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Rating:  -
You'd have to call this "Yojimbo" meets "Kung Fu." Essentially a sword-and-sorcery remake of "Yojimbo/A Fistfull of Dollars" starring David Carradine, TWATS is remarkable faithful to its source material considering how many goofy in-jokes and hokey special effects it contains (the grizzled wandering swordsman played by Carradine is named Cain, for example). You probably need to be drunk or (heaven forbid) high to fully appreciate this film; but it has its moments of goofy fun, and its a must for completests who need to have every remake of "Yojimbo."
Rating:  -
The sword and sorcery genre that emerged in the early 1980s produced some good movies and even more bad ones. "Conan the Barbarian," Arnold Schwarzenegger's big break, serves as one of the better examples. In fact, his movie kicked off the Hollywood quest to run every successful new idea into the ground. And so they did, producing and distributing average fare like Albert Pyun's "The Sword and the Sorcerer" and the atrocious "The Warrior and the Sorceress." Starring the inestimable David Carradine--still recovering from his stint on "Kung Fu" in the 1970s--"The Warrior and the Sorceress" is schlock filmmaking at its cheesy worst. Carradine, whose weird public life is well documented, is one of those actors I have difficulty accepting fully. He does excellent work from time to time, but from the mid 1970s well into the 1980s (and perhaps, some would argue, into the present) he starred in loads of low budget films like Larry Cohen's "Q," "Deathsport," and "Death Race 2000." Undoubtedly, many of these films delight on some level yet they are hardly monuments to epic filmmaking. "The Warrior and the Sorceress" falls well below this category, a movie even fans of the sword and sorcery genre should forget.
"The Warrior and the Sorceress" resembles Albert Pyun's "Omega Doom," which in turn is a rip off of Akira Kurosawa's 1961 film "Yojimbo." It is amazing there are still filmmakers who will copy this film (Omega Doom was made in the late 1990s), but such is life. Why come up with a new idea when an old one will still draw in the dupes? I actually saw a few things to like in Pyun's effort. I saw little to enjoy in "The Warrior and the Sorceress." David Carradine plays Kain (!), a knight of sorts from some defunct society of guardians who now roams the blasted landscapes of a destroyed world. He stumbles into a little village--no more than two fortresses, actually--where two warlords battle it out for possession of a well. Each leader is more or less evenly matched in men and supplies, leading to a frustrating stalemate that wily tricks and epic plans of action rarely overcome for long. The only real losers in this battle are the hapless gaggle of townspeople who must beg and scrimp for a mouthful of the precious water. We don't really know what is going on at first, and frankly, we just as quickly realize we don't care to know. Yes, it is that bad, but don't worry your head about it. By the time this clunker grinds to a halt, you will be able to endure anything life may throw at you.
Kain adroitly plays both warlords off each other. He approaches the warlord Bal Caz, a fat, grinning fool who keeps a talking lizard creature near at hand (!) and offers his services for a sack of gold. At the first opportunity, Kain defects to the other warlord, Zeg the Tyrant, for a similar sack of gold. Kain flip-flops back and forth, stirring up loads of trouble amongst the two rivals paid for in the blood of their underlings. From time to time a mob of slavers turns up to wreak havoc on the village, another group the knight uses to shake things up. The film reaches a painful nadir when Kain battles a "monster" in a prison cell, a special effect that looks like it was made out of giant pipe cleaners. What's the purpose of this exercise? Perhaps Kain wishes to democratize the village by freeing the townspeople of these murderous thugs so the water will quench more thirsts. Maybe he wants to make a load of money. Since there is a sorceress involved--a woman named Naja who stumbles around in the buff all the time--who makes vague allusions to some magical sword every chance she gets, perhaps Kain is merely seeking a grand weapon. It's all so cheesily done, so gratingly banal, that I could care less about Kain's motives. Even a "brutal" drowning, an amusing strip scene, and the battle sequences at the conclusion can't make this turkey fly.
"The Warrior and the Sorceress" fails on every level of moviemaking imaginable: the acting is laughable, the script should have been burned, the set pieces are a joke, and the pace absolutely drags. I think the movie only runs about eighty or so minutes but it felt like eons. Carradine looks embarrassed to be in this mess, and I cannot blame him when I think back to some of the humiliating scenes in the movie. Case in point: at the end of the film, a big battle rages over the water supply. The townspeople finally rise up to assert their rights and attack the soldiers standing guard over the well. Clearly visible are people falling down well after they were supposed to die. Ouch. It is this type of production values that elevate "The Warrior and the Sorceress" to the apex of mediocrity. Director John C. Broderick must have considered falling on his boom mike when he realized he crafted a disaster epic instead of an action film.
If you like a challenge, pick up the DVD version of the film. There isn't a lot in the way of extras, predictably, but there are a mess of sword and sorcery trailers for films like "Barbarian Queen" and several others. Many of these trailers point out a central fact concerning this particular film genre: sword and sorcery equals high cheese. If the makers of these films had aimed for camp, it might have been worth the effort. As it is, they now stand as monuments to inept filmmaking, and "The Warrior and the Sorceress" stands towards the top of the mountain in that regard.
Rating:  -
OK, there is enough cheese in this film to fill the Rose Bowl, but it's GOOD cheese.
Relax, suspend disbelief, and enjoy the four-breasted dancing girl, the fights, and some over-the-top evil overlords.
Rating: -
The Warrior and the Sorceress managed to adapt the story from Korosawa's YOJIMBO to fair effect, giving this movie's plot far more originality and coherence than most of New Concorde's Sword and Sorcery efforts from the '80's. The villains are more intelligent than most of their ilk, but it is the hero who proves to be the one-eyed man in the Kingdom of the Blind, as he proceeds to prod the badguys to self-destruction. Of course we have the full run of scantily clad ladies cavorting about (this is to be expected), as well as the obligatory epic battle at the end (which is par for the course), but hey this is a B-Movie Sword & Sorcery epic, you need these things in it.
The special effects were kept to a minimum, almost to the point of non-existance, with most of the effort expended on sets and costumes for the lizardmen. The props were (admittedly) rudimentary with only one or two outstanding examples of swords.
The acting was ... patchy, I believe is the best word. It might be that under another director the actors would have delivered a more consistent performance. The fight choreography and stunt work, well let's say you can tell they are trying not to hurt each other, but on the other hand Maria Socas was a definite pleasure to ogle, and her acting about on a par with her cohorts.
All in all, for what it was and what they had to work with, this is definitely a cut above the rest.
My final rating: OK (Wow, OK, Eh, Sigh, Blech, Ach Ptooey).
Rating: -
I normally love all this 'Sword and Sorcery' stuff, but was sadly let down by this dire film - for starters where was the sorcery, or `The Mighty Wizardry' as the review on the back of the cover calls it??? Not one spell, incantation, curse, enchantment or lightning bolt in sight throughout the entire movie. All there is to mention is a sword that can chop through an anvil (the one and only time you see this done is when it's made towards the end of the film).
The storyline, dialogue, acting, fight choreography and the sets are all terrible filled with a cast of characters that are instantly forgettable - you kind of wish at the end of the film that a huge fireball would come and engulf them all. It would certainly add to the enjoyment.
All in all, at a short 81 minutes this film felt too long to endure it all the way through, so do yourself a favour and don't bother.
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