Black Gate

The Crimson Bat (Japan, 1969)

Here’s a pretty decent samurai series even I wasn’t aware of until recently: the Crimson Bat, four films starring Yoko Matsuyama as the eponymous hero. Moreover, all four movies are now relatively easy to find, available on YouTube with good English subtitles. There aren’t enough chambara movies with female heroes, in my opinion, so I was pleased to discover these — and hopefully, you’ll be pleased as well.

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The Warrior and the Sorceress (Argentina/USA, 1984)

Barbarians don’t get no respect. The fantasy films released in the wake of the unexpected worldwide success of Star Wars (1977) were all over the map, varying widely in approach and quality, but the barbarian lookalikes that followed the first Conan movie (1982) stuck to a formula, in quality plunging straight to the bottom of the barrel and mostly staying there as the barrel bumped along the cheapie exploitation circuit for the next five years or so. It’s as if filmmakers saw the sword-and-sorcery genre as suitable only for low-prestige flicks aimed at an unsophisticated market, a sad situation that wouldn’t really turn around until The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
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The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (USA, 1946)

In the middle of the last century, you couldn’t say “Robin Hood” without evoking the image of Errol Flynn in 1938’s classic The Adventures of Robin Hood — every movie and TV show in the next thirty years about the bandit of Sherwood Forest was made in its long, green shadow. The Robin Hood story depicted in the Flynn film became the de facto standard version of the legend, cinematic comfort food, with subsequent screen incarnations not straying far from its characters and situation. Still, there were good times to be had in that long, green shadow, and tales of Robin and his Merrie Men owned Saturday afternoons for the sleepy Fifties and well afterwards.

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Yellowbeard (UK, 1983)

By the Eighties the once-thriving genre of pirate movies had been condemned and hung from the yardarm, and based upon the crimes against cinema of this week’s first two films, it’s easy to see why. The terrible Cutthroat Island would follow in 1995 to put the final nail in the genre’s coffin until it lurched from the grave for a surprise resurrection in 2003’s Pirates of the Caribbean.

But don’t lament too loudly, for if there’s one piratical scallywag not even ill-conceived and overblown cinematic hubris can catch and hang at Executioner’s Dock, it’s that unrepentant scoundrel Long John Silver. An’ ye can lay to that, matey!
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The Trojan Horse (USA, 1956)

Our major source for stories of the legendary Trojan War is Homer’s The Iliad (8th century BCE, more or less), which includes a huge cast of characters from both the besieging Greeks and the defenders of Troy, as well as the many Olympian gods who meddle in the mortals’ affairs. For focus, a screenwriter telling a story based on this epic needs to pick a few major characters to follow and relegate the rest to supporting roles. In films made in the middle of the 20th century, that usually meant leaving the gods out entirely, because including them would have meant your film was considered a fantasy (the horror!), and the Western movie-going audience was deemed too Christian to regard Classical polytheism as anything but benighted superstition.

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Highlander (UK, 1986)

Nowadays, so-called “Timeslip” stories are so popular it’s considered a genre unto itself, but in the Eighties that was not yet the case, particularly on the screen. However, inadvertent time travel is an appealing notion, with literary roots going at least as far back as Twain’ s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, giving the author the opportunity of juxtaposing past and present for the purpose of making a point or two about perceived failings of the modern era. Social criticism aside, it’s also a useful plot device for kicking off thrilling adventures, as this week’s timey-wimey trio demonstrates.

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Son of Ali Baba (Universal, 1952)

Including Arabian Adventure (1979) in last week’s article reminded me that there was a slew of films from Hollywood’s postwar spate of Arabian Nights-inspired B-movies that we hadn’t covered here yet. There were a lot of these, quickies shot in about a week apiece, mostly on the same Hollywood backlot. Though tedium reigns over most of the running time of these faux-desert adventures, there are nuggets of good fun scattered among the dunes. If only somebody would compile a half-hour supercut of the best bits from the films that follow, they’d be doing the 21st century a favor. Any takers?

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Legend (Universal, 1985)

The fantasy film boom of the Eighties mostly drew upon pulp sword and sorcery tales, but some harked back farther to earlier traditions of myth, fables, and fairy tales, often because the filmmakers had a more vividly enchanted look in mind. Whether hit or miss, these movies and their typically rich visuals provided a welcome diversion from the then-prevailing norm of mounted barbarians thundering across windswept steppes.

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Ran (1985)

History, bloody history. In this series we usually concern ourselves with the adventures of heroes, singly or in small groups, in quests or endeavors to right wrongs or win personal rewards on a medium or small scale. But sometimes our sword-wielders’ exploits are set against the backdrop of full-scale warfare, imminent or ongoing, and the sheer quantity of blood spilled in wartime adds serious stakes and grave overtones to even the most spirited adventures. We all enjoy light-hearted tales of derring-do, but it’s wise and useful on occasion to remind ourselves that open warfare is the greatest misery that humankind can inflict on itself. It’s an important message, perhaps none more so, and as such it’s also a theme that can inspire great art.

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Krull (1983)

By the mid-Eighties, fantasy films for adults had become a legit commercial genre releasing around a dozen medium to high-budget titles a year. For fantasy fans who’d lived through the slim pickings of the Sixties and Seventies, this was an embarrassment of riches. The fact that about half of these movies were embarrassments in other ways was something one could overlook, because if this week’s fantasy film was disappointing, next week’s might show you things you’d never before seen on the big screen. Which brings us to our current decidedly mixed bag of flicks of the fantastic, offering equal amounts of thrills and cringes. Wizardry ahead!

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