Il trono di fuoco

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.

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.

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.

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)

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