A Espada de Fogo

My review was written in September 1983 after a Times Square screening.

"The Sword of the Barbarians" is a chintzy Italian imitation of "Conan the Barbarian", one of dozens of pasta fantasies ground out recently. Cannon pickup (released independently, not part of the MGM-UA distribution deal) is minus the novelty of fantastic special effects which could earn it much of a following theatrically.

Story has Sangral (Peter MacCoy), son of Ator, uniting his tribe of peaceful plains people in prehistoric times with Belem's tribe, alfter saving Belem's foxy daughter Aki from an attack by nasties belonging to evil Naluk's tribe, Naluk is protected by the Golden Goddess, Rani (Sabrina Siani), to whom he makes human sacrifices, officiated by his set of hunchbacked priests. Rani, who periodically appears via cheap special effects behind the altar fire, has declared war upon Sangral, and in one skirmish Naluk's men kill Sangral's beautiful, platinum blonde wife Leni.

Strictly copying the format of the "Conan" film, Sangral vows to bring his wife back to life, and accompanied by Aki and an oriental friend Lee Wa Twan, he treks to visit a black magician Rudak to obtain the secret of rebirth. Rudak can't help but sends him instead on a mission to the Ark of the Templars, from which Sangral extracts a laughably oversize crossbow which shoots three arrows at once. Dull climax has Sangral dutifully wiping out Naluk and even the goddess.

Director credited as Michael E. Lemick tries to stretch his minimal budget with over-use of low-angle and wide angle shots but to no avail. Underpopulated picture features beasts that are actors in cheapest makeup imaginable and virtually none of the promised sorcery. It's just hand-to-hand battle nonsense in the vein of the Hercules and Maciste films of over 20 years ago. Peter MacCoy has the right muscleman build for the lead role and has appeared in several other local items including two "Gunan" features. Judging from the opening narration, his character here is apparently a descendant of the Miles O'Keeffe "Ato", though no family tree of prehistoric Italian schlock heroes has yet been charted. As the evil goddess, Sabrina Siani, also a vet of many of these pics, is an alluring personage, resembling the young Claudia Cardinale.

This movie stunk. The English dubbing was horribly amateur, like some video company wanting a release in North America hired a bunch of high-school teachers to dub the film and did it in one try to save money at the recording studio. Ignoring the dubbing, the acting was completely off-key. Sometimes the characters looked like they were trying to get their lines over with after practicing a dozen times in front of the mirror, other times they were over-acting, it was the typical acting style you see in high-school dramas.

The choreography was a joke, not only can you tell it's totally fake with the lack blood and the bad acting, but what makes it funny is that they try to make it look real by moving the camera angles in such a way to hide the fact that they thrust the sword to the side of the opponent or to cover up the fakeness. The directing and photography is equally bad, the camera work is shaky, sloppy, and even out-of-focus at times.

The film shots were poorly set-up. They were at bad angles, frames, and positions. I'm sure the director knew this during editing, but they probably were operating on a miniscule budget, so they couldn't afford enough film and decent filming equipment. You can tell the budget is so small by the fact that they lacked enough decent props and backdrops, didn't have any special effects besides camera tricks, and had micro "villages" and settings that had the camera always close-up to hide this fact. Lastly, the music was completely cheesy, like it was made and composed for an electronic keyboard.

To sum things up, this movie is a completely forgettable, straight from film to VHS, watch-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-when-nothing-else-is-on-TV flick.

Phew, I watched this film last weekend and boy, it was pretty awful, but still, perhaps it was awful in a funny way. Last time I had seen this film was in the 80's and I thought it would be kind of nostalgia trip. I didn't expect anything great, but still it was a kind of disappointment! I remembered this film was pretty violent, but there wasn't even a hint of blood showing when the barbarians slewed one another. And their swords were pretty much like toys!! Fighting scenes were hilarious but not in a good way. Well, the final battle between two men was okay. Of course, acting was horrible, but I didn't expect anything else. But it was fun to watch and it took me back to my childhood for a hour and a half so I guess it is always positive thing.

But for those who seek no nostalgia, don't watch this!!

The following review is an extract from the book "Sword and sorcery in cinema: Conan and other barbarians: A filmic guide", which is now available on Amazon.

"Sangraal is a mediocre but entertaining barbarian-exploitation that takes as its model the Conan of Milius. The script is quite dull and inconsistent; you can tell that it was written in a hurry and probably on the fly, without any intention of deepening the story (many subplots are started and then abandoned, for example the potentially interesting story of jealousy between Lenna and Aki is very much wasted).

Both the dialogues and the tiring voice-over of the narrator result in several unintentionally comical and even ridiculous moments: "The Forces of Evil only beget evil, but Good puts good before", the narrator solemnly explains. Another absurd and hilarious example is when Wang introduces himself to Aki and Sangraal. When the girl tells him her name, the Asian comments: "Aki, I like it; it's like sweet music" (!?). Wang's character, who with his "oriental wisdom" always has a "Chinese proverb" at hand, is a clear imitation of Conan the Barbarian's Subotai. Aki and formerly Lenna, brunette one and blonde the other, act as Sonja.

(...) Soon new challenges and missions appear: nothing less than finding "the Templar's Ark" (!??) - Let's not forget that this film is set in a magical and prehistoric time, long before our era.

Besides the armies of Nantuk, Sangraal and his comrades will have to face some "reptiloid" beings (it is never possible to see them clearly) in some underground tunnels and some primitive monkey-men (Cannibals?) in the thickness of the jungle.

In its Spanish version the film is called "La espada salvaje de Krotar" ("The savage sword of Krotar"), but this Krotar does not appear anywhere. He is only mentioned on one occasion very early on by the narrator (it is the king who expelled the people of Sangraal from their original lands). No doubt that misleading title was an idea of the Spanish distributors, who somehow wanted to associate the film with the popular comic book collection of "The savage sword of Conan".

Despite the film's many shortcomings, its soundtrack is more than acceptable; it has highly epic airs, no doubt inspired by the Carmina Burana."

Ah...what have we here....yet another Conan The Barbarian rip off do I see?

Yes indeed and sadly not one of the better ones I might add.

Following the enormous success of the aforementioned pinnacle of the genre, it was inevitable that the market would be flooded with cheap cash-ins.

Now if there's one country in the world that seems to always be the fastest to leap onto any given cinematic band wagon, then it surely must be Italy.

And not just the fastest either, the Italian movie industry, especially in the late 1970's and early 1980's, was probably also one of the most prolific and could churn out seemingly hundreds of films on any given theme (the theme being usually dictated by what happened to be successful in Hollywood at the time) Take for instance the success of George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead (which was released in Italy as 'Zombi') Within no time at all, enterprising Italian producers had released a whole slew of cheaply made (but often rather watchable) virtual copies of the film.

And so it came to pass (damn! - I sound like a Sword & Sorcery movie narrator now!) that with the remarkable success of Conan, Italian film producers, true to form, released numerous clones of their own.

Universally, all were woefully inferior to the original in pretty much every way and yet, one can't deny that there was a certain (cheesy) charm to many of them such as Joe D'Amato's, 'Ator The Fighting Eagle' starring one time Tarzan, Miles O'Keeffe.

Sadly Sword Of The Barbarians, whilst not totally without its merits, is hardly a particularly memorable entry in the genre.

There are all the usual trappings to be found here as in the other films of it's ilk i.e. topless maidens, torture and violent battle scenes (some of which are pleasantly gory) but overall this film feels distinctly lifeless.

It's a sad reflection in fact, that whilst watching this I found myself continuously looking at the video counter to see just how much more running time was actually left, as I was becoming increasingly bored with the unfolding on screen events.

Even the climatic battle between the hero and the main villain was handled in a rather hopelessly lacklustre manner.

Still, if you're a fellow fan of the Sword & Sorcery genre, then you'll no doubt want to see this and make up your own mind.

It's certainly not exactly a complete stinker of a movie (in fact it's quite amusing in a B-Movie sort of way), but it certainly doesn't warrant repeated viewings.