It lights up but then makes him scream in agony and drop either dead or unconscious. Before the four village recruiters are rescued from a mob of lepers by Han and his friend, they’re being hit on by some sleaze, and they get rid of him by humoring him that maybe he’d be worthy and letting him hold the sword. But actually my favorite thing in the movie is a fantastical embellishment: the magical sword. It’s not a good movie or adaptation of the Kurosawa classic, but it is pretty fun to look at as a completist because it does follow alot of the original story. I suspect something happened and they lost or didn’t complete her footage, had to fake this in post-production. After one of the dudes and Julia fend off a bunch of attackers the dude says “Y’know something? I knew you’d come back,” and starts to kiss Sybil, but she’s immediately stabbed in the back, it cuts away and she’s not seen or mentioned again, not even as a dead body. The production values are low and the actors are all dubbed with what sounds like other people’s voices. This is a crappy, low budget quickie produced by Cannon and directed by Bruno Mattei (WOMEN’S PRISON MASSACRE) and Claudio Fragasso (TROLL 2). Compared to the life we lead, living off the land, going where we want when we want, answering to no one, free!” He says (maybe jokingly?), “Think of what life in a village like this must be like, among frightened, defenseless farmers sweating in a field from morning ’til night. But in a strong contrast to samurai leader Kambei, Han is very satisfied with his lifestyle and place in the world. As in both SEVEN SAMURAI and MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, only three survive (they even have burial mounds), one being the young student, who decides to stay with a woman he met. It’s just building to a visually bland stretch of sword clanking and arrows shooting in some barren place with a bunch of brick walls and archways. There’s not much attention paid to training or strategy. Unfortunately the part of the movie that takes the least from Kurosawa is the meat: the preparing for, waiting for and then waging the battle. When he turns on a dime and asks for him to go on a quest the guy immediately agrees, explaining that he’ll do anything to protect children and old people. Lou tests him by taunting him into a fight and feeling out his strength and wrestling skills. In this version he’s doing it with a battle ax until some kids egg him on to do it with his bare hands. I guess he’s not strong or immortal enough to do it on his own, so he has to put together a team which includes some gladiator friends and a badass cynical mercenary lady named Julia (Sybil Danning, who had already been in the space version of SEVEN SAMURAI, BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS).Īs in both SEVEN SAMURAI and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN they find one guy while he’s chopping wood. They find Han (Lou Ferrigno, also in his first movie, though he’d already done six seasons of The Incredible Hulk), a gladiator who is said to be immortal, but it’s not really explained very well. Find somebody worthy and get him to come protect the village. So she sends Pandora (Carla Ferrigno in her movie debut) and three other women into town with “the mystical Sword of Achilles,” which can only be held by the worthy. Obviously.Īn evil Ming-the-Merciless-Halloween-costume-looking-motherfucker named Nicerote (Dan Vadis from EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE and ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN) who apparently has some kind of magic sorcerer powers threatens his own mother (Barbara Pesante) that he’s gonna come back and attack the village after the harvest. THE SEVEN MAGNIFICENT GLADIATORS is the sword and sorcery version of the SEVEN SAMURAI story.
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