Le Retour du Barbare

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.

Watching this I got reminded of my childhood and how I loved watching these types of movies. Swords and sandals I think they are called, with a touch of fantasy. And then I thought my childhood was all a lie. How could I have watched this and think this is any good? But reviews in general here have proved that this obviously is one of the weaker efforts. Apart from one praising this as being better than LotR - pure magic, especially because in no way is this explained. Not that you could explain it and sometimes you go with your gut feeling. But if you want to compare this with a "big budget" movie take Army of Darkness, not LotR which even if you don't like it plays in a different ballpark altogether.

Another reviewer of course, how many times can the hero of the movie be captured? The answer lies within this film. If that resembles to anything that makes sense for you: good for you. Just don't expect the majority to get it. Even when the movie tries to defend it at every way possible. "Stunts" are as if they were from a different era. When you could spot the stunt man doing the back-flips. It has its charm I guess. But there are a lot of other problems too. The inability to act, the script that if it even existed, is as terrible at dialog as it gets. You could go further and accuse this of sexism (more on the women side, but men get a bad rep from this too) and many other things. Prop swords that bend on papier-mache walls and so forth ... I'm beginning to wonder why I gave it a 2 right now ... but I guess I'm still a sucker for this

Peter McCoy (Pietro Torrisi) who also starred in the similarly themed Sword Of The Barbarians and The Invincible Barbarian appears here in this tale of swords, sorcery and ominous prognostication.

In it he plays Siegfried, a mightily muscled hero who is predestined to challenge Satan from attaining mastery over the earth, a feat that the dark one can (luckily for us) only achieve during a solar eclipse and whilst sitting on the magical 'Throne Of Fire' of the films title.

OK so the film isn't going to win any awards for ingenious plot intricacies but in this genre what can one expect?

As it is, the film is actually mildly enjoyable and even has a few decent scenes on offer (the 'Well Of Madness' being a particular stand out), plus there's some rather energetic sword fights on display from our oiled down hero (who looks a fair bit like fellow B movie action star Jeff Wincott!)

Always a plus in my book, this also stars regular Italian sword and sorcery sex symbol, Sabrina Siani who as usual looks absolutely gorgeous!!!

On the downside however, the movie does tend to drag a fair bit throughout, especially during the scenes when our hero is captured....in fact our hero seems to spend the entire film alternating between getting captured and then staging daring escapes! Oh well.....

Overall, if like me, you enjoy these types of films then I'd certainly suggest you give this a try. It's actually not half bad and is certainly infinitely better than most modern takes on the genre.

I'm a big fan sword and sorcery, and Throne of Fire in spite of being an extreme ultra low budget, i give him a reasonable 5 stars. "Throne of Fire", "Il Trono di fuoco" or even "O Trono de Fogo", its a European (special Italian) "Z" sword and sorcery\barbarian flick, like many others ("Sangraal, la spada di fouco", "Gunan il Guerriero", "Sorceress", "Ator 1 and 2", "Deathstalker", "Ironmaster" etc, etc...), full of bad actors, bad script, special effects and soundtrack, but this one, i don't know why, its enjoyable to me see it. I recommend this one for big, big fans of sword and sorcery flicks only..

But one thing i must say, this one is much better then the films i refer before, with the exception of "Sangraal la spada di fuoco". In "Throne of Fire", we have the amazing Siegfreid ( Pietro Torrisi aka Peter McCoy)the hero and the gorgeous Princess Valkiri (Sabrina Siani) the heroine, then we have the fabulous bad guys, the personification of Satan and terrible warlord, Morack, and his general, Tares!!

Well, if you like this movie, i recommend: "Sangraal, la spada di fuoco", "Deathstalker" and "Gunan il Guerriero"(one of the worst)

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.