Posts Tagged ‘Toshiro Mifune’

The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)

Posted: 27/04/2013 in Uncategorized
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During this (Barbarian) month we covered a wide range of Sword and Sorcery flicks and as you noticed nearly every single one of them was a rip off of ‘s Conan The Barbarian. Well, not this film!
This movie is a rip-off of Kurosawa’s legendary Yojimbo! Literally you just take Yojimbo, change a setting to the desert planet of Yura, replace fantastic Toshiro Mifune with less than fantastic David Caradine , add some bad creature effect , a four breasted stripper and sparkle it all with a doze of acid and voila- you get The Warrior and the Sorceress!

Disclaimer: David Caradine looks nothing like this mighty dude!Disclaimer 2: Woman with an extra set of breasts has only a small cameo !

A hooded warrior  (Caradine) arrives in the town. Right off the bat we see the half- naked sorceress Naja (Maria Socas) being tortured by one of the gang members. He quickly decides to cause the commotion in this case by fighting the knights guarding the city’s well. As you can guess they prove no match to his (caugh, caugh) Kung Fu skills. Left unguarded well gets overan by villagers making the leaders of both city’s clans extremely unhappy.

Just look at those bare legs of Caradine, the sign of the real Warrior!

With his reputation preceding him The Warrior visits the first of the clan leaders, the fat man. Dude looks like a giant bold baby, surounded with naked women and his personal assistent
the Lizardman (who’s by all accounts- a hand puppet)*.  They strike a dead right there and then and Caradine walks away with a … of gold. in the meantime… Fat man’s cometitor is trying out a sword made by the priestess. She promised to make a sacred sword of Yura for him, sadly she did not deliever and was imediatly returned to the her cell.

Man’s best friend- his lizardman!

Soon the two sides confront each other in the city’s square. Caradine, a supposedly big asset to the fat man decides to sit this one out and completely changes the complexion of the fight. But just as thing were starting to heat up the slave-owners entered the city gates. As they all love slaves they stop what they’re doing and start biding with the monstrous slave-owner Burgo. After a fine day of selling and buying the slave-owners dance the night away. But little do they know that the Fatman and his trusted lizard poisoned Burgo’s wine in an attempt to frame their competition aka the mighty Zeg. Things seemingly go as planed ad the scaly slaver prophets his revenge with the brilliant words “gather our army and avenge out deaths”. Hopefully he dies at that instant, that would be cool.

He doesn’t look too good, does he?

Dark Warrior seeing all that goes staight to Zeg and offers to sell an information. He explains fat man’s scheme to Zeg, takes some gold and then start roaming around the castle. He finds the Sorceress in the dungeons. She starts rambling something about the secrets and prophecies and then finally agrees to come with Caradine. He starts cutting through soldiers with his usual ease and they succeed in escaping. Next thing Warrior does is almost unforgivable, he steals the (fat) man’s best friend, his lizardman and delivers him to Zeg.What fallowes is the exchange Sorceress for Lizardman and we finally start to wonder does the Warrior have a plan or is he just enjoying fuckin’ with everyone (and getting rich in the process).

Because of all the stuff he (seemingly) did for him the Warrior is invited to the grand feast at Zeg’s place but uses opportunity to AGAIN free the Sorceress (and kill a ridiculous tentacled monster but the less said about that the better). He plays dumb and continues the drinking at a main table but this time Zeg’s got a superise for him! Yeah, the main selling point of this movie a stripper (backed with techno soudntrack), but not just any stripper, a four boobed stripper!!!

Just in case you find yourself in this kind of situation…

Scenes with her are so funny and absurd that they almost make this mess worth a while. Ending her act she attacks Caradine and he chockes her to death but not before she poisons him.For some reason they do not kill him right there and then but they chain him and put him in the cell.

Воин и колдунья (The Warrior And The Sorceress 1984).avi_003661027

Let’s celebrate our new-found partnership!

Then Zed offers an alliance to the fat man which he jolly excepts. when they hug to celebrate he stabs him to death and finally succeeds in reaching the complete domination. Unfortunately just as he was at the top of the world the bunch of lizard-like slavers launched the attack on his army. Naja, the Sorceress frees the Warrior with Caradine’s help finally forges the magic sword of Yura and using it they lead a rebellion against the powers that be- in this case the Slavers. Warrior suddenly appears leading the villagers and then… does what he always does, funny circular motions that are usually supposed to represent Kung Fu. The power of the mighty sword of Yura that we waited to see entire film is… NOTHING AT ALL. The damned sword doesn’t even have cool sound effect that goes with it and doesn’t seem to help Caradine the slightest. He even menages to loose it half-way into the fight with Zeg’s former general and still win fairly easily. Damn, that Sorceress is an incompetent bitch!

David Caradine + Sword of Yura = Everyone dies

After massacring every last Slaver and all of their human underlings (with minimal help from the villagers) Naja tells him “to holy victory” * which is supposed to mean something but it doesnt Being the cool cat that he is he leaves them all and walks into the sunset into new adventures that thankfully didn’t get filmed or captured in any way.

Yeah, hi to you to!

Verdict: Idea a of Samurai film by the way of  of SF/ Fantasy seemingly has some potential but that potential is mostly wasted. Caradine seems to be having a good time and feels constable in his role but the fact is he made his living by acting martial artists and never bothered to learn any and that completely undermines all his effort. If you want to be a convincing warrior in a Sword and Sorcery flick you need to look the part/ or have some serious sword-fighting skills and truthfully (ignoring the man’s significant cool factor) he really had none. Also the movie is considered one of the most violent and bloody barbarian flicks and that may be true but the doesn’t make silly action scenes any better. The only thing that separates this movie from the rest of the pack is the presence of four-boobed stripper and mind0 boggling weirdness of her scene is the only thing worth watching in this film.

Knowing how cheap Corman is, this girl probably had real four boobs, I can’t imagine him paying to get them made…

Trivia: When the director of the film  John C. Broderick originally read the script he called Corman and said that he couldn’t do it because movies was not based of Yojimbo but an (almost) straight scene for scene rip- off. Corman said that the same was true of The Fistfull of Dollars and that Leone had no trouble because Kurosawa used an American book Red Harvest as a model for his film- so there is no real original. He got Broderick to direct but that statement was of course a  blatant lie- because Leone was sued and forced to pay compensation to Kurosawa for remaking  Yojimbo without his knowledge. Thankfully for Corman almost no one knows of existence of  The Warrior and the Sorceress so he’s safe… FOR NOW.

WM Interview: Albert Pyun (Cyborg, Nemesis, The Sword and the Sorcerer)

Posted: 29/11/2012 in Worse Interview
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One of our most reviewed directors on our blog is by far Mr. Albert Pyun (Cyborg, Nemesis, Sword and the Sorcerer…), so naturally we wanted to have a few words with him, find out a thing or two about the classics and also see what’s he been up to these days. So, here we go!

01. I understand that you started your career working with the great Toshiro Mifune and legendary Akira Kurosawa.
What was the whole Japanese experience like and what is the most important thing you learned while working there?

I learned the value of having a hardcore work ethic and preparation. The thing I loved most was watching such a high level of talent and artistry and how they applied their skills to the smallest detail. I also enjoyed the dedication everyone, including Mr. Mifune, had to doing their best no matter the challenges.

02. It can be said that you were slightly ahead of the curve with your Sword and the Sorcerer which came out almost simultaneously with Conan The Barbarian and started a trend of Barbarian movies which lasted some years. I would love to hear about your main inspirations for The Sword and Sorcerer?

My main inspirations for The Sword and the Sorcerer were Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers, John Milius’ The Wind and the Lion and The Baby Cart samurai series.

03. One of the of the signatures of your involvement with the film is often a combination of  kickboxing and hybrid martial arts with a post- apocalyptic backdrop. I am interested to hear how you developed that unique approach to action/adventure movies.

I know, but what’s odd is I didn’t being with great interest in martial arts or with post apocalyptic stories. I was drawn to martial arts as a lower cost replacement of firearms in my films. I was drawn to Post apocalyptic settings because they were easier to create on a limited budget. And there were no rules on how it had to look. I actually feel my current film “ROAD TO HELL” is one of the first films where I got the setting I was after without compromising for budget.

04. I find that most of your movies have a kinda comic-book quality (of course you also you directed one of the early Marvel adaptations). Did you grow up as a comic- book aficionado and if so what were/are some of  your favorites?

Yes, I grew up on all the DC and Marvel comics along with the Japanese Manga books and Tintin as well because I lived i foreign countries as a child so I was exposed to many different types of comics and books.

05.What is the favorite actor/actors that you worked with and why? And is there some actor whose work you greatly admire but you haven’t gotten the chance of working with?

I’ve really enjoyed working with all the actors for the most part.  I never really had any problems there. My favorites were likely Scott Paulin and Norbert Weisser. Both understand my sensibilities. Sasha Mitchell, Michael Pare’ and Christopher Lambert were great as well. I liked them as people immensely. The most colorful was probably Burt Reynolds and Dennis Hopper. Loved both and Ice-T as well. Jean-Claude and Steven Seagal were interesting because they aren’t actors so much as archetypes. So that was a challenge. I really liked them all as they always brought great ideas and all were very easy to work with.

06. You worked on films of many, many different genres (SF, Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary Action even Western),  do you have a favorite movie genre that you enjoy more than the others?

I love musicals most of all and sort of experimental films where I can play with form and structure.

07. I understand that you spent some time here in the Balkans. That was when you filmed Captain America, right? Can you tell us about some of your experiences here and do you plan to visit us again in near future? Especially considering the fact that a great number of foreign music videos and movies are being filmed in Serbia in the last couple of years (District B13: Ultimatum, Raven and Lockout).

Yes, I shoot a good deal of Captain America in Dubrovnik (*Croatia) and some of Adrenalin in Mostar (*Bosnia and Herzegovina). I’d love to shoot more in Serbia.

08. I believe that you are hard at work at a Cyborg sequel/ prequel so it would be interesting to hear something about the basic plot, actors involved and of course about general tone and the esthetics of the film.

I’m just trying to make something different. Something a little experimental and surreal. And, yes, like an opera. A very pessimistic film.

Thank you and all the best!