Thor il conquistatore

well everybody already said how blatantly bad this movie is (the

attempts at humour seems to be directed at the viewer, just to say

"The joke's on you, sucker !", but I have to point out one scene

where we see the hero and one cronie walking to… Well, walking.

Obviously you can see a whole modern village (Italian, I gather) in

the background with no attempt to hide it ! I wonder if it was

intentional or just sloppyness. Of course, you'd say, nowadays they do the same thing in the US,

with a 30 mil budget and a few MTV groovy young stars and none

of the wackiness typical to Italian B-movies, but… Check a Sergio

Martino movie instead of this one. And I saw it in a theatre. After all, maybe I SHOULD get a life

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.

This low-budget Italian "Conan"-imitation can perfectly be summarized in one simple word: unendurable! Even if you have, like myself, a soft spot for kitschy fantasy-cinema, this movie is just a very painful viewing experience and, on more than one occasion, you'll be wondering why the hell you're wasting 85 precious minutes of your life with watching crap like this. Thor is a fascinating Northern deity and there haven't been too many movies made about him, which makes it all the more regrettable to see this one is so damn poor. Barely a few minutes after his birth, Thor's parents are slaughtered by savages and the almighty God Teisha becomes his guardian. This out-of-date God constantly switches from his human shape into an owl and he teaches Thor some very valuable (!) life-lessons, such as "Women are stupid", "Women must obey their men" and "Don't be so gentle with females". Great, now I know why my girlfriend doesn't watch this type of films...And she's right, too! Anyway, once Thor is a muscular warrior who lost his virginity (apparently, that's important), Teisha sends him away on a long and dangerous conquest to avenge his dead father. Teisha himself claims to be too old for the journey, yet he stays around to supply the film with completely unnecessary narrative information. Although clearly part of the vivid "Sword & Sorcery" sub genre, this movie is incomprehensibly boring! Even the battle sequences are insipid and thoroughly unexciting. There's obviously also something very wrong when you, the viewer, cheer at the top of your voice when the "hero" is blinded by his enemies... You're supposed to choose the side of Thor, yet you couldn't feel less connected with his character! He can barely talk in sentences! The few visual effects (near the beginning) are embarrassing and there's almost no on screen bloodshed or sleaze. It's pretty obvious to see why director Tonino Ricci never earned the same respectable status as fellow Italian directors like Lucio Fulci, Ruggero Deodato or Sergio Martino. As well as his previous "Baktérion", this movies utter utter crap!

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.

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.