Four Sword & Sorcery Films
Conan the Barbarian, Excalibur, Clash of the Titans (1981), Dragonslayer
What exactly is sword & sorcery?
Sword and sorcery, also known as heroic fantasy, is a genre that has heroic characters clashing swords in magical worlds and it used to be near and dear to my heart. In my teens and twenties I was a regular reader of fantasy novels, but as time passed I found that when it comes movies, the genre doesn’t seem to offer that many great works.
I somehow became a fan of Manowar at age nine, around the release of their 1988 album Kings of Metal. It was completely drawing from sword and sorcery, Viking and Greek mythologies. Combined with the power metal music, their lyrics really got my imagination going and had me looking things up about these mythologies. Some of their songs say quite awful things in retrospect, but I’m not sure how much I initially understood that - English was a foreign language that I didn’t need to use regularly until years later when I got into computers. What really captured me was their songs’ effect on me imagining worlds, things in them, different peoples and creatures, treasures, strange circumstances and adventures to be had.
That was the start of my interest in the genre, and I also remember seeing the animated omnibus movie Heavy Metal quite early and being very impressed. Soon after I started reading fantasy books and playing fantasy video games. But I didn’t have a lot of contact with 1980s wave of sword and sorcery movies until much later - mostly now in 2024 when I watched around 40 of them.
The movie sub-genre goes back at least to 1920s Die Nibelungen, which is a very good two-part silent fantasy epic by the master Fritz Lang. It then continues intermittently throughout the 20th century, but if you look at Wikipedia’s list of sword and sorcery movies, it’s in the early 1980s when it has a sudden burst that simmers down relatively quickly.
It’s telling that my favourites among these films are all from 1981 and 1982. That was when the trend emerged, and in 1985 it was already slowing down. To some degree the first movies were the most inventive, and had higher budgets, while those that followed were often trying to copy the success of those initial movies cheaply.
There are a lot of silly movies produced in this genre, and a lot of them feature a 1980s lowbrow attitude towards women characters, portraying them as little more than sex objects. There are also films with female characters in the lead, such as Hundra and Red Sonja, but that doesn’t necessarily free them of sexism.
There were some interesting movies in the genre after the 1980s as well. I’m never quite sure whether to count Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies in this sub-genre or not. I think technically they are part of it, but they are too sprawling epics to be directly comparable with most sword and sorcery. I did allow Ralph Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings movie in my list, but that one has a greatly reduced scope.
If we exclude Lord of the Rings, though, the sword and sorcery genre sadly never produced a masterpiece. The film that I think came closest is…
Conan the Barbarian (1982)
A warning to Estonian readers - it could be that you think you’ve seen this movie, while you actually saw the much weaker sequel Conan the Destroyer. Conan the Destroyer aired in chunks in the “Öö TV” program, but under the title of Conan the Barbarian, which it is not. Bizarre.
Conan the Barbarian is perhaps one of the very few great sword and sorcery movies. It doesn’t treat the genre as the joke that it can sometimes be, and uses serious film language techniques within the context of the world it creates, without winking at the audience, but still having fun, even stealing jokes from comedy movies like Blazing Saddles. It’s also both a revenge story and a rather strange coming of age story in one, an epic that also tries to give us an intimate look at the main character, although I think that doesn’t fully succeed.
Conan starts out as a young boy who witnesses his parents murdered in an attack on his home village, but not before his father teaches him The Riddle of Steel, which starts a faint philosophical/religious theme of the movie, and this part is what largely doesn’t work for me, although I’m sure it would have fed my teenage brain if I’d seen it back then.
The boy Conan is then taken as a slave and grows into the muscular form of Arnold Schwarzenegger while doing hard labour. His strength allows him to become a ruthless pit fighter, who impresses his owners so that they give him an education, but in their own twisted way that leaves him with a limited understanding of the world.
One day the owner realises he can’t hold him any more and frees him. Running, he bumps into various people, some of whom become friends or lovers. They steal, fight and party, and all the while Conan thirsts to avenge his parents. The murderers are represented by a faint memory of an evil symbol with two snakes. Snakes feature a lot in the movie, mainly involving a snake cult with the recently passed James Earl Jones playing its leader Thulsa Doom - the main villain and murderer of Conan’s parents. At one point Conan and his friends are given a mission to save someone from this cult, but Conan splits from the group and takes on the revenge on his own. I won’t spoil the story any further, but eventually he has to consider what to take and what to leave from his father’s teachings and what kind of a man he wants to become.
Parts of the movie are shot in wide open Spanish landscapes that provide an extra majesty and scope to Conan the Barbarian. Some other movies in the genre can feel downright claustrophobic in comparison. The film is overall very beautifully shot and has some impressive effects shots. To match that, the epic orchestral score by Basil Poledouris is rightfully famous and considered one of the best.
There are some great looking sets and props in this. All the swords look (or are) real, and even the forging of Conan’s father’s sword looks convincing. There are some other movies in the genre that go further with the visuals, though. For example, the elaborate sets and costumes in Red Sonja outshine the ones in Conan the Barbarian.
All these elements combine to make the world feel at times quite brutal, at times almost tender, sometimes contemplative. Conan as the protagonist is given time to be with his thoughts like in any good movie, but maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger’s acting skills or the direction he received don’t do enough to really make us feel close to the character.
Unfortunately what’s also real in the movie is some animal harm, especially horses being tripped. There isn’t a lot of info about this, it seems in Spain animal rights on movie sets were less protected and monitored than in the US, for example.
I have had a mixed history with this movie. I’ve seen it five or six times and loved it the first time, but was disappointed on a rewatch during a time when I was perhaps over-analysing the dramatic structure of every film I saw. Or maybe I missed some of the subtler themes on that watch. After seeing it again three times in 2024, especially in the longer cut that adds some small but important moments, I’m now back to thinking this is a great movie. Every time I see it I move a bit back and forth with my opinion, depending on the mood I’m in and what aspects I’m paying more attention to, but it will probably remain one of my favourite fantasy adventure movies for the foreseeable future.
Watched the new Arrow Video 4K UHD Blu-Ray (a US release), but the movie is also available in Disney+ and possibly other streaming services. It was actually this Blu-Ray release that gave me the impetus to start this whole sword and sorcery watch project and it really is a great release, but one I had to import from the US.
Excalibur (1981)
Excalibur looks so mesmerising at times that it could be my number one recommendation. Almost every shot contains a piece of reflective, shiny metal and it looks lovely even in the green forest scenes. The shine comes mostly from the costumes - the magician Merlin wears a metal cap and King Arthur is usually in plate armour. I haven’t seen so much plate armour in a movie since Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac and they don’t even take it off during some sex scenes.
The shiniest of all is the eponymous sword Excalibur, which gets passed around like the rifle in the Anthony Mann western Winchester ‘73.
The story is well paced and keeps moving forward, but is also a weak point that prevents it from taking the top recommendation spot from Conan the Barbarian - based on the Arthurian legend, Excalibur deals with a series of episodes that don’t have a dramatic through-line. There isn’t a single protagonist that is challenged to solve a particular problem. It’s not clear what Arthur and Merlin want, and yet it is more clear for some side characters who get the focus in some episodes - Lancelot, Guinevere, Perceval, Morgana. It’s possibly still the best Arthurian non-comedy movie, but I haven’t seen a lot of others.
Excalibur seemed to me stylistically the most influential among the sword and sorcery movies I watched, perhaps the grandfather of them all, considering it came out in 1981. I’m pretty sure it must have influenced movies from Conan and it’s clones to Fire and Ice, The Spine of Night, even Lord of the Rings. In fact its visual style started out as a Lord of the Rings adaptation that didn’t happen in the end and morphed into this movie.
I watched it on the UK Premium Collection Blu-Ray, which looks OK to me, but it certainly doesn’t reach the full potential so I hope this gets a new 4K restoration, if at all possible. I don’t know if it’s currently streaming anywhere.
Clash of the Titans (1981)
Clash of the Titans is a little bit different from most of the other sword and sorcery movies of its time. It was one of the first ones of the 1980s (along with Excalibur and Dragonslayer) and at the same time it was the last movie produced by legendary special effects artist Ray Harryhausen. It’s a great swan song to that type of movie - for more like it see Harryhausen’s Sinbad trilogy and Jason and the Argonauts.
While most sword and sorcery seems more inspired by Vikings and medieval Europe, Clash of the Titans deals with Greek mythology. It’s also a very theatrical looking film in a sense, combining great looking sets with miniatures, fog effects and the occasional misty haze and bloom that sets it visually apart from everyday realism. The film even starts with the gods arguing amongst themselves on Mount Olympus, in a place where they seem to be as if on a stage performing a story, rather than living their lives.
In an early scene the hero Perseus, a demigod and son of Zeus, is even magically transported into an abandoned theatre, where he makes his first friend in the elderly poet who haunts it. I think this all kind of ties in to the type of movie it is, with the Harryhausen stop motion effects already looking somewhat outdated (but still timeless in a way), and the world of spectacle cinema on the move to a different style of effects work like the ones created for Star Wars a few years earlier by Industrial Light & Magic together with upcoming effects superstar Phil Tippett.
The story is a pretty solid adventure story, but has some weaknesses. It’s a bit ambiguous who the villain is - is it Zeus’ (Laurence Olivier) opponents trying to get more control of their own lives back from under his tyranny, or is it Calibos, the son of Thetis (Maggie Smith), trying to avenge the wrong that he feels has been done to him by the gods. The final fight is actually against the Kraken, who is a mere tool the gods use to punish humans in the story, but perhaps the most thrilling is the sequence with Medusa.
There are some nice dreamy sequences in this film and some of the scenes with the young lovers Perseus and Andromeda reminded me of Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Romeo and Juliet. Overall it is quite successful in combining different types of scenes with the wonderful stop motion effects. It would be nice if some of the supporting characters were a little more fleshed out, at times they seem little more than the stop-motion monsters that they help fight.
Watched the UK Premium Collection Blu-Ray, which looks pretty good. It should be available to rent or buy on Apple TV.
There’s a remake of this movie made in 2010, which I haven’t seen, but from what I’ve heard it’s not very good, so make sure you see the original.
Dragonslayer (1981)
I considered picking The Spine of Night or Heavy Metal as the fourth movie, but I went with Dragonslayer because those two animations are not for everyone, while this one is a spectacle that anyone can enjoy, even if you are maybe not a regular fantasy watcher. The effects created by Industrial Light and Magic still hold up, and so does the rest of the movie if you can accept Peter MacNicol of Ally McBeal fame playing the sorcerer’s apprentice. This is a pretty good if somewhat generic fantasy story where they did everything according to the relatively large budget - nothing less but nothing more.
The writing is generally solid and everything gets tied up neatly by the end. But there is some ambiguity in how the protagonist faces difficulties. The small victories come to him very easily. Without doing much himself, he seems one of the smartest characters ever in that he doesn't just learn from his mistakes, but even pre-empts them. In reality it’s not because he was smart (although sometimes that too), but people around him help set him up with the right tools to solve the problem before the problem even occurs. However, when we zoom out and look at the bigger picture, then it feels more like a proper story where the hero tries, fails and tries again.
There are some great looking scenes in the movie, especially those in the beginning, shot quite dark they give you just glimpses of a sorcerers abode and all the alchemical stuff that such places contain. Ultimately however, many of the locations felt to me beautifully shot and functional, but not inspired.
Watched the Paramount 4K UHD Blu-Ray. As I keep finding to my surprise, this movie is also on YouTube.
Coming up: more swords, more sorcery.
I think I have to mention at least a few of the other movies, even if I wouldn’t give them a full recommendation. So keep an eye out for a follow-up post coming soon about the rest of the heroic fantasy movies I watched in 2024.