My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.
Sword and sorcery was never cheaper looking than in "Wizards of the Demon Sword", a poverty budget special by genre-meister Fred Olen Ray. Troma pickup is strictly a video title.
Filmed on trerrain familiar from B westerns and Hollywood serials of yore. "Sword" is actually about the knife of Aktar, supposedly able to unlock evil forces. Russ Tamblyn and his beautiful daughter Heidi Paine have been entrusted with its safekeeping. Evil Lyle Waggoner has captured Tamblyn, but Paine is on the loose.
Macho warrior Blake Bahner accidentally teams up with Paine and film limnsl their misadventures trying to spring Tamblyn. Slapstick and bad pusn are attempted repeatedly without success (a wise man who helps out the duo is named Seer of Roebuck).
Hambone acting, especially by heavily made-up Waggoner and his chief enforcer, Amazonian warrior Dawn Wildsmith, is fun, but the swordplay here is unimpressive. Cheap sets, stock footage and silly insert sequences of crudely done stop-motion animation of dinosaurs are serious drawbacks.
Dan Speaker, who devised the swordfighrts, is personable in tne buddy role opposite Bahner.
Sword and sorcery was never cheaper looking than in "Wizards of the Demon Sword", a poverty budget special by genre-meister Fred Olen Ray. Troma pickup is strictly a video title.
Filmed on trerrain familiar from B westerns and Hollywood serials of yore. "Sword" is actually about the knife of Aktar, supposedly able to unlock evil forces. Russ Tamblyn and his beautiful daughter Heidi Paine have been entrusted with its safekeeping. Evil Lyle Waggoner has captured Tamblyn, but Paine is on the loose.
Macho warrior Blake Bahner accidentally teams up with Paine and film limnsl their misadventures trying to spring Tamblyn. Slapstick and bad pusn are attempted repeatedly without success (a wise man who helps out the duo is named Seer of Roebuck).
Hambone acting, especially by heavily made-up Waggoner and his chief enforcer, Amazonian warrior Dawn Wildsmith, is fun, but the swordplay here is unimpressive. Cheap sets, stock footage and silly insert sequences of crudely done stop-motion animation of dinosaurs are serious drawbacks.
Dan Speaker, who devised the swordfighrts, is personable in tne buddy role opposite Bahner.