The Warrior and the Sorceress – 1984 – United States/Argentina
Michael Weldon’s The Psychotronic Video Guide describes this movie as “an outer space post-nuke samurai Western”. I don’t know if that’s really accurate, but it confirms this: The Warrior and the Sorceress definitely has its own thing going on.
The Warrior and the Sorceress takes place in a savage desert land with two suns. David Carradine plays Kain the Dark One, a cynical swordsman with an awful haircut. He wanders into a fortified village where two cruel warlords fight over a well in the center of town, and the villagers are caught between them. In a plot reminiscent of Yojimbo (1961) and A Fistful of Dollars (1964), Kain tricks the warlords into destroying each other so the villagers can be free.
The visual design of The Warrior and the Sorceress takes some cues from Conan the Barbarian (1982) and all those other 1980s sword and sorcery movies. However, it makes everything weirder and more extreme. The characters are all ugly and grungy-looking, and their patchwork outfits would fit in a Mad Max movie. One of the warlords is a hairless fat man who kisses and cuddles a little humanoid lizard. There is a stripper with four breasts and a poison stinger that comes out of her belly button. None of the women wear clothes. The men look like hobos.
The Warrior and the Sorceress is a cool movie mostly for its outrageous fantasy style, but the plot is engaging enough. Kain is an interesting protagonist. He is an expert swordsman but prefers to use stealth and subterfuge to get his way. I like that the movie has plenty of action and danger but not much fighting.
The soundtrack, which occasionally imitates Ennio Morricone, is pretty good too.
Rating: 8/10 Shrunken Heads
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