Savage Three (1975)

Savage Three (Fango bollente) is a 1975 poliziottesco directed by Vittorio Salerno and based on a story by Ernesto Gastaldi.

This was an unsettled rather anxious period in Italian history. As in most western countries violent crime was on the rise but in Italy there was a great deal of political violence as well. There was an air of paranoia, and some sympathy for the idea that a degree of ruthlessness on the part of the police was sometimes justified. The emergence of the hard-edged ultra-violent paranoid poliziotteschi genre was hardly surprising.

Savage Three is the story of three young men who work with computers in a research facility. The research involves things like violence and the effects of overcrowding on aggression. The facility has links with the police who are coming to see computers as a useful tool in regaining control of the streets.

Ovidio (Joe Dallesandro) is the leader of this little band. They’re bored and frustrated by their work and feel that they’re being exploited. Ovidio clearly has a few psychological issues as well. Ovidio is the catalyst.

The three provoke a violent riot at a football stadium. They enjoy watching the violence they’ve unleashed. They’re like overgrown juvenile delinquents, spoilt and bored. Ovidio might be the leader but his buddies Giacomo and Peppe take to thuggery like ducks to water.

Ovidio and his pals develop a taste for violence which quickly escalates to rape and murder. One can’t help feeling that Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange was an influence on this movie. Ovidio and his two pals are like middle-class versions of Alex and his droogs, out for a bit of the old ultra-violence.

Violence seems to be an addiction for the three friends. They don’t always intend to commit murder but things always seem to get out of hand. Once the violence starts it always escalates. The city is now in the grip of a wave of exceptionally violent crimes and while the police have almost no clues they are sure that there are three perpetrators and that they’re responsible for all these horrific crimes.

The research facility conducts experiments on rat behaviour, so we’re clearly expected to see a link here. Ovidio and company are like rats living in an unnatural environment starting to display symptoms of frustration-aggression. We’re presumably also meant to see computers as a symptom of a society becoming dehumanised.

This is however (unlike A Clockwork Orange) very much an exploitation movie and it revels in the violence, and those socio-economic subtexts may be little more than an attempt to give the movie a political veneer. On the other hand the interview with the director on the Blu-Ray suggests that he was reasonably sincere in his intentions.

This is also the story of Commissario Santagà (played by the director’s brother Enrico Maria Salerno), a somewhat disillusioned cop. There’s some conflict between Santagà and his colleague Commissario Tamaraglio. Tamaraglio is younger and he’s inclined to see almost every violent crime as a political crime. Santagà is the middle-aged old school street cop. He trusts his gut instincts, but despite being older he’s more flexible in his thinking.

Santagà is intrigued by the fact that these crime are apparently motiveless. He thinks that’s important and he’s starting to develop the germ of a theory.

It has to be said that some of Santagà’s flashes of insight are just a little implausible, and a little bit too convenient in plot terms.

Enrico Maria Salerno is very good as Santagà. He’s sympathetic but with a few rough edges.

The standout performer is however Joe Dallesandro. He has the ability to project both evil and an odd kind of innocence simultaneously and he’s rather chillingly coldblooded. I was very impressed by Dallesandro.

Gianfranco De Grassi who plays Giacomo seems to have based his performance (and very effective it is too) on a close study of Malcolm McDowell’s performance in A Clockwork Orange.

There is some gore and there are a few harrowing scenes. Vittorio Salerno mostly relies on the sheer senselessness of the violence to give the movie its impact. There’s a small amount of topless nudity but Salerno was trying to keep the sexual explicitness to the minimum, consistent with the inherently sleazy subject matter.

Savage Three is a fairly nasty little movie but it has a few interesting ideas and the combination of poliziottesco and psycho killer movie works quite well. Highly recommended.

Arrow have released this movie in their Years of Lead poliziotteschi boxed set. The transfer is excellent. Extras include a lengthy and fairly interesting interview with the director.

King Solomon’s Mines (1985)

There have been several film adaptations of H. Rider Haggard’s classic 1885 tale of adventure King Solomon’s Mines. The 1937 version has its admirers and it’s reasonably enjoyable but it has its problems and Sir Cedric Hardwicke is badly miscast as Allan Quatermain. The 1950 version is much better with Stewart Granger being perfectly cast in the lead role, and looks great. And then there’s the 1985 version.

This is a Cannon production, which depending on your tastes is either very promising news or very worrying news. This 1985 version is much less admired than the earlier films but there was some impressive talent involved. Maybe he’s no Stewart Granger but Richard Chamberlain was no slouch when it came to playing in adventure movies. Sharon Stone was not yet a big name but you can see signs of her star quality. You’ve got Herbert Lom as a villain, always a huge plus. And John Rhys-Davies is always fun in these kinds of movies. You’ve got J. Lee Thompson directing. This is the guy who directed The Guns of Navarone. The man knew how to make exciting action-adventure movies.

This 1985 version is not exactly a faithful adaptation of the novel, as we shall see. Not surprisingly given that it was made in 1985 this is very much an attempt to capture a Raiders of the Lost Ark vibe.

The setting would appear to be German East Africa and since there are cars and aircraft but the Great War is never mentioned we can guess that the events of the film are supposed to take place shorty before the outbreak of war, probably around 1912 or thereabouts.

Jesse Huston (Sharon Stone) is a student archaeologist from Iowa. She has apparently hired Allan Quatermain (Richard Chamberlain) to help find her archaeologist father who has disappeared in Africa. He had been looking for a map revealing the location of King Solomon’s Mines, having devoted most of his career to the search for the mines. Hardly anybody actually believes the mines exist. Jesse’s father believes they exist, and he is convinced that he has acquired a map that really will lead him there.

The local German commander, Colonel Bockner (Herbert Lom), believes in the mines. As does the sinister scheming Dogati (John Rhys-Davies). They want that map.

Allan Quatermain doesn’t believe in the legend but Jesse is his client and although she’s exasperating he’s determined to help her.

Wild adventures ensue, with Jesse getting captured several times, a horse-drawn car chase, a car chase, an aerial dogfight, various pitched battles, fight scenes on a train and encounters with lions. Jesse and Quatermain almost get eaten several times, and not always by animals.

Of course they eventually find King Solomon’s Mines and of course it turns out to be a very dangerous discovery, with Colonel Bockner and Dogati not being the only threats.

The whole movie is crazy and don’t expect a taut coherent plot, and don’t expect a movie that makes any concessions at all to realism or plausibility. It’s closer in feel to the wonderful movie serials of the 1930s and 40s than to Rider Haggard. Scenes are included because they’re fun, not because they have the slightest connection to the plot.

Cannon obviously could not match the budget Spielberg had on Raiders of the Lost Ark but this movie still looks expensive. Whatever the budget was most of it ended up on the screen. The visuals are impressive. OK, some of the special effects are a bit iffy but for a modestly budgeted movie they work well enough. And they are fun. I’d rather have fun cheesy special effects than fancy effects done without imagination.

J. Lee Thompson is a director whose work has been seriously underrated. He knows the importance of pacing. The action doesn’t let up. As soon as our hero and heroine escape from one danger they are plunged into some new terror.

Richard Chamberlain makes a perfectly adequate hero. Sharon Stone is charming and cute as the likeable Jesse, a girl with an extraordinary talent for getting herself into trouble. Herbert Lom hams it up outrageously, which is as it should be.

This movie did extremely well at the box office. Critics hated it, insisting on comparing it to the 1950 movie even though it should have been glaringly obvious that the 1985 movie has its tongue planted firmly in cheek and is deliberately silly, goofy and cheesy. This unabashedly a B-movie.

Get yourself plenty of beer and popcorn, switch off your critical faculties and just sit back and enjoy the fun. This is a hugely enjoyable load of nonsense and I loved it. Very highly recommended.

The Olive Films Blu-Ray is barebones but offers a lovely transfer.

I've also reviewed the 1937 version and the 1950 version.

King Kong (1976 remake)

The 1976 Dino De Laurentiis-produced remake of King Kong has a very poor reputation. Does it deserve the derision it has attracted over the years? We shall see.

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1933 King Kong is one of the most important genre movies ever made. It set new standards in visual splendour and extravagance and it’s a fun monster movie that has real heart and a certain degree of moral complexity. It is rightly regarded as a masterpiece.

The 1976 version retains the essential story elements, with some unfortunate changes. An ambitious obsessive sets out to find a previously unknown island. In the 1933 version he is a documentary film-maker named Carl Denham. In the 1976 version he’s a ruthless oil company executive. The island turns out to be home to a previously unknown tribe, and to a 5-0-foot tall gorilla who is worshipped as a god. In the ’33 version Denham takes along with him a girl named Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) who will provide the love interest in his movie. In the ’76 version the girl is Dwan (Jessica Lange), an actress rescued from a yacht that has sunk. The girl finds herself being offered to the giant ape, although whether she is a sacrifice or is intended to be his bride remains uncertain.

Eventually the ape is captured and taken to New York as the world’s greatest spectacle, he runs amok and lots more mayhem ensues. The 1933 version boasts one of cinema’s most iconic endings.

Despite staying fairly close to the original story the 1976 film manages to do a lot of things wrong.

Firstly, the island looks too real. This is a story of the fantastic, a mix of fantasy, science fiction and horror. In the ’33 movie the island looks like it belongs to the world of dream, of the imagination, of the subconscious. In the ’76 version it looks too much like it belongs in the real world. On the other hand the locations were well chosen and they do look great.

Secondly, the film is too long. The original ran for 100 minutes and included a leisurely (but effective) buildup. The ’76 version runs for 134 minutes and it’s just too much. Despite its much longer running time the ’76 version has a lot less action and excitement. It really drags at times.

Thirdly, the story just doesn’t work in a 70s setting. In 1933 the idea of a previously unknown island full of unexplained wonders seemed plausible. In 1976 it just seems silly.

Fourthly, the iconic ending is replaced by a crude clumsy ending with no style at all.

Fifthly, the ’76 remake is heavy-handed and grindingly predictable.

Sixthly, in the original Kong is an actual monster but that gives the tragic element a certain bite. The ’76 version is all syrupy sentimentality. Kong is a peaceful herbivore who just wants to eat bananas and make friends with the pretty blonde lady. It all gets much too Gorillas in the Mist for my taste. Kong really isn’t scary enough in this ’76 version.

The biggest problem of all is that the characters are so much less interesting than those in the 1933 movie.

The character of film-maker Carl Denham in the original is replaced by oilman Fred Wilson. Carl Denham was a complex man. He was ruthless and reckless but he was fundamentally honest. He made questionable decisions but he was no villain. He was an interesting character. Fred Wilson is a cardboard cut-out movie villain and he’s not the least bit interesting.

In the remake the love interest for the girl is zoologist Jack Prescott (played by Jeff Bridges who is more hairy than Kong himself). Jack is an idealistic scientist hero who cares nothing for money but is dedicated to science and justice. He’s perfect in every way. He’s a bit of a smarmy self-righteous bore although Jeff Bridges tries hard to make him likeable.

The one exception is the girl. Jessica Lange has copped a lot of flak for her performance. I think that’s unfair. OK, Fay Wray was a better actress and the character she played was more interesting but Lange is obviously playing the part of Dwan the way it was written. She’s supposed to be a ditzy blonde actress. That’s how Lange plays her. She’s cute and sexy and fairly likeable. She’s the only cast member who gives a halfway decent performance.

John Guillermin directed. My favourite of his movies is the very unfairly maligned Sheena (1984) which has some slight affinities to King Kong.

The 1976 version is not a total loss. It has its strengths. Dino De Laurentiis wanted to put the relationship between Dwan and Kong at the centre of the movie. It becomes a kind of very kinky love story. In fact it becomes a perverse romantic triangle with Kong and Jack competing for Dwan’s love (she really likes her men hairy). That’s an interesting angle. It’s also made clear that there is an erotic dimension to Kong’s attraction to Dwan. You have to remember that audiences in the 70s were much more sophisticated than modern audiences and much more comfortable with grown-up concepts.

There are some great visual moments and of course this was pre-CGI so the visuals really do look terrific. The scenes in which Dwan is presented to Kong as his bride are superbly conceived and shot and they’re loaded with perverse eroticism. 

There were plans to build a full-scale Kong but it proved impracticable so most of the shots of King are guy-in-a-gorilla-suit shots, but they're still extremely impressive.

Overall the 1976 King Kong has to be regarded as a failure. An interesting failure perhaps, but one that is hard to recommend.

Adventures of a Taxi Driver (1976)

Adventures of a Taxi Driver was released in 1976 and was the first of the three “Adventures of” British sex comedies, inspired by the success of the “Confessions of” movies. In fact the formula is pretty much the same - the hapless hero finds that his job brings him into constant contact with sex-starved women, and despite being hapless the hero is also strangely attractive to women.

Producer, director and co-writer Stanley Long had by this time been in the exploitation movie business for a long time. He knew how to make movies with very limited budgets. In the 60s he had been mostly a producer but around 1970 he started directing as well.

Adventures of a Taxi Driver was made on a very small budget indeed (on 16mm) and was a huge box office hit.  Two more Adventures movies would follow.

There’s very little plot. Joe North (Barry Evans) is a London taxi driver. He lives with his mum (played by the great Diana Dors), his thieving kid brother Peter and his kid sister. Life at home is total chaos so Joe moves out. He moves in with his mate Tom (Robert Lindsay) and Tom’s stripper girlfriend Nikki (Judy Geeson).

Joe’s girlfriend Carol (Adrienne Posta) wants him to move in with her. In fact she wants to get married, an idea that terrifies Joe.

In the course of his job Joe has numerous sexual encounters with female fares, some of which end satisfactorily and some of which (in fact most of which) end up in disaster of some kind.

Big trouble is in store for Joe and this time none of it is his fault. Maybe he’s a bit too trusting.

Joe is good-natured, a bit cheeky, a bit cocky and in spite of his many misadventures very cheerful. He likes chasing women and frequently it’s the women doing the chasing. Barry Evans is perfectly cast - he has the charm and likeability to make it quite plausible that the female of the species would find him very desirable. Evans is certainly the film’s biggest asset.

Judy Geeson is very good of course (and although she’s playing a stripper she doesn’t take her clothes off). She’d been paired very successfully with Barry Evans in Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush in 1968 which probably explains her casting here. Diana Dors has great fun as Joe’s mum. The other cast members are generally competent enough. Look out for a cameo from Stephen Lewis, playing a character identical to the one he’d played in the massively popular On the Buses TV series. Also look out for Ian Lavender, better known as Private Pike in Dad’s Army.

It has been said that the problem with 70s British sex comedies is that they’re not sexy and they’re not funny. That’s somewhat unfair. These movies have been much maligned over the years. I quite enjoy them. Adventures of a Taxi Driver might not be hilarious but it is consistently amusing.

The other accusation levelled against these films has more weight. Of course one has to take account of British censorship. The fact that this incredibly innocuous movie got an X Certificate in Britain illustrates the craziness of British censorship. This movie is unbelievably tame. I don’t think censorship was entirely to blame - British film-makers, even British sexploitation film-makers, have never been comfortable with sex. One does get the impression when viewing this movie that Long’s approach to the nude scenes was let’s get them over with as quickly as possible.

If you compare this movie to an Italian sex comedy made at almost exactly the same time, Nello Rossati’s The Nurse (1975), the difference is striking. Rossati was clearly quite unembarrassed about shooting nude scenes. It’s also worth pointing out that the Italian film is much funnier.

This movie doesn’t rely on slapstick to the same extent as the Confessions movie. There was apparently a lot of last-minute improvisation.

Amusingly this movie was playing in Britain at the same time as Martin Scorcese’s Taxi Driver and Adventures of a Taxi Driver did much better business at the box office.

Adventures of a Taxi Driver is harmless fun. Recommended.

This movie is part of Powerhouse Indicator’s three-movie Adventures of Blu-Ray set. The movie was shot in 16mm so while the transfer is very good it’s not going to blow you away. The boxed set comes packed with extras.

King Kong (1933)

Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s King Kong astounded audiences in 1933. It hasn’t lost any of its impact. It’s deservedly regarded as a classic, and it’s one of the most important movies in the history of genre cinema. 

This is a movie about a man who wants to make movies unlike anything ever seen before and that’s exactly what Cooper and Schoedsack were aiming to do, and they succeeded.

King Kong was made at RKO with David O. Selznick acting as executive producer.

Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) makes what we assume are semi-documentary movies in wild and exotic places (such movies were indeed hugely popular at the time and Cooper and Schoedsack had made such movies). He’s been advised that what his films need is some love interest. He’s decided that that is good advice. He’s looking for a suitable actress but due to his reputation for risk-taking no agent will provide such an actress. Quite by accident he encounters Ann Darrow (Fay Wray), a former film extra down on her luck. She’s desperate and she jumps at Denham’s job offer. She’s told she’ll need to be on board the ship ready to sail at dawn.

The movie starts fairly slowly but that’s OK since we get a gradual buildup of the sense of mystery. This is a ship headed to an unknown destination for an unknown purpose. We also get a chance to get to see just how obsessive Carl Denham is, and we get the chance to get to know Ann Darrow and care about her. She’s feisty, likeable and sexy. She also takes a very sensible and grown-up attitude towards Carl Denham. He’s certainly using her but he did rescue her from destitution and gave her a break when she needed it so she owes him. He also promised not to put the moves on her and he’s kept his promise. He’s played square with her and she intends to play square with him.

The destination turns out to be an uncharted island west of Sumatra. If Carl Denham wanted something special to film then he’s certainly found it here. Dinosaurs and a gigantic gorilla definitely qualify as something new. A great deal of mayhem follows, Ann gets to be up close and personal with King Kong, there’s plenty of slaughter. Eventually even more slaughter will follow, in New York, leading up to one of the most iconic ending sequences in movie history.

Of course it’s tempting to focus on Willis O’Brien’s stop-motion animation which was ground-breaking at the time and still impresses but King Kong has a lot more than that going for it. Once the action starts 40 minutes in it’s relentless. There is a solid hour of non-stop action and excitement and danger. It has a solid plot, basically a riff on Beauty and the Beast. The sets are wonderful. There’s tragedy (Kong is certainly a tragic monster). There’s romance.

It’s also a pre-code movie. Had this movie been made two years later it would have been a whole lot blander. The mayhem and violence wrought by Kong would have needed to be toned way down. And the hints of perversity would have been eliminated (any suggestion that Kong’s attraction to Ann was sexual would have been ruthlessly eliminated). It would have been just a routine monster movie. But in 1933 RKO didn’t have to worry too much about such things and King Kong is breathtakingly violent and loaded with perversity.

I love the extreme artificiality of the island. It’s like a fever dream. Or a voyage into the unconscious of a madman. The special effects are stunning but they’re not aiming for realism. If you’re going to make a fantasy movie it’s pointless trying to make anything in the movie look realistic. King Kong takes place in its own world where the rules are different.

The movie was shot entirely on sound stages and on the backlot. There is no location shooting at all. Which is a major plus - it reinforces the sense that we’re no longer in the everyday world. We’re not in Kansas any more.

Two acting performances stand out. Robert Armstrong is excellent as Carl Denham, effectively conveying the character’s complexity. Carl is unscrupulous and cynical but he’s basically honest and in his own way he’s an obsessive visionary who will sacrifice anything to get his vision on the screen. There’s a lot of Carl Denham in most of the great film-makers in cinema history.

The other standout is Fay Wray. She’s mesmerising and very sexy and she’s never whiny.

And, to be fair, Bruce Cabot is quite good as the handsome first mate Jack Driscoll with whom Ann falls in love.

The Warner Archive Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer and most importantly the film is uncut. Anyone who saw King Kong on TV in the 60s, 70s or 80s was seeing a heavily cut print. The audio commentary track features Ray Harryhausen, a very appropriate choice. It also features snippets or archival interviews with original cast and crew members including Merian C. Cooper and Fay Wray.

King Kong works as well today as it did ninety years ago. A hugely entertaining visually stunning movie. Very highly recommended.

The Witch (La strega in amore, 1966)

La strega in amore is a 1966 Italian gothic horror movie in a contemporary setting, directed by Damiano Damiani. It was released in English-language markets as The Witch, The Witch in Love and Strange Obsession.

Sergio Logan (Richard Johnson) is a writer although he appears to be more interested in women than in writing. He replies to a newspaper advertisement placed by an old lady. She is looking for a live-in librarian to organise a huge manuscript collection. Sergio is intrigued because the qualifications outlined in the advertisement could only apply to one man in the whole of Italy - himself. Why is the old lady so interested in employing him?

The old lady is Consuelo Lorente (Sarah Ferrati). Sergio considers the possibility that she is merely looking for a toy boy. But the manuscript collection exists, as does the library. Then things get a little odd, and then Sergio meets Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino), the old lady’s daughter.

He had already decided to decline the job offer but now he thinks it might involve the possibility of persuading Aura into bed, and that interests him a lot more than old manuscripts. He decides to take the job.

Sergio is a somewhat amoral character. He’s a womaniser and he’ll do whatever it takes to get a woman into bed. He isn’t bothered by the idea of lying or manipulating people. When it comes to women he’s used to calling the shots and it doesn’t occur to him that someday a woman might turn the tables on him.

He encounters Fabrizio (Gian Maria Volontè), his predecessor in the librarian job, and his predecessor in others ways that Sergio doesn’t yet fully understand. Fabrizio has apparently been given his marching orders but he’s still there and seems to intend to stay. Sergio’s mistake is to make certain very obvious assumptions about the setup. He assumes that Consuelo is a middle-aged woman terrified of getting old and looking for young male bed partners. That’s not what is going on, and Sergio will come to regret making such blithe assumptions.

It’s obvious to Sergio that Fabrizio has been sharing Aura’s bed. It looks like a classic romanic triangle, with Sergio as Aura’s new lover and Fabrizio as the displaced lover. There’s plenty of tension between the two men.

The audience will immediately recognise that there’s something wrong about this strange household. Consuelo lives in what is virtually a palace, hidden away in the middle of an ordinary street in Rome. There’s an atmosphere of decay and decadence, we suspect there are some dark secrets concealed here, the stories Consuelo tells of her marriage to her late husband should ring alarm bells for Sergio but they don’t. There’s an unhealthy overheated excessively enclosed atmosphere.

Sergio of course doesn’t know that he’s a character in a horror movie so he assumes Consuelo is just a rich crazy old eccentric trying to convince herself that she’s still the sex kitten she once was. A viewer who didn’t know that this was a gothic horror movie might well make the same assumptions. Until very late in the movie there are no overt signs of anything supernatural. The movie seems to be a psychological or perhaps an erotic thriller, with a film noir tinge (enhanced by some quite noirish black-and-white cinematography). It might even be a twisted melodrama.

The viewer will however start to suspect what’s going on long before Sergio does. There are subtle clues, and things that don’t quite add up. We start to think that Sergio has involved himself in something very strange and very perverse and most viewers will doubtless figure out the secret long before the final reveal.

Richard Johnson was inspired casting. He’s so over-confident and arrogant that he misses all the red flags. At the same time Sergio is not actually evil and Johnson makes him just sufficiently sympathetic that we don’t want anything too terrible to happen to him. Rosanna Schiaffino is excellent. She makes Aura seem slightly mysterious without overdoing it. Sarah Ferrati is wonderfully disturbing as Consuelo. Gian Maria Volontè gives a strange unsettling highly strung performance as Fabrizio, who could just as easily be a villain or a victim.

When things get really weird and the gothic horror elements kick in they’re done quite subtly. The horror is all the more effective for being low-key. This is not grand guignol stuff.

If you’re expecting conventional gothic horror you might be disappointed. Until very late in the movie it has the feel and tone of a noirish psychosexual melodrama. It never does become a conventional gothic horror movie. It does however have a protagonist put into a situation which threatens psychological and emotional destruction. The threat is to the psyche, and maybe the soul, rather than the body. As to whether there’s a threat to his physical existence as well, you’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

This is a movie that includes some classic gothic tropes but it goes out of its way to avoid dealing with them in a routine horror film fashion. It’s creepy and disturbing rather than scary. If you can accept those things then it’s highly recommended.

This film is part of Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico Blu-Ray boxed set. La strega in amore gets a lovely transfer. Kat Ellinger’s audio commentary is as fascinating as the movie. I liked her unexpected comparison of this movie with both Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity and her placing of the movie within the context of decadent literature.

Excalibur (1981)

John Boorman’s Excalibur is a very ambitious retelling of the legend of King Arthur. Despite its ambitions it was apparently a rather modestly budgeted movie. Boorman claims to have inadvertently kicked off the sword-and-sorcery boom of the 80s. Given that Conan the Barbarian came out in 1982, a year after Excalibur, he may have a point.

Excalibur aims to retell the entire Arthurian legend, starting before the birth of Arthur.

Boorman’s idea was to show the three stages in the history of the land, coinciding with the three stages of Arthur’s life. The idea that the king and the land are one is central to the myth. If the king thrives, if he is strong and just, then the land thrives. If the king loses his way then the land suffers.

The first third of the movie is the first stage, an age of barbarism and chaos. It is Arthur’s destiny to unite and civilise the land. Boorman saw the story as also being a metaphor for the rise of Christianity and a more rational individualistic outlook displacing the older nature-centred concept of the land, the king and the people being mystically and magically linked. Which in some ways means that civilisation contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction, since an individualistic rational conception of life is incompatible with the older truth that the king and the land are one. Boorman doesn’t try to tell us which of those outlooks we should prefer. We have to make up our own minds. This is a movie for grown-ups.

Britain is a chaotic divided land. The sorcerer Merlin (Nicol Williamson) aims to unite the land under Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne). He hopes that Uther will be the man capable of doing so, but Merlin has his doubts when Uther becomes obsessed with Igrayne (played by Boorman’s daughter Katrine Boorman), the beautiful young wife of the duke of Cornwall (Corin Redgrave). Uther persuades Merlin to use his magic to allow him to spend the night with Igrayne, with Igrayne thinking she is making love with her husband. This night of lust will have immense consequences. The child that results is Arthur, and the deal was that the child would be Merlin’s to raise as he sees fit. The other consequence is that Igrayne’s young daughter Morgana (Arthur’s half-sister) will have a life-long grudge against both Merlin and Arthur.

Merlin sees the boy Arthur as the man destined to bring a new world into being. Merlin however knows that there will be no place for him in this new world. He is in effect putting in train events that will destroy the world of magic and of the old gods, the world to which he belongs. Merlin accepts this as inevitable. Morgana will also come to realise that there is no place for her in this new world. She belongs to the world of the old gods, the world of mysticism and magic.

This first stage of the movie has a dark grungy look. This was not quite the first epic to go for this look. The excellent The War Lord, made back in 1965, had pioneered the gritty realistic approach to the epic but Excalibur puts this approach to a very different use.

The second stage begins when Arthur becomes king, ushering in an age of prosperity, peace and stability. The whole look and tone of the movie changes. Everything is bright and airy. Camelot is not quite a fairy tale world, but it is a world of light and of order.

This can however only continue as long as the king is strong and just. The problem is that Arthur is betrayed by his queen Guenevere (Cherie Lunghi) and his best friend and most trusted knight, Lancelot (Nicholas Clay).

The king has lost his faith in himself and in his destiny and he has lost his sense of his own destiny. The king sickens physically, morally and spiritually and the land sickens. There is famine and plague, and misery. Again the tone and look of the movie changes. We’re now in a dark and gloomy world.

Morgana has played a sinister role in promoting discord between the king and queen, but it is the betrayal by Guenevere and Lancelot that does the real damage.

Once again magic has been used to bring about a fateful sexual union, and the birth of a child which will have consequences. The child is Mordred, the son of Arthur and Morgana.

Merlin is determined to prevent the fatal consequences which will follow, and a battle of magic between Merlin and Morgana ensues.

The Arthurian legend is no cheerful fairy tale. It is a tragedy. The triumph of good over evil cannot be assumed. The triumph of the new world over the old cannot be assumed. In this third stage of the movie there is hope, perhaps the Quest for the Grail can restore both the king and the land, but it’s a precarious and desperate hope.

Merlin and Morgana are by far the most interesting characters. They are outsiders. They belong to a different world. A pre-rational world of pagan gods, nature mysticism and magic. Arthur is ushering in a new world, a world in which there will be no place for Merlin and Morgana. While Morgana has other more personal reasons for opposing Arthur she would have to oppose him anyway because he represents this new world.

Merlin is aware that there will be no place for him in this new world. He believes it is destined to come anyway, and that he is destined to play a major part in bringing this about.

Perhaps Merlin knows that Arthur’s world will not last, and will end in a reversion to chaos and barbarism. Perhaps he sees human history as a cyclical thing, as in Norse mythology where the world will inevitably be destroyed, and then reborn. The idea of an eventual rebirth is certainly implicit in the Arthurian legend - one day a king will once again appear and will once again claim Excalibur from the lady in the lake.

This movie probably has more resonance today than it had in 1981, given that we now live in an age of gloom and pessimism.

There are some great action scenes and the movie can certainly can be enjoyed as a fantasy action movie, or even indeed as a sword-and-sorcery movie. There is however also plenty of thematic and emotional complexity.

Boorman relies mostly on fairly simple special effects. It’s another demonstration that talent and imagination (and intelligence) matter more than money and gee-whizz digital effects.

Excalibur looks superb on Blu-Ray and John Boorman’s audio commentary is what an audio commentary should be. He doesn’t tell us things that we can perfectly well see for ourselves. Instead he tells us how and why he made the movie and what he was trying to achieve.

Excalibur is very highly recommended.