What some good sword and sorcery movies? Any given value of "good" that isn't "so bad it's" Give me your deep cuts, your Hollywood runoff, your Turkish Conan, your Bollywood Beastmaster.
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I've always enjoyed Yor: Hunter from the Future(1983)'s blend of traditional barbarian movie elements with a -spoiler- sci-fi twist in the 3rd act. Start off fighting dinosaurs and end fighting Darth Vader. Oh, and his theme song is great!
I'm a big fan of Ladyhawke. Your tolerance for wisecracking young Matthew Broderick and prog-rock synth music may vary from mine, but it has a nifty plot, great cinematography, and Rutger Hauer is fantastic.
Mario Bava, one of the great Italian horror directors, did an obscure but terrific fantasy/beefcake flick called Hercules in the Haunted World that is extremely worth your time.
Warrior and the Sorceress is some clearance rack cheese but if you want Yojimbo with David Carradine set in a crusty medieval fantasy backlot then you're in luck
Hopefully some of these match your fantasy flick taste.
The Green Knight
Nimona
Army of Darkness
The Northman
Legend
Vampire Hunter D (1985)
The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf
Dragonheart
The Forbidden Kingdom
Bahubali: The Beginning
1 on imdb: it's a serbian forklift safety video or something. no one watched this
2-4: 12 people watched it and 8 of them really hate women for some reason
5 on imdb: dared to have a budget below 5 million
6-7: yep, it's a movie
8-9: newish Diz tentpole release
10: beloved classic
If you accept flying heroes and martial arts "powers" as sorcery, then Hero, starring Jet Li, is one of the most beautiful Sword and Sorcery movies of all time.
I don’t know if Bakshi’s “Wizards” counts as what you’re after, but it’s a deeply strange fantasy that commingles animated fantasy and the history of fascism.
Honestly Barbarians is really fun/stupid and looks incredible. It's the closest cinematographically to a Vallejo painting that we will ever see. And it's SO dumb and silly. It rules
Can’t go wrong with a trashy Barry Prima movie. He fights alligator men that jump out of a lake in a reverse shot and wear costumes pretty clearly made out of old tires.
"So bad it's good" is such a useless nebulous term but I guess for me it means movies that you laugh at without any real, genuine, non-ironic affection. I have a lot of affection for a movie that genuinely tries its hardest to be fun. Fun is good, no qualifiers.
I kinda lump that together with "guilty pleasure" with a definition of "you know objectively that this is not good but the charm overrides any objections so strongly and heavily that the qualitative assessment does not matter and in fact is beside the point."
Hell yeah we're on the same page. Generally '80s and early '90s wuxia pics give me the goods that I wish western sword & sorcery movies did. There's not much that compares to stuff like Zu Warriors, Buddha's Palm, Holy Flame of the Martial World, etc.
Pearl Chang Ling's Wolf Devil Woman (Taiwan, 1982), an absolutely bizarre adaptation of the same novel the rather better known Bride With White Hair (1993) is based on
Chang wrote/directed/starred in a number of other odd swordplay movies, found in a confusing mess of retitlings and edits
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SHE (1984)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koubGuN6A38
Dragonslayer
Sorceress
Fire and Ice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr7oipQkCfc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_and_Ice_(1983_film)
conan the destroyer and the jason momoa conan are both goofy but honestly not TERRIBLE terrible imo
Krull
Dragonslayer
as previously mentioned, Sword and the Sorcerer
The Green Knight
Nimona
Army of Darkness
The Northman
Legend
Vampire Hunter D (1985)
The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf
Dragonheart
The Forbidden Kingdom
Bahubali: The Beginning
2-4: 12 people watched it and 8 of them really hate women for some reason
5 on imdb: dared to have a budget below 5 million
6-7: yep, it's a movie
8-9: newish Diz tentpole release
10: beloved classic
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9ojYMDeiZ6Zb5OqK8XhgiDffs2qGmHCQ
https://youtu.be/GPSbOfX48HA?si=NL29VQ5rsZAf67GQ
Just realized THE BARBARIANS is streaming on Prime. I know what I'm doing tonight!
I love showing friends Vallejo and Bell paintings and then revealing how they're both jacked as fuck themselves.
HURRR. HURRR.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJi9zZqbJoY&list=PL_l6nUy0fLNaXn00Q8Gxf0TJceULBfO1a
Chang wrote/directed/starred in a number of other odd swordplay movies, found in a confusing mess of retitlings and edits
https://youtu.be/n7AS7ozgtAI?si=-Wl5oTLI8H-6hQVq