Ah...what have we here....yet another Conan The Barbarian rip off do I see?
Yes indeed and sadly not one of the better ones I might add.
Following the enormous success of the aforementioned pinnacle of the genre, it was inevitable that the market would be flooded with cheap cash-ins.
Now if there's one country in the world that seems to always be the fastest to leap onto any given cinematic band wagon, then it surely must be Italy.
And not just the fastest either, the Italian movie industry, especially in the late 1970's and early 1980's, was probably also one of the most prolific and could churn out seemingly hundreds of films on any given theme (the theme being usually dictated by what happened to be successful in Hollywood at the time) Take for instance the success of George A Romero's Dawn Of The Dead (which was released in Italy as 'Zombi') Within no time at all, enterprising Italian producers had released a whole slew of cheaply made (but often rather watchable) virtual copies of the film.
And so it came to pass (damn! - I sound like a Sword & Sorcery movie narrator now!) that with the remarkable success of Conan, Italian film producers, true to form, released numerous clones of their own.
Universally, all were woefully inferior to the original in pretty much every way and yet, one can't deny that there was a certain (cheesy) charm to many of them such as Joe D'Amato's, 'Ator The Fighting Eagle' starring one time Tarzan, Miles O'Keeffe.
Sadly Sword Of The Barbarians, whilst not totally without its merits, is hardly a particularly memorable entry in the genre.
There are all the usual trappings to be found here as in the other films of it's ilk i.e. topless maidens, torture and violent battle scenes (some of which are pleasantly gory) but overall this film feels distinctly lifeless.
It's a sad reflection in fact, that whilst watching this I found myself continuously looking at the video counter to see just how much more running time was actually left, as I was becoming increasingly bored with the unfolding on screen events.
Even the climatic battle between the hero and the main villain was handled in a rather hopelessly lacklustre manner.
Still, if you're a fellow fan of the Sword & Sorcery genre, then you'll no doubt want to see this and make up your own mind.
It's certainly not exactly a complete stinker of a movie (in fact it's quite amusing in a B-Movie sort of way), but it certainly doesn't warrant repeated viewings.
