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.