St. George and the 7 Curses

"The Magic Sword" is one of B-movie producer/director Bert I. Gordon's best known films. Granted, it's no masterpiece, but it is enjoyable on it's own terms. The plot, very loosely based on the 'St. George And The Dragon' legend, has a princess (Anne Helm) kidnapped by evil sorcerer Lodac (Basil Rathbone) and hunted by lovesick George (Gary Lockwood). Aided by his foster mother Sybil (Estelle Winwood) a good witch, George vows to save the princess and destroy Lodac. Although this plot has been done to death, it's the acting by the splendid Rathbone and Winwood which keeps this film consistently entertaining. Add some modest, but impressive special effects, and you have a very entertaining minor adventure for the family. Beware: this public domain film is available on several cut-rate DVDs, but only the newly released one from MGM/UA home video is worth the price. They have a beautiful print of the film (it was originally released by United Artists) which contains a fun theatrical trailer. This is the one to get!

I was 7 years old when this movie came out, and although I didn't see it then, I bet I would have loved it. Swashbuckling knights, a quest, plenty of adventure, some pretty evil bad guys, and a few memorable creepy images. Of course, I wound up seeing it at the age of 47, and I have to admit it's for the most part pretty cheesy. Gary Lockwood and Anne Helm are so badly miscast it's hilarious, the attempts at humor are excruciatingly bad, the plot is kind of lumpy (the 7 curses don't seem to have any pattern to them), and so on. But hey -- some films are for kids and not adults, and this is about as good as you're going to get from Bert I. Gordon. Let's give him his due on this one.

Why a re people so unkind to this very funny fantasy. Any adult can tell it is not meant to be taken as some sort of 'magnificent spectacle'. Yes it is low budget but it knows it, and Basil and Estelle seemed to be having a very sly old time brewing potent hammy acting to fling at each other and the hopeful cast. Kids love this film even today; it has the sort of 'crummy but fascinating' manginess cheap color fantasies have. Does anyone remember those equally hilarious and ghastly 'storybook productions' like Mother Goose or Jack and the Beanstalk? Terrible but lovably hopeless and thoroughly entertaining. THE MAGIC SWORD even has a pre 2001 Gary Lockwood; boy I bet he's glad Kubrick saw something in him after this. Kubrick would have seen this, you know, I am sure he saw everything Gary Lockwood made before casting him in 2001. And he still hired him. Besides, MAGIC SWORD has the unforgettable Estelle Winwood. She is like Edward Everett Horton in a dress. Pantomime? Sure. Hilarious? Yes. Enjoyable? Thoroughly in its mangy matinée way. Can you believe I saw this on a double feature with SINK THE BISMARK! Such were kids matinées in Australia in 1962. The next week we saw CAPTAIN SINBAD which almost looks like the out takes of THE MAGIC SWORD.

A friend of mine lent me their copy of The Magic Sword, a 1962 film directed by Bert I. Gordon. While it's still fresh on my mind, I thought I would crank out a review.

The film is based loosely on the medieval legend of St. George and the Dragon, or so I read on Wikipedia. I don't know much about the legend myself, but I probably would after a bit of searching.

Anyway, the plot of The Magic Sword is your typical "brave knight goes on a quest to save a princess from an evil wizard" deal. The sword in the title has to do with the fact that the main character wields a sword that apparently has some kind of magical powers.

Despite the use of the tired old "save the princess" plot, the film itself is surprisingly good and was a lot of fun to watch. The acting is just a bit on the hammy side, but I think it's one of the things that made watching the film fun. The film moves along nicely from scene to scene and didn't seem to drag anywhere. The special effects, though a bit cheesy compared to what we're used to seeing these days, were still pretty good considering the time the film was done. The dragon effects near the end were really cool.

There might be a scene or three that might be deemed inappropriate for very young children. There's some boobage, though very brief, near the beginning (although the version I saw blotted it out with a mosaic... the bastards). A couple of other scenes were just due to some really disturbing makeup effects. Other than that, the film is pretty family friendly.

Overall I recommend this film. It was fun to watch and there was never a dull moment. But mostly because Basil Rathbone is such a badass as the evil wizard.

THE MAGIC SWORD (1962) is a fantasy film that enthralled me as a child when I sat in a Bronx theater with a packed house of kids on a summer afternoon. We talked about it for days afterwards and acted it out in our street games. As a grown-up, when I returned to it on TV, I may have found some of the effects less than convincing, particularly the dragon, but I still found the film quite engaging and consistently memorable. The images have a bold graphic quality reminiscent of the best comic book art. Each shot cuts right to its essential information and uses whatever low-budget means at the filmmaker's disposal--make-up, costumes, color, lighting, simple optical effects--to make the image stand out. In addition, there are strong performers on hand who have a kind of comic book/fairy tale aspect to them, e.g. Estelle Winwood, as the hero's spell-casting guardian; Basil Rathbone, as the sorcerer villain; and Vampira as a beautiful woman the knights meet on the road, who turns monstrous at a moment's notice.

The film is not afraid of grotesque imagery and doles it out in small, effective portions. As an adult I was struck by the horrific nature of some of the images, e.g. the withered old hag that Vampira turns into; the acid pool that yields up the skeleton of a victim who'd fallen into it just moments earlier; the burned, reddened skins of two of the knights as they're caught in some kind of intense sun ray. But as a child, I wasn't frightened by these images; they helped make the story more believable and more involving. Filmmaker Bert I. Gordon (THE AMAZING COLOSSAL MAN) was not afraid to show us the dark, gruesome side of this mythical tale. He wasn't trying to shield the kids in the audience the way bigger-budgeted Hollywood films of this stripe would have at the time (e.g., Harryhausen films like SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD and THREE WORLDS OF GULLIVER). There was an honesty to Gordon's approach that I think we, as kids, even without being able to articulate it, appreciated and respected. As an adult, I can't get this film out of my mind, while more recent spectacles like the overstuffed LORD OF THE RINGS are but a dim memory.