WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD (1991)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical*

I don't recall the origins of the phrase "How low can he go," though I associate it with the party game of limbo. But the phrase was practically made for Fred Olen Ray. Because he's so prolific, even when I see a truly wretched Ray production, I can't help but wonder, "But is this really the worst he can do?" WARLORDS and THE PHANTOM EMPIRE, both made in 1988, might have seemed the nadir of Ray's career to me at one point. But three years later, Ray directed (but did not write) this shot-in-four-days wonder, WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD, and it makes those two earlier films seem moderately entertaining.

I'll probably never know if SWORD is Ray's worst, but at present it now occupies my rating for the worst sword-and-sorcery film of all time. A gem called TIME BARBARIANS used to occupy that spot, but at least when I saw that one some twenty years ago, I could remember a few things that happened in it. I probably saw SWORD about the same amount of time ago, and it proved utterly forgettable. Absolutely nothing about the film had stuck in my mind, not even the constipated-seeming performance of CAROL BURNETT cast-member Lyle Waggoner as Khoura, whose machinations set the "plot" into motion.

Khoura is a wizard who occupies a castle (the not-yet-demolished set for Roger Corman's 1989 MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH remake) along with a handful of guards, toadying junior magician Omar (Jay Robinson), and fanatical henchwoman Selena (Dawn Wildsmith). Khoura wants to obtain the magical Knife of Aktar, which will make him sorcerer supreme. He captures the custodians of the Knife, aged Ulric (Russ Tamblyn) and his daughter Melina (Heidi Paine), but Melina-- who possesses some vague magical link to the weapon-- escapes, no doubt thanks to the lack of adequate guardsmen. Some warriors overtake the beleaguered girl, but by chance a wandering swordsman (Blake Bahner) wanders by and saves her. This is Thane, who will be forever heralded as the Worst Movie Swordsman of All Time, though it's hard to tell since everyone else in SWORD is just as awful.

So Thane and Melina wander around for a while, getting into trouble as Melina seeks the advice of the great Seer of Roebuck. Had the writers wanted to attempt anything remotely funny, they might have tried giving everyone punny names a la MAD MAGAZINE, but apparently one pun was all they could manage. Khoura doesn't take any major magical action to attack the fugitives, but Selena, who's his apprentice in the Black Arts, uses a ritual to send her spirit out of her body so that she can possess Melina's body. After Selena-Melina tries to make love to Thane so he'll drop his guard, she attacks him with a dagger, and he has to knock her out. Apparently Heidi Paine's contract allowed her to show mostly side-boob, which means that SWORD may be the first Ray film that managed to make dull the sight of a nude buxom woman.

This is about as exciting as the movie ever gets. Some of Khoura's henchmen finally overtake the duo and recapture Melina while leaving Thane tied up in the wilderness for wild animal fodder. Another swordsman, one Damon (Dan Speaker) happens along and frees Thane, but only to engage Thane in a duel to prove which of them can provide the worst swordplay. Back at the castle, we get to see a few more of the MASQUE sets as Khoura threatens Ulric and Melina, the latter being dolled up in dominatrix in preparation for torture. Fortunately for her, though not for the viewers, Thane and Damon show up to rout the villains, and Khoura is bested by a really ridiculous stratagem.

It's likely that the actors made up a lot of their anachronistic dialogue, but for once old pros like Michael Berryman and Lawrence Tierney seem just as disengaged with their roles as the young newbies. If I was forced to come up with two positive things about SWORD, the first would be that Jay Robinson alone seems to be trying to invest his oily manservant with a little integrity.

The other tiny asset is that SWORD provides viewers with a title even more meaningless than 1968's KING OF KONG ISLAND. That silly film, which is much more lively than SWORD, has frequently been parodied because it includes no island, no king, and no one named Kong. But SWORD is a much lousier movie, and it not only features a knife rather than a sword, there's nothing demonic about the weapon and there's really only one full-fledged wizard in the flick. But then Ray couldn't have conned many viewers with ONE WIZARD AND TWO APPRENTICES OF THE VAGUELY MAGICAL KNIFE.