Hawk the Slayer (1980)

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1. 

   nbats

   https://youtu.be/p159MJQ0vCo 1 year ago
2. 

   Siskoid

   Sometimes, on a full moon, kids playing D&D invest so much in their imaginary adventure, someone out there spontaneously turns it into a movie. At least that's what Hawk the Slayer feels like even if it doesn't have those origins (so far as I know, but the character types are very D&D Basic). Some performances are worth looking at - Jack Palance is of course pleasantly over the top as the villain, William Morgan Sheppard is great as one of the heroes, and Christopher Benjamin has a small part as a con man - but the hero himself has zero personality. I'd say even less than the robotic elf who thinks he's playing a Vulcan, but still playing it badly. It's an okay adventure, a bit too interested in the mechanics of assembling a party perhaps, but fine. It just doesn't have the means to show us its ideas. The magic looks ridiculous (a silly string spell?!), a giant is just a tall person and an iron dwarf just a shortish person, and most egregiously, the bloodless battles almost never show a hit happening. It's all "cut to result", making a hash of the editing. Not to mention the machine gun archery which just looks silly, though I don't entirely dislike it. And that disco score! The movie promises sequels that never happened, which is surprising given what DOES get sequels in the coming decade (as video changes the game for B-material). 2 years 1 month ago

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