Bert I. Gordon | Lasers, monsters and barbarians oh, my!

1962

Directed by Bert I. Gordon (oh, dear) maker of crap with lots of big people and big monsters. Actually he made one B film I really kind of like, I won’t spoil the surprise but I’ll review it here at some point.

Gary Lockwood as Sir George the lovesick not so spectacular knight (?) on a quest of some sorts. Best known as Gary Mitchell in the “Where no man has gone before” episode of Star Trek and as Frank Poole in 2001: A space odyssey.

Basil Rathbone as Lodac an evil wizard who appears to be wearing hand me downs from a gypsy woman. You of course no know best from the great series of Sherlock Holmes film playing the best detective of all time.

Estelle Winwood as Sybil who raises George and on occasion does some magic while a comedy soundtrack plays on. You have no doubt seen her tons of stuff from the Batman TV series to Mel Brooks the Producers. She acted regularly for 45 years and lived to be 101.

Anne Helm as Princess Helene a princess who gets captured by evil guys and then….well that’s of what she does. She acted fairly regularly in TV from the late 50’s up until about 1980.

Liam Sullivan as Sir Branton a brave poof haired knight who talks a good game but like most everything else in this film bored the crap out of me. Sullivan was a character actor who was in tons of show including the Twilight Zone, Dallas, Magnum P.I. and tons more.

I could pretend to slay a really lame dragon with this baby.

What’s this about? The less you know the better, but I guess you want to know. The princess Helene is taken by Lodac and everyone is upset. Poor George gets Sybil to give him powerful weapons and six not real knights to help him on his quest to get the princess. He’s supposed to face seven curses and I lost track along the ways as the real curse was trying make it through this film. George and his knights are joined by Sir Branton who puffs his chest out a lot and has a streaky star design of some sorts on said chest-oh, shiny. Branton *spoiler* is actually a heel (gasp) and he’s in legue with Lodac (the fiend) so he’s trying sabotage the knights. George and his group of ethnic armor played associates take on a rubber masked giant/ogre/ cheap werewolf looking thingie who crowls a lot. They also run into a she-beast who changes from beauty to rubber faced crone. Oh and there is a pit of bubbling water-oh the horror! Aw yeah and there are some crazed leper/zombie looking gentleman who stumble around attempting to look scary. So apparently curses come in the economy version too. So George knights get picked off on the way to the castle, but George is a such a brave soul he will go after the princess on his own. Lodac is ready for him as he goons including hawk nose goons, lumpy faced goons and my favorite the coneheads-way ahead of Saturday Night Live. George and Helene are in for it now-oh whatever shall they do. Lodac gets his powerful ring from Branton and as evil does he turns on Branton and puts his head on the wall. Not in a cool chop your head off and mount kind of way but rather in a limp flick of the wrist and poof there’s his mug on the wall kind of deal. Anyways all this hemming and hawing gives Sybil a chance to get there to help. Then George has to fight the most immobile dragon ever. George wins (boo) and in all that commotion or dry filler Sybil gets the ring from the hook nosed baddie. She promptly turns herself into a huge cat and mauls Lodac.Good has triumphed well good as it is here not good in movie form since there is very little good here. George and Helene return and marry plus thegood knights that were killed are unexplicably back and unharmed. Whatever-roll the credits.

The negatives-Jason and the Argonauts was a great film because it had a fantastic hero, a cruel villain, a strong plot, plenty of action and great special effects. The Magic Sword tries to be the same kind of film, but other than the cruel villain they have none of the above. My seven year old summed this movie up when he said “it’s like the knights ride around and fight a bunch of nothing, it was really boring”.

The positives-It’s a very colorful movie with some alright sets. Plus we get Basil Rathbone. A past his prime Rathbone who looks ashamed to be in this film, but still it’s Rathbone and he tries here, he really does.

There you go.