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I am aware that this film has been badly received by most reviewers, but I cannot get myself to agree. It may be corny, cheesy, gimmicky, but for me, all the gimmicks worked. I loved the matte paintings, which most sfx connoisseurs scoff at. I loved the stiff acting, and melodramatic cornball dialogue, and the shallow Tolkienesque ambiance. I adored Jack Palance's ham acting as the villain. I loved the Elf, and the Dwarf, and the Giant, and the Witch. I loved the music (and did not notice anything particularly "70s" about it, but perhaps that was because I grew up in that era). What I loved most about it was an aspect that another commentator complained about: its incompleteness. That other commentator (from IMDb) complained that he felt like he was watching part 2 of a three-act play. Well, that's a good thing, isn't it? What is the point of immersing oneself in a fantasy world if it is going to be so small it can contain itself in a single film. The implication that I was watching a small part of a much greater story was what gave this film its charm. The cryptic references to things beyond its borders made the world created seem far vaster than it was, and helped the matte paintings seem to come to life.

-- NystulC

As you watch this film, you will more than likely sit back and say, "This is so silly." Remember this is an 80's film. I remember first watching this film as a teenager and saying it was so cool. Well many moons later, I can see the aweful special effects, and the obvious mistakes made. The interesting things about "B" movies is that if actors know they are in one; it comes through in their acting. With this film, they try to act as seriously as possible, which makes it more believable. For people with a poor budget, they did quite well. The score is still some of the coolest music ever. It sets the tone for the film, and encompasses Hawk's mysterious nature.

As a regular film, it is aweful. As a "B" film, it does quite well. Cult classic.

Suffice to say the other review here is spot on. This is possibly one of the funniest films ever made. (for all the wrong reasons) I am in fact, at time of writing, watching Hawk the Slayer on BBC1! Nice to know we pay the ever rising license fee for a good reason.

Sorry however to the the other reviewer but I have to correct you about the repeating crossbow. It did actually exist (another side affect of the BBC....bloody learning zone)

Other than that, very accurate. A collection of wooden sets and gold sprayed tin foil. Also this film wins the award for the most polystyrene looking hammer....ever! I seriously recommend this movie purely because you will laugh/cringe so much, even though you most likely won't last all the way through.

P.s. does anyone else think the sound track is like a porno/western?

There are crusty old cynics out there who dare to suggest that Legolas, in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, shoots his bow a tad too quickly to be truly realistic. Oh my god, they've seen nothing; nothing to compare to the hilarious nonsense that is Hawk the Slayer.

John Terry plays our hero Hawk – no, not the central defender for Chelsea Football Club although, were this true, it would be the least of the casting disasters. Terry was later to appear in Of Mice and Men and Full Metal Jacket – I can only assume his acting had improved on this, his third, film in which he could have single-handedly re-populated the Amazon Rainforest.

But ohmygod, there's more. Bernard Bresslaw – yes the big guy from the Carry On films – as a giant. The corpse of Jack Pallance re-animated for one week only to play – of all things – Hawk's evil brother! Ray Charleson as (pause) Crooow, the amphetamined up elfin type. And let's not forget William Morgan Sheppard – the only man in the middle ages to have a crossbow complete with an AK47-style magazine cartridge – "When you absolutely have to kill every MF in the goddamn room, except no substitutes!" What were they thinking? What could they have been thinking?! You also have to wonder what the cast and crew thought when they sat down to watch the post-production cut of this movie. The comedy fantasy names, the dry ice, the tree-lined, side-of-the-motorway set, the disco soundtrack, Jack Pallance looking like nothing so much as John Wayne holding his mighty weapon. They had unleashed a monster. Would any of them survive it? Terry Marcel clearly didn't; a year later he was making the British TV series Bergerac – the directorial equivalent of being sent to the Russian Front.

He's my suggestion for this film. Buy it – nothing could ever provide you with more entertainment. Keep it under your bed like it was a porn flick and get it out (so to speak) when your mates come around for a kitsch early 80s revival night. Drink lots of beer (you'll need it when you see the size of Pallance's weapon), slide into a pair of fake leather trousers and press play.

Ah, if only they had meant it – it would have been pure genius. 1/10.

Hawk The Slayer is one of those movies that looks better through the rose tinted glow of nostalgia than it really is. In fact its a cheap, badly acted, stupid movie with rubbish effects that must have been written, directed and edited by a 5 year old.Jack Palance has some kind of eye patch and tries to make up for the wooden acting of everyone else by overacting to a degree that even the most over the top panto performer would be embarrassed by. Bernard Breslaw plays the giant without any kind of fx to make him look taller, clobbering the baddies with his plastic hammer like a kind of sword and sorcery Timmy Mallett. Wacaday!

Most of the cast and the director never did any thing else memorable.

Awful movie with a ridiculous soundtrack.

Some would say this film is one of the poorest ever made. They would be correct. However it is also one of the most amusing. Such classic moments as 'a bit falls off the set really obviously' and 'the baddies lair is a skanky old tent', and of course the cheesy sound effect/soundtrack make this a great movie, especially when drunk. To assist this, the Hawk the Slayer Unofficial Drinking Game is as follows: Drink when: Anyone says 'Hawk'; Anyone says 'Voltan'; Every time they show a picture for the backdrop instead of a real set; Every time they use the ridiculous electronic sound effect (first used at the start with the sword); Every time someone dies (can be limited to 3 drinks for a fight scene as its hard to keep count); Every time the crazy disco soundtrack starts up; Every time there are poor special effects; Every time there is a cheesy flashback Every time the top of the set is visible.

Enjoy!

Mediaval romp about two brothers locked in deadly combat till the end of time . This is an atmospheric sliced chunk of swords , fights , sandals and witchery . It is set in a strange land of swirling fog , somewhere in the mists of time , there a misfit crew of rebels rides through orange-skied outdoors . There a good warrior , Hawk the Slayer (John Terry) , struggles against his malevolant brother (Jack Palance) , to possess a magic sword with incredible powers . After seeing both , his dad (Ferdy Mayne) and sweetheart (Catriona McColl) die at the hands of his ruthless sibling Voltan, then Hawk the Slayer sets out in pursuit him and the chance to live up to his title . As Hawk leads the battle against Voltan to free the land from the forces of evil and avenge his loved ones . The group is formed by an elf , a giant , a dwarf , an one-armed man with a machine-crossbow (Bernard Brasslaw) and a witch (Patricia Quinn) , who can turn an useful trick or to , all of them attempt to bring peace and order. These peculiar weird crew of reservists rides at the shoulder of the heroic warrior Hawk the Slayer . This valiant hero wielding a "mind-sword" has great opponents , the first : the big Brother , Jack Palance, along with his bunch of minions and guards under his stiff command. The object of the motley team , kill each other . As an Abbess (Annette Crosbie) is kidnapped and the brave outfit has to free her .

This is a comic-book fantasy with thrills , fierce fights , noisy action and necromancy .There is a vein of satire to all this and and references to legions of darkness . It is full of cardboard castles , painted backdrops , matte-painting , sorcery , and gauze-infested woods . It is all so incredibly tacky that it almost works . Here Palance makes a great villain , he steals the show , though giving overacting . A varied cast , it stars John Terry as Hawk the Slayer , tooling himself up with the magic sword and he sets out for vendetta , recruiting a motley band of warriors formed by an Elf interpreted by Ray Charleson , a dwarf played by Peter Farrell , a giant acted by Bernard Bresslaw , along with an Abbess perfomed by Annette Crosbie , and a nun performed by Cheryl Campbell , the wonder of it is that this cast can deliver their lines without cracking up , though packing unbelievably some anticlimatic , inappropriate and ridiculous scenes . And a notorious support cast formed by prestigious secondaries making brief appearances as Harry Andrews , Derrick O'Connor , Warren Clarke , Patrick McGee , Peter Benson , Roy Kinnear, Barry Stokes , Ferdy Mayne , Shane Briant and Graham Stark.

It delivers an unusual and inadequate musical score by synthesizer composed by Harry Robertson who also wrote and produced. Being well photographed in wonderful outdoors by Paul Beeson , Disney usual . Being shot on location in Buckinghamshire , Black Park , Mansfield , England and Pinewood Studios .The motion picture was original but regularly directed by Terry Marcel , a craftsman who has made some decent films such as : ¨Prisoner of the Lost Universe¨ , ¨Jane and the Lost City¨ , ¨The Last Seduction II¨ and several TV episodes of series as ¨Heartbeat¨ , ¨Trainer¨ ,¨Dark Night¨ , ¨Robin Hood¨ , among others .Rating 5.5/10 . Passable and acceptable in spite of some very silly scenes .

... But not in a good way .

I saw HAWK THE SLAYER many years ago and couldn`t remember much about it except for the bizarre funky soundtrack . After seeing it again tonight I have to confess it`s a very poor sword and sorcery film but aren`t they all unless Peter Jackson is the director ? In which case I shouldn`t be too cruel

But there`s no getting away from the fact that this movie is a yawn inducing experience . There`s no character development because there`s no characters just a bunch of one dimensional cyphers like a giant who is ver big , a dwarf who is very greedy and a elf who ... well what does the elf do ? You see the cyphers are terribly underwritten so I`ll be kind when I say the actors do their best with non existent material though by a cruel irony we see Jack Palance ( An actor at his very best when saying nothing ) getting far too much in the way of ludicurous lines

There is one aspect to the film that does deserve serious criticism and that`s the editing . Look at the fight scene where the elf is leaping around firing arrows at the bad guys . It looks like he`s jumping in the air four or five times while doing so . Only thing is that it is supposed to a single leap . Got the idea ? I could give several other examples of this inept editing

As for the music , disco was popular when this movie was made in 1980 so I guess that`s why it was composed to go with this movie . Am I the only person who was glad that a rap band didn`t do the music for FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING ? Am I the only person glad that a nu metal band didn`t do the music for THE TWO TOWERS ? Am I the only person glad that Simon Cowell didn`t find a a pretty boy singer to do the music for RETURN OF THE KING ?

" I`m sorry Hawk but looking all homo erotic while riding a horse through a forest against a disco soundtrack just doesn`t do it for me . What does Paula think ? "

This is one of those rare early 80's movies that I love. Everything about it is terrible and yet something about it is great!

It has the feel of a Saturday "matinee" and is certainly an entertaining piece of work (although far from a masterpiece). Essentially, this movie is a guilty pleasure. If had to choose between it or "The Beastmaster", I would certainly take Hawk the Slayer.

I recommend this movie as a must see! Although I am not blind and can certainly see all of the faults, I still love this movie.

I even sampled sound bites from this movie and created a dance mix! (Not for commercial purposes... just for fun). If interested, check out the messages boards as I have posted a link to the sound file there.

Sometimes you watch a movie and you wonder whether in the midst of shooting the film-makers have realised they are making something irredeemably terrible and decided, "What the hell? Let's make this even worse. Let's make this as dreadful as we possibly can." Such is the case with HAWK THE SLAYER. Everything about it is apparently calculated to elicit maximum ridicule - giving characters names like Voltan, Drogo, and Gort; the absurd editing to illustrate the elf's nifty technique with his bow and arrows; Hawk's grotesquely corny flashbacks of his late girlfriend...the list is endless. A cult classic for sure, and does anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of the stupendous theme tune - a glorious venture into what I can only describe as "medieval disco"?

Back when playing Dungeons & Dragons was all the rage in high school, many fantasy movies came out to cash in on the success of this craze. Remember "Krull", "Conan the Barbarian", "Dragonslayer", "Excalibur", "Ladyhawke", and "The Beastmaster" (and later "Willow")? Well, there's one film that was glossed over by many except the die hard D&Ders: "Hawk the Slayer".

I cannot say the film is great. It's not. The production values and acting are at television level, despite some good talent. The special effects are often jarringly laughable. The attempts at creating character dynamics are pathetic.

And HtS suffers from the tendency of fantasy films to get pretentious in the acting. That is, if the director wants to give a feel of other worldliness to the atmosphere, he tends to use archaic language or, in the case of HtS, have the characters behave one-dimensionally and stereotypically. The result just makes you shake your head.

The music is actually appropriate in its anachronism. This was the 80's, remember, so synthesized music was still cool. The idea was to give the whole movie a "cool" feeling. Of course, it dates the movie completely.

But I remember it fondly. At least *someone* was attempting to portray the D&D world up on the screen. Someone wanted to create the motley crew of multiracial adventurers and put them in an adventure kids could relate to. And truly, the director's heart was in making something halfway fun. That's probably why I remember it so well.

It briefly made the rounds of late night television in the mid-80's here in the U.S., and then I didn't see it until I recently bought the DVD.

I admit I'm a "sword and sorcery" fan, and am usually rather forgiving when I watch one of these movies.

But "Hawk--the Slayer" is in a class of bad all its own.

First--the dumbest dialogue ever. It's as if someone filled a Rolodex with "standard lines from fantasy epics", and then used it to write the script. Thus we get such gems as "the prophecy is fulfilled!", "wolves now hunt where none were seen before", and "the wizards gather in the South".

Jack Palance is supposed to be Hawk's brother. But he looks old enough to be his dad; and other than some similarities in their right ear-lobes, there is no resemblance whatsoever.

The outside scenes all seem to have been filmed in the same tiny patch of forest. And what's with all those skulls and lizards that seem to be randomly scattered about? F/X largely is confined to stopping and reversing the camera, along with generous use of the smoke machine. In a supposedly haunted forest, our heroes are menaced by what appears to be a finger puppet.

The music is a curious sub-sub genre that can be best termed "medieval disco".

What WERE they thinking when making this film, anyway?

Please - I beg of you - do not watch this film unless you are willing to laugh. The acting is wooden, the dialogue so poorly contrived that it might have been written by a ten-year-old, the backdrops sometimes like a school pantomime, and it is all fantastic! This is one of those wonderful films that is so very bad, it is good.

I have seen it six or seven times, and I marvel each time as to how it was ever released. It takes "The Lord of the Rings", "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves", "The Princess Bride" and " Willow" and rolls them all into one, with dreadful special effects, unmitigatedly awful stop-go cinematography, and poor editing. It is a classic, whose whole is most definitely greater than the sum of its parts. Watch it and laugh.

Yep, its hysterical. The acting! The plot! The music! Hilarious!

Please note that its value as the funniest movie of all time was probably about as intentional as the time I let a hamster that I was hamster-sitting roll off down the stairs in his rollerball:

THUMP THUMP THUMP!

CRASH!

BWAHAHAHAHA!

And that's Hawk the Slayer summed up. Enjoy!

A whole 1 star out of ten for making me fall to my knees in hysteria - it's THAT good...

Where else are you going to find a medieval fantasy with musical interludes that sound as if disco had been invented in the middle ages? (It's very reminiscent of "Jeff Waynes' Musical Version of The War of the Worlds").

Like many B(ad)-films, "Hawk the Slayer" contains several elements that warrant a cult classic, in my humble opinion. To my knowledge, however, it has never achieved said status, and many people don't even know it exists, which is one 'cult criteria' in itself.

In its favor, HTS has a very straightforward story/plot (rescue the Abbess) that it unfolds in an unflinching, smooth manor. It's protagonist (Hawk), antagonist (Voltan), and their conflict are clearly defined. Its themes/subplots (triumph of good over evil; companionship over adversity) are classic, valid, and successfully executed.

Even the lack of a hefty budget (it was a TV movie) aids the film's style (setting, costumes, etc.) in that it helps the audience suspend belief regarding the time period, the location, and the fictional qualities utilized. Unfortunately, the music, the performances, and some of the props dispel that illusion.

One major annoyance for me was the lack of backstory. Granted, everything strictly related to the film's plot is presented (mostly in flashback), but many references to events that happened off-screen in the past (before or after the flashbacks?) are never dealt with. It feels very much like you're watching part two of a triology that has no part one or three.

Though the story has its quirky moments (most of which appear to be budget-based), I credit HTS with a number of inventive ideas and interesting action scenarios (not counting the slow motion, poorly choreographed final sword fight). Plus, it's one of the few (if not the only) fantasy films that actually utilizes a team comprised of various medieval classes of heroes.

If for no other reason, see this film for the clip-loading, rapid fire crossbow and the super fast, super accurate elf. I guarantee, however, that you'll be asking yourself, "Why didn't anyone challenge Voltan to a sword fight earlier?"

So we have this bad guy named Voltan, and we have this hero named Hawk. And Hawk has a magic sword, with a metal hand for a pommel, which he can control with his mind. And we have a big dude. And a little dude. And an elf dude.

Yeah, this movie wasn't made with a lot of thought put into it. I would almost call it intentionally silly, but there are certain scenes, which force me to think that they probably tried to make a serious movie here. Well, as serious as 80s fantasy films can ever be.

The film is also made on a shoestring budget, with most of the locations being small and intimate. The costuming is actually fine, if a bit basic, and the score is okay, even if it doesn't fit the mood of the film particularly well. But it's the special effects where this movie absolutely drops the ball. They're silly. Just silly. Flashing lights and coloured filters for magic, jump cuts to imitate speed, neon-coloured backdrops, the whole gamut of just... why?

And yet this is a fun movie to sit through. It's the very epitome of so bad it's good. I laughed myself silly watching this movie just fail on every basic level. Well, okay, that's bit harsh. I mean, the actors are trying, the story is not the worst possible and the characters are humorously stereotypical.

Give it a watch with the right expectations and I guarantee you'll enjoy yourself.

I first saw this movie in 1981 at about 4 o'clock in the morning and I LOVED it. I had some friends staying over at my house for the weekend, we were 12 years old and lived to play D&D. About 2 minutes after the movie ended we all set about creating our own Mindswords and automatic crossbows for our characters. Yes, the acting is truly lame, but in a movie like this, who cares? I've always secretly hoped that there was a sequel made, as they totally left it open for one, but I guess that would be too much to ask for. I have always wanted to find the movie on DVD so I can show it to my nephews, who thanks to me, are also D&D players. The greatest cult fantasy movie ever!

Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson wrote this endearingly low-rent, silly sword and sorcery fable. It will of course rank as pretty bad if you compare it to "Conan the Barbarian", the high water mark of this genre which actually came along two years later. But for a B movie with a knowingly cheesy style, it entertains adequately. At the very least, it goes on no longer than it should, with a trim running time of just an hour and a half.

Jack Palance and John Terry play brothers (Jack was approximately twice Johns' age when they filmed this), and naturally Jack is the bad guy, and John the good guy. Jack is such a rotten piece of work that he kills their father (Ferdy Mayne) just for starters. Jack will also hold nuns hostage in order to get the gold inside their monastery. But John is a very strapping sort of hero, who can also get by with a little help from his friends: Gort the giant (Bernard Bresslaw), Crow the elf (Ray Charleson), and Baldin the dwarf (Peter O'Farrell).

Complete with oh-so-tacky visual effects, a whole lot of woodsy atmosphere, and a priceless music score (by Robertson) that lays traditional fantasy genre music on top of a funky disco soundtrack, this is generally "good" fun. John is rather stiff as the hero, but Jack is such a hilariously hammy villain that he more than makes up for the blandness of his adversary. They're well supported by actors such as Bresslaw, Charleson, O'Farrell, Patricia Quinn, William Morgan Sheppard, and Shane Briant. Meanwhile, guest stars including Mayne, Harry Andrews, Roy Kinnear, and Patrick Magee turn up with pleasing regularity. Much of the cast play the material with straight faces, which helps to sell this good-natured nonsense.

The ending is definitely attempting to set up a sequel, although it would be another 29 years before a sequel would even be announced. Nothing has come of this so far, however.

Six out of 10.

Set in a medieval kingdom, a warrior named Hawk (John Yerry) sets out to avenge the deaths of his wife and father at the hands of his treacherous power hungry brother Voltan (Jack Palance). Voltan attacks a abbey where one armed archer Ranulf (W. Morgan Sheppherd) is recuperating following Volatan's forces laying waste to his village, and despite Ranulf's best efforts Voltan kidnaps the Abbess (Annette Crosbie) intending to extort 2,000 gold pieces from the church. As the church will not pay the ransom, Ranulf sets out to find the warrior Hawk and along the way with the help of a blind sorceress (Patricia Quinn) they reunite with Hawk's companions the giant Gort (Bernard Bresslaw), elfin bowman Crow (Ray Charleson), and dwarf Baldin (Peter O'Farrell) to rescue the Abbess and bring Voltan to justice.

Hawk the Slayer had the distinction of being one of the earliest if not the earliest entries in the early 80s wave of Sword and Sorcery/Fantasy films which had become hot commodities in the wake of the public's hunger for higher concept material with the success of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even Star Trek: The Motion Picture. The film was the project of British filmmakers Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson who planned to make a locally produced fantasy film in their native England as larger scale projects like Dino De Laurentis' Conan adaptation went through budget disputes and a planned adaptation of Lin Carter's Thongor struggled to get backing. While initially planned to be independently produced with Roger Corman distributing, the project eventually came to the attention of noted British producer Lew Garde who guaranteed the movie under his company ITC Entertainment. Made for a modest 600,000 Pounds and shot over about a month in Buckinghamshire, Hawk the Slayer was supposedly a decent success in the UK (though exact numbers are hard to find) and while the filmmakers did intend this to be the start of a long running series with an already announced Hawk the Destroyer starting production in 1981, the film's international prospects were curtailed by the collapse of ITC and the movie wouldn't be given a theatrical release in the United States instead debuting on TV on The CBS Late Movie in 1982. Critical reception tended to run mostly negative with a number of comparisons to Star Wars but the movie does have a cult appeal and to this day has fans including the creators who have tried to get a follow-up made and even Garth Ennis wrote a comic book sequel to the film. At its core Hawk the Slayer is fun 80s fantasy cheese.

In terms of plot, Hawk the Slayer is pretty simple with both Marcel and Robertson saying the plot of the film was influenced very much by Spaghetti Westerns and it certainly shows as this is more or less a western with swords and bowguns. Even the soundtrack by Harry Robertson does have some parts of it that seem to be striving for an Ennio Morricone type feel....before weirdly transitioning into a disco/techno beat style that makes the movie unintentionally funny. This is where Hawk the Slayer's appeal really comes from as the story and characterization is paper thin, but it's the weird execution of the elements of that story that make the film standout. For starters despite Hawk and Voltan being brothers we have the very distracting age difference of Jack Palance and John Terry where Palance was 31 years older than Terry and shows it even in the hammy flashback sequences so you can't even pretend it's some sort of "stolen life force" thing from the magic he's using (which is a footnote in the movie). We also have the very funny contrast of John Terry's barely emotive plank of wood style of acting to Jack Palance's hammed up performance that definitely calls to mind Ed Wood era Bela Lugosi. But it's not like they're the only bad performances in the film as pretty much everyone has the same issue with either being too bland or too cartoonish. The only one who strikes the right balance is Bernard Bresslaw who plays the "giant" Gort (to be fair he's big, but a giant?....) and he gives the right amount of humor and energy to his performance that would've been put to good use in a movie with actually resources. And then of course we have the action and spectacle in the film which is certainly looking about 600,000 Pounds worth and hope you like trees because 90% of the settings of this film are just parts of the woods minimally dressed up with very easily movable props.

Hawk the Slayer does have a reputation as a "so bad it's good" movie with even Rifftrax having provided a commentary on the film. Hawk the Slayer isn't the worst of 80s fantasy films and it's not even the worst fantasy film with Jack Palance as he has not one but two Gor movies to his name, but it is one of the more amateur in production and execution. But despite its flimsy production it does become kind of endearing in its ineptitude making for the kind of movie that doesn't work but bless its heart it's trying.