Film Summary DCCCIX (The Magic Sword)

 


We sure are living up to the terms ''sword and sorcery''. 
A sword is present and sorcery is everywhere. 
Even the protagonist is a sorcerer, or at the very least his mother is. 

A boy named George has fullen in love with a princess he's never met. 
I'd say that be a problem. 
But that's a staple of just about every medieval fantasy story involving rescuing a damsel in distress. And that's literally all this movie is. 

George has to go on an adventure to face seven curses being inflicted by an evil wizard (Lodac). He's accompanied by his posse of six Knights, of which he brought to life using his magic sword and one other knight who belongs to the kingdom of which the princess was from. 
That knight is evil. 
Who would have guessed. 
I mean you don't know he's evil at the beginning but he becomes pretty shady fairly quickly. 
Especially when you see he's evil dragon ring. 

The evil sorcerer in question wishes to acquire said ring has to make himself Immortal from all attacks.
it seems whoever possesses the ring is Untouchable by the evil wizard and even lackluster Sorcerers like the mother of George can technically hurt the evil wizard, if he doesn't have the ring in his possession. 
Now he does get the ring at some point. But then he loses it within 10 minutes. 
In fact the evil wizard is a kind of let down villain. 
He's played by Basil Rathbone. He gives a pretty fun performance and has this real menace about him. But his actual character is a bit lacking. 
He loses his ring as quickly as he acquired it and he's a complete let down at the end of the movie. 
He's supposed to be the final curse and he end up getting attacked by George's mother (Sybil) when she turns into a cat. 
Now grant you, she turns into a mountain cat or some sort of black cougar. But still. 
I'm told you're the immortal Evil wizard and a cat lady kills you within three seconds. 
And then the story ends with George marrying this random princess the entire story wraps up so quickly that you don't even have time to process the death of the wizard.

Some of it scenes and characters feel a little disconnected from each other with silly skits and evil curses but for the most part it's a basic adventure story of a man and his group of knights trying to save a princess from an evil wizard who's also in conflict with another knight who also wishes to acquire the princess for his own. 
We're supposed to think he's the evil villain because he's a bad knight. But at least he has some knowledge of the princess. 
That doesn't make his lustful desires any better, but he's actually seen the woman. Our main protagonist George is literally just seen her in a body of water.

There's a scene involving tiny people (that is people who are 5'' tall) carrying a giant prop sword over to George when he's captured to help him break free of his bonds. 
It's a fun scene as you know somebody out there had to make this ridiculous sized giant sword for their miniature set. 

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