The Sword and the Sorcerer: Cranking Sword & Sorcery Up to Eleven!
The Sword and the Sorcerer (99 minutes; 1982)
Written by Albert Pyun, Tom Karnowski and John V. Stuckmeyer. Directed by Albert Pyun
What is it?
Released less than a month before Arnold Schwarzenegger’s more stately and much better known Conan the Barbarian, The Sword and the Sorcerer is a somewhat over-the-top and low-budget Eighties Fantasy film – and not a particularly well-remembered one.
That, I would argue, is a tragedy. Because this movie is fantastic, if you go into it with the right mindset. Because it is without question an absolutely pure Sword and Sorcery extravaganza.
Seeing those two films so closely together as a 14-year-old in 1982, there was no question which I preferred. Conan had Arnold, of course, and the amazing voice of Darth Vader himself, James Earl Jones. But The Sword and the Sorcerer had everything else! An Aragorn-like hero too busy doing heroic deeds around the countryside to worry about lesser stuff like being king; a beautiful princess to rescue; a scary mutant sorcerer, or whatever the hell Richard Moll is playing; a dastardly usurper of a villain; and the greatest S&S prop in movie history: the three-bladed rocket-sword! Are you kidding me? Who didn’t love this thing as a kid?
Taken all together, The Sword and the Sorcerer is bold, brassy, colorful, and glorious! It simply kicks ass from start to finish, takes no prisoners and makes no apologies for itself. And neither will I.
Kathleen Beller in The Sword and the Sorcerer
Noteworthy
The cast is remarkable considering the movie’s low-budget feel. It includes a number of actors who would go on to big things — and some who had done big things already. It stars Lee Horsley (the future “Matt Houston”) as the hero, Kathleen Beller (a future Dynasty babe) as the leading lady, and includes Simon MacCorkindale (Manimal), George Maharis (Route 66) and Richard Moll (Night Court). (Every Fantasy movie of that era should’ve included Richard Moll!) Peter Breck (The Big Valley) even shows up briefly as a nobleman in the dining hall scenes.
The main villain, Cromwell, is played by the great Richard Lynch, whose distinct and striking (perhaps even scary?) appearance was caused by massive reconstructive surgery after he set himself on fire during an LSD trip in 1967. This led to him being cast as a number of noteworthy bad guys on television and film during his heyday in Hollywood. Here he dominates all he surveys, chewing the cheap scenery with reckless abandon and clearly having the time of his life.
The co-writer and director, Albert Pyun, briefly studied in Japan under Akira Kurosawa and his director of photography, Takao Saito, before returning to the US to make his own movies. After The Sword and the Sorcerer, Pyun went on to a career in low-budget and direct-to-video films (including the 1990 Captain America). He has sometimes been referred to as “the new Ed Wood.” A badge of honor, if you ask me!
Quick and Dirty Summary
Cromwell (Lynch) overthrows the rightful ruling family of a fantasy kingdom. The fallen king’s son, called Talon, escapes, and grows up to be Lee Horsley. He returns at the head of a group of mercenaries, and he’s now wielding a fabulous three-bladed sword that can fire the outer two blades like missiles. Over the course of 99 minutes, Talon rescues a princess, overcomes a creepy ancient sorcerer, defeats Cromwell in battle and saves the kingdom. Does he then reclaim his throne? Heck no. He gives the throne over to Manimal before riding off into the sunset with his mercenary companions, in quest of more adventures – -like any true, self-respecting Sword & Sorcery hero would! Talon knows what is best in life!
Fantasy/SF/Sword & Sorcery Elements
Every. Single. Thing. In. The. Movie.
This is, I would argue, the most Sword and Sorcery movie ever made.
Two of the main elements of the story are 1) a sword and 2) a sorcerer! Case closed! What else do you need?
You need more? Well, let’s throw in a sneaky advisor, a guy so Machiavellian he’s literally called “Machelli.” We have a band of rowdy but lovable mercenaries, a harem of beautiful ladies for Talon to land in during a chase scene, and a grotesque creature awakened from his ancient tomb by magicians. How much more “Sword and Sorcery” could it be?
High Point
The battle we’ve been waiting for all along finally happens near the end: Talon squares off against Cromwell. It’s the big fancy sword vs the three-bladed rocket sword. And not just anywhere, but in a desolate, swamplike dungeon with giant snakes lurking in the dry-ice fog.
When your Sword and Sorcery entertainment is maxed out at 10, but you’re still not quite there, you know what you do, my friends? Yep. You pop in The Sword and the Sorcerer. Because every knob on this movie goes to 11.
Low Point
The whole affair admittedly has a low-rent feel to it, and unfortunately that is what critics often focus on. It’s understandable; the movie was produced for only $4 million, and it shows. But I say, let’s ignore the drawbacks and celebrate Pyun and this cast for creating something this marvelous for only that small amount of money!
Standout Performance
Richard Lynch was nominated for a Saturn Award for his turn as the villain Cromwell. I would argue the young Lee Horsley, pre-Matt Houston mustache, makes for a great heroic fantasy leading man, as well.
Richard Moll as the sorcerer Xuxia
Overall Evaluation as a Movie and as Fantasy/SF/Sword & Sorcery
Is it the greatest movie ever made? No. It’s probably not even the greatest Sword and Sorcery movie ever made. I’ll give you that.
But I would argue it’s the most Sword and Sorcery movie ever made. The absolute most. The purest.
And it may not look like a million bucks – it barely looks like its actual four million! — but it’s just so cool and so very much fun.
Don’t approach it expecting high production values or master-classes in acting. Don’t even expect the script to make perfect sense at all times. Just leave your brain in neutral, grab some popcorn and have an absolute ball with the purest Sword and Sorcery movie ever made.
Because it goes to 11.
Van Allen Plexico is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a Grand Master of Pulp Literature (2025 class) and a multiple-award-winning author of more than two dozen novels and anthologies, ranging from space opera to Kaiju to crime fiction to superheroes to military SF. Find his works on Amazon and at Plexico.net.
I remember seeing this movie, which I quite enjoyed at the time (perhaps less so now, being more nit-picky). After leaving the cinema I went down the road to the film’s distributor’s offices here in Sydney, Village Roadshow, and explained to the lady at the front desk that I was a big fan of the artist who did the promotional poster, Peter Andrew Jones – he often signs his work PAJ – and would love a poster if they had any spares, which they did. I still have that poster, which is different to the one featured in your piece. And yes, the three-bladed sword was one of the catchier gimmicks from the Sword And Sorcery boom of the 80s.
Yes, this movie has a LOT of different movie poster variations. I’ve owned several myself. The one at the top of this article is the one the SHOUT Factory shipped out with the 4K Blu-ray disc a couple of years ago.
The crossover we’ve always needed is the Glaive vs the 3-bladed sword!!
I’ll take Deathstalker (the first one) over this.
Loved this movie back then, and I love it now. Great swashbuckling score, too.
I do think that The Sword and the Sorcerer has some of the best ‘banter’ in fantasy films:
Guard (busy with courtesan): Go away, boy, or die!
Talon: That’s a small threat. (Eyes directed below the waist.) That’s a very small threat!
(Mercs ready to rescue Talon from dungeon cell)
Elizabeth: Let me go with you!
Darius: No.
Elizabeth: But I know the way.
Darius: Take a sword.
(Crash cut to mercs all stuck inside a dungeon cell.)
Eric: We never should have followed her in here.
The laughs I got were worth the price of admission.
I love this one, but primarily because of Lee Horsley. His “I don’t really care” attitude toward everything except the final fight was perfect for this movie.
I admit this one never quite clicked for me, possibly because my first introduction to it was via Gary Gygax’ review in Dragon Magazine (he reviewed both Sword & the Sorcerer and Conan the Barbarian and didn’t care for either of them, although he allowed as how he preferred this one to Conan) and I didn’t actually see it until I got it on disc from Netflix, by which point I was no longer in the target audience.
My soft spot will always be for Beastmaster.
This was a great one!
Conan the Barbarian is of course on a whole other level (for better or for worse) but this and Beastmaster were the cream of the remaining crop. Both had tons of classic S&S elements. Later in the decade with the Red Sonja film, the Conan sequel, and stuff like “the Barbarians” it devolved into more cheese. But I’d take that over most of what we get today.
Cool review! One of my favorite movies. Conan with Arnie was superior, but every Conan movie AFTER the first one is inferior to this one! Sword and Sorcery (Heroic Fantasy) is near perfect in in this one. This genre needs the extremes – the muscled barbarians, voluptuous wenches, evil kings, lovecraftian mad/evil wizards, monsters, battles sex and violence… Nothing wrong with this either, it’s got a niche aka male appeal and yes (gasp!) “Male Gaze” as if there’s anything wrong with it.
Some call this a rip-off but like Star Crash there’s a very good argument they were clearly started well before Conan/SW were legit being made and almost certainly would have been made with or without them. Free and fair competition I love the knock-offs, rip-offs and movies made in the wake of these of course. IMO they are better by far than “Modern Audience” Sequel and re-re-re-remake era movies save SFX. And the latter only because modern tech they spend more $ catering gourmet meals to the adult babies who pretend to be actors in big budget productions.
I’d like to see the Ghita movie made – and again modern tech they could do the lush backgrounds and have practical effects for tentacles and trolls, etc. But it’d need to be made outside the monopoly machine of today or it’d be blunted or bad.
The black haired Kathleen Beller is an absolutely beautiful lady. By the way, why don’t you post reviews of other classic S&S films of the 80s??? like Beastmaster, Deathstalker or the one with David Carradine that I don’t remember the title
That’s the plan! Stay tuned!
Couldn’t agree more! I was 14 0r 15 , when, my older brother took me to see this movie. I think it was the first sword & sorcery movie I ever saw, unless you count Sinbad, Jason and the Argonauts, and dubbed Hercules movies, which I’d only watched Saturday afternoons on TV.
Seems like we may have known that Conan was coming, or maybe they showed a trailer for it at The Sword and the Sorcerer. So this was like a warm-up for that to us.
At the time, I absolutely loved it. Yeah, it was a B-grade movie or maybe even a C-grade, but back then, pretty much every SFF or horror movie looked like this. So we really didn’t know how cheesy it was. And didn’t we get see some boobies? That was always thrill when you’re a boy in your early teens.
And yeah, it’s the quintessential sword and sorcery movie. It’s got macho dudes with swords, swashbuckling attitude, scantily clad babes, evil monstrous sorcerer, primal, and exotic locales in an ancient archaic world. And like you pointed out, the hero even turns down the crown despite that fact he is the royal heir. (Besides what genre fiction isn’t just a little cheesy?)
Since it beat out Conan the Barbarian in the release date, were there even any other traditional S&S movies before it?
You inspired me to a rewatch of this in the last week. While that was both good and bad, as I still enjoyed the adventurous spirit and the old-school/based storytelling – the effects and humor in some cases left alot to be desired.
Having never seen Deathstalker, I started that as well and wow it is a major step down from even S&S – pure Corman which I guess isn’t really my thing.