www.imdb.com/title/tt0080846/usercomments
uk) from London, England There are crusty old cynics out there who dare to suggest that Legolas, in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings, shoots his bow a tad too quickly to be truly realistic. nothing to compare to the hilarious nonsense that is Hawk the Slayer. John Terry plays our hero Hawk - no, not the central defender for Chelsea Football Club although, were this true, it would be the least of the casting disasters. Terry was later to appear in Of Mice and Men and Full Metal Jacket - I can only assume his acting had improved on this, his third, film in which he could have single-handedly re-populated the Amazon Rainforest. Bernard Bresslaw - yes the big guy from the Carry On films - as a giant. The corpse of Jack Pallance re-animated for one week only to play - of all things - Hawk's evil brother! Ray Charleson as (pause) Crooow, the amphetamined up elfin type. And let's not forget William Morgan Sheppard - the only man in the middle ages to have a crossbow complete with an AK47-style magazine cartridge - "When you absolutely have to kill every MF in the goddamn room, except no substitutes!" You also have to wonder what the cast and crew thought when they sat down to watch the post-production cut of this movie. The comedy fantasy names, the dry ice, the tree-lined, side-of-the-motorway set, the disco soundtrack, Jack Pallance looking like nothing so much as John Wayne holding his mighty weapon. a year later he was making the British TV series Bergerac - the directorial equivalent of being sent to the Russian Front. Buy it - nothing could ever provide you with more entertainment. Keep it under your bed like it was a porn flick and get it out (so to speak) when your mates come around for a kitsch early 80s revival night. Drink lots of beer (you'll need it when you see the size of Pallance's weapon), slide into a pair of fake leather trousers and press play. Ah, if only they had meant it - it would have been pure genius.
wdrroach from Phx, Az This is one of those rare early 80's movies that I love. Everything about it is terrible and yet something about it is great! It is certainly an entertaining piece of work (although far from a masterpiece). If had to choose between it or "The Beastmaster", I would certainly take Hawk the Slayer. As a side note: I play keyboards and do a little mixing as a hobby. I am not blind, and can certainly see all of the faults that other viewers noted, however, I still love it.
Rob Taylor (Rob_Taylor) from London It is D Dully acted. What better music to go with a sword and sorcery movie than modern (at the time) synthesizer sounds. The actors are all soooo wooden I kept losing them amongst the trees. Bernard Bresslaw (of Carry On movies fame, and one of the world's all-time worst actors) plays Gort, a giant. Well, he's taller than anyone else, so he must be a giant, right? Jack Palance plays Voltan, supposedly the hero's brother, but looking more like his father. He dresses very much like Darth Vader but overacts so completely that I wondered if he was trying to end his career with this movie. He can shoot arrows so fast that the camera couldn't catch more than one being fired, so they replayed that shot over and over so you got the idea he was really fast. William Morgan plays Ranulf, a man with a rapid firing crossbow (they obviously had those in pseudo medieaval times) and Peter Farrel is Baldin, a dwarf. You know he's a dwarf because he's the shortest one of the group. He also acts and delivers some lines so badly you won't believe (see the raft scene). The story is a standard rescue scenario, though why anyone would want to rescue the Mother Abbess is beyond me. Ineffectual would be a polite word to describe all the nuns, who mill about and cower a lot, but do little else. None of that fancy Star Trek malarkey about slowly disappearing. Here you simply sit inside two rings welded together at an angle and placed on a turntable. Then there's the "storm of whirling fireballs" which appear to be ping-pong balls fired horizontally. And then there's the silly string to immobilize the guards. "One ping-pong ball to blind them, lots of silly string to bind them" The only half-way decent effects are the mindsword, which has a cool glowing orb held in a fist instead of a pommel. And the healing orb, which Voltan uses to soothe his damaged face. The teleporter rings, the ping-pong fireballs, the sword, the healing orb, all of it. It was supposedly burnt, which is where the damage came from, but it won't heal naturally? Anyway, this film has all the bad things that make a classic B-movie and is well worth a look. If you set out to do everything wrong in a movie it would be truly awful, but here, it just works.
com) from London, England Sometimes you watch a movie and you wonder whether in the midst of shooting the film-makers have realised they are making something irredeemably terrible and decided, "What the hell? Everything about it is apparently calculated to elicit maximum ridicule - giving characters names like Voltan, Drogo, and Gort; the absurd editing to illustrate the elf's nifty technique with his bow and arrows; A cult classic for sure, and does anyone know where I can get hold of a copy of the stupendous theme tune - a glorious venture into what I can only describe as "medieval disco"?
Lester from Louisiana As you watch this film, you will more than likely sit back and say, "This is so silly." I remember first watching this film as a teenager and saying it was so cool. Well many moons later, I can see the aweful special effects, and the obvious mistakes made. The interesting things about "B" movies is that if actors know they are in one; With this film, they try to act as seriously as possible, which makes it more believable. It sets the tone for the film, and encompasses Hawk's mysterious nature.
Acolyte-2 If you're the sort who likes to do a roll-your-own kind of MST3K movie night -- and let's be honest, it's *much* more fun to come up with your own wiseass comments anyway -- then this film is on your must-see list. There's so much wrong with it that I hardly know where to begin. There's some genuine skill involved in the portrayal of two or three of the characters, and there's some fun chemistry between Bernard Bresslaw as Gort the giant and Peter O'Farrell as Baldin the dwarf, but other than that this is all Golden Turkey material. John Terry in the title role could have been outacted by a dead cat, and Jack Palance as the villain is so over-the-top that he's ridiculous instead of menacing. There's not so much a plot as a series of contrivances that serve as an excuse for the actors to deliver their lines and the fight scenes. I think they used up their studio's entire Plot Contrivance Quota for both 1979 *and* 1980, which must have been a real hardship because it would have left them unable to film any of the teenage sex comedies that were so popular back then. The Giant Executive Desk Toy that's supposed to be a magical teleporter! Bottom line is if you take this film as seriously as it presents itself, you'll hate it. But for a rollicking fun evening of derisive mockery, you'll have trouble finding a better.
Elricwolf from USA I first saw this movie years ago as a kid who Dungeons and Dragons and from that standpoint it was an instant hit with me and my friends. I don't know how I can still like this movie with all it's terrible special effects, but I always get a kick out of watching it. The cast is pretty funny and Jack Palance's over-the-top B-movie acting in this is classic. " The music is the best thing about this movie - so surreal it's cheesy yet cool enough to work. In short, the movie somehow surpasses the sum of its individual parts to achieve something near a cult classic quality. I've even made Baldur's Gate (PC) characters based on the characters using pics and voice clips from the movie. Just imagine clicking on the elf character and hearing "I, am ready" or "Name, the target" in that delightful monotone.
cupidandpsyche85 from United Kingdom Hawk the Slayer has become quite the cult favourite over the last few years: indeed, it proved to be an indispensable staple when i was...
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