cinema - TL:DR (That's Long, DID Read)

Belated weekly update: If You Want To Feel…

So, I’m taking far too long faffing with the more (relatively) substantial things I’ve been working on, so in the meantime I will try to reinstate the weekly updates. Just to stop the whole thing becoming too repetitive, this one is in a very slightly different format from the usual playlist etc (though not massively different to be honest). So anyway; here are some things…

If You Want To Feel… slightly heartbroken, in a teenage kind of way…

Listen to – American Anymen + Lise – Oui EP

I love this beautiful little release. It’s a lovely collection of wistful, charming songs that reminded me in various ways of Daniel Johnston, Bright Eyes, Jad Fair, BMX Bandits and other groups whose work is similarly uncluttered and direct. People label this kind of thing twee, but if it is then I guess my feelings are twee, too. Oh – and this is available for FREE!

If You Want To Feel… like you belong to the Multiverse…

Find out what was going on in your local area, in a period that interests you. It’s easy and fun, unless of course you find it difficult & boring. Previously I have read about The Beatles in Kirkcaldy (a surreal thought) but I was recently reading about about the local activities of the suffragette movement and discovered several things that I felt I should have known for years. Not only was a local railway station which I have been to many times rebuilt in 1913 after being burned down in (allegedly) a suffragette attack, but, more definitely, the prominent suffragette, Ethel Moorhead, has very local (to me) connections. She left her childhood home in Dundee to study as a painter in the studios of Whistler & Alphonse Mucha – which is interesting enough – but a few years later, after joining the WSPU, she was arrested many times, being subjected to the usual sadistic treatment under the ‘Cat & Mouse Act’. After one of her lesser offences, she was locked up in a jail (nowadays just offices) that I walk past almost every day. She then proceeded to wreck the bathroom and flood the building. This happened in the town where I went to High School, but the (mostly very good) history teachers I had either didn’t know about it, or didn’t think it worth telling the pupils about. And yet, knowing this kind of thing makes history far more vivid and alive (and paradoxically ghostly) than the kind of standard issue textbook things that are (or were; not been to school for years) usually taught. Incidentally, I think the school really should have explained the horrors of the Cat & Mouse act. Saying women on hunger strike were ‘force-fed’ is not untrue, but doesn’t really capture just what the authorities were doing; especially here in Scotland.

If You Want To Feel… like the 80s cyberpunk future is still the future

Listen to – Anvil Strykez – Anvil Strykez

I have written a review of this great album for Echoes and Dust so won’t say much here. But if you were living in an early William Gibson novel, or the kind of 80s cartoon that is at least 50% chase or fight sequences, this would be the soundtrack

If You Want To Feel…like simple concern for your fellow human beings is less important than political ideology

Look at every major political party in the UK right now. If however, you don’t want to feel that way, look at the many people and institutions fighting for the rights of people of all kinds and trying to improve the lives of people and make your own opinion known. There are probably more people fighting and campaigning for human rights and equality than at any time in the history of the western world; this is a good thing. One of the saddest things about UK politics in 2017 is that there are many such people even within the main parties; but on the whole, their voices are being made subordinate to the political aims of those parties.

If You Want To Feel… like the internet is like all the encyclopaedias in the world, only better

Sign up for some of the many great newsletters put out for free on the web. Your interests may not be the same as mine, but I have never yet had a single newsletter from any of these without finding something of interest:

Messy Nessy – this site covers so many areas; culture, pop culture, history, art, architecture, society – and its regular newsletter is great

The New Yorker – you already know what The New Yorker is – brilliant journalism, politics, art, culture, cinema, fiction, you name it; they recently had an unpublished F. Scott Fitzgerald story for christ’s sake! For free!

FEMigré – Vonny Moyes’ blog is fairly new, but has already built up an extremely thoughtful & considered series of articles, looking at society & the world from a feminist viewpoint, which challenges not only the cultural status quo, but dogma of all kinds.

Gail Carriger’s Monthly Chirrup – mainly for fans of Miss Carriger’s books perhaps, but in addition to news relating to her steampunk fiction, the Chirrup often takes in Victoriana of all kinds, fashion and humour and is highly entertaining in its own right.

Zero Tolerance Magazine – okay, I write for ZT, but the newsletter includes lots of extreme metal-related news/offers etc as well as keeping readers up to date with the ZT blog

Museums & Galleries – most really good museums & galleries have worthwhile newsletters, the Tate & V&A etc are good but one of my favourites is The National Museum of Women in the Arts which has links to their excellent blog as well as the usual updates etc

If You Want To Feel… like you’ve run a marathon while being hit over the head with a hammer – but in a good way

Listen to Never – Demo 2017

Never are a punk band from Brighton and play intense, cathartic & exhilarating hardcore/noise-ish music with lots of heart. It makes you feel better by making you feel worse

If You Want To Feel… like the music scene in 2017 is as vibrant and essential as it always is, here’s a current playlist – why break with tradition entirely?

Ghost World – Ghost World (Svart Records)

archetypically teenage neo-grunge, Finland’s Ghost World have made a fine debut album which, incidentally, includes my favourite ‘ooh’s of the year so far (on the track ‘Drain’, if you’re interested)

The Moon & The Nightspirit – Metanoia (Prophecy Productions)

Hungarian pagan folk music which is probably as influenced by fantasy as by actual folk traditions; but it’s a lovely, slightly spooky and thankfully not very cheesy album nonetheless.

Ummagma – Winter Tale/Frequency

Ummagma’s almost unclassifiable* mix of dreampop, shoegaze, ambient electronica, synthpop etc etc (*see?) is at its best on the Frequency EP, a collection of extremely fresh and delicate but never throwaway tunes made with the collaboration of luminaries such as Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins & OMD’s Malcolm Holmes. Winter Tale is jointly credited to Ummagma and equally-unclassifiable (or maybe not) dreampop pioneers A.R. Kane; and it sounds like both groups, which should please anyone who likes to float on a dreamy cushion of beautiful, harmonious noise.

wildcard: Coldfells – Coldfells (Bindrune Recordings/Eihwaz Recordings)

I’m not actually sure how much I like this yet; rough, harsh, Thorns-like black metal/doom with strangely melodic choruses. Hmm. A few listens in and the riffs and rough bits are great – the choruses take some getting used to, in this context though. But interesting and I’m sticking with it, so definitely not a thumbs-down.

Current Reading: I’ve been on an Orwell bender of late; currently reading his diaries, which are alternately great and dull, as one might expect of something that is in part a record of how many eggs his hens are laying etc.

Also –

The Vorticists (ed. Mark Antliffe & VIvien Greene)
Gail Carriger – The Finishing School (series)
Samuel Beckett (shorter prose works)
Steffen Kverneland – Munch
The New European (newspaper)

Current Viewing:

The Last Kingdom (series 2, BBC)
Logan (pretty good, if ridiculously violent & bleak)
Shadow of a Doubt (1943) Hitchcock masterpiece with Joseph Cotten at his charmingly sinister best

So anyway, enough for now? Until next time!

The Lucky Ones Were The First To Die! The 1980s post-Mad Max Apocalypse

However successful George Miller’s 2015 Mad Max movie was, for a variety of reasons it is unlikely to have the impact of the second (and by extension, the far superior first) one did; the release of 1981’s Mad Max 2 (known internationally as The Road Warrior) coincided with the boom in home video (specifically home video rental; those were the days when to actually buy a movie on VHS cost outlandishly vast sums) and the fact that it was set in a barren landscape with details (cars, clothes, technology) that were recognisably contemporary, but generally beaten-up, rather than gleamingly futuristic meant that its look and feel was easy to imitate on an extremely low budget. The storyline, too, was simple and dynamic in the style of a spaghetti western; requiring only a few key locations, a small cast and some action, it was apparently eminently imitable. Except of course, that George Miller is a masterful director and the pre-Hollywood Mel Gibson was an immensely charismatic and capable actor.

There was also the atmosphere of the early 80s; people may now, on the whole, be more scared than they were then, but the threats of the 21st century are rarely as monolithic and inescapable as the fear of nuclear war once was. The cold war, pre-Gorbachev, created a paranoia that pervaded not only obvious movies like Wargames (US) and When the Wind Blows (UK), but also silly flag-waving nonsense like Rocky IV. Not surprisingly, this is a feature of life in the 80s rarely acknowledged by the nostalgia industry.

Aside from Mad Max 2, the other cinematic progenitor of the 80s post-apocalypse straight-to-video movie was John Carpenter’s 1981 masterpiece(ish) Escape From New York. In fact, so influential are these movies that many of those that follow could (and will) justifiably be referred to as ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ movies. Most of the classic derivative B movies can be easily identified by the presence of a post-Mad Max/Snake Plissken hero – lone, brooding, grizzled, leather clad, often with unacceptable hair.

Due presumably to it’s powerful final scene, the 1968 classic Planet of the Apes is evoked every now and then, albeit on a less epic scale; even less obvious, but arguably still there, is the distant influence of HG Wells’ The Time Machine, with its vision of a small ‘civilised’ ruling elite (Eloi) living in comfort and bestial devolved humanoids (Morlocks) roaming the wilds. A debased version of this idea; a small group of nice, civilised people terrorised by a group of not-nice, non-local people, helped by a nice, non-local person or people is so widespread in cinema (westerns, samurai movies, Night of the Living Dead etc etc) that it’s hard to say where exactly it originated (actually, probably somewhere quite obvious/well known, but I will look that up after it’s too late for this article).

Since the 1920s, most Hollywood movies have historically tried to sell themselves with a snappy tagline; as you will see, these movies have some of the best ever coined. So here is a selection of worthwhile post-apocalyptic movies that gives an idea of how varied even such a narrow subgenre can be…

Countdown to Apocalypse…

Technically pre-dating the 80s straight-to-video post-apocalyptic cycle (and influencing it?) but definitely worth a mention is

Damnation Alley (1977)
Tagline: You Have Seen Great Adventures – You Are About To Live One

Basically a bunch of TV and B-movie actors driving around the desert in ridiculous Robot-Wars-looking modified vehicles. Many of the factors that would become clichés are firmly in place here; a shattered, post-apocalyptic world (cheap desert locations), a ramshackle group of survivors (though less fashionably ramshackle than in Mad Max 2 and its imitators), a pretty basic ‘quest’ style theme (in this case a search for fellow survivors).
In terms of general filmmaking competence and originality this, though not great, is far above the standard of the general 80s movie of this type.

Another early entry that sets the tone for what was to follow is…

Ravagers (1979)
tagline: 1991: Civilisation is Dead

It really IS dead; in this yawn-apocalypse, Richard Harris tries to find a way to safety through a decaying post-civilisation landscape populated by warring gangs. It is far less exciting than one would think possible.

Post-Apocalyptic Raids

Not surprisingly, the true Escape from Mad Max 2 subgenre was defined by the work of Italian B-movie/exploitation directors. One of the true genre-setting movies, and pretty ubiquitous in video shops back in the 80s is Enzo G Castellari (director of Jaws ripoffs, horror movies and The Inglorious Bastards (1978))’s opus:

1990; The Bronx Warriors (1982)
tagline; The lucky ones were the first to die!

The disclaimer here is that there is no apocalypse as such; but the movie is 100% in the post-Escape From New York genre, with the Bronx declared a warzone and sealed off from the rest of the world, left to the feuding gangs that inhabit its decaying tenements and warehouses.

In fact, the movie is kind of an amalgam of several sources, most notably Walter Hill’s all-time great The Warriors (1979) and it owes as much to Romeo & Juliet and to spaghetti westerns as it does to the usual subgenre films. It is fun, more or less, but it has serious pacing problems (not to mention dubbing issues) that put it firmly in the z-list. The characters too are confusing – storyline-wise Mark Gregory’s ‘Trash’ should logically be the hero or the villain but isn’t really either. On the plus side, though, there is a character called ‘Toblerone’! This movie was part of a seam of post-apocalyptic movies with ‘Bronx’ in the title, possibly influenced by the depiction of the Bronx as violent no-man’s-land in Paul Newman vehicle Fort Apache The Bronx (1981)? Bronx Warriors itself is followed by the very similar but not-at-all-better Bronx Warriors 2 (Escape from the Bronx). Everything you need to know about that one is on this better-than-the-movie poster:

Another, but better Escape from Mad Max 2 movie is Fred Olen Ray associate Steve Barkett’s

The Aftermath (1982)
tagline; Hell in the Aftermath; who will survive?

Mad Max‘s bizarre mutant biker-gang leader was (strangely yet memorably) called Toecutter. The Aftermath has a gang of mutant weirdo bikers led by B-movie god Sid Haig’s ‘Cutter’. Despite the utter lack of originality, the story (slightly influenced by Planet of the Apes: astronauts return to Earth to find it a post-apocalyptic wasteland inhabited by gangs of violent criminals et cetera) and direction actually make this a very watchable B-movie.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for:

She (1982)
Tagline; Sandahl Bergman tempted Conan and now she is ready to take on the World

Even the truly great Sandahl Bergman (of Conan the Barbarian etc) can’t save this plodding post-apocalyptic updating of H Rider Haggard’s classic adventure novel She. There are lots of excellent and bizarre elements; werewolves, gladiators, mad scientists and so on – but (a key genre fault, this) the pacing is bad and the atmosphere flatter than a dust-swept wasteland. A sad waste of talent, especially since it was directed by non-schlock Israeli director Avi Nesher.

Similarly unambitious but more fun is giallo maestro Joe (Papaya: Love Goddess of the Cannibals) D’Amato’s…

Endgame (1983)
tagline; For An “Endgame” Champion In The Year 2025, There’s Only One Way To Live. Dangerously

‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ again; this film shares many parallels with the later The Blood of Heroes (see below) and looks forward to The Running Man, but is much more fun than either. Telepathic mutants, violent game shows, warriors, what’s not to like?

Similar but SO much better; perhaps the ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ movie of all time also arrived in ’83, in the shape of Italian exploitation master Sergio (La Montagna Del Dio Cannibale) Martino’s opus…

2019: After The Fall of New York (1983)
tagline; Mankind will prevail if it can survive the year 2019…

After a nuclear war, naturally, (this film, like John Carpenter’s, actually names the – now alarmingly close – year, rather than giving the usual vague-but-infinitely-more-sensible date of ‘the near future’) society has broken down, technology has failed and gangs of radiation-infected mutants roam the ravaged wasteland blah-de-blah.
In this case, what’s left of society is being led by the evil and repressive “Euraks”, while a rebel Federation fights for the survival of the old ways of life (presumably those same ways of life which led to the apocalypse, but that’s people for you).

In a blatant ripoff of Escape from New York, the Federation hires a mercenary (though not a nothing-to-lose criminal like Snake Plissken) called, somewhat loftily, ‘Parsifal’, who, naturally owes allegiance only to himself and his own survival and *snoooooore* but nevertheless accepts the mission to travel into the heart of New York(!) to retrieve the only fertile female left on earth.
The key to this film’s enjoyability is its utter trashiness, and to be fair, the survival of the human race does seem like more of a ‘prize’ than the life of the President or fuel. Fun, nasty and definitely unboring, like B movies should be.

Speaking of ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ …

Stryker (1983)
tagline; After the holocaust, nothing matters but survival also, perhaps better; The Odds are a million-to-one. And Stryker is the one.

Uninspired taglines for an uninspired movie; Filipino exploitation master Cirio H. Santiago (TNT Jackson, Nam Angels) directs this opus in which, after the inevitable apocalypse, the world is running out of water (of course), and a group of Amazons guard the last known freshwater spring but are attacked by a gang of blah blah blah, until moody, monosyllabic tough guy “Stryker” turns up to help them out. You know the rest.

more of the same in….

2020 – Freedom Fighters (1984)
tagline; When earth becomes an arena… murder becomes a way of life.

Joe D’Amato again, but on much weaker form, this super cheap plodathon tells the story of a band of grizzled warriors fighting against fascism in post-holocaust Texas.

Business as usual in Bobby (The One-Armed Executioner) Suarez’

Warriors of the Apocalypse (1985)
tagline: They turned paradise into hell!

Although firmly in the Escape from Mad Max 2 mould, there is a welcome flavour of heroic fantasy in this movie. After civilization has inevitably been wiped out by nuclear war, a ridiculous leather-clad adventurer leads a group of wanderers on a search for the fabled Mountain of Life, on the way encountering mutants, pygmies, ladies in fur bikinis etc. FUN.

A very welcome if sadly very bad addition to the genre is…

Robot Holocaust (1986)
tagline; It’s machine versus man in the ultimate battle for the future!

Finally, someone (in fact Tim Kincaid, director of Bad Girls Dormitory and gay porn) realised that there might be robots after the apocalypse! In this timeless masterpiece (as much heroic fantasy as anything else) a ‘drifter’ called ‘Neo’ and his rusty robot sidekick battle evil authorities who are using slave labour to run their power station, with extremely low budget results.

More typical (but less fun, and shockingly an even weaker premise) is…

Steel Dawn (1987)
tagline; there are several, none great. Best is probably In this frightening time, one man makes a difference

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, an evil gang are menacing a peaceful group of survivors because they want to steal their water. *YAAAWN*, and then a ludicrously bearded warrior in the shape of the late, great Patrick Swayze(!) arrives to sort everything out. Yep, it’s ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ again, only more good-natured and much less fun.

But what happens when you cross ‘Escape from Mad Max 2’ with the superior 70s sci-fi movie Rollerball, I hear you ask..?

The Blood of Heroes (ridiculously aka The Salute of the Jugger) (1989)
tagline; The Time Will Come When Winning Is Everything

The second half of the 80s produces especially threadbare variations on the post-apocalyptic straight-to-video movie and this is one of the worst; in this future, the ragged survivors of nuclear war aren’t looking for fuel, Presidents, ladies or even water; they are playing a nasty yet somehow extraordinarily dull version of football. ‘The Time Will Come When Winning Is Everything’ – hopefully not for a while yet though.

Fred Olen Ray got a brief mention earlier, and it would be strange if one of the ultimate Z-movie directors of the era hadn’t dabbled in a (presumably lucrative) straight-to-video genre: of course he did!

Warlords (1988)
tagline: He came out of nowhere. A stranger, a soldier… and maybe a saviour

Seriously cheap (though less so than Olen Ray’s Lovecraftian yawnathon, Phantom Empire) this endlessly boring Escape from Mad Max 2 movie has a cast of maybe 10 people, several of whom play handily-masked mutants that hero David Carradine despatches every 10 minutes or so. The ‘plot’; Warlord (Sid ‘the Cutter’ Haig) kidnaps a girl and takes her into the mutant-ridden wastelands. David Carradine rescues her. Even the fairly formidable quantities of gratuitous nudity that 80s B-movie directors revelled in fail to make this watchable to post-adolescent people.

Almost too late, but just about worth a mention is

World Gone Wild (1988)
tagline; 50 years after the end of the world the only ones left are nuked-out, zoned-out burnouts. The wildest adventure of all is about to begin.

Actually it really isn’t. A small role for Adam Ant as a bad guy is perhaps the most memorable thing about this ‘ragtag bunch of survivors protecting dwindling water supplies’ movie, but it is more-or-less watchable and fun.

AFTERMATH…
‘More-or-less watchable and fun’ may be a modest achievement, but it is but an unattainable dream for the most recent additions to the genre. There are (leaving aside ‘big’ movies like The Road and The Book of Eli which, whatever their faults, are not B-movies in the usually accepted sense) comparatively few these days, but those that there are (that I have seen) are on the whole not even as enjoyable as the lamer entries here, and in some cases (Doomsday (2008)) fall into all of the old ‘Escape From Mad Max 2‘ cliches, without even the excuse of cashing in on a recent, fashion-changing blockbuster. And then there is the new Mad Max. But if Charlize Theron, Tom Hardy and actually being released in cinemas just seems too commercial, there is enough of the 80s apocalypse out there (if not available on DVD, let alone Bluray) to keep even the most hardened leather-clad mercenary busy for some time...

“Cheap Turd”: the mysterious charm of Valet Girls (1987)

Valet Girls (1987)
Dir. Rafal Zielinski
Starring. April Stewart, Meri D. Marshall, Mary Kohnert
Valet Girls is a poorly made, badly paced, atrociously acted, flatly filmed, desperately unfunny, trashy near-exploitation movie; it has almost no redeeming features; so why is it so great?

Mostly, this must be due to ‘period charm’ – they probably do make crappy movies like this nowadays, but somehow the tone of the modern post-Farrelly brothers, bottom-of-the-barrel comedy is incredibly charmless even by the standards of the z-grade sub-Police Academy humour that plagued straight-to-video films 30 years ago.

What’s funny (peculiar) about Valet Girls is that it doesn’t even have the courage of what convictions it has – the movie poster and publicity suggests a raunchy (indeed, near-pornographic) teen movie, but it is in fact, significantly less titillating than Porky’s, Revenge of the Nerds or even the aforementioned Police Academy itself.

The perfunctory storyline can be summarised extremely briefly; three girls (April Stewart, Meri D Marshall and Mary Kohnert – only the latter was to make further appearances on film) start working as valet parking girls in LA in order to make it in show business. Ironically, the film seems to have been in part an unsuccessful attempt to launch the music career of the appealing but not overly star-powered Meri Marshall; as far as I can tell she had some success in Germany. To that end, she sings a handful of forgettably likeable synth-pop songs, somewhere between Tiffany and Debbie Gibson stylistically.

So what is the appeal of the film? Partly the utter woodenness of the three leads – their intense anti-charisma becomes, to the sympathetic viewer, a kind of endearing charisma. The same can’t be said for the irritating young men who are outwitted by the girls throughout the film and whose names I can’t be bothered to look up. Probably the biggest names associated with the film are John Terlesky (best known to sci-fi/fantasy fans as the title character in the below-par comedy sequel Deathstalker II) and Ron Jeremy, in one of those roles that demonstrates why his career never took off when wearing clothes. Naturally, being the kind of film this is, it wants to have its cake and eat it; we are supposed to see the girls as go-getting young business women, aiming for the stars, but doing it all for themselves; all well and good; and in fact they are both smarter and tougher than the males in the film. As luck would have it for the people trying to sell Valet Girls to a youth audience, though, the girls’ business venture requires them to be sexy (at least I presume they are supposed to be sexy) and to dress (relatively) sexily throughout.

Mainly though, it is that ‘period charm’ – modern movies set in the 80s may carefully research and study the hairstyles, the fashion and music of the time to give an authentic 80s appearance for those too young to remember, but Valet Girls is a compendium of the kind of attempts at fashion that were unsuccessful then and have never been revived, but which were nevertheless a pervasive part of the 80s pop culture universe; witness for example the majesty of the jerky new wave-ish cover of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Purple Haze’ played by ‘The New Psychotics’; an 80s movie producer’s idea of what the kids might (but didn’t) think was cool. All eras have these kind of things, but the time preserved here has, like the 1920s seen through John O’Hara’s Appointment in Samarra, a poignancy even in its silliest details; for those of the right age, this was their youth and is an era which shall never return.

Valet Girls may be the longest 90 minutes or so you will ever watch – and in terms of plotting, acting, comedy and direction it makes Weekend At Bernie’s 2 look like Weekend at Bernie’s, but on the other hand, if you are old enough to remember the 80s (or wish you had been alive then) and wallowing in amateurish anti-nostalgia appeals to you then you could possibly do worse.

Footnote: the title of this article isn’t just me being mean, it comes from a ‘hilarious’ moment of Police Academy style humour where one of the girls insults one of the many irritating men who populate the film:

Rosalind (April Stewart): “Cheap turd!”

Archie Lee Samples (John Terlesky): “what!??”

Rosalind: “I heard”

For similar experiences see also:
Biggles; Adventures in Time (1986) (80s nostalgia)
Mesa of Lost Women (1953) (50s B-movie nostalgia)
Her Reputation (1933) (30s B-movie nostalgia)
Grange Hill (1978-1990-ish) (an authentic British 80s childhood experience, only without the swearing)

Once Upon a Time in Argentina: Swords & Sorcery, 1980s style

If the heroic fantasy movie has become synonymous, post-Lord of the Rings, with state of the art special effects, epic locations and massive budgets, there was a time, not so long ago, when its natural home was the video rental shop and its scope, although theoretically limited only by the imagination, was in fact reliant on ready-made formulas and the cheapest epic locations that small studios could afford; usually, it turns out, in Argentina.

Despite the lowliness of the genre’s ambitions, the poverty of its ideas and sometimes the modesty of the actors’ talent, the 80s swords & sorcery genre is not without its merits. Like the post-apocalyptic sci-fi with which the fantasy genre sometimes crosses over, most of the films under discussion here were basically the aftershocks of a couple of hugely successful films. The main progenitors are probably: Star Wars (1977) and its sequels, which set the standard for fairly basic (and familiar) mythology-derived plots (well, less mythology than pulp literature, especially the works of Robert E Howard and his imitators) as vehicles for spectacular action. Again, theoretically spectacular; on the whole there is nothing more dramatic than swordplay and possibly a few flashes of crudely animated magic.

Related but not so influential on the fantasy genre was Desmond Davis’ cheesy classicClash of the Titans (1981), which to an extent revived an interest in mythology and adventure, but mostly renewed the popularity of Ray Harryhausen’s earlier masterpieces. John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), too, was a high profile release, but although loved by many (myself included), it remains – like Boorman’s sci fi masterpiece Zardoz – something of an acquired taste, too specialised (and perhaps too British) to have much effect on the low budget video scene.

The biggest influence of all though – and the initiator of 80s swords & sorcery cinema proper – was John Milius’ epic, if plodding Conan The Barbarian (1982). Visually beautiful and symbolically powerful, Conan is in a different league from its imitators, but alas, many suffer from the exact sort of pacing issues that make Conan such a long two hours. The simple ‘orphan-seeking-revenge’ plot is one imitated again and again throughout the great sequence of cheap 80s fantasy movies. There were of course genuinely good/interesting/enjoyable fantasy movies made in the 80s; Ridley Scott’s flawed Legend, Ladyhawke, Labyrinth and even The Dark Crystal, but this article is not about those. The shelves of the local video shops were heaving with ‘genre’ movies: post-Porkies, sub-Police Academy risqué comedies, post-Star Wars sci-fi (Ice Pirates, The Last Starfighter et al), horror series galore (a long article could be – and probably has been – written about Cannibal movies alone).This list isn’t anywhere near complete (like most of these niche genres, the sheer quantity of these kinds of movies is amazing), not all of these movies are very watchable but they are all worth mentioning.
Starting near the top end of the genre, an archetypal 80s Swords & Sorcery adventure is…

Beastmaster (1982)

Essentially Conan with ferrets, Beastmaster tells the tale of the He-Man-esque ‘Dar’ (Marc Singer), who goes on an animal-aided quest for revenge against those who killed his family.
The storyline, basic though it is, allows for the usual combination of encounters with bizarre creatures, evil warriors and comical companions. Less usual are the beasts that give Dar his title; a slightly aged-looking black panther, a bird and a bag of ferrets. What Beastmaster has that many of its peers (and influences) don’t, is watchability. It’s silly, it’s cheap and sometimes dubiously acted, but it isn’t boring.
Beastmaster has a particular kind of sequel, shared by others in the genre; the (presumably even cheaper) ‘fantasy hero goes through a portal into modern day USA’ plot. These are worthy of (and may get) an article of their own some day; the undisputed genre classic is of course Dolph Lundgren’s immortal Masters of the Universe (1987).

Where Conan the Barbarian was unusual was that, thanks to Arnie’s famous physique, it effortlessly lived up to its Frank Frazetta-style poster. The poster was in fact almost as influential as the movie; Peruvian fantasy art icon Boris Vallejo single-handedly made many a B-movie actor and actress look puny and pallid in comparison with his Olympian depiction of them. Boris is arguably one of the most accomplished painters of the 20th century, but it’s fair to say that his heroic, dynamic poster designs are one of the reasons that the Deathstalker series feels so disappointing. Worth a look though, especially…

Deathstalker (1983)

Post-Conan in the extreme, Deathstalker tells the story of a – by Conan/Boris standards – not-quite-muscular enough dork called Deathstalker, who is sent on a quest to find various objects and free a princess from a magician. If you had never read a single fantasy novel or seen a single fantasy movie this would still feel hackneyed and unremarkable. But if you like the clichés of the genre it’s plodding but enjoyable.

In Evil Dead style (though far less inspired), the sequel was not to be a true sequel at all, more of a lampooning of the genre. And it went by the thrill-inducing name of…

Deathstalker II (1987)

deathterl — Deathstalker (John Terlesky) meets the legendary (but real) wrestler Queen Kong

The ‘story’ of this movie is perfunctory in the extreme, with Deathstalker (now portrayed by the hardly-muscular-at-all John Terlesky) mainly indulges in smart-arsey wisecracking dialogue. Although the ratio of lame to funny is definitely weighted towards the ‘lame’, there are a few funny lines and the overall feel of the movie is likeably silly. The hero may be less heroic, the scantily clad beauties less scantily clad, but it is probably superior to the original nonetheless.

Deathstalker III (1988)

introduced another lead actor, an even cheaper production, fewer jokes and an almost statically aimless plot. Rick Hill returned for the final instalment in 1991, but although it retained some of the humour of the other sequels, it was severely lacking in the mayhem, violence and gratuitous nudity which gave the original movie what flavour it had.

Similar but a lot better is…

Amazons (1986)

The key to the appeal of Amazons; basically a limp quest movie, is that despite the perfunctory plot, bad acting and poorly staged fight sequences, the characters are extremely likeable and their soap-opera relationships are very watchable, though the low-key villain (some bearded guy) undermines the drama a little. Trashy fun.

A fondly-remembered, if somewhat boring movie, Hawk the Slayer (1980) is a modest British film. Hawk… predates most of these movies, and is a wooden, plodding film, but fun for those who like the ‘unlikely band of adventurers; dwarf, elf, giant and man’ type of quest movie. Jack Palance makes an excellent (if obtrusively American) villain as the scarred Voltan.

Sorceress (1982)

Cheap, inept, badly acted (and oddly, apparently dubbed in parts though clearly being in English), this is nevertheless a fun, completely watchable movie. The plot doesn’t really bear repeating.

If watchable cheese is what you want, you could do far worse than…

Barbarian Queen (1985)

Much like Amazons, only delivering more of the gratuitous nudity implied in its cover art, Barbarian Queen is a simple revenge thriller/plodder, a tougher and less sentimental movie than Amazons but also less memorable. It does, however satisfy on the cheesy B-movie level as no doubt intended.

Yet more of the same in…

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Despite his undoubted talent, David Carradine’s presence was rarely the indicator of a good movie, and this is no exception. A simple story, based on Kurosawa’s classic Samurai drama Yojimbo sees Carradine as a nameless moody swordsman becoming involved in the feud between two villages who are competing for the ownership of the only well in the district. A simple, dramatic plot can be no bad thing, but here the pacing and dialogue make for a long 81 minutes, despite the generally well-staged fight scenes and mainly decent acting.

Honourable mentions:
The Sword and the Sorceror (1982)
Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985)
She (1982)
Ironmaster (1983)

By the early 90s, the genre seemed to have run its course and, despite the odd one-off, the heroic fantasy genre lay dormant until the twenty-first century, when Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy brought swords and dragons back into the mainstream once again. The plots may remain the same, but changes in filmmaking techniques, fashion and special effects mean that now the 80s swords & sorcery genre feels as remote and archaic as Cimmeria….