How I Found The Warrior and The Sorceress
Picture this. You are a guy like me into these crazy B movies and you’re at a friend’s house who’s huge into eBay. He has found a couple of VHS tapes. The cover of one tape featured David Carradine as a barbarian. This DVD has the old Conan the Barbarian style art on it but Carradine in the place of Arnold. You know it – I had to find and watch The Warrior and The Sorceress. Let’s talk about this find.
Jedi Cloak Hides Kung Fu Body - The Poster
First things first, repeating myself, Carradine played a great kung fu wise man but, that’s it. We’re going to talk more about that later so, on to the cover art. On the cover, you have Carradine brandishing a sword. Every muscle in his body shows the mark of the juice. A beautiful damsel is in distress on the rocks below him. The first element of humor appeared, along with Carradine, in his black Star Wars cloak that he wears 98% of the movie. I suppose he had to cover that scrawny kung-fu body up that held no resemblance to the cover art. That damsel didn’t look quite the same either. There were no Instagram filters then but, there have always been artists.
Star Wars Influence
While we’re talking about Star Wars, let’s look at a couple of things in The Warrior and the Sorceress. Our choice movie for this blog, The Warrior and the Sorceress, was released in 1984 only one year after the classic Return of the Jedi. It’s really no wonder that they piggybacked off some ideas and designs. As I mentioned, you had the cloak but there were other things too. First, one of the bad guys was a very large man with a weird lizard/humanoid-type pet. He was carried around on a platform throne. Who does the remind you of? The gangster boss of Return of the Jedi, Jabba the Hutt. Also, there was a creature with a lot of tentacles called “the protector” in this movie. There was a strange resemblance to the Sarlacc, also from Return of the Jedi.
The Warrior and The Sorceress Meets Expectations
I didn’t go into this one expecting a classic so, I wasn’t really let down. I knew with Carradine not being in a kung fu role that there would be issues. He does use some swordplay and a little kung fu-ish fighting. Really, he uses more guile than anything in this movie and that is part of what makes the good parts good. The number of tricks used in this movie make the plot interesting and helps to hold your attention. Even the ending has a twist. Basically, three factions are fighting over a well. Carradine’s character, Caine, pits them against each other essentially. Certainly, what I expected in the end was not what I got from The Warrior and the Sorceress.
Not Deathstalker or Conan But Worth Seeing
If you are a fan of Sword and Sorcery genre movies, this is worth watching. Just know going in that it is NOT Deathstalker, and it is certainly NOT Conan the Barbarian or Conan the Destroyer. Every scene is the same scene, and the costumes are plain and poorly designed. David Carradine did not fit in a barbarian role and his lines are consistently stupid. Everything together though, it is not a bad sword and sorcery film. It could have been much better. I read on IMDB that this movie was fashioned from the idea behind Fist Full of Dollars which traced its original roots to a Japanese film named Yojimbo.
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