#StokerScore Rewound: The Sword and The Sorcerer (1982)

#StokerScore 7.5/10

Two films came out in 1982. Obviously that's not true, there were many, many more than two, so let me try to be clearer. There were two significant sword and sandal movies released in 1982. The one that most people would have been aware of, even if they didn't like the genre, was Conan the Barbarian with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sandahl Bergman making the Robert E. Howard 

characters come to life in a fun and thrilling movie. Conan is a huge favourite of mine and I still wish they would make a King Conan movie at some point, even the sequel that we did get wasn't that bad it just wasn't as good as the original..



The 80's was a good decade for fantasy. Dungeons and Dragons was always popular, Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson began to release the Fighting Fantasy novels, and Conan wasn't the only (anti?)hero to be found in the

cinema. I say cinema but the 80's was also the decade of videotape which meant that even if the movie didn't get a cinematic release you could always find it on Betamax, VHS or even Phillips V2000 system. Most corner shops had small video libraries where you could peruse the gaudy, enticing cassette box covers, rent a movie overnight and watch it as often as you wished in the time you had it for. As a kid who used to scan the pre-satellite multi channels tv listings hoping for a decent movie to be on at an equally decent time, this made things much easier.

The choice of rent-able movies wasn't endless, instead it was limited to recent movie releases that were given the conversion treatment and B movies through to Z movies where the producers were just looking to turn a quick buck with low budget, low quality fayre. This certainly encouraged the further growth of cult movies in niche genres because some weren't necessarily that bad and perhaps some ideas thrown out by the major studios were made on shoestring budgets meaning the story at least saw the light of day.

Because of this system the world was treated to a movie, that in my humble opinion, matches Conan for fun and action and actually surpasses in terms of dialogue. The Sword and The Sorcerer had a similar Conan-type hero, sinister bad guy, beautiful damsel and the kind of corny lines that at the time sounded great to a fifteen year old. The difference was in budget and where Conan had one in the region of 20 million dollars The Sword and The Sorcerer (TSATS) was closer to $4 million. This was fairly obvious in terms of the special effects but then again Conan had rubber snakes. What made TSATS great was that it was just a bit darker, a bit more irreverent. Plus the hero, Prince Talon, had a special three-bladed sword that could fire the blades as projectiles.

There are so many similarities between Conan and TSATS that one gets the feeling that if they'd got Arnold to play Prince Talon and change his name to Conan it could have been another story from Conan's catalogue. But does it hold up to viewing thirty five years later? Well, story-wise yes. I'd forgotten some of what happened so that came as a surprise. The effects and the picture quality aren't great, sure, but apart from that it was a real treat to watch again and i'll certainly re-watch it again in the not-too-distant future. If you liked the original Conan and think the 2011 remake was poor, try to find this one (it's available on youtube if you can't find a dvd copy)and give it a go...