills via showing the same shot again and again in quick cuts while adding hilarious sound effects; and last but not least, a script that makes little sense and meanders from one damn thing to another with random abandon. Yup, Hawk truly has it all.


Of course, since time travel doesn’t actually exist apart from the boring linear movement most of us – I’m not sure about certain script writers and filmmakers - suffer under, Hawk being a full-fledged Italian sword and sorcery movie made in the UK before the genre actually existed, might also suggest the big Italian sword and sorcery wave didn’t just try to rip off Conan and Excalibur but was actually heavily influenced by Terry Marcel’s Hawk the Slayer. I’m not sure I’m not preferring the time travel theory, though.

The Head Hunter (2018)

A man (Christopher Rygh) lives a lonely life in a hut in the wilderness of a technologically medieval fantasy world. Following sparse flashbacks, he wasn’t always alone but once had a daughter (Cora Kaufman); a woman never comes into play. The daughter was killed by some kind of monster, and the man now earns a pay he derisively throws to the side as the local king’s monster hunter, rather unhygienic ramming a fresh and unprepared monster head onto a spike in what amounts to his living room whenever he’s back from a job. He is really biding his time with this, waiting for the return of the monster that killed his daughter. Eventually, it does indeed return.

Jordan Downey’s The Head Hunter is a pretty great little movie, the sort of film that wants to tell a very specific tale in a very specific way and then goes about telling it just so. In this case this means the camera and the audience are not accompanying the man on his monster hunts at all, only witnessing his preparation, perhaps a bit of the way towards the monster, his usually wounded returns, his healing his wounds with a magic goo, his ritual of putting the monster heads on spikes and his visits to his daughter’s grave where the dead child is the only one witnessing the handful of sentences he ever speaks.

It’s a very sparse approach to this sort of tale that probably will leave more than a few viewers hoping for some hot monster fighting action disappointed, but which really says all it needs to say about him and his life, the way everything he does is only part of waiting for and surviving until the only thing happens that still has meaning for him: the return of the thing that killed his daughter. So the film shaves all of these things unimportant to its protagonist off, too, carefully focusing on what’s important: small gestures, the man’s ever heavier and strained breathing, the little failures and chance mishaps that can add up to disaster rather quickly, the tiny circle grief and the need for vengeance has reduced the man’s life to. We do get to see the fight against the thing that killed his daughter, though, or rather, the excellently staged and paced final stretch of it that really proves the film hasn’t just not shown the monsters before because it couldn’t come up with proper monster costumes.

It’s all grim and lovely at the same time, and works as a rather more personal sword and sorcery/horror movie than typical of the genre, as well as it does as one where everything that happens is a living (if you can call the man’s existence living still), breathing metaphor. Even the ending that might seem a bit too left-field at first works exceedingly well with the central metaphor about the destructive force of grief.

The film also looks fantastic, particularly for something that couldn’t have had much of a budget, with some great, oppressive landscape shots and a staging that always focuses on the small things that will turn out to mean so much, as well as highly expressive lighting and sound design that’s sparse in just the right way to fit the film.


I really love Downey’s approach to the fantasy genre here, taking well-worn (and much-loved by me, don’t get me wrong) elements, making minor adjustments to them that are mostly based on literally changing our perspective on them, and turning them into a film that’s one of a kind, as far as I know. There are so many clever little touches in the film too - from the derisive yet compulsive way Rygh stakes the heads to his wall to Downey’s version of Chekhov's Gun – so that it feels like a true labour of love rather than another film of someone adapting their D&D campaign (not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course).

Past Misdeeds: Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.

A long time ago, a secondary world fantasy continent was kept under the thumb of the exceedingly evil followers of the Book of Vile Darkness, a tome made of bits and pieces of an evil necromancer. This reign of terror ended when a new order of knights, the Order of the New Sun arose, blessed by the powers of the god of light. The knights freed the lands, and, while they didn't manage to destroy the Book, they did force its few remaining followers to split it apart and hide it away.

During the course of the following centuries, with their goal fulfilled, the Order of the New Sun descended in importance and power. At the beginning of the film, none of its knights have been blessed with godly powers for eight hundred years, and the Order has been reduced to a handful of people. Just after young Grayson (Jack Gerges) has been initiated into the Order - of course without any resulting supernatural powers - a band of evildoers slaughters what's left of the order and kidnaps Grayson's father. Our hero doesn't know it, but it's all part of a plan to find the remaining pieces of the Book of Vile Darkness, and create it anew.

Grayson barely makes it out alive, and swears to do anything to rescue his father. "Anything" in this case means the young man goes undercover with a small party of evildoers led by the witch Akordia (Eleanor Gecks) who are out looking for the cover to the Book. Soon, Grayson's virtues are put to the test, his oath of chastity threatened by a certain witch, and he just might realize he carries rather more darkness inside himself than he expected. On the positive side, Akordia grows rather fond of him, which just might become helpful when Grayson's plans start going awry.

It's a bit ironic that the third Dungeons & Dragons movie, which was after all produced for our dear friends of SyFy by the same companies who made the - not quite as horrible as the first one, yet still pretty bad - second D&D film, and even was directed by the very same Gerry Lively, turns out to be rather fun. On paper, made-for-TV movies are a step down even from direct-to-video films, after all, even though the borders between both have begun to dissolve increasingly in the last decade or so.

It's best I'll qualify the word "good" here right at the beginning, for The Book of Vile Darkness is certainly made for an audience willing and able to suspend their disbelief regarding a fantasy world full of characters dressing like (good) LARPers, sometimes cheesy melodramatics that fit the generally melodramatic acting style (which again fits D&D, and I do mean that as a compliment), and dialogue that can be sharp and funny, yet at other times sounds as tinny as an old shellac record. I guess if you can say the film's title three times without giggling or rolling your eyes, you're a) like me and b) perfectly able to actually enjoy this.

Personally, I find myself enjoying the seriously played cheesiness of the whole affair in particular, and see the melodramatics as a way for the film to demonstrate how seriously it takes itself. In fact, I don't think secondary world fantasy can work on the movie screen without a film treating all its sillier elements with dignity and quite as a matter of fact; irony does not build worlds. Why, yes, of course evil people dress in black, have sex (unlike good people), have tattoos and piercings and like long philosophical speeches about the appropriateness of their alignments! And make no mistake here, writer Brian Rudnick does clearly know how D&D's alignment system works and just as clearly realizes how much of a shame it were if he didn't use it. Having respect for one's source material is of utmost importance for a movie like this, even if its source material is not the be all and end all of philosophical thought.

The film's core character developments are deeply grounded in the alignment system, but they're also constructed flexibly enough to produce Book of Vile Darkness's main message, namely that your "virtue" isn't much of a thing to be proud of if you never had any reason not to be virtuous; it's also a nice change for the fantasy genre in its on screen incarnation that Book does seem to realize not all evil aligned people would be raving maniacs, nor see themselves as "evil" as much as following a violently libertarian philosophy (the jerks!). So, just like real libertarians.

Obviously, Book of Vile Darkness is rather darker than its predecessors, with a hero who will even stoop as low as murder by poison (including a use of a Bag of Holding right out of a slightly out of control table top session) - clearly, he's Chaotic Good at best - and a pleasant sense for the bizarre. The latter is demonstrated via elements like a prehensile eyeball (which is awesome, if I even have to explain that), an - decidedly creepy looking - undead child nourished by negative emotions and evil yet poisoned by love and compassion, or the Book of Vile Darkness (do I love writing the phrase? Yes I do.) needing to be written with the pain of someone with a pure heart. If you have played fewer RPGs than I have, you'll also find scenes like the one where a helpful prostitute brings Grayson (a stupid name for a hero, but what can we do?) into an RPG-typical shop for magic items that is about as mystical as a supermarket rather strange. Yes, I'll take that Bag of Holding, this Ring of Force, and of course that evil looking armour, because I am evil now. It is, as our American brethren would say, awesome.

I was also positively surprised by some of film's effects: the red dragon our evil party of adventurers fights is particularly great for this budget bracket, as is the undead child, but spell effects and digital matte paintings are also much better than I would have expected. There's nothing half-assed about the film in this regard, at the very least.


Nor is there much half-assed to find in The Book of Vile Darkness as a whole. Lively and Rudnick go about their job of creating a low budget sword and sorcery movie with an enthusiasm and a care you don't always find in the genre, turning what could be as perfunctory as the second D&D movie, or as embarrassing as the first one, into a whole lot of fun.

Past Misdeeds: Hundra (1983)

Through the transformation of the glorious WTF-Films into the even more glorious Exploder Button and the ensuing server changes, some of my old columns for the site have gone the way of all things internet. I’m going to repost them here in irregular intervals in addition to my usual ramblings.

Please keep in mind these are the old posts presented with only  basic re-writes and improvements. Furthermore, many of these pieces were written years ago, so if you feel offended or need to violently disagree with me in the comments, you can be pretty sure I won’t know why I wrote what I wrote anymore anyhow.


One day, while their best warrior Hundra (Laurene Landon) is away hunting, a generally peaceful village of amazons is attacked and eradicated by a band of ugly, hairy men riding under the sign of the bull. When all is over, a returning Hundra dispatches a horde of the aggressors in a drawn-out fight, but that still leaves her people quite dead.

Our heroine then makes her way to the only remaining elder of her kind, who for some inexplicable reason dwells among a horde of really rude little people. Though after hearing the sage's glorious plan for the revivification of her people, I'm not surprised by anything about her, for she declares Hundra to now be solely responsible for the survival of the tribe. Our poor, bedraggled heroine shall go down to the land of the men praying to the bull, and get herself pregnant stat.

But Hundra's first attempt at getting pregnant only teaches her one thing: she still has certain standards, and won't tolerate the attentions of hairy, unwashed guys who'll even turn consensual sex into rape. So, after showing off her wrestling skills and sneering at less feminist women than herself (she'd get along well with a certain type of Internet feminists), off she rides to what goes under the term of "city" in sword and sorcery land.

There she will get into trouble with the ruling cabal of religious male chauvinist pigs whose religion is orgies, meet a man who doesn't stink and isn't a jerk, learn the womanly arts, teach the warrior arts to her teacher of womanly arts, and be somewhat responsible for a death by sitting on a face.

Among the many, many films jumping on the bandwagon created by John Milius's Conan the Barbarian, Hundra is one of the most unique in that it isn't slavishly copying all of its predecessor's story beats and aping its philosophy, but actually having a head of its own. Admittedly, Hundra's head just might be as much full of nonsense as it is of clever ideas, but I find it difficult to disagree with a film that is clearly having so much fun. Plus, you can say the same about the Milius movie, too.

Still, having fun or not, Hundra is at times a film sending very mixed messages. Tonally, it's just very inconsistent, with scenes of really unpleasant slow-motion violence like the destruction of Hundra's village (ending - especially tasteful - with the rape of Hundra's teenage-at-best sister) and sequences of Hundra romping through the city and kicking guards in the balls (one of her favourite fighting moves) standing in strange contrast to each other, quite as if half of the film were made by a low-rent Sam Peckinpah and the other half by the director of one of the later Terence Hill and Bud Spencer movies. I suspect part of this curious mixture is just director Matt Cimber (a man with a career so curious someone should write a book about him, as he did Hundra as well as Pia-Zadorasploitation) fulfilling his quota of exploitational values, just that in this film, violence towards women after the big village destruction usually leads to Hundra giving the respective prick a kick in the respective balls. It's a bit like a woman in prison film where all the male bad guys are dispatched before the grand climax, and therefore don't have enough time to get really sadistic.

At times, when it's not spending its time having strange plot holes (so, the main bad guys are all about seeing Hundra “tamed”, but then they somehow don't realize when she's pregnant?) or making jokes about Hundra's cowardly male dog, Hundra actually becomes a somewhat clever inversion of the classic sword and sorcery tale, where the storyteller suddenly realizes that treating women like objects isn't alright at all, and sends out a female version of Conan to sort things out with men. The film plays with a lot of traditional sword and sorcery elements this way, turning what begins like the usual tale of vengeance into the story of a woman who learns that a lot of men are indeed shits, but not all of them, and that consensual sex is a-okay if both partners want to have it. And in a really surprising turn of events, this does not lead to our heroine giving up on her curious destiny and only ever living for her man from then on, but just sees her psychologically better prepared for it. Of course, her male love interest here is just as bland as the female love interest in sword and sorcery movies with a male hero often is, so it's not too much of a surprise she can leave him (at least for a time - the film actually is all about choice on that level).


These clever bits are surrounded by an Ennio-Morricone-scored shot in Spain series of fights, brawls and slow-motion attacks (with a bit of nudity), bad jokes, good jokes, male characters so vile I'm sure they don't wash, and Spanish actors speaking English with heavy accents. It's a bit of mess, really, but so much of the film is riding on a wave of fun, with a lead actress who may not be all that great at, well, acting, but sure seems to have as much of a blast in her slightly awkward action scenes as her character has. That sort of thing always goes a long way in turning awkward action scenes into loveable awkward action scenes. And once a film is like Hundra and mixes its loveable awkward action scenes with kinda sorta feminism that would make John Milius (and Robert E. Howard, for that matter) cry, there isn't really anything anyone could do to remove it from the warm place it has found in my heart.

In short: Kull the Conqueror (1997)

By what is rather difficult not to describe as a series of violent yet hilarious accidents, barbarian Kull (Kevin Sorbo) becomes king of ancient Valusia. Nobody actually wants him on the throne, obviously. Various nobles – among them evil super-mullet man Taligaro (Thomas Ian Griffith) – would have been better suited for the position, but that’s how it goes in Valusia, apparently. Of course, the scheming nobles soon get together and form a conspiracy, deciding that using the priest of an ancient evil godhood to awaken a 3000 year old evil queen named Akivasha (Tia Carrere) is the best way to get rid of Kull.

Man, you think that’s not gonna work out to their satisfaction?

John Nicollela’s Kull the Conqueror doesn’t make it easy to like it: if you’re tolerant towards the special charms of badly thought out Sword & Sorcery movies, you’re probably right in the market to be bothered by the film’s other main annoyance – wasting one of Robert E. Howard’s best characters. Sure, the film does use some elements that vaguely resemble bits of the Kull stories, so clearly someone involved in the script has read them, but it completely ignores those elements that are actually fascinating and worthwhile in favour of a fantasy tale both generic and surprisingly undramatic. And if you’re hoping for snake people, picts, and philosophy, you’ll be sorely disappointed.

I just barely managed to squeeze past these hurdles (I’ve grown too old to jump, alas), to get at the film’s cheesy core. It’s not as tasty as the core found in many an Italian barbarian movie, but I take my fun where I can get it. So, if you go in for the cheese, you’ll probably hoot at the strictly PG-13 hot sexy times, headbang awkwardly to a score by Joel Goldsmith that fluctuates between crap pseudo-metal and a really crap Basil Polidouris imitation, giggle about an absurdly wooden – we’re talking Bryce Dallas Howard in Jurassic World degrees of woodenness here – good girl female lead in Karina Lombard, appreciate an awkward but enthusiastic witch queen, enjoy some somewhat okay sword fighting, yawn at boring magic, cry for the minutes of your life now wasted on camel piss based humour, and gawp at a finale that sees Kull kissing the Big Bad to death.

If you’re in for the beefcake, Kevin Sorbo doesn’t like shirts.

Three Films Make A Post: So deadly, it may be the last movie you ever see.

The Veil (2016): Despite some very decent acting and a fine enough basic idea, director Phil Joanou quickly falls into the usual traps and trappings of modern mainstream horror: there’s the script that needs to isolate its characters but can only find the most stupid way to do it, a colour palette so muted the film’s greyish brown and boring to look at, and of course an idea of horror that loves jump scares so much more than anything else it can’t live without at least one every five minutes. And there’s obviously the lame twist ending too.

Witchville (2010): This SyFy movie was for some reason and to good effect shot in China, giving the affair some local visual influences on the production design. There are also Chinese actors in smaller roles. It’s basically a cheap sword and sorcery movie with Luke Goss enriched with mild wuxia elements, and as such Pearry Reginald Teo’s film pushes a lot of my buttons quite adeptly. It’s merrily paced, has a lot of perfectly decent Sword and Sorcery ideas about witches and the way people fight, adorably small armies, and is good, stupid fun all around.

The Mystery of Mr. X (1934): Edgar Selwyn’s film about a cracksman (Robert Montgomery) hunting a serial killer of policemen because he’s under suspicion himself (without much actual evidence, mind you) on the other hand is very slow going. It seems to have the reputation of being a hidden gem in classic Hollywood lover circles but I does very little for me. I’m a sucker for the “charming thief hunts worse criminals” kind of tale, but I could do little with Montgomery’s performance here, that for my tastes was more smug and self-satisfied than roguishly charming.

The romance angle doesn’t work for me either, the romantic plot moments and the mystery always getting in each other’s way while they’re only competent looked at separately. So we’re safely in the area of “boring competence” here again, and that’s something I have no love for in films made now or in 1934.

In short: The Four Warriors (2015)

You’ll probably need to share my general love of medieval pulp action (this time around even with the sorcery to make it pseudo-historical sword and sorcery, instead of sword and sorcery without the latter!) to get much enjoyment out of Phil Hawkins’s film about three crusaders and their Saracen prisoner stumbling about a village whose whole male and juvenile population has been kidnapped, perhaps by something much worse than slavers, particularly once it turns into a pretty basic Dungeons and Dragons scenario. There are a myriad problems: there are continuity mistakes even I see, the plot is clichéd and presented in the least interesting manner, the acting is often awkward (well, script writer and male lead Christopher Dane and female lead Alex Childs are certainly decent), the dialogue heavy-handed yet utterly improbable for the time period, the demon costumes mostly ridiculous, and the whole thing slows down to a crawl somewhere around its middle. There’s also a lot of basic conceptual stuff that just doesn’t work at all, but I don’t think there’s any need to go that deep for this one.

Still, I did enjoy myself enough for the ninety minutes of The Four Warriors running time. There are people with swords in armour, mediocre fights happen, lame synthesizer music plays, and Evil is conquered by the power of believing in not being Evil (or something), while, from time to time, Hawkins manages an effective or even a pretty shot. Plus, the film does take itself seriously in a way that makes it unkind, perhaps even cruel, to criticize it too heavily, for it is quite clear that this is the best the people involved could do in the time and place, and with the tiny amount of money they had at their disposition. It doesn’t work out very well, but you sure as hell can’t say The Four Warriors isn’t at least trying very hard, which, let’s be honest, is quite a bit more than you could say about your typical Michael Bay movie.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,in short,sword and sorcery,phil hawkins,christopher dane,alex childs

On ExB: Hawk the Slayer (1980)

Stop press! The history of cheap sword and sorcery movies has to be rewritten thanks to the most Italian British movie ever made – before cheap Italian sword and sorcery movies even existed.

Learn more about this dark sorcery in my column about Hawk the Slayer at the cackling Exploder Button.

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,other places,sword and sorcery,terry marcel,jack palance,john terry,patricia quinn,bernard bresslaw,ray charleson

On ExB: SAGA: Curse of the Shadow (2013)

aka Curse of the Dragon Slayer

aka Dragon Lore: Curse of the Shadow

aka SAGA: The Shadow Cabal

aka Rise of the Shadow Warrior

By now, my long-suffering readers will have a realized I possess landmasses of patience for cheap sword and sorcery and fantasy films, so I often find myself championing parts of the genre most other viewers seem to loathe with true passion.

For my tastes, Curse of the Shadow makes it quite easy for me to get excited about it, too, for this is a film that might be built on clichés but works really well with them, enough so it deserves its own quite positive column over at ExB. If you click on through, you might just see a pointy ear or two.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,reviews,fantasy,john lyde,danielle chuchran,richard mcwilliams,paul d. hunt

SyFy vs. the Mynd: Jabberwock (2011)

In a curious medieval Europe (one supposes, at least the film mentions the Romans, so should take place on planet Earth; filming did of course take place in Bulgaria) full of American accents, where neither church nor liege lords seem to exist, but rather a lot of short swords are bandied about, a lightning storm - that all-purpose fiend - opens the remaining egg of one of the horrible flying creatures which once created the local wastelands. The Jabberwock, as the creature only still remembered via a children's rhyme (or - cough - what we know as a poem by Lewis Carroll), is called, follows an unlucky traveller (Raffaello Degruttola) to a peculiar local village whose inhabitants live from who knows what yet still have a weapon smith if no other visible means of subsistence.

The creature - as is creatures' wont - starts terrorizing the countryside, killing people and grabbing take-away virgins to eat. It will fall to Francis (Tahmoh Penikett), the smith I mentioned, his undeclared love interest Anabel (Kacey Barnfield), his dying father Reginald (Hugh Ross), and his warrior brother just returning from war Alec (Michael Worth) to find a way to get rid of the monster. Their plan will involve a dubious looking home-made armour and an oversized mouse trap, so surely nothing can go wrong.

Oh no, it's another SyFy production I liked. Despite its curiously weak worldbuilding (seriously, what do these people live off, and what are Anabel and the other villagers doing when they're not fighting a monster, and so on?), Steven R. Monroe's sword and sorcery without the sorcery movie is a really fine time.

Sure, it's not a deep film, and I sure as hell could have lived without the "Tamoh Penikett is finally growing up and learning to grow closer to his family (too bad they'll have to die for it)" subplot, but the film does at least handle its cliché characters development with a firm hand, and the actors work pretty well together, so that the character parts are never standing in the way of the medieval monster movie parts, are in fact motivating them in a not subtle yet useful manner. Plus, there's no annoying comic relief at all, the film taking its smith versus monster plot seriously.

Talking about the Jabberwock, the monster in question is a decent CGI creation with a pretty interesting looking head that is of course at its most convincing when it's alone on screen, and is the most troublesome when it's supposed to interact with the characters around it. There's an early scene with the creature sitting on the village's wall (by the way, wouldn't that kind of wall not make it a town?), and the villagers fighting it where perspective and reach seem particularly dubious, but for most of the time, Monroe shoots around the limitations of its creature well enough.

Working around the limitations of his material and his budget is really what Monroe does for most of the time here, turning out a low budget sword and sorcery CGI monster movie that gains quite an entertaining pull through its insistence on not taking lazy shortcuts when it doesn't need to, and telling an old story with enough conviction to make it feel lively again.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,american tv,in short,sword and sorcery,steven r. monroe,tamoh penikett,michael worth,kacey barnfield

On Exploder Button: SyFy vs. The Mynd: Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness (2012)

As you know Jim, the first movie based on the venerable US RPG system was rather dreadful, the second one much better loved yet not actually any better. The third one was produced for the SyFy Channel and is…rather good, actually.

Point your unbelieving eyes at my column, and realize that my taste is a frightening thing.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,syfy vs the mynd,reviews,other places,sword and sorcery,gerry lively,jack derges,eleanor gecks

In short: Thor the Conqueror (1983)

Barbarian archer and bad guy Gnut (Raf Baldassarre) murders the father of the freshly born Thor. Shaman Etna (Luigi Mezzanotte) escapes with the baby and raises him like his own son. Or so he says, for curiously, grown-up Thor (Bruno Minniti) doesn't know what a woman is, will only feed his foster father with fish heads, only talks in sentence fragments, and talks of himself exclusively in the third person, pretty much like the Hulk. I don't think Etna's a very good father.

After Thor has killed his first man and slept with his first woman (helpful hints by dad: women are stupid, don't be too soft with them, women are meant to serve men), Etna sends him out to invent agriculture, take vengeance on Gnut, and become the greatest chieftain ever. On his way, Thor rapes an amazon (Maria Romano) who of course falls in love with him (the sound you now hear is me vomiting), and has various cheap adventures.

I honestly think Tonino Ricci's low-rent sword and sorcery movie was at one point in its existence meant to be something rather cool - an attempt to use the sword and sorcery genre to tell a kind of origin myth that explains where agriculture and horses came from and how the world works, the sort of tale one imagines some fantasy world barbarians would tell their children.

Alas, between that basic idea and its actual execution sits quite a gulf, or a wall made out of a non-existent budget, for Thor looks so impoverished even the Deathstalker films seem lavish in comparison. There are basically no sets, just one very European looking wood, a cave, and some fur tents. The soundtrack consists of ill-fitting orchestra library music that makes the movie feel even cheaper. Camera set-ups are primitive and somewhat boring, and what special effects there are, are unsurprisingly bad.

Its immense misogyny (the film actually seems to mean that crap about woman's subservience to man), and the outright assholish-ness of its hero were no help in improving my opinion of the film, yet still I found myself watching it with a degree of tolerance and slight amusement.

It was probably the wackiness of some of Thor's ideas that did the trick: Etna's tendency to follow Thor around in owl form to sprout unasked for exposition into the camera, the shaman's obvious relish in secretly watching his foster son having sex (though I suspect there's no need for secrecy and Thor would just grunt and say "Thor say watch" if asked), snake poison as the cure for blindness, the fact that the first horse was beamed into this world by Thor's god for our hero to frighten his enemies with. There's just a whole bunch of vaguely bemusing and highly amusing crap here that makes it difficult to condemn Thor completely, as much as I would like to.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,in short,sword and sorcery,tonino ricci,bruno minniti,maria romano,raf baldassarre

On WTF: Hundra (1983)

As we all know, John Milius's Conan had quite a few unexpected consequences, many of them rather painful to watch. However, as nobody expects the Spanish inquisition, nobody could have expected Hundra, a surprisingly fun semi-feminist exploitation sword and sorcery movie that has its way with certain sword and sorcery traditions.

So this week, my column on WTF-Film contains womanly belly-laughs, unpleasant sex stuff, weird sex stuff and lots of kicks in various balls.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,spanish movies,sword and sorcery,reviews,matt cimber,laurene landon,maria casal,cihangir gaffari,other places

Things I Thought While Watching Conan The Barbarian (2011)

for it's really not worth a proper review. Yes, I know I've reviewed much worse films.

• Oh hey, it's another Robert E. Howard adaptation that has fuck all to do with the stories it's supposed to adapt. Now if it were at least good…
• The Hyborian age was so brown, people even bled a brownish hue. Remember when movies had colours in them?
• Wait, so Jason Momoa is Ron Perlman's son? I think that's the sort of situation paternity tests were invented for.
• CUT OUT OF HIS MOTHER'S WOMB ON THE BATTLEFIELD! EXCLAMATION MARK!
• Li'l Conan shows all the signs of becoming a psychopathic serial killer. I would not suggest forging a sword for him, but then I'm not Ron Perlman. Also, now I want to watch an all ages cartoon show named "Li'l Conan".
• Slow motion horsemen. I dunno how they ever manage to ride down anyone, what with them moving much slower than normal riders or people on foot.
• You gotta love how these war-like non-nomadic Barbarian movie tribes always have no defensive structures whatsoever at their places of habitation and always seem completely unprepared for any attack.
• Ron Perlman prefers death to being in this movie any longer. I do understand, Ron, I really do. The bad guy doesn't, though, so he just has to hold out for one scene longer. Say "War. War never changes", Ron!
• Is denositation a word? If it is, that's what Conan's good at.
• These barbarian tribe members all have fantastic teeth. Except for most of the bad guys, of course. I imagine time travelling dentists with high morals are to blame.
• Aha, so all the actual Howard stuff happened between little Conan shouting "Grraaaaar" and becoming Jason Momoa so that there's room for the crap the scriptwriter came up with instead of Red Nails.
• And now he's a leading member of a gang of hard-partying pirates.
• Conan is way too fond of decapitations for comfort. And of torturing people and then being a dick to them afterwards. I thought he was a Cimmerian, not an American.
• The Shadowlord? But which one? And where is Lord British?
• Conan has known his pirate friends since he was a child, but he only now mentions the name of the guy who killed Ron Perlman (and wiped out Conan's tribe, but that's obviously not worth mentioning). He's only playing to the camera.
• Hooray for martial arts monks!
• In a surprising twist, Rachel Nichols is actually allowed to be competent in a fight.
• It's rude to discuss the property rights to a woman in front of her. I think.
• "Woman! Come here! I said, come here!". That element of Howard they did not change.
• Stop the press! The big bad has a motivation apart from being evil!
• They're bickering and he's tying her up. Obviously, these two are meant for each other.
• "Why would you save me only to tie me up?"
• My incest sense is tingling.
• I think someone responsible for the production mixed up Conan and the Punisher.
• Exploding barrels! Why didn't I invent them? I'm sure I'd be rich now.
• You know, I'd totally watch a movie about Rachel Nichols' character having swashbuckling adventures instead of the one about Jason Momoa avenging his father in a very brown land.
• So Conan is a grunter during sex. Who'd have thunk?
• Obligatory kidnapping of female lead so we can have more scenes of Conan scowling and mumbling through his dialogue. Which is what this movie thinks is "being heroic and badass". Bored now.
• Why isn't this scene awesome? It has Conan fighting a tentacle monster below him and bad guys around him while also trying to protect a thief companion. There are cages and chains. And yet it's still not very exciting at all. I don't think Marcus Nispel is all that good at this directing lark.
• "Behold - in despair - your new master!". I wouldn't work as a henchman for this guy, but then I am something of a wimp.
• "Barbarian, I don't like you anymore". I assume when they taught smack talk in villain school, Mister Bad Guy did not attend.
• Dual-wielding broadswords looks dumb.

Technorati-Markierungen: american movies,in short,fantasy,sword and sorcery,marcus nispel,rachel nichols,jason momoa