'THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER'........A CLOSER SHAVE WITH 3 BLADES......

The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)   As far as we can tell, this movie's singular accomplishment was beating (but just barely) "Conan The Barbarian" into the marketplace........officially kicking off cinema's  1980's  infatuation with bare-cheated, heavily muscled guys battling villains, monsters and assorted creepy fantasy denizens, stopping only for a brief tumble with curvy starlets in fur-lined bikinis.......

             Fun, fun, fun for all........except for this movie, which ironically seized the privilege of sporting the most perfect, primal title of all the subsequent films in this genre.....

             Maybe you thought we planned to include this one in our "moves-that-are-fun-to-remember-but-impossible-to-sit-through" category......

              Nah.  This one's not even fun to remember.  And we doubt if even the most rabid fanboy ever gives it a moment's backward glance.

             It stunk to high heaven when it came out. And still does.  With one notable exception.

             That exception is not first time director Albert Pyun, for whom the film served to begin a long, long prolific career (close to 50 films).  Until sidelined with illness, Pyun steadily pumped out a huge filmography of C-minus Sci-Fi/Horror shlock......

               We'll not deny this much.........having viewed virtually all of Pyun's output while we toiled in the video retail industry, we could cherry-pick a fair amount of memorable moments in his slapdash, throwaway movies........

               ........the spontaneous dance number in "Radioactive Dreams" still sticks in our mind......and we even fully enjoyed "Postmortem", his ambitious, filmed-in-Scotland attempt at serial killer chills 'n thrills with Charlie Sheen.

                But to get to this good stuff, you had to plow through Pyun's woeful pacing, choppy editing and murky camerawork.  And both he and his films never really improved with age.......which kept him forever stuck in the D-movie basement.

                Enough dissing, though.....let's remember a little of "The Sword And The Sorcerer"s cool crapola....

                .......the ridiculous tri-bladed sword......(the film never explained how you replaced  the two pop-out blades after you've zipped them into an opponent - whether you have to pull them out of the corpse yourself or buy a Gillette plastic-pak refill set at Ye Olde Walgreens)......the poor blood-soaked guy - after he collapses, the King cries out, "Quick! Get a leech!" When the bleeding shlub tries to speak, the King calms him with "No, no...wait for the leech!"  (This gives you an idea of what Paul Ryan's version of Medicare would look like).......and Lee Horsley as our hero, Prince Talon - what a guy,  swinging a sword after having just de-crucified himself, pulling foot-long iron nails out of his palms.....(no wonder Tarantino gave him bit roles in "Django Unchained" and "The Hateful Eight"...)

                 One individual alone distinguished himself in the middle of this confused, poorly shot and edited mess (the exception we spoke of earlier).....composer David Whitaker.

                 Whitaker stepped up to the plate and gifted this movie with a rousing, swashbuckling, Korngold/Williams/Goldsmith score that stood far, far above the bottom-the-barrel filmmaking it accompanied.........and still remains a much beloved, sought after treasure among soundtrack collectors.  For this score, Pyun should have dropped to his knees and kissed Whitaker's feet.....

               For the two springloaded blades in Prince Talon's Mach 3 sword, we'll hurl out 2 stars (**).......by all means see it if you're a sword-and-sorcery completist......if not, stick with the soundtrack alone and while listening, imagine your own, much  better movie to go with it.