Rating: 
Summary: Good for its time, great for the genre
Review: This is a fun flick, plain and simple. The "undemanding" types (you know, the folks who like to be entertained and not preached to) will know why this movie is a classic upon one viewing, for it has all of the ingredients: timeless story, action for action's sake alone, beautiful women, a creepy demon, and non-stop glorious violence. No boring (and insincere) Hollywood commentaries on the unfairness of the modern class system, no politically correct BS, no attempts to be hip, just good cheesy fun. I could never understand why people who hate these kind of movies still insist upon watching them and then drone on and on about how much they hate it, ad nauseum, ad infinitum, etc. (they must all be critics who like fey "art films" and are paid by the word...). Low budget, perhaps...sometimes cheap looking, perhaps...but just keep in mind that twenty years from now all of the "cutting edge" contemporary films about "virtual reality" and hip-hop culture and computer generated monsters will look incredibly stupid. What's wrong with smashing skulls for just causes? What's wrong with fairy tales if it makes you feel good? Think for yourself, feel for yourself, and ROCK ON!
Rating: 
Summary: NOT BAD ...
Review: This is actually not a bad Swords and sorcery movie, but it should have had a credit to Robert E. Howard since so much of the material was lifted from Howards work.First, the wizard, brought back to life by a group of conspirators to try and take the throne was freely lifted from "Hour of the Dragon". And the crucifiction scene was also lifted from another Howard story, " A Witch Shall be Born". Still, unless you had read those stories as I did, you'd never know they were not original. One of the better movies of it's kind though. ...
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and action-packed fantasy flick.
Review: This is one of the best, and surprisingly underestimated, fantasy movies of the 80's. It goes along the lines of classics like Beastmaster, Conan, Dragonslayer, Krull and Legend. Its best features are the great dialogues and solidly written characters, the marvelous sets, a surprisingly coherent and original plot, and an excellent soundtrack. The acting on the movie is not so good, but the story is so entertaining and funny that you won't really mind. Talon, the son of a murdered King, turns into a barbarian hero who tries to end the rule of an evil conqueror and his allied demon. To achieve his goal he must free the heirs of the kingdom and avenge his father. In his quest he will encounter all the elements common in most fantasy stories: sword battles, powerful demons and treacherous villains, beautiful and exotic damsels in distress and dark ancient rituals and magic spells. After the credits roll by, you will probably be left expecting to see the second installment of this movie: Tales of the Ancient Empire, which unfortunately, was never made. A word of warning: the image quality of the DVD is not great, nor does this movie have any Special Features, but it's very unlikely it will ever get a better edition. A must for fantasy film buffs.
Rating: 
Summary: Leave the Sword in the Stone
Review: This movie is played tounge-in-cheek, and it has the feel of B-movie heaven, but while watching it, I couldn't help wish that I was watching 'Conan the Barbarian' or 'Excalibur' instead. All the conventions of fantasy sword and sorcery movies are here: the lunk-headed yet charismatic hero, the ancient evil villain, the scantly-clad babe, and tons of doofus warriors and guards that exist simply to be killed.
I just couldn't get into it. The hero is too goofy and not ineresting at all, there's not enough satisfying action and it you feel undewhelmed by it, and the villain gets killed off too easily without a good fight. It's just not as entertaining as it should be. Interestingly enough, I prefered the so-called "serious-yet-not-serious" tone that 'Conan' had. I'd go for that instead.
Rating: 
Summary: Trashy fantasy adventure at its best
Review: This outrageous, gratuitous, exploitative, low-budget fantasy epic has to be one of the most entertainingly misguided movies ever. The whole thing is played with the rousing, happy enthusiasm of a children's adventure film, but it's loaded with blood and gore, off-color humor, nudity, and sex. It also seems to have been inspired by everything from "Excalibur" to "Conan the Barbarian" to "Star Wars" to various gory late-70's and early 80's horror movies.
Lee Horsely plays Talon, a rogue barbarian who travels around a fairy tale kingdom on his horse, looking for adventure. He dresses like Conan, smirks and wisecracks like Han Solo, and looks just like every wanna-be actor in Hollywood in the early 1980's - with chin stubble, and a big, feathered, blow-dry hairdo. And oh yeah, he also has a trademark weapon (every great '80's action hero had to have a trademark weapon) - a magical sword with three blades. The extra blades can shoot off and look very awkward as they fly through the air and impale bad guys. How the blades get replaced is never explained, but somehow they always do.
Richard Moll plays Xusia the Sorcerer, who looks like a cross between Freddy Krueger from "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and The Emperor from "Return of the Jedi". He sleeps in a coffin covered with human faces and filled with blood. The real bad guy of the movie is Cromwell, a ruthless leader from another country who is trying to conquer the entire land. He seeks out Xusia and demands that the ancient Sorcerer use his evil powers to help him. Xusia rips out the heart of a half-naked witch girl and agrees to help.
Cromwell pillages and plunders and takes hostage the leader of the resistance, Micah, and tortures him in the dungeon. So Micah's sexy brunette sister (played by Kathleen Bellar) seeks out Talon and begs him to help her rescue Micah. Talon (our hero) is at his sleaziest here, as he tells Bellar that his fee for the rescue mission is that he gets to have sex with her. Thus the adventure begins!
The good guys sneak into Cromwell's castle. Talon steals the guard's uniform and gets into lots of fight scenes. Bad guys get shot with arrows, set on fire, stabbed, etc. Another bad guy gets his head splattered on a grinding stone. Kathleen Bellar gets captured by the bad guys and thrown into Cromwell's harem. Once she's stark naked and receiving a full body massage from the other harem girls, she doesn't seem to mind so much anymore. Talon gets caught by the bad guys and crucified with his hands nailed to a big, wooden X. No problem. He just yanks his hands off the spikes that have been driven through them, and goes back to fighting!
The big ending takes place in a scary, cave-like dungeon with smoke and blue lighting. One of Cromwell's servants takes the sexy heroine (now barely dressed in a skimpy white costume and pearls) down to this dungeon and acts like he's going to rescue her. But then, in a very gruesome special effects sequence, he rips his own face in half and reveals that he's really Xusia, the Sorcerer in a flesh and blood disguise! The girl faints and falls to the ground, where she is attacked by a snake. There are many slow, lingering shots of Kathleen Bellar's bare legs writhing with the snake twisting around them. Cromwell and Talon show up and the ending is a big, three-way fight between Talon, Cromwell, and Xusia. The Sorcerer tries to use his evil powers to rip Talon's heart out. The magic sword shoots more blades. Cromwell's staff has a secret blade hidden inside of it! Talon breaks the magic sword in half to reveal that it ALSO has a secret weapon hidden inside! Cool! Then Cromwell reveals ANOTHER hidden weapon! Then Talon unleashes a hidden knife blade from his wristband!!!! AWESOME!!!!! There is more violence, and Talon wins. He chops the snake's head off and saves the girl. Then we see him swinging on a rope carrying the girl, as several people down on the ground pump their fists and shout his name! "TA-LON! TA-LON!"
But the funniest part is the very last thing, right before the credits: A title card comes up, promising that "Talon WILL return!" A goofy title for a sequel is offered. But alas, no such sequel was ever made. Oh well.
Rating:
Summary: Oh Richard Moll, you bad, bad boy.
Review: To think I had been in cut-throat bidding wars for mildewy shop-warn copies of this masterpiece in online bidding rooms. Now it's on DVD! HA! This is my favorite Sword and Sorcery movie of all time. Not as well written or acted by half as say, Conan, but by God it has something. Demons and swords that shoot any number of blades...daring rescues...crucifixion...nudity. It has it all. I've been renting this movie since I was a kid, and now I own it. Oh sweet happiness. In all seriousness, the effects hold up, the dialogue is great, and any number of later tv stars pop up all over the place. I could not recommend this more if I made money on it's sale. Which I don't...unfortunately. Go but it at once and taste the adventure.
Rating:
Summary: Ultimate cheese
Review: When you go to a local burger joint, you know the guy who makes the burgers is there in the back just cranking the things out. His cuisine is never going to reign supreme on "Iron Chef." But does that stop you from going there? No -- if you want a perfect combination of grease, cheese, and charred animal proteins, you can still enjoy the heck out of a good burger. That, in a nutshell, is The Sword and the Sorcerer. It's a brilliantly dumb movie that has no pretensions of being High Cinema, and as such it succeeds better than any other movie of heroic fantasy (especially Conan the Barbarian, which any reader of the books knows is watery-weak in plot and vacuum-sparse in its characterization). See it for the sometimes striking and sometimes laughable special effects. See it for its fantastic, bombastic soundtrack. See it for hammy acting and borderline clever double-entendres, tons of bit parts by B-list actors, a swirlingly complex plot that really doesn't matter, and a swaggering hero who out-Conan's the Schwarzenneger Conan and manages to do it despite some wincingly bad hair days. If you like cheesy movies, you should love this one.
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