'Look who's here.'
Welcome back to my Dark Corner of this Sick World.
‘Yeah, what do you want?’
The Warrior and the Sorceress is an unofficial remake of Sergio Leone’s Fistful of Dollars.
#Western Sting#
Which itself is an unofficial remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo,
so there really shouldn’t be much wrong with the plot.
‘Have you seen it?'
David Carradine is Kain, a lone warrior in an Eastwood poncho.
'I never was much for digging.'
That move makes sense if you have sidearm but your sword is on your back,
you’re just making it awkward to draw.
'I'm going to cut you in half.'
Now, although it looks likes this is set in the past it’s actually on an alien planet called Ura,
though I think we might as well call it Tatooine,
even has two suns,
but the basic plot remains.
‘Zeg the tyrant, that’s who. His enemy Balc az, lives there’
One village, two warlords,
‘Each of these scum pits his hired soldiers against each other for control of the well, it’s the poor villagers caught in between who suffer’
First we meet Balcaz the Hutt.
‘You will fight for Balcaz’
even has his own version of Salacious Crum.
Kain sides with him first killing the guards on the well belonging to the other warlord, Zeg.
The peasants, desperate for water, take their chance,
to have the medieval equivalent of a wet T short competition,
and you may notice as we go that the women’s costumes do have a very subtle tendency towards exploitation.
This is Naja, who has been imprisoned by Zeg,
which presumably explains her wardrobe.
Nope. Even after she’s rescued she is bare-breasted in ever scene in which she appears,
even when wearing a monk’s cassock.
Zeg is holding her because he wants her to create a super-weapon,
‘You’ve got one more chance to make me the sword of Ura’
and she and Kain clearly have some sort of connection,
‘There was a time when I could command’
‘And I would obey’
Kain rescues her from a creature, part Return of the Jedi’s Sarlacc,
part Little Shop of Horrors’ Audrey 2.
This makes Zeg, for whom Kain is now working, very suspicious,
‘How could this have happened’
after a brief period of total idiocy, and he sets a trap,
‘In honour of my new sword, I’ve ordered special entertainment'
It’s just a dancing girl.
Okay, fair enough, that’s special and one-up on Total Recall.
'You make me wish I had three hands'
'I think you are doing just fine with two.'
But two down on Return of the Jedi's Yarna d'al' Gargan.
#Orginal Lapti Nek song! None of this Special edition Jabba Rocks garbage.#
But that’s not all that makes this girl alien.
Kain is captured and beaten up, but escapes and is sure to get the last laugh because earlier...
‘Now if they lower a man down there they’ll think the well has gone dry’
So…
‘It’s drying up, this is all we could draw’
Which makes what happens next rather odd,
‘Take the well or die’
Balcaz doesn’t know yet but why the hell is Zeg fighting for a dry well?
The absence of water pushes the peasants past breaking point leading to the great Jawa revolt,
doesn’t go well.
Kain’s decision to drain the well has consequences I don’t feel anyone really pulls him up on.
And now someone else arrives in town.
This is Burgo the slaver, who did appear earlier but fairly briefly and now...
'Disarm him!'
‘What are you doing? I thought you were my friend’
Apparently not.
‘Slavers have no friends’
and maybe you want to ask yourself why that is.
Zeg already killed Balcaz,
both bad guys have now been killed and not by Kain,
who is now healed and Naja has knocked up a magic sword for him so he can confront… Burgo.
‘Master, Look!’
Obviously Burgo is a bad guy but in the context of the story he’s not the bad guy.
It drains the catharsis from a film when the good guy doesn’t actually take out the bad.
The only bad guy left is Zeg’s henchman Kief who Burgo has captured.
Burgo’s army charges,
'Kill him'
Then attacks one at a time,
and incidentally, that sword cut through an anvil a minute ago now I don’t see it’s having any effect at all.
Led by Naja the peasants join in the fight,
and free Kief. Purely so Kain can have a fight that actually means something,
Oh no, now Kief has the magic sword,
yeah, it’s useless.
On the one hand, it’s good Kain wins through skill and not cos he had the better weapon,
on the other where was the point in the whole sword and sorceress plotline?
‘She pleases me’
That’s actually it. It’s almost as if taking a very well-constructed story
and jamming in an extraneous plotline just so you can have a nearly naked woman run around for 80 minutes
wasn’t a good idea.
‘Stimulating, you agree?’
Thanks for watching.
To see an uncensored version of this review join us on Patreon as an acolyte.
It’s rare to find a story covered by two such great directors,
what are your favourite Kurosawa and Leone films. Let us know in the comments below.
'Come back to us.'