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Hawk The Slayer [1980]
![Hawk The Slayer [1980]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61shgioHsYL._SL160_.jpg)
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No! Not the Silly String! Anything but that! Aaaargh!
Review date: 2007-12-31 Rating: 6 out of 10
Where do I start? The acting is either wooden or over-the-top, the plot is naff, the effects are reminiscent of when Doctor Who hit it's lowest ebb.
But the film is saved by a funky soundtrack!
Watch with amazement how John Terry plays Hawk without ever changing his facial expression, even when sword fighting! See the giant who's slightly taller than the others, and the dwarf who's just slightly shorter! Behold the elf who can master fast-motion, and the mystical woman who can kill using silly string - one can only imagine what she might do if she had some party poppers, and she isn't allowed near the crackers at Christmas in case she wipes out a continent.
The most surprising performance in the film was from Bernard Bresslaw, well known for the Carry On films with their almost cartoon-like over acting, he gave a natural (and to be honest, the best) portrayal.
Like I say though, given all the poor aspects to this film, it never feels as though it takes itself too seriously. This means you can laugh at the film and still enjoy it whilst the orchestral/synth soundtrack has you humming along.
This film should be crap - but it's actually not that bad!
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Reviews
The Spinal Tap of Fantasy
Review date: 2007-12-10 Rating: 10 out of 10
Had the "Carry On" gang ever made a serious stab at a swords and sorcery movie, it may well have taken this form. And indeed, Bernard Bresslaw himself puts in a particularly sterling performance as the scary giant (complete with obligatory, unfeasibly massive club...). I defy anyone not to enjoy this movie. Wobbly sets (including a monastery with an interesting 'skull' interior decor motif), wobbly acting (performed by many 'before they were famous' British thesps who almost manage to out-ham an incandescent Jack Palance) and, spendidly, an incredibly wobbly script, which never opts for simple cliche when the opportunity to employ a mind numbing, painfully formulaic approach presents itself.
I love this film.
Were it a woman I would ask it to marry me and bear my child...although the union would no doubt produce a hideously deformed progeny that utterly failed to justify the intense labour involved in its birth: oh, the irony.
Look out for jumping fog (as a result of attempts in the editing room to make things magically 'disappear'), hilarious arrow-antics all round (the 'who cares about the laws of physics' hats-off moment being particularly splendid in slow motion), a giant who generally appears in the foreground to create the impression that the dwarf is smaller than is actually the case and, crucially, a steady supply of grimacing baddies sitting round in forests (which seem to cover Hawk's entire world and contain any number of snakes, skeletons, and dry-ice machines) ready to pick a fight at the drop of a hat, thereby enabling key characters to strut their heroic stuff. The soundtrack alone is worth the price of this video (can Jeff Wayne sue...?), especially the hilarious 'good/bad/ugly' Hawk signature twiddle. Unfortunately, the ensuing laughter often drowns out the subsequent dialogue. You should therefore take care not to miss such classic lines as "How they laughed..." and "The hunchback will have something to say about this..."
One thousand words are insufficient to describe this movie. Once seen, your life will never be the same again. In fact, drop me a line and together we can push for a national re-release....
Enjoy
Brother Mugga (with assistance from Dr. Chris 'Wuss' Emmett)
Ps: Nice to see a 'Hawk' reference in an episode of "Spaced". That's the spirit.
"The hunchback will have something to say about this!"
Review date: 2007-11-20 Rating: 6 out of 10
Yes, it's time to travel back to the dying days of Lew Grade's ITC Films, an age of darkness, of low-budgets and even lower-tech special effects, of bad acting and even worse writing: a world where clichés run rampant and Hawk the Slayer and his mindsword set the cause of sword-and-sorcery back several years. Shot almost entirely on a single Abbey set in Pinewood and the woods surrounding the studios in the heart of Autumn, this demented no-budget British spaghetti sword-opera - a sort of would-be A Fistful of Swords - pits John Terry's virtuous hero against his evil one-eyed brother with a taste for Darth Vaderesque headgear Jack Palance after the latter kills their badly dubbed dad Ferdy Mayne in a squabble over "The power that is rightly mmmmiiiiiiinnnnnnneee!" That power being a magical mindsword with a glowing green handle that can fall into your hand if you think about it (and run the film backwards).
Mind you, as flashbacks later reveal, the evil Darth Voltan (okay, he's not really called Darth) has already killed the love of Hawk's life, something which almost shocks one-time Felix Leiter (in The Living Daylights) John Terry into changing his expression, before moving on to underline what a bad egg he is by kidnapping guest star Annette Crosbie's Mother Superior, prompting Hawk into action. Well, not exactly action, more riding around the same stretch of woodlands while ineffectually ripping off The Magnificent Seven and A Fistful of Dollars (you half expect John Terry to say "My pony don't like Begin' laughed at.") as he assembles his A-Team - a giant played by Carry On veteran Bernard Bresslaw, an elfin bowman who talks like a constipated Dalek, a not particularly short dwarf and Patricia Quinn's witch with a particularly naff line in sorcery involving, er, smokey eggs. But then it's pretty obvious that the budget didn't really stretch to much in the way of even the cheapest special effects, with those there are largely of the stopping-the-camera-and-starting-it-again after-the-actors-have-left-the-frame variety, alongside a magic neon hula-hoop left over from some disco movie, a pair of Spock ears from a novelty shop and, in one memorable killing, silly string (or as the DVD chapter stop calls it 'The silly string of death'). And my, didn't they get a good deal on the fog machine that week!
Long shots also seem a bit of an alien concept for director Terry Marcel, who cut his teeth as a third assistant director on Carry On Cleo and never seems to have scaled those lofty peaks again. Most of the film is played in medium shot to cut down on the number of actors required and to hide the fact the set isn't that big - or perhaps just out of the fear that if they move the camera too far back, the actors will take the opportunity to run away before they have to deliver lines like "My son Drogo speaks true!" "Even as we speak, the wizards gather in the south" or serial overactor Shane Briant's immortal "I am no messenger. But I will give you a message. The message of DEATH!"
Jack Palance doesn't get much good dialogue either, but chews on what he gets for more than it's worth anyway - he's the only actor who could make the word "Wiiiiizzzzzaaaaaahhhrrrrrrdddddd!!!!!" last almost as long as Hamlet's soliloquy, so it's a shock to see how relaxed and, well, normal he looks in the raw onset interviews on the UK DVD (where he expresses far more admiration for Dinsdale Landen than Elia Kazan). Although even he might have balked at Bernard Bresslaw's defiant "I'd sooner eat cowdung." (Met with the inevitable response "That can be arranged, and you can wash it down with your own blood if need be.") Indeed, when Hawk addresses Patricia Quinn as "Woman" - as in "Woman, we need the use of your magic" - you half expect her to reply "I'm a man. I'm not old, I'm 37. What I object to is you automatically treat me like an inferior. Oh, Slayer eh? Very nice. And how'd you get that, eh? By exploiting the workers. By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society. Just because some dying character actor lobs a mindsword at you is no basis for a system of government."
Sadly much of the film is more dull than unintentionally funny: writer-producers Marcel and Harry Robertson clearly intended this, you know, for kids, so it's a bloodless school panto affair for much of the running time, visually bland and lethargic even at a modest hour-and-a-half. How they expected to stretch it out to a series of five movies is anyone's guess (the film ended up as the supporting feature to Saturn Three). Still, on the plus side former pop star and Hammer and Children's' Film Foundation regular composer Harry Robertson (who wrote the superb Hammer Transylvanian Western score for Twins of Evil as Harry Robinson - it really is outstandingly good) turns in a score that's like a demented disco combination of an Ennio Morricone paella Western and Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds, and the film is nowhere near as soul-destroyingly awful as Marcel and Robertson's subsequent collaboration seven years later, the almost unwatchable-even-at-gunpoint Jane and the Lost City.
Naturally for a naff movie this boasts a good UK DVD, with Network's DVD offering a superb transfer (but then it's not as if the negative got much use) and an array of more on-set interviews than any sane individual could ever want to watch, including one great moment where Marcel is asked if it's true he turned down a $10m budget because he didn't want to cast big names: "That's a load of rubbish" he replies while trying not to burst out laughing.
Product Details/Specifications
Actor(s):
Ray Charleson
Jack Palance
Harry Andrews
Annette Crosbie
John Terry
Creators:
Jack Palance (Primary Contributor)
Annette Crosbie (Primary Contributor)
Director(s):
Recording label: Network
Manufacturer: Network
EAN: 5027626260248
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: PAL, Special Edition,
Release date: 2007-02-19
Audience rating: Parental Guidance
Region code: 2
Running time: 90 minutes
Theatrical release date: 1980
Language: English (Original Language)