Warrior & The Sorceress

Frankly, I am a fan of all genres of B-grade films, but the mystical films are not one of my favorite subsets of cheese. This one basically pits Kain, the 'Dark One', against everyone. He is a mercenary for hire to the highest bidder (although the trailer says it is the ultimate fight between good and evil): Carradine spends most of the film switching allegiances based on pecuniary considerations. It is tough to keep up with which side he's on at times, but in the end, inspired by the sorceress he sides with the peasant revolt and helps kill off the pig-faced slavers. Thematically, the film centers on the value of water as a natural resource and Kain's bank account. The movie has comically named characters like 'Bludge', 'Zeg', 'Burgo', 'Blather', 'Gabble' and 'Hubcap'. (I'm not sure about that last one; it is hard to understand some of the names.) Kain's power ultimately comes from the magic 'Sword of Ura' which the sorceress makes for him. It is so mighty it can cut through rocks! Zeg launches an all out war to get it, with the help of the fat guy and his talking pangolin (or is it a Komodo Dragon?) puppet (which speaks, though his lips don't move). Eventually Kane, sorry, I mean Kain takes on just about the whole planet and wins water for the oppressed masses.

This movie has both its share of good and bad. The swordplay is actually very good, particularly in the final scene. The big black clouds that herald Kain's entrance onto the battlefield and the incredibly stupid giant land squid (with teeth!) are leaders in the bad column. Also modestly in the bad column is leading lady Maria Socas (better known for her work in Argentinean cinema with such credits as "Sobredosis", "El Color Escondido", and the 2002 release "Sin Intervalado") who has serious hair issues (though to cut her some slack, this movie was made in 1984) and is really not a very good actress, and is frankly not quite attractive enough to walk around in her given costume (if you can call it that.) She isn't terrible, but mostly looks disinterested.

This movie isn't particularly good, but it isn't wretched either. It is too long, though, at 81 minutes. If it were an hour long it would be a much more entertaining production. Features of the DVD include trailers from this and many similar movies (actually the narration in the trailer made some sense of plot points which were confusing) as well as biographies/filmographies of the four central characters.

Two stars. It won't ruin your life or cause you to seek therapy, but there are many better (and many funnier) B movies out there.

"The Warrior and the Sorceress" resembles Albert Pyun's "Omega Doom," which in turn is a rip off of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film "Yojimbo." It is amazing there are still filmmakers who will copy this film (Omega Doom was made in the late 1990s), but such is life. Why come up with a new idea when an old one will still draw in the dupes? I actually saw a few things to like in Pyun's effort. I saw little to enjoy in "The Warrior and the Sorceress." David Carradine plays Kain (!), a knight of sorts from some defunct society of guardians who now roams the blasted landscapes of a destroyed world. He stumbles into a little village--no more than two fortresses, actually--where two warlords battle it out for possession of a well. Each leader is more or less evenly matched in men and supplies, leading to a frustrating stalemate that wily tricks and epic plans of action rarely overcome for long. The only real losers in this battle are the hapless gaggle of townspeople who must beg and scrimp for a mouthful of the precious water. We don't really know what is going on at first, and frankly, we just as quickly realize we don't care to know. Yes, it is that bad, but don't worry your head about it. By the time this clunker grinds to a halt, you will be able to endure anything life may throw at you.

Kain adroitly plays both warlords off each other. He approaches the warlord Bal Caz, a fat, grinning fool who keeps a talking lizard creature near at hand (!) and offers his services for a sack of gold. At the first opportunity, Kain defects to the other warlord, Zeg the Tyrant, for a similar sack of gold. Kain flip-flops back and forth, stirring up loads of trouble amongst the two rivals paid for in the blood of their underlings. From time to time a mob of slavers turns up to wreak havoc on the village, another group the knight uses to shake things up. The film reaches a painful nadir when Kain battles a "monster" in a prison cell, a special effect that looks like it was made out of giant pipe cleaners. What's the purpose of this exercise? Perhaps Kain wishes to democratize the village by freeing the townspeople of these murderous thugs so the water will quench more thirsts. Maybe he wants to make a load of money. Since there is a sorceress involved--a woman named Naja who stumbles around in the buff all the time--who makes vague allusions to some magical sword every chance she gets, perhaps Kain is merely seeking a grand weapon. It's all so cheesily done, so gratingly banal, that I could care less about Kain's motives. Even a "brutal" drowning, an amusing strip scene, and the battle sequences at the conclusion can't make this turkey fly.

"The Warrior and the Sorceress" fails on every level of moviemaking imaginable: the acting is laughable, the script should have been burned, the set pieces are a joke, and the pace absolutely drags. I think the movie only runs about eighty or so minutes but it felt like eons. Carradine looks embarrassed to be in this mess, and I cannot blame him when I think back to some of the humiliating scenes in the movie. Case in point: at the end of the film, a big battle rages over the water supply. The townspeople finally rise up to assert their rights and attack the soldiers standing guard over the well. Clearly visible are people falling down well after they were supposed to die. Ouch. It is this type of production values that elevate "The Warrior and the Sorceress" to the apex of mediocrity. Director John C. Broderick must have considered falling on his boom mike when he realized he crafted a disaster epic instead of an action film.

If you like a challenge, pick up the DVD version of the film. There isn't a lot in the way of extras, predictably, but there are a mess of sword and sorcery trailers for films like "Barbarian Queen" and several others. Many of these trailers point out a central fact concerning this particular film genre: sword and sorcery equals high cheese. If the makers of these films had aimed for camp, it might have been worth the effort. As it is, they now stand as monuments to inept filmmaking, and "The Warrior and the Sorceress" stands towards the top of the mountain in that regard.