Sword of the Valiant

My first viewing of this movie was probably in 1985 or so when it was available on VHS.  Some 20 years later (May 24, 2007), I was trying to watch all of Sean Connery's films and felt obligated to give this one another go.  Yes, it was as bad as I remembered:

Thanks to the success of Excalibur (1981) and Conan the Barbarian (1982), there was a move to make more fantasy-like films. One such film was Sword of the Valiant, produced by Golan & Globus, a company best remembered for Chuck Norris vehicles (Delta Force, Firewalker, Missing in Action III) and a number of Ninja films. Sword of the Valiant tells the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight. The cast is quite surprising, including such notables as Sean Connery, Trevor Howard, Peter Cushing, and John Rhys-Davies. Unfortunately, it is a rather wooden Miles O'Keeffe with an embarrassing haircut who played the lead.

The story, like the tale it is based upon, opens with the Green Knight arriving at the New Year's Feast of Camelot and challenging anyone to chop off his head. Gawain accepts the challenge and strikes off the Green Knight's head. The Green Knight collects his head and departs, declaring that he expects Gawain to receive a similar blow one year hence. An interesting start indeed but the movie quickly descends into something near incoherence. Armored in the chrome armor made famous by Excalibur, Gawain attempts to kill a unicorn for dinner, is seduced by Morgan Le Fey, defeats a black knight, finds a magical land, uses a ring of invisibility, meets a dwarf sage, goes back to the magic land to rescue Linet, loses Linet to Oswald the evil knight, fails to save Linet from Oswald, then finds Linet living with some kindly lord in a neighboring land. His year over, Gawain heads off to meet the Green Knight but finds his way blocked by Oswald. After killing Oswald, he goes with the Green Knight to meet his fate. The Green Knight's blow is deflected by a magic shawl and Gawain slays the knight. He finds his beloved Linet awaiting him by the sea but she must return to her magic land.  Transforming into a bird, she flies off to leave a dejected Gawain alone on the beach. The End.

My synopsis probably makes it sound more epic and exciting than it was in practice. The direction is clumsy, the acting has wide swings from decent to horrendous, the music is awful, and the ending is silly. This movie is a precursor to the Uwe Boll movies where talented actors somehow find themselves in atrocious movies (e.g. Michael Madsen and Ben Kingsley somehow stared in BloodRayne).