Here's an interesting failure: goremeister Lucio Fulci's take on a fantasy film is packed full of excessive and disgusting violence guaranteed to bring up the lunch. Otherwise, it's a poorly-shot, poorly dubbed and poorly edited epic which relays the most simplistic of stories and tells it like it's something phenomenal and important. Sadly Fulci's decision to shoot some of the film through a gauze - in order to give it an appropriately other-worldly look - means that it's difficult to see what exactly is going on for a lot of the time. This spoils what is otherwise a fun film to watch. It's not in the least bit original, however; Fulci's two main influences seem to be CONAN THE BARBARIAN (inevitably) and the little-scene prehistoric gore flick MASTER OF THE WORLD from which all the head-cracking and brain-scooping is inspired.
The show-stopping opening sees an innocent woman being captured by beast-men (who look like Chewbacca rather than anything resembling convincing) and then dismembered. Her severed head is taken to the evil chief, a woman known as Ocron who looks quite the part, naked, covered in gold paint and wearing a weird kind of mask. Ocron proceeds to bang a hole in the head and devour the brains inside - it's clear that Fulci puts his trademark gruesomeness into this film from the very beginning. From then on, we're introduced to the two leads, one a long-haired lout who is in touch with nature, the other a foppish kid who's handy with a bow and arrow. More baddies are spiked and clubbed than you can shake a stick at, often spilling blood as they do so. Any hits with blunt instruments also result in gouts of blood splashing everywhere.
For his fantasy landscape, Fulci tints the sky red and shoots in an eerie, desolate moor land – the isolated setting is one of the film's best aspects and to the film's credit, a lot of the atmosphere comes from the backgrounds. This does generate some atmosphere, and it's just a shame that the world Fulci and his fellow producers created is hidden behind a white mist (or looks to be) for much of the film. Some crisp cinematography would have done wonders for this film and lifted it no end. Still, there are a lot of basic thrills to enjoy here; plenty of battles between good and evil and even some cheesy computer effects thrown in, which is pretty much par for the course for any low budget fantasy or sci fi flick of the 1980s. Fulci even finds time to throw in a cool zombie interlude which sees a load of marsh-strewn corpses wake up to attack our do-gooders and then get staked (perhaps they got confused with vampires).
Other highlights see a poisoned man erupt with festering boils which then proceed to spill gooey slime everywhere - it's absolutely disgusting! The acting from the likes of muscle-bound Jorge Rivero (DAY OF THE ASSASSINS) and Andrea Occhipini (A BLADE IN THE DARK) is pretty hopeless, but Sabriana Siani (who made a career out of Italian fantasy flicks with this, THRONE OF FIRE, ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE and many others) is a pleasingly unconventional villainess. The blood is always flowing thickly and freely which make this bizarre outing worthwhile. It's not a good film perhaps, but certainly an entertainingly bad one just because it's so different.
The show-stopping opening sees an innocent woman being captured by beast-men (who look like Chewbacca rather than anything resembling convincing) and then dismembered. Her severed head is taken to the evil chief, a woman known as Ocron who looks quite the part, naked, covered in gold paint and wearing a weird kind of mask. Ocron proceeds to bang a hole in the head and devour the brains inside - it's clear that Fulci puts his trademark gruesomeness into this film from the very beginning. From then on, we're introduced to the two leads, one a long-haired lout who is in touch with nature, the other a foppish kid who's handy with a bow and arrow. More baddies are spiked and clubbed than you can shake a stick at, often spilling blood as they do so. Any hits with blunt instruments also result in gouts of blood splashing everywhere.
For his fantasy landscape, Fulci tints the sky red and shoots in an eerie, desolate moor land – the isolated setting is one of the film's best aspects and to the film's credit, a lot of the atmosphere comes from the backgrounds. This does generate some atmosphere, and it's just a shame that the world Fulci and his fellow producers created is hidden behind a white mist (or looks to be) for much of the film. Some crisp cinematography would have done wonders for this film and lifted it no end. Still, there are a lot of basic thrills to enjoy here; plenty of battles between good and evil and even some cheesy computer effects thrown in, which is pretty much par for the course for any low budget fantasy or sci fi flick of the 1980s. Fulci even finds time to throw in a cool zombie interlude which sees a load of marsh-strewn corpses wake up to attack our do-gooders and then get staked (perhaps they got confused with vampires).
Other highlights see a poisoned man erupt with festering boils which then proceed to spill gooey slime everywhere - it's absolutely disgusting! The acting from the likes of muscle-bound Jorge Rivero (DAY OF THE ASSASSINS) and Andrea Occhipini (A BLADE IN THE DARK) is pretty hopeless, but Sabriana Siani (who made a career out of Italian fantasy flicks with this, THRONE OF FIRE, ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE and many others) is a pleasingly unconventional villainess. The blood is always flowing thickly and freely which make this bizarre outing worthwhile. It's not a good film perhaps, but certainly an entertainingly bad one just because it's so different.