Amicus Production’s Milton Subotsky gave us some of the most beloved B films of the 1960s and 1970s, including two of my all-time favorites: The Land That Time Forgot (1974) and The People That Time Forgot (1977). Too bad we were denied his sword and sorcery extravaganza that would have featured stop-motion animated “air boats,” “lizard-hawks,” “giant flying spiders,” and a “Dragon-God,” not to mention David “Darth Vader” Prowse in the role of the barbarian hero. Subotsky wanted to do a Conan movie very early on, possible as early as the late 1960s, but he couldn’t get the rights. He settled for Lin Carter’s copycat, Thongor.
The article, from Starlog #15 (August, 1978), has Thongor: In the Valley of the Demons slated for a July 1979 release, but it was not to be. Both Clash of the Titans and Conan the Barbarian were in development, and Subotsky couldn’t get the money he needed to compete with the talent involved (namely, Ray Harryhausen).
The first live action sword and sorcery movie was, instead, 1980’s Hawk the Slayer.
2 Warps to Neptune 
Man, this would have been so great even if it had been awful. Every kid would have seen it just to say the title. By the way, I’d argue that EXCALIBUR was the first sword and sorcery film of the 80’s as it came out before HAWK THE SLAYER. My Retro-View: https://technicolordreams70.wordpress.com/2008/07/01/retro-view-excalibur-1981/
My bad! EXCALIBUR was 1981! I remember watching HAWK THE SLAYER on its TV debut as I was a big D&D geek at the time.
Me too! We all pretended to have that machine-gun crossbow. Boorman did write a script in 1969 for a live action Lord of the Rings film:
https://2warpstoneptune.com/2014/09/11/john-boorman-and-the-making-of-excalibur-the-biggest-selling-game-in-america-is-something-called-dragons-and-dungeons/
That lizard critter would make Harryhausen proud. Hell, I wish he’d been superhuman enough to help with this project at the same time — that thing would be beautiful if he’d animated it.