The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)
Dir. Albert Pyun
'It's Sword and Sorcery time!' said my brain when I sat down one Tuesday in October to pick a movie. And lo! It sure as hell was. And I did rejoice.
The story is standard fare, for the most part, with a youth who grows into a formidable warrior (Lee Horsley) after witnessing the murder of his loved ones at the hands of an evil rival (Richard Lynch). As fate and cliché would have it, years later the orphaned swordsman gets an opportunity to exact revenge for the heinous deed, in heroic fashion.
The FX are great, the dialogue is corny — the fanciful v/o narration especially so — and the action is decent. Its biggest gimmick is the hero's tricksy sword, which might make even a Final Fantasy video game character a little envious.
It's 'stupid good' fun for a fan of the genre. But like most such pictures, I don't think it would hold the full attention of anyone who doesn't identify with that particular noun.
NOTE: the promised sequel did eventually appear, albeit almost three decades later, in the form of Tales of an Ancient Empire (2010), starring Kevin Sorbo. I watched the trailer. It looks shit.
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