80's Sword & Sorcery Retrospective, Part 4: 1985-86

[carminalizarin]

In which Hollywood tries to make fantasy films “respectable” again and sort of succeeds, but the Turks were on hand to keep things cheap and trashy.

~ 1985 ~

An interesting year in which we end up with some more mediocre Conan and/or D&D cash-ins and a nifty anime flick, but we’ll start with the two high-budgeted Western films which marked somewhat of a turning point in the cycle, both of which start with “L.”



LADYHAWKE

Dir. Richard Donner


Apparently this was, for years on end, Blockbuster’s single most-rented movie (back in the days when videos were rented in physical, material format). That’s probably because it’s a good flick which is a “romance” but also has lots of swordfighting, thus appealing to the stereotypical tastes of both sexes. There’s only one supernatural aspect in what is otherwise a “historical fiction” setting, but the magical stuff is central to the plot, so…

A neurotic thief (Matthew Broderick, not particularly convincing as a resident of medieval Europe) escapes from a supposedly-inescapable dungeon in the city of Aquila, which seems to be somewhere in France circa 1300. Aquila is also ruled by an unnamed Bishop (John Wood) who is an icy-hearted douche; even a monk talks shit about him in one scene. Anyway, the thief soon bumps into a swordsman named Navarre (the great Rutger Hauer) who has a “pet” hawk. But then at night, Navarre is nowhere to be seen and instead there’ some attractive woman named Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer) hanging around along with a wolf instead. Turns out the aforementioned evil Bishop wanted Isabeau but she wanted Navarre -- you know how it goes -- so he called upon the Devil to curse them to be “always together, forever apart” by having each shapeshift into a different animal at night vs. day. Most of the film then consists of the three protagonists running around the country in a circle and getting into random adventures before figuring out a way they might be able to break the curse and get revenge on the Bishop, etc.

Being a mainstream Hollywood production helmed by competent people, everything is pretty good here, though the electro-pop-rock soundtrack is a bit of an acquired taste. Still, nice costumes and sets and camera work and acting and so forth, which might be a bit refreshing if, for example, you were to watch all of these movies in the order I’ve listed them and come to this one right after Ator 2. It is however a bit overlong, with an entire story arc / subplot involving the Bishop sending a wolf hunter (Alfred Molina, pre-fame) to kill Wolf-Navarre; this section could have been excised without the film losing anything except another melodramatic ten minutes in between The Middle and The End. Also the final act that occurs during the climax would never, ever have been tolerated by anyone in Medieval Christian Europe, which makes me pine for the original ending in the script, in which (SPOILER) the curse backfires on the Bishop and turns him into a wolf permanently, which would have been much better than (SPOILER) having a guy throw a sword through him in the middle of a church service. He was a bastard, but still, pretty sure Navarre would have been lynched for that. Then again, I probably shouldn’t complain about “believability” in a motion picture where people change into wolves/hawks to begin with.

Also, incidentally, the bad guys mostly wear red and white, whereas Navarre, the hero, is the one who wears black. Weird, but this is Rutger Hauer we’re talking about. Even when he’s a good guy, he’s required to be sinister.

LEGEND

Dir. Ridley Scott


Another film I’ve written a bit about before, but let us revisit it anyway. Here we have a sort of primal fairy tale, albeit one that is too dark and violent to really be aligned with the more kid-oriented fare that the decade produced. The result is something that’s about as close as possible to “pure fantasy” rather than standard S&S, though I’d say it qualifies for discussion here. Furthermore it’s one of the best-looking movies I have ever seen (typical of Scott’s work.) And not only Tom Cruise. Everything else is pretty, too.

In an enchanted forest, the balance of Nature (or something) is kept by the existence of a pair of unicorns, whose power over sunlight keeps the forces of evil at bay. Into this land comes Lily (Mia Sara), an innocent, virginal princess type who is supposed to be the most beautiful girl in the world. (In order to tell her apart from Tom Cruise, she wears a white dress, whereas he wears a brown tunic.) She has recently fallen in puppy-love with Jack (Cruise), a sort of forest waif guy who communes with fairies while not wearing pants. In a fit of infatuated stupidity, he takes Lily to see the unicorns, and she tries to touch one, distracting it. Unfortunately for everyone/everything, at that very moment some goblins happened to be hunting the creatures on behalf of the Lord of Darkness (Tim Curry), who was really getting tired of all this “balance” stuff and wants to banish Light from the world forever so that everything is locked in eternal night and eternal winter, which at least makes an interesting contrast with the fiery heat of his hell-like underground fortress. The goblins kill the male unicorn, capture the female, capture Lily while they’re at it, and some unfortunate NPCs freeze to death in the sudden blizzard while Jack stumbles around trying to find his buddies amongst the Fair Folk and figure out what the hell is happening. The fairies unsurprisingly blame him for all this but also agree to help him fix it. So they go to the usual enchanted cave to retrieve some magical golden armor and a nice sword before embarking on the obligatory quest to the scary domain of Darkness (who, like Jack, has become sufficiently infatuated with Lily that his higher cognitive functions are impaired).

The plot is relatively thin and only slightly coherent, so the emphasis here is on the visuals, which are astounding. The forest is the apotheosis of all forests, whether in summer or winter mode, and the dungeon complex where our Big Bad lives manages to amalgamate an awful lot of nightmare scenarios under one roof, with an appropriately uncanny ambience of mystical weirdness even when nothing is happening. Shots like the one of the wounded unicorn blundering through a grove that has been completely filled with wafting magenta flower petals almost hurt to look at (in a good way). And the Lord of Darkness, modeled on the “standard” appearance of the Christian Satan, is an incredible achievement in character design. One can only imagine Curry’s abject suffering under that amount of makeup-and-costume shit (he apparently injured his neck from the weight of those massive horns), but it was worth it, and the actor’s performance in this juiciest of roles is another major highlight. (Somehow his Frank N. Furter sneer is recognizable even under the massive prosthetics.) The result of all this is a movie that makes a profound emotional impression even despite its lack of real depth, much like a dream.

Click to view

So yeah.

On a final note, there are at least two versions of this film, and is often the case with such situations, neither of them is ideal, i.e. I’d like to combine the best features of both, but no one seems to ask me to dictate these things for some reason. The standard American version is shorter and removes several “riddle” sequences (which is too bad since those add to the fairy-tale theme IMO) as well as some plot stuff, making the film choppy and hard to follow. It does, however, have the benefit of a strange but excellent electronic musical score by Tangerine Dream, which has become pretty much iconic. The Eurasian version on the other hand includes all the deleted scenes but uses the originally-commissioned Jerry Goldsmith score, which is still pretty good, but more “normal” and ultimately not as memorable as the TD one. Thus we end up with another obnoxious conundrum as to which version is better, sort of like with Re-Animator and Fist of Legend, but don’t even get me started on those.

RED SONJA

Dir. Richard Fleischer


The unofficial third Conan film, since it stars another character associated with the Howard-based franchise and a guy named “Kalidor” (Arnold Schwarenegger) who was supposed to be Conan but there was some legal fuckery so he was renamed “Kalidor.” Still, it’s basically “Conan 3 in which Conan is now the Deuteragonist Instead of the Protagonist.” (Same director as Conan 2, as well.) It’s also fairly terrible, but is a longstanding guilty pleasure of mine.

Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen, in her first acting role, and boy does it show), a hot red-haired girl, is stumbled upon by the evil Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman, whom you may remember from Conan 1), who apparently is a lesbian with a thing for redheads, but this was the Hyborian Age so that sort of thing wasn’t approved of and Sonja reacts to the Queen’s advances by slashing her face. Gedren does not take this well and has her MIBAs gang-rape Sonja, murder her family, and burn down her shitty peasant farm. Standard operating procedure. Then (and this is all prologue-backstory stuff, btw) a misty spirit appears and arbitrarily grants Sonja the strength she’ll need to become a master swordswoman and avenge herself. (The Red Sonja comic was written back in the days when people still thought that medieval swords weighed like 40 pounds -- in fact, they usually weighed more like 2 or 3 -- so it was assumed that a female would need supernatural help in order to wield one. In other words, go back to my Hundra review if you’re looking for an actual “feminist” take on S&S.)

Anyway, fast-forward a few years and Sonja is now a master swordswoman just like the arbitrary spirit said. Which is good, since Queen Gedren has graduated to attacking temples and seizing ancient artifacts to take over the world, such as the green, glowing Talisman, which only women may touch for some reason, and which has the power to basically blow up the planet -- definitely something that should be in the hands of a woman who orders mass rape and murder when she doesn’t get sex on demand. (Gedren also does something horrible to the priestesses at the temple, which is portrayed as disturbingly as possible, so at least this is one of those movies that doesn’t hold back on making the Big Bad a very unlikeable person. In fact I’d say she rivals Voltan in Hawk as the most loathsome individual in all the films we’re discussing.) The only escapee from this massacre is Sonja’s sister (who presumably wasn’t at the farm earlier), so Sonja joins forces with Kalidor as well as an annoying ten-year-old Prince and his obese manservant (Ernie Reyes Jr. and Paul Smith) and they go on the usual bad-guy-killing / world-saving quest, earning the Hard PG-13 rating via some moderately bloody slaughter of MIBAs including an arm-chopping and a couple beheadings. (Also, the Queen’s right-hand man, played by Ronald “Gestapo Guy with the Glasses in Raiders of the Lost Ark” Lacey, dies in unnecessarily awful fashion under circumstances that the filmmakers didn’t even try to make plausible-looking.)

Nielsen’s acting is beyond amateurish, Bergman’s isn’t the best either, Reyes’s character is intrusive and unnecessary (the 80’s by now had entered the “mandatory kid sidekick” phase), the violence is almost shockingly mean-spirited at times, Sonja repeatedly gets her ass saved by men despite supposedly being better then them at fighting and stuff, there is a MECHANICAL DRAGON (as in, it’s supposed to be mechanical, in-story), Gedren’s motivations make no sense beyond “she is evil and therefore must want to conquer the world with a superweapon,” etc. etc. Schwarzenegger considers it the worst film he ever made and you can sort of see why.

And yet… I kinda like this flick. I think it has something to do with the surprisingly good set and costume design, the score by Ennio Morricone again (which is… pretty similar to his one for Hundra), the atmosphere (it looks much colder and greyer in the Italian Apennines than it did in the warmer, sunnier settings of most of these films), and the general sense of “barbarism” at work here, which I suppose is abetted by the aforementioned heavy sadism with which people are ruthlessly tortured and killed. There is also an interesting implication that Gedren’s coolly-named kingdom of Berkubane is in the process of (literally) collapsing under her misrule and general decadence, anyway, and that Sonja and Kalidor are basically just finishing the bastards off on behalf of the Natural Order or something. That is quintessentially Howardian.

ALTAR

Dir. Remzi Jonturk


A Turkish Conan-ripoff which, being Turkish and all, sets new standards for sheer lack of talent or polish to the point that it makes all but the worst of the Italian flicks from a few years earlier look slick. It is, however, curiously watchable (though I couldn’t find it either dubbed or subbed into English and therefore had to just sort of guess the plot based on the visuals + the IMDB description since I do not know Turkish. Sorry!).

In yet another setting that seems to be “the Stone Age only with steel swords,” an evil warlord named Zodiak (Esref Kolcak) holds a monopoly on fire, so of course he and his MIBAs ride forth to massacre the shitty peasant village of some hill-folk who have figured out the secret of fire for themselves. Lo, the hill-folks’ blacksmith (Sait Seyit) dramatically invokes his god, makes a big-ass sword, tries to get revenge, and fails, so his son, named Altar (Seyit again; I’m not sure if the filmmakers were aware that "Altar" is a “word” in English, but then again the bad guy being named “Zodiak” suggests they were) grows up to succeed where he failed after being a pit fighter just like Conan and whatnot.

The budget here is not large, but they came up with a few cool bits (the parts where the blacksmith/shaman guy calls out to the Powers That Be from atop a pillar of rock are surprisingly affecting) plus the rugged and primordial Anatolian scenery is pretty nice, although the sets are very limited and often shot in a tight, cramped way, possibly to disguise how little elbow room they actually had. Lots of shit happens that is completely random and nonsensical, like the heroine falling off a cliff for no reason and being caught by Altar. Or when Altar wins a couple pit fights and then, TWICE IN A ROW, before he can have sex with some chick as his victory prize, other women cock-block him by killing the chick in question. (The first time it’s Amazons; the second time, vampires.) Also, mid-film Zodiak is supplanted by his son (I think it’s his son?) as the Big Bad, which is unfortunate since Zodiak is menacing, well-spoken, and really ugly (even when not wearing his hideous black demon-mask helmet thingy), whereas his son is just sort of a generic-looking buffoon in a silly wig.

I particularly enjoyed watching the parts where the hero(es) wield the big sword. This sword is modeled after the one in OG Conan, only they made it much larger and with a massive, beefy hilt decoration such that it probably DOES weigh 40 pounds (see Red Sonja, above). Thus, in order to “fight,” the protagonists just sort of slowly pivot in a circle with the blade extended, requiring the forces of evil to jump directly into the weapon in order to die. Also they ripped off some of the Goblin/Argento music from Suspiria. I’m curious if they paid the proper royalties for it. I mean, probably not, after all the nickels and dimes they would have had to melt down to make that sword.

VAMPIRE HUNTER D

Dir. Toyoo Ashida


We’re overlapping a bit with science fiction and gothic horror here, but I wanted to include one of my favorite anime somewhere on this list, and otherwise it qualifies. Since this is the 80’s and all, anime characters still looked sort of human while retaining that fetching animesque appearance that we all love so much; and the slightly grainy and washed-out quality of the animation only adds to the atmosphere. Not to mention, there is tons of blood-spurting violence inflicted upon horrid monsters courtesy of the protagonist’s mighty sword, which of course is the main attraction.

A really really really long time in the future, the world is finally starting to emerge from the dark age of tyranny in which VAMPIRES ruled, though pockets of their despotic ways remain in the hinterlands. Fortunately there is a guy named D, a dunpeal (which is Engrish for “dhampyr”), i.e. half-human half-vampire, who goes around slicing vampires and their vile minions into small pieces on behalf of humanity. He comes to some province ruled by Count Magnus Lee, where a hot blonde named Doris (who wears a skirt so short as to be pointless, since her panties are literally exposed at all times) has recently been bitten and is happy to hire D to kill the Count before she herself joins the undead.

What follows, as you can imagine, is the REAL “Castlevania anime.” You know, the GOOD one. That doesn’t suck. Unlike, you know, some “other” things that people might conceivably refer to as “the Castlevania anime” (which suck). Though of course this film predates the first CV game by a year or two so you could arguably say that it’s more like Castlevania was the first Vampire Hunter D video game.

This is great vintage Japanimation (as it used to be called in the bad old days), full of relatively simple but effective storytelling, stunning visuals (some of the evil vampire’s mutant servants are… interesting), and plenty of gore and nudity, plus D is a super cool hero, a sort of future-S&S/horror version of Eastwood’s Man With No Name (and a nodachi instead of a revolver). Of course, being a half-vampire who hunts vampires, he also sort of resembles Blade, which is always a good thing, too. (The sequel, Bloodlust, is even better, actually, but it came out in 2000 so I’m not allowed to talk about it.)

~ 1986 ~

A slow year, but it did produce one important, iconic film.

HIGHLANDER

Dir. Russell Mulcahy


Yes, a lot of this movie takes place in contemporary New York City, but a significant chunk also takes place in medieval Scotland, and there are plenty of swordfights and the whole premise has to do with random people who are immortal and who pass their powers on to those who decapitate them, meaning that the ultimate goal of being immortal is to kill every other immortal person so you can get all their powers combined (“The Prize”) and not have to deal with assholes sporadically challenging you to swordfights. So, I’d say it qualifies.

I just summarized part of the plot above, so this film focuses mainly on Connor MacLeod (pronounced like “McCloud,” sorta, and played by Christopher Lambert), a guy born in the Middle Ages in Haggistan but currently residing in NYC and making a living as an antiques dealer. An attractive redhead (Roxanne Hart) becomes curious about him, which in typical Hollywood fashion means that the two of them end up having sex the instant she finds out his secret. Unfortunately, there is also a guy known only as The Kurgan (Clancy Brown in the first of many, many bad-guy roles), a vicious barbarian who has descended upon the city for the final battle of the last few immortals, and whom no sane person wants to be the one to get The Prize, etc. (We know that he is the bad kind of barbarian because he wears black armor and a skull helmet in the flashback scenes, instead of just wearing a brown loincloth like a good barbarian.) Also, in the past, MacLeod was mentored by an ancient Egyptian pretending to be a medieval Spaniard who, unlike MacLeod, is played by an actual Scotsman (Sean Connery).

While the “modern” plotline makes things a tad hokey and “dates” the film very much to 1986 (not that that’s a bad thing exactly, since ‘86 was the single greatest year in the history of music -- which reminds me that the theme tune is one of my favorite Queen songs), it’s still tons o’ fun, and the parts set in old-tyme Scotland are especially cool. (This is when the bad guy appears in his scary bone-armor.) Also, immortals can only be killed via decapitation, so almost every time a person dies in this flick (apart from the scene where The Kurgan runs a bunch of people over with his car for no particular reason), you can rest assured that their demise WILL result from chopping-off of the head.

TO BE CONTINUED