The Spanish Sword

Great Britain's notorious Danziger Brothers--that country's answer to Sam Katzman--have turned out yet another chintzy, cheap-looking time-waster. "The Spanish Sword" is a listless, slow-moving story of a knight who tries to thwart the plans of a greedy, rapacious baron. This is not one of writer Brian Clemens' finest hours, to say the least--his script is talky and cliché-ridden, with no feeling whatsoever for the times (11th-century England) and director Ernest Morris doesn't do any better on his end; the film moves like molasses and what passes for "action" scenes are tired, perfunctory and poorly staged. Performances by the largely unknown cast range from amateurish to hammy, except for veteran character actor Nigel Green, here playing the villain and trying to overcome the lousy script and poor direction but not having much luck. Star Ronald Howard looks like he wandered in from another picture and is trying to figure out what he's doing there. Leading lady June Thorburn doesn't acquit herself particularly well; the script didn't give her much to do, but she didn't do very much with what little she was given.

Overall, this is a pretty lame programmer, boring and predictable, with not much going for it. Skip it.

I happen to like swash & buckle movies, the more trite, the better. I even like melodramas, complete with Snidely Whiplash and a dashing Hero. But this movie was too much, even for me. Cheaply made, the producer obviously cut corners everywhere: the writing is not just weak, it's watery. The direction is practically non-existent, the camera-work could have been done by a mannequin, and I've seen better acting in Community Theater. One of the Little Rascals plays would have been more interesting to watch.

I have to admit that I didn't make it all the way through the movie. Even though I have chronic insomnia, I fell asleep in the middle of the climatic fight scene. So I guess it was good for something, after all...

The Spanish Sword is one of those b-movies where most plot descriptions would make it sound like an exciting action-adventure, but ends up being a very dull stinker. Probably the main reason it's so bad is because it's concept called for a way bigger budget than it probably had. If any independent filmmakers are reading this, I just have one piece of advice they're probably not telling you in film schools: movies that don't take place in modern times in the modern world need a big budget. Otherwise you'll just end up with this poor excuse for a period film.

The thing that I most disliked about this movie was the incredibly wooden acting. Although to be fair, the actors didn't have a very good script to work with. The dialogue was very corny and the characters were so personality-less that they could barely be called humans. At least you could tell the actors were at least trying at times, but sadly couldn't bring in decent enough performances. But the bad acting and dialogue could be forgiven if there wasn't so much of it. Seriously, the movie had way too much boring dialogue scenes. I can't even tell you what this movie is about because the acting and dialogue was so distractingly bad I had a hard time following the actual story.

That's not to say their wasn't any action scenes. In fact, those were my favourite parts of the movie due to how hilariously bad they were. The swords were very fake-looking, and way too often characters died from having the swords being waved near them. I realize CGI wasn't invented yet, but it was so painfully obvious that the swords weren't even touching them. But I think the best one was the climatic fight scene which you can barely see because it kept cutting to an extreme long shot of two professional fencers fighting each other.

But not everything in the movie was bad. The cinematographer obviously had some experience. I've seen one too many b-movies where the camera did nothing but shoot the actors saying the lines. But the camera in this movie actually moved! The movie also had a pretty decent score. It wasn't a great score, but in movies like these you really need to appreciate what little competence the filmmakers showed.

I'd only recommend this movie if you're like me and find bad movies interesting. Otherwise, stay away from this stinker.

If you're in the film industry and looking for something else, this is something else. 'Low-budget B Movie' doesn't come close to preparing you for the abject disappointment of this film. Any period film is going to be expensive, done properly - so this was never going to work. Nigel Green - an actor I very much admired, couldn't pull this dog out of the .....! The sword fighting scenes where victims are viewed being run through are truly awful, because it's clear that the victim has the blade under his arm and is turned sideways to look as though the sword has gone through, when it obviously hasn't! And that's just the beginning - I won't waste your time with any further negative comments, other than to repeat that students of the film industry should watch films like this!