The Faceless God

A thousand torches burned under a thousand stars in the moonless night of the desert, the light shining on the sand dunes turned to steel in the deep blue silver. In the wide open space, between two pillars of stone carved with ancient glyphs, two great clans of nomads met beneath a banner of truce. Banners fluttered in the night breeze, and light glinted on a thousand swords and a thousand spearpoints among the gathered hosts.

Beneath a black hawk standard were the war-lords of the Muzur Clan, hardened warriors and raiders led by their towering, one-eyed chief, Ayyut. Across the flame-lit space before him awaited the men of the Emru Clan, led by their young chieftain, the tall, handsome Izil, son of a great father, now gone down into death to leave his only son to command his people. The banner that hung over him was an ancient one, emblazoned with a red serpent coiled upon itself.

Riders came forth and erected a great pavilion there in the darkness, and they hung it with ornate lanterns and lit the oil so the canopy glowed with a warm radiance. The sides were drawn up, so that all might see there was no treachery, and no assassin might lurk. All was done beneath the watchful eyes of thousands of warriors, for these clans were mortal enemies, and did not trust any motive of the other.

Izil had called this gathering, and so he rode forth first, a dozen of his greatest warriors in his guard. He dismounted from his horse and entered the tent. A seat was brought for him, and he sat down on it, his sheathed sword across his knees. He drew off his brazen helm and set it down beside him, and he waited.

KRULL

The early 80s saw a boom in fantasy and effects films, brought on by the success of Star Wars, which had opened up the floodgates for movie projects that might previously have been considered unfilmable. In much the same way the birth of CGI effects in the 90s led to many movies going into production because there were new possibilities for doing the visuals, the early 80s were a time for experimentation.

Krull is one of the stranger films in the fantasy canon, as it does not draw upon any established mythology or history, but presents an entirely fantastical world, and it also includes some elements of Science Fiction and even Horror in ways not usually done, and it does it all with a lot of energy and some really innovative visuals.

A British production, Krull was directed by Peter Yates, director of solid action/thrillers like Bullitt and The Deep. He was never known as an especially adventurous craftsman, but he saw the script (Originally The Dragons of Krull) as a chance to stretch out and try new things.

The script is pretty much the usual tropey fantasy junk that was passed off in dozens of 80s movies, with the One True Hero riding off to Rescue The Princess with the power of the yadda yadda yadda. Prince Colwyn has a Wise Mentor, a comic-relief Inept Wizard Sidekick, and a trademark Ragtag Band Of Freedom Fighters. There’s nothing you have not seen in a dozen other movies, though there is some interest in the cast. Krull features early parts for both Liam Neeson and Robbie Coltrane, and also gave Alun Armstrong his first widely-seen feature role.

Even with a decent amount of star power, you can’t say the performances are very good. Ken Marshall tries gamely, but he’s just not very charismatic in the lead role. Lysette Anthony is gorgeous to look at, but she doesn’t have much to do, plus all her lines were dubbed over by Lindsay Crouse after filming was over. The late, great Freddie Jones is overacting like crazy as Ynyr, but at least he’s got some gravitas. His scene with the beautiful Francesca Annis as the Widow of the Web is the most affecting, genuine scene in the whole movie.

What really sets the movie apart, and has done a great deal to make it a cult classic, is the arresting and original art direction and the overtones of SF and Lovecraftian horror that color the story. The villain of the film is known only as “The Beast”, and he comes from outer space in his flying black fortress. His minions are the white-armored Slayers, who wield both blades and some sort of energy weapons, and when killed they collapse and some kind of worm or slug emerges from their skulls and burrows into the earth. Ew.

The Beast himself, when he is revealed, is a towering, misshapen figure with pulsing, gelatinous skin and glaring red eyes. He can read minds, change his shape, and seemingly controls the very form of his fortress, causing it to shift and alter in some startling ways. The interior design of his tower is really cool, drawing on Giger and Bosch to create weird, organic landscapes like nothing else in film. The whole design adds a layer of strange grandeur to the scenes within the fortress, and creates an air of mystery and Lovecraftian gulfs of unknown time and space.

Another plus is the epic, sweeping score by James Horner, who was then just beginning to break out, and his lively, swashbuckling work really adds another dimension to the movie. It’s the kind of lush, string-and-horn heavy score that sounds like a cross between a Robin Hood movie and a Space Opera.

The movie was famously expensive, the budget ballooning to $30 million in 1983 money (equivalent to about $75 million today) largely due to sets and costumes having to be redesigned as the script was constantly rewritten. It points up that in the early days of big-effects movies, directors did not yet understand the absolute necessity of previsualization and tight storyboarding to keep costs down. Plus, the effects crew was often trying techniques that no one else had ever used, and sometimes they didn’t work out and had to be either scrapped or redone. In places, the movie looks pretty rough, but you have to keep in mind that they were pretty much making shit up as they went along.

Despite a lot of effort spent to market it, Krull was a financial failure, and didn’t get many critical accolades either. A lot of the cast and even the filmmakers seem pretty embarrassed about it, but over time, it has built up a cult following among fantasy fans, and despite its flaws it engenders a lot of affection. Even now, the design and sets stand out, and present sights you won’t see anywhere else. Even though it looks cheap in places, it avoids the bargain-basement look of so many 80s fantasy movies, and having a villain from outer space is an original twist that I don’t think anyone else ever used. Even almost 40 years later, Krull still stands out.

The Dust of Fallen Ages

The sun cursed the skies over the endless sands of the Zaheh, turning the dunes into waves of gold and azure, the shadows deep as night. The day was failing, but not fast enough. Shedjia rode her camel across the barren landscape of a waste older than any kingdom, and she looked with her hawk’s eyes for a sign.

She was wrapped in black silks and linens, covered against the fierce heat of the day, only her eyes peering forth, heavily rimmed with kohl to cut the glare of the merciless sun. The winds moaned, and she listened uneasily, hoping she did not hear a voice utter her name. This place was forsaken by all men, wandered only by the desperate, and the dead. She was one, and she hoped not to join the other. A spirit caught in this trackless land would wander for an eternity.

Her beast was almost done, and she rode him as easily as she could, trying to keep him going as long as his strength would last. The pace of her journey had exhausted him, and he walked with his head down, and only occasionally did he give forth one of his ugly, groaning cries.

At the top of a dune she looked back, squinting through the heat shimmer, and she saw them there. Riders followed her faint track across the sand. There were perhaps a dozen of them, she could not say for certain. She cursed all gods living and dead, for no one would follow her in this waste for a gentle cause. They were marauders come to sell her into slavery, if they did not cut her throat first. The kinds of bandits who haunted this part of the world would be the lowest, most feral kind. Madmen of the desert.

Perhaps she had been mad as well to ride here, to seek a treasure she risked everything to obtain. Like any gamble, if she won she would seem brilliant and courageous, and if she failed the sands would swallow her bones. She had carried out many thefts – enough to make her half a legend – but nothing compared to this. Now she hunted through the ruins of an empire so old its very name was a legend, and she sought a jewel so fabulous it should not exist.

The Last Witch Hunter

This is very much a Sword & Sorcery movie that bucks the standard by setting itself within the modern world, pushing the question of whether an S&S story has to be set in a fantasy world. I will maintain that this movie is set in a fantasy world, it’s just one that superficially resembles our own.

The movie opens in a poorly-defined “dark ages” which we can gather from later context is supposed to be sometime in the 1200s. Humanity is at war with an elder race called “Hexen” - which is a Germanic word for “witch”, though we are given zero indications where this all is supposed to be happening. Vin Diesel stars as Kaulder – which is not a real name, and the cognate “Calder” is a Scottish name. So this is just some vague “Europe in the dark ages”.

Anyway, we see the big showdown between Kaulder, his companions, and the Hexen, or witches they came to fight. The evil tree that serves as the lair of the Witch Queen looks amazing, and the digital painters do a great job with the backgrounds, giving it a really evocative look. The battle is a bit confusing, but in the end it seems like Kaulder is the sole survivor, who stabs the Witch Queen and she curses him with immortality as she dies. We later find that none of this is true, but that’s later.

Then the movie cuts to modern New York, where Kaulder has become a figure that would be very familiar to fans of the pulp heroes of the 30s. Vin always kind of plays the same character in his starring roles, but this time it works. Kaulder is like other pulp luminaries like Doc Savage or the Spider, as he is always the coolest, toughest, smartest guy in the room. He’s rich, lives in a cool apartment, and all the chicks want him.

Kaulder has spent 800 years as the “or else” of a human brotherhood that made a truce with the witches, and now, so long as they behave, he lets them go about their business. But of course there are always witches who say “fuck that” and start trouble, so Kaulder always has lots of opportunities to stab people with his flaming sword.

The look of the movie is pretty good, even if some of the CGI is iffy-looking. The sets they built and the locations used range from good to great, and the cinematography is excellent. The cast is solid, with Micheal Caine, Elijah Wood, and Rose Leslie on hand. Even if Caine is kind of phoning it in, he lends dignity to the proceedings, and Leslie is quite good as the gothy witch girl Chloe, who kind of becomes Kaulder’s sidekick.

The handling of magic in the plot is varied and imaginative, with witches using magic stones, runes, powders, herbs, incantations, and other methods that all look cool and have their own effects. It’s a bit too complex to work completely in a movie, when you don’t have time to really lay out the rules very well, but I appreciate that they did more than just have them throw CGI lights at one another, and the magic has some echoes of real-world witchcraft to give it texture. Magic is also depicted as being an inborn power, a connection to a vast and dangerous force that is inevitably dangerous to humans.

Overall, it’s a really fun ride of pure pulp entertainment. It’s doing what it wants to do, and nothing else, and so if you go in expecting something besides a pulpy adventure, you will probably be disappointed. If you are in the right mindset, however, you will have a good time. It wasn’t that well reviewed, and did rather poorly financially, which is a shame, as this kind of character always works best as a serial.

The Last Witch Hunter certainly fulfills some of the criteria of Sword & Sorcery. Kaulder is definitely in the mold of an S&S hero, and he is not a black and white, moral character. He’s driven by revenge for his slain family, but also has an ambiguous relationship with both his ostensible foes and the people he serves. Magic is shown as dangerous and unknowable – an inhuman power that only witches can use. The theme of man fighting for survival against a prehuman race is very much in the tradition of Howard and Moorcock, and the idea of a secret war carried on against a hidden enemy for centuries has echoes of “The Shadow Kingdom” and similar pulp tales.

The world-spanning stakes and modern setting are the elements least compatible with S&S, and there could definitely be more straight-up violence in the movie, but overall, this is a film that Sword & Sorcery fans should find a lot of good stuff in, and I have hopes it will find a niche as a cult classic down the line.