2 Warps to Neptune

Thanks to the success of Conan the Barbarian and D&D, a huge number of knock-off sword-and-sorcery flicks were released in the ’80s, bless them all. The Sword and the Sorcerer, directed by schlock-artist Albert Pyun and featuring Lee “Matt Houston” Horsley as the barbarian who wields the infamous three-pronged sword, is one of the best.

The story is unimportant. When it’s not directly ripping off Conan, it makes little sense and is poorly told. I’ll just mention that there’s a heart-getting-ripped-out-of-chest-from-twenty-feet-away scene, a scantily-clad goddess (seriously, she’s hot), a slimy demon played by “Bull” from Night Court, killer atmosphere (everything looks and feels dirty, bloody, and anarchic), a grisly crucifixion from which our hero escapes by a highly unlikely method, and some great one-liners and sexual innuendos.

But let’s talk about the sword and why it’s the coolest weapon in the genre. Yes, geekholes, even cooler than the machine-gun crossbow in Hawk the Slayer (1981). I told you that it has three blades, which is indisputably awesome, but I didn’t tell you that it shoots those blades through the air with deadly accuracy. How it does so I don’t know. How it’s so accurate I don’t know. Who cares? Watch this movie. And watch the magic sword in action below.

UPDATE (3/12/12): Apparently stuntman John Hale (Jack Tyree) died during the filming of The Sword and the Sorcerer “after he leaped from a 24-metre cliff and hit the ground… away from a cushioning air bag.” A lighting tech’s firsthand account of the stunt can be found here. I remember thinking this fall looked pretty goddamn realistic in the film, and I’m horrified at the possibility that the filmmakers left the scene in the movie.

(Poster images via movieposter.com)