I coltelli del vendicatore

In the ancient times, the savage and cruel warrior Hagen (Frank Ross) is chasing Queen Karin (Lisa Wagner) and her son Moki (Louis Polletin) to marry her and usurp the kingdom of her husband, King Arald (Jack Stuart). Karin and Moki are hid in a cottage in the woods living like peasants and they are protected by a stranger, the warrior Helmut (Cameron Mitchell), who is an expert in knives. Moki gets close to Helmut that teaches him how to hunt and fight and later Karin discloses to him that three years ago, her husband traveled in a ship to overseas to seek grains to his starving people. The vessel wrecked in the coast of Britain and since then they have had no news about Arald. Further she tells that Hagen was the responsible for the starvation since he had broken the truce between the kingdoms of Arald and King Rurik and killed his wife and son. Thirsty for revenge, King Rurik had invaded her kingdom with his warriors and killed the people and raped the women including her in her honeymoon, but spared the life of Arald. Helmut, who is actually King Rurik, falls in love for Karin and questions whether Moki is his son.

This is the first action movie of Mario Bava that I have seen and I found it an underrated tale of revenge and redemption. The screenplay is very well written, disclosing a dramatic story, and supported by great direction and acting and magnificent cinematography. In the end, the viewer is never sure whether Moki is the son of Rurik or Arald but the tears of Karin might indicate that she knows the truth about the fatherhood of Moki. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

Cameron Mitchell and his stunt double take on the Viking hordes in this cheaply made Mario Bava film that carries a little more emotional weight than usual. This film cost $75,000 to make, which is surely really cheap even for 1966?

The story is this: jerk Viking Hagen has just returned from exile to his home town to claim the throne from himself, as the previous King, Arald, has seemingly drowned at sea. The only way Hagen can become King is to marry Arald's wife, Karin, but she has gone into hiding to get away from him, hiding with her son in a remote cottage. Hagen has his men scour the land looking for her, and ignores the prophecy of a strange old woman that a man is on his way to kill Hagen.

One day, hunky Cameron Mitchell turns up at the cottage looking for shelter and some food, and ends up saving Karin from two of Hagen's men in a rather violent fight. Turns out Cameron is a drifter who offers his services to Karin and starts training her son to be a fierce fighter, but also falls in love with Karin and sees the kid as some sort of surrogate son. This is all heading somewhere!

Everyone has a past and it's the past that comes back to haunt the characters in this film, as Cameron seeks both revenge and redemption and is actually quite believable as a man torn between his conflicting emotions. He's also hard as nails and takes down quite a few of Hagen's men with his throwing knives, even if his stunt double has a totally different colour of hair.

You can tell this was made cheaply, due to the limited sets, most of the action on the beach taking place in the one area, and a general sparse feel to the whole film, but then again you've got Mario Bava behind the camera, so everything looks better than any big budget film made last week with the most hi-tech CGI you can imagine. Plenty of action too, mainly Cameron taking on gurff Viking types.

He also gets a good performance out of Cameron Mitchell, who is prone to hamming it up in most of his roles. Here he exudes warmth and regret and finally, resignation, and his character does go on some kind of personal journey that ends in a bitter victory.

Cameron Mitchell stars in this Viking film that essentially is a traditional western plot but set in the Middle Ages. Mitchell plays the hero--a guy who comes to town and finds that a local baddie is tormenting folks. So, being a noble sort of guy, he comes to the aid of a woman and her son--not realizing that she is a queen living in hiding. While all this sounds pretty exciting, it really isn't. Despite Mitchell tossing knives about and acting manly, it's pretty dull. BUT, I really expected much worse. Considering the zillions of Samson/Hercules/Machiste Italian films (most of which were terrible), I assumed this dubbed film would be just horrible. Perhaps having the talented director Mario Bava (known for horror films) helped a bit. Still, it's far from a must-see film and is easy to skip or see if you've got nothing better to do.

A mysterious knife-throwing viking warrior protects a young peasant woman and her young son from the clutches of a evil regent bent on claiming the title of king and the woman for himself.

Although a certified fan of Mario Bava's work (particularly his horror films), what actually got me interested in watching this was Giacomo Rossi-Stuart. For American audiences, non-American (or at least non-English speaking) actors rarely get noticed. The number of Italians famous in America can be counted on one hand. And this is a shame -- Italy has its share of stars, and Rossi-Stuart is one of them.

He is not top billed here (Cameron Mitchell is), but still attracts notice. His look is so distinctive, I just really appreciate him for the presence he brings to the screen.

I have nothing to say about the actual movie... it is pretty good, but not a genre I feel confident making strong judgments about.

Rating: ** (max. ****)

Poorly paced Viking epic about Mitchell, who comes to protect the wife of a dead king from an usurper, unaware that she has reason to exact vengeance on him. Storyline is unusually complex but going-ons seem stretched out unnecessarily. Some consider this a western - well, if it wasn't for that setting they may be right. Score, photography, acting is quite nice, but, to reiterate, sluggish story-telling diminishes the effect. For Bava completists. Stick with OPERAZIONE PAURA, LISA E IL DIAVOLO, CANI ARRABBIATI or CINQUE BAMBOLE...

Afterword:

In the liner notes, Bava historian Tim Lucas considers this film "the genre's last hurrah" and sees it as a "distinct forerunner of the sword and sorcery genre". A "hurrah" it ain't, and Schwarzenegger's CONAN was inspired by HERCULES (Bava was involved!). For more Bava reviews, please visit my homepage.