Das Schwert des Barbaren

I've seen yesterday on a local Tv this movie and i can say that it is superb. It's better not only than Ator flicks,but also than Conan curse. Sangraal has got a lot of violence,action,fights;it hasn't got the absurdities of "Blade Master"(The ultra-bow has more sense than the hang-glider) and has got a lot of superb BREASTS SHOTS! I can say that Tarantini has made the better finish for this type of flicks. With the exclusion of Red Sonja, the entire group of sword an sorcery movies say on the finish the hero leave the heroine alone,refusing their love with the stupidest phrases that you can hear in your life ; well,in these situation the hero in question saves the girl(who seems like Caroline Munro) from collapse of the cave ,bringing her to safety. Sangraal DOES NOT cover girl's breasts and begins to kiss with her! And finally the hero shares his new horse with her(probably to go to make love otherwhere,so the heroine remains with nude breasts)!! I'm serious but this finish is the best that i have never seen for this genre of movies!!Brilliant,brilliant,brilliant! There aren't the massacres that we can see on other flicks,and this can make the happiness of those who love action movies with many survivors. I'm sad only for the death of Hal Yamanouchi... But i give to SANGRAAL 10 stars out of 10!! It's indefinitely better also to Deathstalker!

My review was written in September 1983 after a Times Square screening.

"The Sword of the Barbarians" is a chintzy Italian imitation of "Conan the Barbarian", one of dozens of pasta fantasies ground out recently. Cannon pickup (released independently, not part of the MGM-UA distribution deal) is minus the novelty of fantastic special effects which could earn it much of a following theatrically.

Story has Sangral (Peter MacCoy), son of Ator, uniting his tribe of peaceful plains people in prehistoric times with Belem's tribe, alfter saving Belem's foxy daughter Aki from an attack by nasties belonging to evil Naluk's tribe, Naluk is protected by the Golden Goddess, Rani (Sabrina Siani), to whom he makes human sacrifices, officiated by his set of hunchbacked priests. Rani, who periodically appears via cheap special effects behind the altar fire, has declared war upon Sangral, and in one skirmish Naluk's men kill Sangral's beautiful, platinum blonde wife Leni.

Strictly copying the format of the "Conan" film, Sangral vows to bring his wife back to life, and accompanied by Aki and an oriental friend Lee Wa Twan, he treks to visit a black magician Rudak to obtain the secret of rebirth. Rudak can't help but sends him instead on a mission to the Ark of the Templars, from which Sangral extracts a laughably oversize crossbow which shoots three arrows at once. Dull climax has Sangral dutifully wiping out Naluk and even the goddess.

Director credited as Michael E. Lemick tries to stretch his minimal budget with over-use of low-angle and wide angle shots but to no avail. Underpopulated picture features beasts that are actors in cheapest makeup imaginable and virtually none of the promised sorcery. It's just hand-to-hand battle nonsense in the vein of the Hercules and Maciste films of over 20 years ago. Peter MacCoy has the right muscleman build for the lead role and has appeared in several other local items including two "Gunan" features. Judging from the opening narration, his character here is apparently a descendant of the Miles O'Keeffe "Ato", though no family tree of prehistoric Italian schlock heroes has yet been charted. As the evil goddess, Sabrina Siani, also a vet of many of these pics, is an alluring personage, resembling the young Claudia Cardinale.

This movie stunk. The English dubbing was horribly amateur, like some video company wanting a release in North America hired a bunch of high-school teachers to dub the film and did it in one try to save money at the recording studio. Ignoring the dubbing, the acting was completely off-key. Sometimes the characters looked like they were trying to get their lines over with after practicing a dozen times in front of the mirror, other times they were over-acting, it was the typical acting style you see in high-school dramas.

The choreography was a joke, not only can you tell it's totally fake with the lack blood and the bad acting, but what makes it funny is that they try to make it look real by moving the camera angles in such a way to hide the fact that they thrust the sword to the side of the opponent or to cover up the fakeness. The directing and photography is equally bad, the camera work is shaky, sloppy, and even out-of-focus at times.

The film shots were poorly set-up. They were at bad angles, frames, and positions. I'm sure the director knew this during editing, but they probably were operating on a miniscule budget, so they couldn't afford enough film and decent filming equipment. You can tell the budget is so small by the fact that they lacked enough decent props and backdrops, didn't have any special effects besides camera tricks, and had micro "villages" and settings that had the camera always close-up to hide this fact. Lastly, the music was completely cheesy, like it was made and composed for an electronic keyboard.

To sum things up, this movie is a completely forgettable, straight from film to VHS, watch-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-when-nothing-else-is-on-TV flick.

Having basically grown up with them, I admit to being a sucker for the cheesy sword-and-sorcery flicks of the early 1980s. However, this was one I had never heard of before coming across it – nor am I familiar with the work of its director, since he mostly dabbled in vulgar comedies…though I am sure some have nevertheless tried to build a cult around his resume' in view of his surname being similar to that of a certain American film-maker!

Anyway, this (originally intended as a sequel to Franco Prosperi's GUNAN, KING OF THE BARBARIAN released earlier that same year) is pretty much standard fare though marked by a couple of excesses that make it unintentionally hilarious. Upfront is the intermittent narration, which is so utterly downbeat and gravely-spoken to boot that I swear the speaker was on the verge of tears at times! The other is the sheer display of histrionics by the villain who frequently – and not always with good reason – takes to shouting out the hero's name at the top of his lungs; incidentally, his beef with him is merely because the latter has killed a number of his priests-cum-minions, thus thwarting an onslaught on a neighboring village…so I wanted to yell back at him: "Get over it already"! As usual, the protagonist is muscle-bound yet thoroughly bland: at the beginning of the film, he survives the obligatory extermination of a peaceful tribe; eventually, he leads the remaining members of the clan to a promised land (along the way to which, some have begun to despair and almost turn against him – sounds familiar?!); as if that were not sufficiently Biblical, the hero is named Sangraal which, literally, means "Holy Grail"!

He has a blonde girlfriend but soon also sets his sights on the daughter of the people he defended; conveniently, another assault sees the former killed…which the hero is forced to watch from afar while strung up (crucified, get it?). Rather than start life anew with his other girl and make life easier for all of us, he determines to bring the dead woman back to life (yep, they keep coming!) and seeks out a hermit-like sage with the help of an Oriental archer who comes out of nowhere but subsequently breaks our balls by incessantly spouting Charlie Chan-type aphorisms! Pilfering yet another fashionable mystic source, the villain and his men worship a topless goddess who lives inside a fire a' la SHE (just as bloodthirsty and constantly threatening her disciple when his every ruse to dispatch the hero inevitably fails!).

Later on, the protagonist and his two companions are attacked by blind creatures that live in caves and sport webbed fingers – maybe their tatty 'costumes' were borrowed from Sergio Martino's ISLAND OF THE FISHMEN (1979)? – before stumbling upon a secret weapon, an unwieldy arrow-shooting contraption that barely sees service thereafter! Eventually, hero and villain engage in a one-on-one by the sea, with the latter ending up impaled on his own dagger! Mind you, in spite of my disparaging remarks, one cannot really hate this type of juvenile (nudity and gore notwithstanding) fare too much – in fact, on the strength of this, I acquired two other minor efforts (albeit from American exponents) in this vein i.e. Jack Hill's SORCERESS (1982) and THE WARRIOR AND THE SORCERESS (1984), though I probably will not be getting to them just now...

Ah...what have we here....yet another Conan The Barbarian rip off do I see?

Yes indeed and sadly not one of the better ones I might add.

Following the enormous success of the aforementioned pinnacle of the genre, it was inevitable that the market would be flooded with cheap cash-ins.

Now if there's one country in the world that seems to always be the fastest to leap onto any given cinematic band wagon, then it surely must be Italy.

And not just the fastest either, the Italian movie industry, especially in the late 1970's and early 1980's, was probably also one of the most prolific and could churn out seemingly hundreds of films on any given theme (the theme being usually dictated by what happened to be successful in Hollywood at the time) Take for instance the success of George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead (which was released in Italy as 'Zombi') Within no time at all, enterprising Italian producers had released a whole slew of cheaply made (but often rather watchable) virtual copies of the film.

And so it came to pass (damn! - I sound like a Sword & Sorcery movie narrator now!) that with the remarkable success of Conan, Italian film producers, true to form, released numerous clones of their own.

Universally, all were woefully inferior to the original in pretty much every way and yet, one can't deny that there was a certain (cheesy) charm to many of them such as Joe D'Amato's, 'Ator The Fighting Eagle' starring one time Tarzan, Miles O'Keeffe.

Sadly Sword Of The Barbarians, whilst not totally without its merits, is hardly a particularly memorable entry in the genre.

There are all the usual trappings to be found here as in the other films of it's ilk i.e. topless maidens, torture and violent battle scenes (some of which are pleasantly gory) but overall this film feels distinctly lifeless.

It's a sad reflection in fact, that whilst watching this I found myself continuously looking at the video counter to see just how much more running time was actually left, as I was becoming increasingly bored with the unfolding on screen events.

Even the climatic battle between the hero and the main villain was handled in a rather hopelessly lacklustre manner.

Still, if you're a fellow fan of the Sword & Sorcery genre, then you'll no doubt want to see this and make up your own mind.

It's certainly not exactly a complete stinker of a movie (in fact it's quite amusing in a B-Movie sort of way), but it certainly doesn't warrant repeated viewings.