HAWK THE SLAYER (1980)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *good*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological*

I'm amazed that anyone would consider HAWK THE SLAYER a "bad" movie. It's certainly a cheaply made film, and it does have a glaring disadvantage in that its one "name" actor, Jack Palance, horribly chews the scenery in his role as the villain. But it's a well made film, which unlike most sword and sorcery films has strong plot-momentum and memorable characters.

(Side-note: I kept wondering why the filmmakers gave the bad guy the name "Voltan," which sounds like a combination of "volt" and the name of the Greek blacksmith-god. Then I realized that his name, and that of his heroic brother the titular Hawk, had very possibly been borrowed from the world of Alex Raymond's FLASH GORDON, whose adventures included a sojourn among the HAWKmen, who were ruled by Prince VULTAN. The association, conscious or not, may stem from the fact that in the comic strip, Vultan ends up rebelling against the reigning emperor of Mongo.)

The core conflict between Hawk (John Terry) and Voltan begins years before the action of the film proper. Voltan, the elder son of a king in some fantasy-realm, goes to war while Hawk remains behind. Voltan incorrectly believes that the Lady Eliane loves him, and in his absence Hawk and Eliane are married. Voltan believes that Hawk stole Eliane, and he kidnaps Hawk with the idea of forcing Eliane to surrender to him. When Voltan tortures his younger brother, Eliane strikes back by shoving a blazing firebrand into Voltan's face. Hawk and Eliane try to escape, but Voltan shoots Eliane dead with an arrow. For years thereafter, Hawk devotes himself to finding and killing his brother, but (in one of the less praiseworthy conventions) can't seem to find him. 

In the film's present-- also the first scene-- Hawk has returned to the side of his (unnamed) sire, but the younger brother is off to one side when Voltan, now wearing a half-helmet to hide his disfigured features,  ambushes their father, demanding a prized "elfen mind stone." The sire won't yield the stone to Voltan, and Voltan kills the old fellow and escapes before Hawk makes the scene. The sire then rejects primogeniture in favor of ultimogeniture, causing the mind-stone to imbed itself in the pommel of Hawk's sword. (Curiously, the pommel of Hawk's sword looks like a human hand, and a little later, one of Hawk's minor allies loses a hand.)

Voltan doesn't really seem to have any specific need for any magical stones, for he's in no way a sorcerer, though there's a mysterious unnamed mage who tends the warlord's wounds and who may be manipulating Voltan to covert ends. Voltan assembles an army of raiders and begins seeking the brother who stole Voltan's bride and his patrimony. But Voltan also needs money-- implicitly to pay the raiders-- so he raids a convent, kidnaps the revered Abbess, and holds her for a huge ransom. A swordsman named Ranulf (the guy who loses his hand) reaches the convent after this has happened, and the nuns direct him to a high priest, who in turn tells the guy to go looking for Hawk. Once Ranulf finds Hawk and lets him know what Voltan's doing, Hawk gets some help from a sorceress in order to assemble a small coterie of warriors with whom Hawk served in other adventures. Ranulf fades into the background as these more colorful allies join Hawk: a grim elf who (like Tolkien's Legolas) is a master archer, a dwarf who can use a whip really well, and a giant (actually just a really tall man) who wields a war-hammer. These three characters serve to give the film a little more human characterization, given that Hawk remains largely defined by his obsession to have revenge. (For instance, Hawk himself is humorless, so the script has the cunning dwarf pull some fast ones on the bluff, none-too-witty giant.) 

Most sword and sorcery flicks depend either on the location of some magical talisman to defeat some menace or on the rescue of some innocent from a tyrant. HAWK follows the latter pattern, but this time the innocent is a mature priestess rather than a sexy princess, so there's no suggestion that the hero is ever going to find a replacement for his lost wife. Indeed, Hawk's only payoff for his heroic action is his reunion with his fellow war-buddies, some of whom perish in the course of the adventure. The saving of the Abbess does not change anything about the fantasy-world; it's just presented as the right thing for heroes to do. However, Hawk still has a better outcome than Voltan, for his disfigurement prevents him from continuing his line (or at least he makes that claim). So he adopts a son, one Drogo, whose only action in the film is the attempt to betray his adoptive father-- showing that Voltan was not exactly good father-material no matter where he got his offspring from. The film of course ends with Voltan's defeat-- though the unnamed sorcerer makes noises about reviving the warlord-- while Hawk and his surviving friend (the "giant") depart for further adventures.

The biggest surprise about all the fights between Hawk, Voltan and their respective allies is how little the "mind-sword" affects the plot, though it does set Hawk free at a vital moment. Director/co-scripter Terry Marcel doesn't really expand on any of the magical aspects of his world, least of all the unnamed sorceress who is in part responsible for the good guys' triumph. But I grade the movie's mythicity high because the script maintains an interesting parallel between Voltan's losing out on both his bride and the mind-stone, which lack puts him in his own private hell. Despite Palace's over-acting, the sibling rivalry gives this film more psychological content than one usually finds in the cinema's attempts at sword and sorcery. HAWK THE SLAYER can't touch a deeply mythopoeic film like 1985's LEGEND, but it represents a decent "stab" (so to speak) at the genre.