By
Hank Reineke
The
Magic Sword (United Artists, 1961) is essentially an
imaginative re-telling of the ancient folklore fable of St. George and the
Dragon. Of course, this being a Bert I.
Gordon production, you can safely bet there’s going to be any number of massive
scale monsters lurking about as well. Gordon’s stock-in-trade (beginning with The Amazing Colossal Man in 1957) were back-projected monsters who -
more often than not - suffered from radioactive-induced bouts of gigantism. In this
fantasy-adventure film, there’s no radioactivity to blame but there are
nonetheless giant monsters a-plenty.
St. George is now merely Sir George (Gary Lockwood), a
love-struck, somewhat depressed teen. The
young man resides in a cramped red-tinted cave along with his sorceress foster
mother Sybil (Estelle Winwood), a chimpanzee, and a two-headed servant. George’s biological parents perished in the
plague, and ever since he has been selflessly reared and doted upon by his
good-hearted foster mom. He’s
romantically mooning over the beautiful Princess Helene (Anna Helm) whom he has
actually never met. He watches over her breathlessly
– and maybe just a wee creepily - through his “Pool of Magic.â€
It’s a good thing he did in this case as the Princess finds
herself in trouble from the start. Helene
is kidnapped in broad daylight by an emerald-eyed ghostly apparition who then spirits
her away to the castle of the evil sorcerer Lodac (Basil Rathbone). Lodac defiantly appears before the King
shortly after the abduction of the princess, explaining to his Highness that the
royal daughter is now his prisoner… and will be fed to his fire-breathing dragon
in seven days’ time unless rescued. This
grudge is payback for the King’s father having executed Lodac’s eighteen-year
old sister for the crime of witchcraft. If the princess is to be saved, Lodac reminds the court that any brave
knight choosing to embark on the mission will have to endure seven deadly
trials as they undertake the “Perils of the Dark Journey†to his castle.
The court’s bravest knight, Sir Branton (Liam Sullivan)
wants to take this challenge alone, but is forced to become only one of a posse
when Sir George and an international band of black magic resurrected knights
arrive to assist in the rescue to the Princess. On their way to Lodac’s castle, the company will face such terrors as a
wolf man-looking ogre, the “boiling crater of death,†a treacherous hag, a
fireball spiral, a cavern of ghosts and several other unpleasant obstacles in
their attempt to rescue the Princess from her designated fate. I imagine it’s no spoiler to comment that
with each new dark challenge, members of Sir George’s rescue party dwindle rapidly
in number.
Yes, it’s all very hokey, but I really enjoyed this
film. Basil Rathbone is wonderfully evil
throughout. Clad entirely in black,
caped and sporting a devilish red head scarf, the actor’s famously clipped
British pronouncements include such melodramatic wicked lines as “I don’t bargain with mortals, I destroy them!†It’s worth mentioning that this old-school
film is refreshingly devoid of any moral equivalencies. The bad guys are really bad in this movie,
and the good guys are really good… if not always all that bright in their words
and action. Truth be told, Gary
Lockwood’s Sir George comes off as bit of a simpleton. If it wasn’t for the magic sword and shield
he was gifted with prior to his setting out this film… well, I imagine this
film would have had a much shorter running time than it does.
It’s true that many of the film’s effects are somewhat
dated, some of the acting overly-melodramatic and stiff, but this is, by and
large, a pretty rousing, swashbuckling adventure. The materials used to produce this new Blu-ray
from Kino are virtually flawless, the source print exhibiting nary a
blemish. The film will certainly appeal
to nostalgic adults, the sad boomers amongst us who grew up with such nonsense
as this. But even in these cynical times the film has a surprising timeless
appeal and can still entertain a contemporary family audience as well. For the most part the film’s visual effects
are imaginative and impressively well executed, especially when one considers
the era and budget constraints. Some of
the effects might prove frightening to younger children, the film parading any
number of grotesque creatures across the screen. There’s even a dollop of low-core gore sprinkled
about. The inhabitants of Lodac’s castles, never explained and appearing on-screen
mostly as background decoration, are a collection of cone-heads, bird-beaked
creatures, clutching dwarves, and white-faced ghouls.
Actor Liam Sullivan, who plays the court’s treacherous knight
Sir Branton, recalled production on The
Magic Sword moved at a brisk pace, principal photography lasting a scant
three weeks. His memories of the
production, shared in Tom and Jim Goldrup’s book The Encyclopedia of Feature Players of Hollywood (Bear Manor, 2012),
were mostly confined to listening with great pleasure to Basil Rathbone’s
legendary stories between takes and to playing – and consistently losing – at
bridge with actress Estelle Winwood. He
also recalled that he was unexpectedly taken down with a sudden attack of
laryngitis within the first four days of shooting. Since producer Gordon was, in Sullivan’s
estimation, “a man that did things as cheaply as possible†he was not about to
re-shoot four days’ worth of sequences with a replacement actor, so the actor
was advised to emote in a hoarse whisper with the expectation of his being
available for dubbing at production’s end.
Principal shooting for The Magic Sword took place on the 2oth Century Fox lot in Hollywood
and in and around the various caves and caverns of Bronson Canyon. The now dimly remembered monster movie
magazine, Fantastic Monsters of the Films,
was one of the few publications to offer any detailed reportage on the films’
production. The movie was given an
appetizingly generous, non-mystery-cloaked pictorial spread in its debut issue
of 1962, exploiting several of the more fearsome and bizarre creatures that
would feature in the film. The magazine
described Gordon’s new spectacular as the producer’s “most ambitious project to
date†and offered that bringing the spectacle to the big screen had involved
“eighteen months of exhaustive planning.†Most of this planning would have surely included the construction of the
fearsome two-headed dragon who appears near the film’s climax. It was reported the model of the creature
took nearly four months to construct, was some twenty feet in length and was
“operated manually by six men on the inside.†On screen, the dragon’s scale appears as a more monstrous 150 feet in
length… and that’s not to mention its fire breathing capabilities.
In a likely apocryphal tale, Gordon told the reporter from
Fantastic Monsters that he non-superstitiously
began filming on the 13th day of the month and followed that up with
a cast and production party on the thirteenth day of shooting… which happened
to be Friday the 13th. A cursory look
through a period calendar clearly exposes the tale as pure ballyhoo, but it made
for a great story as long as no one fact-checked. It must be said that, unlike some other of
Bert I. Gordon’s films, this particular film doesn’t look cheap or
slapdash. The sets and locations are
handsomely dressed and decorated. Having
Paul Vogel, an Academy Award winning veteran Director of Photography, lens the
film didn’t hurt either. He and Gordon,
who also directed, certainly were successful in capturing the film’s gloomy,
foreboding atmosphere.
United Artists did their best to push the film, taking
out a two page spread in every trade magazine aimed at motion picture
exhibitors. Since The Magic Sword was, in essence, a children’s film – though one
with cross-generational appeal in 1962 due to the presence of the great
monsters - the studio hyped the release as “Box Office Magic for Easter.†They
were hoping to bring in a good sized audience of matinee patrons since many
schools would be out for spring recessionals. UA was planning on a fairly major dump of the film on the mass-market,
excitedly announcing their plan for “territorial saturation booking†in “Atlanta,
Buffalo, Columbus, OH, Denver, Indianapolis, Kansas City, MO, Los Angeles,
Memphis, New Orleans, Norfolk, Omaha, San Francisco, Portland, OR, St. Louis,
Salt Lake City and Pittsburgh.â€
The pressbook for The
Magic Sword encouraged theater operators to run the film for a teenagers at
special midnight screenings that would include impromptu dance parties. A fifteen cent comic book adaptation was
scheduled to be published by Dell Publishing to coincide with the release of
the movie. For those with deeper
pockets, serious fantasy fans could purchase a replica of Sir George’s magic
sword Ascalon. If you had eight dollars to spare, the toy
replica of the sword was a true gem. The
weapon’s Lucite handle housed an internal flashlight, its guard was bespectacled
by multi-colored stones, and the title of the film was imprinted upon its long
blade.
Upon its release in April of 1962, The Magic Sword was the top-bill of a double feature that also
included Minotaur – The Wild Beast of
Crete, an appropriately dubbed-for-the-U.S.-audience Italian sword and
sandal epic from 1960. As the film
lurched into secondary markets later that summer, it was still being promoted
as the main attraction - though now paired with The Mighty Ursus, yet another Italian peplum, this one also dating
from 1961. By October, The Magic Sword had slipped into the
support slot of a double-feature program, appearing as the under bill to the
Chuck Connors’ western Geronimo. If
you weren’t a movie-going child in 1962 your introduction to The Magic Sword was likely through the
subsequent and occasional resurrection of the film on television. This is a charming film that’s worthy of
discovery or, in my own case, of a rediscovery.
This Blu-ray edition of The Magic Sword from Kino Lorber Studio Classics features a brand
new 2K master of the film with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio in 1920x 1080P and DTS
sound. Bonus features include an audio
commentary track by film historian Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog magazine) and comic book artist/indie filmmaker
Larry Blamire. The set also features
original trailer from The Magic Sword,
as well as trailers for other fantasy adventure films as Jack the Giant Killer, Arabian
Adventure and Sinbad of the Seven
Seas.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER FROM AMAZON