Il trono di fuoco

If you are like me...you don't mind spending a Saturday watching a poorly made movie with swords, magic, and beautiful leading ladies. The Throne of Fire is just such a movie.

The plot is basically good vs. evil. Satan's messenger and a witch have a son and he is raised believing no one can oppose him. He sets out to rule the kingdom. In order to sit upon the Throne of Fire (made by the Norse god Odin) he must be a rightful heir to the throne and sit upon it first on a solar eclipse. To obtain the right to the throne he kidnaps the princess of the kingdom and forces her to marry him. However, the good-guy barbarian Conan wannabe is there to try to save the day.

Plenty of sword fighting ensues and some pretty bad special effects. In my humble opinion this movie was too long and not worth much to anyone unless you enjoy the genre. The leading lady (Sabrina Siani) is indeed beautiful and I will try to find other movies of hers. Look for errors in this movie such as the Christian wedding ceremony in a Norse Barbaric period.

My review was written in June 1986 after watching the film on MGM/UA video cassette.

"The Throne of Fire' is a very ordinary Italian fantasy adventure cranked out in 1982 with the same cast and virtually the same plotline as a dozen other pictures at that time. Cannon pickup bypassed U. S. theatrical release to debut on video cassette instead.

Peter McCoy (real name: Pietro Torriso) toplines as Siegfried, a muscleman destined to save the world from evil, latter personified by Moark (Harrison Muller), the on of the devil's messenger Belial (also played by Muller) and the witch Azira.

For evil to continue to exist in the world, Morak must take the title throne "on the day of the night in the day" (another cornball eclipse coming up). To qualify, he must marry beautiful blonde princess Valkari (Sabrina Siani), daughter of King Egon who recently died. To sit on the throne without qualifying means instant death as it magically generates flames.

Imbued by his sorcerer father with invulnerability (except for a susceptibility to fire), Siegfried also get the temporary use of invisibility, just like his legendary namesake of "The Nibelungen" saga. Sluggishly paced low-budgeter has okay sword fight action but little else. The uncrowned queen of the genre, Siani (who made at least seven such films in 1982) is an athletic, intense beauty who deserved to graduate to better roles. She co-starred with the wooden McCoy in "The Sword of the Barbarians", which Cannon released theatrically in 1983 and the much sexier "The Invincible Barbarian" (released here on video cassette only). Co-star Muller (of "2020 Texas Gladiators") is funny with his rapidfire (self-dubbed) dialog delivery.

This cheapjack Conan rip-off is so mightily inept that the villain actually comes off appearing more sympathetic, interesting and intelligent, not to mention handsomer, than the hero. Surely this was an unintended consequence of the poor script and bad acting, the seemingly lumbering stupidity of the wooden muscle-bound hero and the obligatory trotting around cardboard sets in g-strings by these supposedly heroic do-gooders. This makes the Conan and Beastmaster films look like Ben-Hur and El Cid in comparison. The only (accidental)redeeming feature is the striking presence of Harrison Muller, Jr. as Morak a surprisingly appealing "bad guy." Both his person and his character stand out, perhaps largely due to the colossally boring nature of those around him. It's hardly his fault that he was warped by destiny as the plot would have it...the viewer can't help but root for him to succeed since he's the only one of any interest or appeal on scene.

I remember seeing this one on home video back in the 80's. My friend rented it no doubt on account of its video cover which almost certainly featured a barbarian babe with a sword. I can't say I remembered it too fondly, as all I could honestly remember was the scenes of the throne of fire itself. Overall, it isn't nearly as salacious as some of the other barbarian movies of its era, such as Amazons, so I reckon that may be why it seemed so averagely routine back then. Having revisited it again just the other night I do have to say that it was considerably better than I thought it would be. Sure, its story about a warrior's quest to prevent the son of Satan sitting on the throne of the title and ruling the world in an evil way, is about as generic as you can get for this kind of thing. But when it comes to the mid 80's sword and sorcery sub-genre, cosy familiarity is not necessarily a bad thing, right?

What you get is a chief villain with a perm, who likes to kill as many innocent people as he can but fortunately for us, always puts the hero in easily-escapable positions and then leaves the room. To this end, various capturings and escapings ensue in the story, one sequence of which features the hero being thrown into the Well of Madness, where he encounters a floating severed head and an armoured warrior. So, this is all good silly fun that delivers the requisite ingredients basically, however, the definite highlight of the movie was the delectable Sabrina Siani who plays a character called Princess Valkari whom the chief baddie is set on marrying on the day of the night of the day (a badly rendered solar eclipse to you and me); anyway, Ms Siani has a body to kill for and kicks about for the entire runtime in a barbarian girl bikini, which was very nice of her to be perfectly honest.

There is something quite attractive about those Italian rip-offs. Everything seems to be more dramatic but will less talent. Throne of fire sure is one of those. You get everything you paid for, cheesy lines, inept acting, boring sequences after boring sequences and probably the worst villain ever.

If you're into those kind of films, you'll get what you're looking for and much more. The "pit of madness" scene, whatever is it called was hilarious, a classic Z-grade moment. Personally, I got a kick of watching this, just a glimpse of the cover art and I knew I was in for something "memorable".For the rest, quite a crap fest with some weird entertaining scenes but nothing good really.