Hawk the Slayer (1981) (DVD)
Adventure - Fantasy
Written by Terry Marcel and Harry Robertson, Directed by Terry Marcel
Starring Jack Palance and John Terry
Publisher: Hen’s Tooth Video, $24.95
I remember seeing Hawk the Slayer when it came out on our local Select-TV (before cable), around 1981/82. If was advertised as a good but low-budget fantasy movie. They were right about it being low budget, but for some darn reason I like it.
Hawk the Slayer is a British fantasy film that was released in the UK in 1981 (I don’t know if it was ever release theatrically in the US). The main plot revolves around the conflict between two brothers, Hawk (played by John Terry), and Voltan (Jack Palance). You can tell just by the names who is the good guy and who is the bad guy!
The film starts with Voltan killing his father because he will not share the secret of a magical sword. Hawk manages to get the secret before his father passes into death. From there on, Voltan goes on a rampage of destruction and kidnapping, and Hawk must do his best to defeat him. Along the way he recruits help from a giant, an elf, and a dwarf (who acts more halfling that dwarf), and a witch who lives in the wild.
The acting in this movie is not that great, but for some reason I just love the characters, especially Hawks companions. I think it’s the way they interact with each other that appeals to me, especially between the giant and the dwarf. I can’t really think of any other explanation, as the movie itself is rather bad, but with enough to make it a good sort of bad. Just picture your favorite B movie from the 50’s, and you’ll get the idea. It may be cheesy and bad, with poor special effects, and have far fetched bows and crossbows that never seem to run out of ammo, but it just seems to appeal to the D&D player in me.
The musical score is a bit annoying too. Picture bad 80’s disco music playing throughout the movie, and you'll get the picture. Combine this with the fact that none of the battle scenes show one drop of blood (I told you it was low budget), and you get some really poorly made battle scenes. It could have been so much better, but with a budge of $100 (just joking, I really have no idea what it cost, but it couldn’t have been a lot), you can’t do too much. My favorite “fun” scene is when the witch casts a firestorm sort of spell that basically is flying glow-in-the-dark rubber balls flying through the air. Slow it down on the DVD player and you can watch the balls bounce all around the place. In fact, I used the “slow” feature to expose a bunch of super bad special effects that you wouldn’t normally notice too much because they go so fast. About the only effect I thought was cool was this spinning ring around Hawk as he gets teleported to different locations by the witch. Not bad at all!
If you saw this movie when you were younger, now is it time to pick up a DVD copy of it and relive a bit of your past. For those who haven’t seen this somewhat of a cult movie, you may want to try to rent or borrow it from someone first before making a purchase. It will definitely not appeal to the mass public, but then again D&D people aren’t really your average type of people (and thank goodness for that!)
(review (c) March 2003 / David Flemming)