Sorceress [Blu-ray]

You know the films I'm talking about. These are the flicks that transcend merely being bad and achieve a weird level of greatness. They aren't good films, but they are great experiences.Of this genre, Troll 2 will forever remain the undisputed champion. But this film holds its own with plenty of head-scratching decisions, terrible acting, and a plot that is somehow both completely simplistic and utterly baffling.The first thing you should know is that this is a Roger Corman film. If you don't know who he is, shame on you. Suffice it to say, if ever there was an incredibly made genre film, Roger Corman was there to try to cash in on it with as cheap a knock off as he could possibly get away with. And at the time this movie was made, Conan the Barbarian was a box office success and Dungeons and Dragons was at a height of popularity. The Fantasy genre was hot.The plot of this film is almost too pointless to go into. What you really need to know is that some of the basic structure is similar to Beastmaster (which came out the same year), but with a Corsican Brothers angle instead of a talking to animals spin. This brings us to maybe the biggest head-scratcher of the film: the title. As far as I can tell, there is no sorceress anywhere to be found. Legend has it that the title was picked via poll, which, let's be honest, is not the weirdest way Hollywood has gone about making choices for a film.The film stars a pair of twins who, at the time, were really only known for having posed in Playboy. So of course that film has to use every possible excuse to show them topless. In fact, the film is far less shy about showing topless females than it is about any displays of violence. The latter of which often occur off screen, in quick cuts, or involving as little blood as possible. Remove the nudity and this film would almost be safe for broadcast television.The point being, despite this being a hack and slash fantasy film, it's clear what the priority was.The big bad needs the twins for some sort of ritual of unlimited power that is only vaguely explained. Well, technically, he only needs one of the twins, whichever one was born first. Meanwhile, the twins want to kill the big bad for murdering their mother. The twins meet a warrior and his sidekick, a horny satyr (I kid you not), and eventually a barbarian. The twins have been living as boys their entire lives and the fact that they are actually women is completely lost on everyone, despite the relatively skimpy attire they wear and zero attempt whatsoever to disguise their voices. Because everyone in this film lives in a tiny world of coincidences, it's revealed that the barbarian is important and somehow vital to the big bad's ritual (but apparently not so vital that anything would have changed had he never figured out who the barbarian is). And then a manticore appears in the sky.Oh, and then there's a disembodied head that shoots lasers at people. Maybe this is the sorceress? Who knows.Apparently this film caused a rift between director Jack Hall and Roger Corman. Hall claims that Corman never delivered the budget that was promised, which compromised the film. I might argue that compromise maybe started with the writing...but what do I know? Anyway, Hall claims the film would have been better with the effects budget he was promised (again, writing?!??) and so he took his name off the film and refused to work with Corman again.Ironically, this film went on to become pretty successful... in the framework of Roger Corman films.Why talk about all of this? Well, as oddly entertaining as this film was as a "bad movie," I have a feeling that a movie about the production of this film would have been amazing.Anyway, I digress... some odd musings:-- The best part about this movie is the music. It should be. James Horner was the composer. Roger Corman was so cheap that he just took the music Horner composed for Battle Beyond the Stars and reused it here. So far as I can tell, he didn't even give Horner a credit on the film.-- Although I couldn't find something conclusive to back this up, I swear that the over-dubbed voice of Erlick the Barbarian is Richard Hatch.Anyway, don't go into this expecting anything more than really cheap, exploitative schlock.

A raunchy 80s fantasy movie featuring naked twin barbarian women, a floating manticore God and the dumbest magical prophecy ever. This ranks pretty low even if you enjoy bad 80s R-rated fantasy. There's nudity, raunchiness, dumb dialogue, one scene with a neat monster, stupid magic spells and a satyr peeping Tom. If that sentence doesn't make you want to see this, then you don't want to see this.This movie is so bad that even IMDB totally phoned in the synopsis, which reads as follows: "Sword and sorcery story of the cosmic struggle between white magic and black magic." I'm pretty sure this just described every movie featuring magic ever made. Thanks for the clarification, IMDB. <<Drops the mic and walks away>>The story is shaky at best--but this should come as no surprise from a campy 80s genre best known for even having its strong lead female protagonists get naked (e.g., Barbarian Queen). Some evil wizard needs to sacrifice some woman's first born child to summon some sort of monstrous demon thing. There's just one problem, the woman had twins and the evill wizard needs to know which twin was first. With me so far…sort of? Good.Like a fairy godfather, Krona (Martin LaSalle) the good wizard bestows unto these twin girls the powers of sword and sorcery. It's about as easy as Neo uploading kung fu in The Matrix (1999), but without the HDMI ports in the back of the head. The twins, Mira (Leigh Harris) and Mara (Lynette Harris), are so clueless into their early 20s that they don't realize there is a difference between boys and girls and, as such, don't think to hide their lady parts from the opposite sex. They don't even understand what sex is. This is really convenient for this kind of semi-smutty movie and the campiness that ensues is barely tolerable.The action is laughable in an awesomely bad way. A guy catches a spear and throws it back, Mara catches an arrow bare-handed, and all combat seems to be a fumbling tumble of silliness. Unfortunately the action falls short in all ways compared to even other bad 80s sword and sorcery films--leaving this movie very low among their ranks for overall entertainment value.The manifestations of magic are a tribute to low budget early 80s fantasy. That is to say, they look awful! LMAO. Don't worry, you should enjoy it.Written by Jim Wynorski (Chopping Mall, Deathstalker II, The Haunting of Morella--don't be fooled, these three movies are much better than Sorceress) and directed by grindhouse champion Jack Hill (under the pseudonym Brian Stuart; Coffy, Foxy Brown, Switchblade Sisters), this exploitation fantasy filth leaves no raunchy stone unturned--seizing every opportunity for breasty sophomoric thrills. A woman's panties must be revealed (on-screen) before disemboweling her (off-screen), breast-feeding prefaced with commentary of "how full" her breasts are, our naked twin heroines skinny dipping in a river who naively try to figure out what "that thing hanging between his legs" is before kicking their voyeur's butt, there's a threat of death by anal impalement, and Mara learns what it means to be a woman…yeah, it's all pretty classy over here.The evil wizard Traigon (Roberto Ballesteros) evidently has three lives and self-resurrects at a predestined location if killed (kind of like FPS games), his scantily clad ally (Ana De Sade; Caveman) has a servant in an evil gorilla suit, an awkward satyr incessantly "baahs", the town bazaar boasts what seems to be an outdoor strip club, there's a gorilla assault, and for the finale there's an undead army.In the end, simply uttering a magic word dispels some enchantments and summons a pretty spiffy looking good manticore God (basically a giant floating lion with bat wings) which snarls and spews lightning at this disembodied head of an ugly disfigured evil woman god. This is accompanied by a large scale melee of sword fighting that is yawnably awful. Just pure crap.The sword and sorcery genre peppered bad movies throughout the 80s, but this is easily one of the least pleasurable installments even for lovers of campy, dumb movies. This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it at all. But I'll probably never watch it again and prefer pretty much all other such films of the decade above this one.

The good news for UK buyers is that this Blu-ray disc is region-free so it should play on any Blu-ray player. The picture quality is very good and aspect ratio is 1.78:1. The disc also includes interviews and a couple of trailers. The film itself was made when Sword and Sorcery films had become popular. Films such as Conan the Barbarian and The Sword and the Sorceress come to mind. This film has all the right ingredients - gorgeous women action scenes, special effects and a certain humour. Unfortunately this film is laugh-out-loud for all the wrong reasons - bad script, bad acting, and surely the fight scenes must be the worst ever committed to camera and a strange bleating half-man, half-beast which looks like something out of Greek mythology. The special effects are both excellent (the undead zombie things) and terrible (the flying lion thing). The film is fun to watch though with the gorgeous Harris sisters disguised as men, surely no male above the age of four could be fooled, and then proving in no uncertain way that they are all woman. Sorry, forgot to mention that this film also includes that staple of S&S films, bare breasts.The plot? Does it really matter? Oh all right then. Twin sisters are sent away to live as men in order that no-one knows their identity. Twenty years later their father returns to sacrifice the elder in order to get immortal power. A sorcerer has endowed the sisters with warrior skills and together with an expertly permed warrior they must defeat their father. By the way, despite the film being called Sorceress, the sisters never get sorcery skills. This is a fun movie and at 83 minutes is said to include previously unseen footage.

These types of movies were pretty popular throughout the 80's along with Conan and the barbarian queen and deathstalker etc, Sorceress tells the tale of 2 twin sisters who were hidden as babies from an evil wizard, he wishes to slay the first born as a sacrifice, by good magic they are granted the skills of mighty warriors, they then grow up into beautiful women and go on a quest to kill the evil wizard, its certainly as cheesy as it sounds but its also brilliant too, these movies are long lost classics and so much fun, the effects are cool for the time, great make-up effects and costumes especially from the undead zombies, the soundtrack is great, listen out for the battle beyond the stars theme playing over the action, the cast is good fun especially the beautiful sisters played by Leigh and Lynette Harris who were popular playboy playmates, ample nudity from them!! If you love these old fantasy classics from the 80's certainly get this release as its great.BLU-RAY has a great picture qualityNever before seen slightly extended version 83 minutes.Special features 4 interviews with filmmakers including Roger Corman and a few old classic trailers from the 80's.English MonoREGION FREE!!!

thank you for the film it is very good i like it a lot ,thank you from david

Fantastic film don't won't to say to much that's all ready bean said but thanks to the kind reviewer that stated this would play on a UK blue ray player or a UK ps3 in my case so to any one about late 30s in the UK it works means a lot as this is so hard to get now love it my be old but its as good as lord of the rings ore more resent the very good hobbit films one thing it douse have is no rubbish cgi

I like everything about this movie. The contradictory comments made by people in the commentary about who is responsible for the zombies going after the girls gag is interesting.