Hawk the Slayer

• Directed by Terry Marcel
• December 21, 1980

Two brothers fight to gain control of a magical sword.

I had heard about Hawk the Slayer before. I may even have passed over it once or twice in my local video store back when you had to go out and rent movies. Some movies you hear about and they sound good while others are a mood film that only appeal under certain conditions. This is a mood movie and after 45 years the mood finally struck me.

Hawk the Slayer is a movie that tries really hard. I mean that! It wants to a great and grand adventure and aims for that. Sadly it has caviar dreams on a hotdog budget. It wants to be NASCAR but only has access to Mario Cart. It wants to be Lord of the Rings but written by a barely literate pulp author.

The music is the first thing that jumped out to me about this. Some of it does a good job of conveying a lighthearted fantasy adventure while other elements sound like you’re getting ready for a swinging guest disco tune. Weird juxtaposition in a medieval fantasy film about a virtuous warrior seeking to avenge the murder of his father at the hands of his brother who wanders a medieval land covered in smoke pots and spray-painted sets. Maybe I just made it make sense there.

Our hero of Hawk (John Terry)-an individual of maybe undefined royal blood-travels the land fighting the good fight while doing little to avenge the murder of his father (Ferdy Mayne) whom he desperately wishes to avenge at the hands of his brother Voltan (Jack Palance). Terry is about as stiff and wooden as one could get without being dead or a tree. Or a dead tree. Angry. Mad. Indifferent. They are all the same leaving you uncertain of how the character is feeling.

Palance does what he often did and that is overact to a level that would not be seen again until Nicolas Cage became a star. He is such a presence that he drowns out everyone else in the moment including the actor playing his brother. Jack Palance was no spring chicken by the time he made Hawk the Slayer. There was no hiding the closeness in age between he and Mayne (three year age difference) even though Palance spent much of the movie with half his face covered.

Voltan is hard up to get a secret from Pops McSame-Age which turns out not to be a secret but rather sole control of a stone that is part of a magic sword or gives that sword magical powers. It is more than a little fuzzy on that as are many of the plot elements here. For example, they can’t decide whether or not what happened with Voltan’s face is a disease or a wound he suffered.

Hawk is tracked down by Ranulf (W. Morgan Sheppard) to help a convent whose abbess (Annette Crosbie) has been kidnapped by Voltan. It is a simple hostage deal so Voltan can get the money he believes them to have but his forces should be more capable of dealing with unarmed nuns. Maybe they know king fu.

After stumbling across a blind sorceress called Woman, Hawk enlists her aid to help him gather together a group to beat the snot out of Voltan and end his threat finally. Being too lazy to travel, he is teleported to where each and every old friend is in a cost-cutting move by the people making this. Considering this looks to have been filmed in the same small stretch of woods walking should have been a snap.

Characterization is a little lacking. Rather than define the characters they just race headlong into the story. Hawk goes around and collects these people and they just decide to help him, well, because. They are his buddies and that is all the reason they need. I am bothered that each of the assembled group does not necessarily add something unique to the quest.

It also doesn’t help that this is on the low budget side with at least one person getting covered in silly string which I guess is meant to be some kind of magical encasement. There are regular appearances by growing orbs which I am convinced were those glowing bouncy balls that the filmmakers purchased in large quantities just for this film. You can find them in just about any discount store.

The dialogue is rough at a good moment. The actors give it their best, but their best is not always good enough. “I am no messenger. But I will give you a message. The message of DEATH!” That is one of many bangers that were in this and sometimes you just have to laugh.

The shots are uncomfortably tight. I don’t need wide and cinematic, but I need something a little more than what we got here. And considering they are outside in some of these tight shots I’m not sure why they’re tight. If everything in your background is just trees then why does everybody need to be so close together when they talk? Pull the camera back!

As it is Hawk the Slayer is just an awkward and cheap production. With a little more polish they could’ve gotten the sequels that they were clearly aiming for based on the finale of the film. At the minimum the script needed a little bit of polish. And rather than the sorceress shortcut to get the group together something else should’ve been done. This is not terrible but it’s not great either. Yet there’s enough entertainment value here that you will watch it. It’s fun and enjoyable in its own bad way. 

While certainly no classic and definitely not influential, Hawk the Slayer is fun and entertaining. Maybe a bit of a guilty pleasure but nothing to be ashamed of.