Thor le guerrier

I really can't add anything that hasn't been said already. Being a connoisseur of bad sword and sorcery garbage image my dismay when I stumbled upon this cinematic masterpiece. I laced up my boots and set out to find this gem. Many seconds passed when with a couple of clicks of my mouse this elusive jewel was mine.

As I eagerly awaited it's arrival, anticipation built to levels of which I had never experienced. Finally the sparkling gem was I my hands. I immediately placed it ever so carefully into my player and the end of my journey was almost complete. 85 minutes later I took a deep breath and sat silently as the credits rolled.

What an absolute piece of sword and sorcery garbage. I really can't think of any redeeming qualities this has other than it has to be seen to be believed. Cinematic gold.

Thor the Conqueror is a bottom of the barrel example of the low budget greased up barbarian sword and sorcery movie boom that took place in Italy in the early eighties. It was a regular cottage industry with reams of these god-awful little movies churned out by the Italian movie makers. This one actually has practically nothing to do with Thor or any Norse mythology. It is basically about some big greased up muscleman type who happens to be called Thor having adventures in a generic caveman world. There isn't a lot of plot to go around- basically Thor, who is some kind of chosen one, wanders around some forests randomly fighting other cavemen and quasi-cavemen guided by his misogynistic magical mentor before he teams up with some more civilised and friendly farming cavemen types and battles the head bad guy, is blinded, gets better and leads the nice cavemen to victory. That description might sound vague but the movie is pretty much that incoherent and meandering. There is much of interest to report there other than the at times draw dropping misogynism present be it Thor pretty much forcing himself onto most of the various he meets including his future love interest and rants from Etna the magician about women are there to be used by mean and are fundamentally stupid. It might very well be an accurate depiction of gender politics among cavemen but it doesn't make our protagonists very likable. Other than it has lots of cheap costumes, badly staged fight scenes by actors who look like they were rounded up as part of a work for the dole project and some very stagy and badly written narration by Etna the magician presumably shoehorned in to make the large sections of dialogue-sparse meandering go down easier.

After both his parents are brutally murdered by his fathers rival Gnut and his men, the new born Thor is placed in hiding by the the god Teisha. When Thor comes to maturity he goes on a quest to avenge the death of his parents and return peace to his lands.

Thor the Conqueror AKA Thor il conquistatore is directed by Tonino Ricci and is agonisingly one of the bottom of the barrel of the countless Conan the Barbarian cash-ins. Sadly it doesn't hold a candle to the likes of Lucio Fulci's Conquest, Ator or Thorne of Fire. It has nothing to with Thor opening with a low budget zero budget version of Conan's opening. If anything the savage-look seems more One Million Years B. C. (1966), Planet of the Apes TV series (minus the apes) or Tarzan classics. Made in 1983, it feels more 1963.

Unfortunately Ricci is unable to create any sort of atmosphere or visual interest on the backdrop of the beautiful scenery, it suffers from the usual quality issues, poor sound design, editing and clunky staging. Possibly due to the budget, Ricci appears to set this so far in the past that this flat bland approach allows there to be little if any sets.

Luigi Mezzanotte plays Etna, the Owl (as Christopher Holm) who pops up like Richard O'Brien, oddly narrating now and again as Thor and Sheeba aimlessly fight cannibals, also warrior soldiers, slashing, axing, decapitating heads as they walk the lands. It sounds better than it is. Even familiar Italian actors including Raf Baldassarre as Gnut who gives a larger than life performance or underused Malisa Longo can't lift Tito Carpi's bare bones story and screenplay. Blinded at one point, still nothing can stop long hair model-like Bruno Minnit's Thor, not even snakes or horses from getting his magic sword. The stunning Maria Romano Sheeba, the slave is notable but sadly gets little to do. Actually Romano is one of the few redeeming features of Ricci's offering.

All things considered, it's barebones at best. Yet again, the poster art is far superior than the film.

Now I know that general opinion holds this film in utter disdain and yes, I will concede that it is certainly no cinematic masterpiece, but.......there is a certain strange fascination that it exudes in it's primitiveness.

This is REALLY low budget movie making in effect.

The story details the protagonist's adventures in a land filled with various perils such as demons and evil tribes etc. There is also an underlying story of revenge as Thor's fate leads him to battle and eventually slay the barbarian who murdered his father when he was a baby.

Whilst the plot itself is incredibly basic, (if it even merits as a plot at all) the way it unfolds on screen is bizarrely compelling.

I really can't put my finger on exactly why I rather enjoyed such a universally reviled movie. As said above perhaps the sheer baseness of the picture was the attraction to me. Certainly the closest movie I could liken it to was Lucio Fulci's similarly themed 'Conquest', again a film which is generally loathed by most people (even fans of the Sword & Sorcery genre to which it belongs) but again, a film which I found to be strangely intriguing.

Overall then, if your a fan of Sword & Sorcery flicks then you might want to give Thor The Conqueror a try - just don't expect anything along the quality lines of Conan The Barbarian.

I like how Thor is a retarded rapist whose only friend is a misogynistic mystic who turns into an owl, doesn't offer help when it's needed, and likes to watch. Wait, I don't like that at all!

Seriously, I pride myself on having seen almost every sword and sorcery movie made in the 80's. Even knowing in advance how bad this movie was supposed to be, it went down pretty hard. Fortunately, I had good company - we've climbed a lot of z-movie Everests before. Even Deathstalker IV was better. To go outside of sword and sorcery, even Star Knight or Nukie compare favorably to Thor.

The only 80's sword and sorcery movies that may be worse are: Princess Warrior, Time Barbarians, and Wizards Of The Demon Sword (1991). I haven't seen these to confirm for myself, but as one of them is supposedly shot on video (and is REALLY bad to begin with), another is a Fred Olen Ray film, and two of them are of the "Barbarian in L.A." type, I'm betting any time spent as an audience with these would be pretty gruesome.

The other IMDb reviewers have this film exactly right. It's miserable. Absolutely unmotivated, and engaging only where it offends or is too seizure-inducingly stupid. (incidentally, the first line I wrote accurately summarizes EVERYTHING in Thor).

There ARE some funny moments. My favorite is when Thor's mystic/mentor produces an - uh, is it all right if I call it an equine? - and explains to him that "this is a creature that will not be called a horse for several centuries," or something to that effect. This, of course, means that if you WANTED to call it a horse in the meantime during the intervening centuries, you'd be stuck.

It doesn't stop being moronic there, though; Thor proceeds to use the horse to, uh........impress his enemies? All he does is ride it up and down a field while his enemies watch; doesn't so much as brandish his sword. Eventually, they flee. I'm sure in the script it said "Thor's enemies, having never seen a horse before, flee in terror." Yeah. That's not really conveyed. But then, not much is in "Thor." My friend and I marveled at its shortcomings.

Recommended for barbarian completists and bad movie fetishists only.