They tortured me....... with machines.....I don’t believe in pleasure being guilty but there’s a hint of something not entirely worthy about liking sword and sorcery films. So I did try not to enjoy “King Arthur” on BBC1 just now. It got panned when it came out and now I regret not seeing it as it’s a huge trifle of a film, full of all the nonsense you want from the genre.
Let’s tick off the essentials for great Sword Sorcery film.
Spurious historical setting Tick
Rampant anachronisms Tick
Random mummerset accents Tick
Sketchy understanding of British geographyTick
Hot feisty fighting babes in artful leather gear and not entirely suitable for chilly Albion filmy gauze of the shoulder dresses (with strangely hot posh accents) Tick
Rubbish fake snow Tick
English character actors busily chewing the scenery Tick
Appeals to truth, beauty and nebulous freedom Tick
Ray Winston back to his “we use to be fast “Robin of Sherwood best “Do we have problem” indeed Tick
It even had a cool fantasy novel mapTick
Top stuff to look out for:
Stellan Skarsgård as mad eyed Saxon Fascist full of suitably glum Scandinavian gloomy depression and random violence.
A cool pet hawk nicked from 80’s classic the Beastmaster
Oh and some fighting on a frozen lake nicked from Serge Eisenstein
3 comments:
hmmmmmm I must admit I did enjoy it though...I quite liked the basic premise (trying to come up with a possible background to the Arthur legend) though the twee albionistic nationalism bit at the end was naff in the extreme and unnecessary
No don't get me wrong it had me beaming away . I can't see why it didn't take off and equally hammy Gladiator did. Now where's my copy of Krull ah it's over there underneath the Red Sonja VHS and my dragon heart press kit......
I've never seen King Arthur etc etc but I have seen 'The Beastmaster' several times...
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