THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER (1982)
Article 4512 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 4-22-2014
Directed by Albert Pyun
Featuring Lee Horsley, Kathleen Beller, Simon MacCorkindale
Country: USA
What it is: Sword and Sorcery, what else?

An ambitious tyrant plans a coup to take over the entire civilized world, but he must face the vengeful son of a king he killed, as well as a sorcerer he betrayed.

The opening scene, in which a group of men invade a tomb and resurrect the sorcerer, is a wonderful sequence; if the rest of the movie had lived up to this scene, it would have been a winner. Unfortunately, after the first twenty minutes or so, the movie starts to fall into a sequence of rescues, failed rescues, bloody mayhem, torture, and occasional touches of swashbuckling lightheartedness, and though there’s lots of action, the thing gets rather tedious. This was the first directorial effort from Albert Pyun, and for a first movie, it’s not too bad. Still, it’s the type of movie for which I need a solid story to hold my attention, and on that level it’s pretty trite. The movie promised a sequel called TALES OF THE ANCIENT EMPIRE; Pyun would eventually get around to making one called TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE three decades later.