REVIEW: ATOR L'INVINCIBLE
REVIEW: ATOR THE FIGHTING EAGLE
REVIEW: JOE D'AMATO [ 1982 ] 92'
REVIEW: FILMIRAGE S.R.L.
CAST: MILES O'KEEFFE, SABRINA SIANI,
CAST: RITZA BROWN, DAKKAR
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: DIALOGUE OF THE GODS!

"And lo, the kingdom of the spider shall last one thousand years and the people shall suffer one thousand years - for it is written. This will be known as the time of darkness for the shadow of the spider shall be the law. Indeed, the people shall pay tribute to the master and live in bondage in the valley of the shadows - even to the very mists of the volcano that sleeps above! Take heed, when the thousand years is done a man will come to promise a different way... and he shall be named Thoren... Many will believe and many will be persecuted and the sign of Thoren will bare witness to the legend...

But Thoren will fail, for the wrath of the Spider King is mighty indeed!

And the people of the valley shall weep, for there is no hope. For it is also written that the Spider King will reign until the day the mountain speaks forth in anger! Then, out of the darkness, the prophecy re-lives! For Thoren cast his seed upon the wind and, even in death, to him is born a son."

And so, in the awkward and overly convoluted fashion that would shape the series to come, the legend of Ator begins.

In the real world the legend of Ator more than likely began with the European release of the very successful CONAN THE BARBARIAN around March and April of 1982. Never one to sit by and let other production companies have all the fun, Joe D'Amato's FILMIRAGE s.r.l. pushed into production a film that would live to be one of the least competent and hysterically horrendous ripoffs in all of history - and a film that would, likewise, spawn one of the most unfortunate of franchises.

Whether these things are good or bad, in retrospect, is totally up to interpretation.

One dark and fateful night a woman is giving birth - so is brought into the world the son of Thoren (conveniently pre-wrapped in a towel and a good 20 pounds in size). The villagers acting as midwives are astonished that the, ehem, 'newborn' bares the mark of Thoren - but rather than being happy that the savior of the prophecy has arrived they say to the mother, "May the Gods forgive you!" and hurry off. Don't worry if you don't understand it - this will be far from the last, "Huh?" moment of the film. In a completely undisclosed location an unidentified man who apparently likes to sleep in defunct Muppet outfits is awakened by a sudden onslaught of wind, thunder, and flashing stage lights. He sits up in his bed and utters the words, "It is done," before donning another dead puppet skin and rushing out into the storm.

Right.

Back in the ancient Roman amphitheater that's doubling as Spider King headquarters we are introduced to someone we simply assume to be the Spider King himself - we know this because he's trying to look like James Earl Jones a la CONAN THE BARBARIAN and has various breeds of tarantulas crawling all over him. Suddenly one of his minions runs in and utters a few of the best lines in the film - "Lord! Lord, the sign is in the sky! The animals cry out... and the wind... the trees... and the mountain... The Earth trembles like a virgin being drawn to the nuptial bed." While the Spider King seems to understand the meaning of all this gibberish, the audience is left quite in the dark as we cut to the man in the dead puppet skins riding on a white horse through the, ehem, 'night'. Back at Spider King H.Q. a large statue of the head of an eagle has started bleeding from one of its eyes. The Spider King is none too happy with this and gives a rousing little speech about the sign of Thoren and all that and orders the son of the woman from scene one to be killed. So off into the, ehem, 'night' ride a bunch of soldiers in search of the child who, if left to grow to manhood, will put an end to the ancient ways of the Spider King. Long life to the spider!

Back at the mother-of-the-son-of-Thoren's place the dead puppet skin man shows up and, without much ado, takes the child away - not a line of explanatory dialogue is uttered. The unidentified man escapes the village just before the kill-happy clowns of the Spider King start to tear up the place - the mother of the child is decapitated (off screen) by one of them. Back at dead puppet skin man's house we finally learn his name - Griba - and that he intends to use the son of Thoren to avenge that time long ago when the Spider King banished him from the kingdom of the spider. Here the child is, for no real reason, christened Ator by Griba and told that he must grow fast and strong for he has much to do. He takes care to hide the mark of Thoren so that no one will suspect that the child is the prophesied one. And so, with a nary 12 minutes of film elapsed the creators deem it necessary that we be narrated about the prophecy once more:

"In the pages of the secret book it is written there will come one from the north, a tall warrior who will challenge the rule of the Spider King - he will be called Thoren, but he will be vanquished! Many years will pass in which the spider reigns supreme, but one day there will come another for to Thoren will be born a son - an even mightier warrior they will call Ator!

When the time is near the great eagle will shed tears a blood and those who defend the dark regions of the spider kingdom must prepare for battle, for Ator will cast light upon the darkness."

I dare say it doesn't sound any less nonsensical the second go around, but I digress. The Spider King prays to whatever it is he's supposed to pray to, announcing that the son of Thoren is no more. Oops. The next day Griba goes to the village and, after briefly considering his options, offers up Ator to a pair of complete strangers with the promise that he will provide food "that you may eat" and herbs and weapons as well. The only catch is that they must raise the child. No problem, they say, and the child is instantly entered into the family. A feel-good happy piece of music plays and the film whisks us 18 or so years into the future and into one of very best scenes in the film - a conversation between Ator and his now sister Sunya.

SUNYA: (after running up to Ator, who is sitting on a log) I couldn't find you. Don't you ever leave me like that, ever!

ATOR: I was in the woods. Here, I brought you a present! (Ator hands Sunya a baby bear)

SUNYA: Ooh! What's his name?

ATOR: Tiok. (The bear bites Sunya, who drops it to the ground and looks longingly into Ator's face) I love you.

SUNYA: And I love you.

ATOR: Why can't we marry?

SUNYA: Ator, we are brother and sister.

ATOR: (After looking around in a bought of confused thought) I'll talk with our father.

Even though we, as the audience, are well aware at this point that Ator and Sunya are not actually related, this moment of incestuous conversation coupled with the romantic theme playing throughout it still comes across as more than a little disturbing. And while we might initially think otherwise, things don't get any better when Ator goes to talk to the father.

FATHER: You're already a better hunter than I am.

ATOR: Well, I owe it all to you, father.

FATHER: What's the matter Ator, you have sad eyes. Are you in love by any chance?

I'll leave you to marvel at the incomparable absurdity of that last line of dialogue for a few moments before continuing. . .

ATOR: Who told you? (Ator looks incredibly uncomfortable at this point)

FATHER: My heart told me, and your mother's heart. There's nothing wrong with that. All young men fall in love, and you're a man now.

The romantic theme that played throughout the previous conversation resurfaces here - Ator looks behind him and sees Sunya, smiling, and begins once more.

ATOR: Uh, father. You see, I would have told you sooner. And do you remember when our ancestors used to allow marriage between... brother and sister... I know times have changed but...

FATHER: Ator, you don't know how happy you really make me.

Okay okay okay. Hold the phone. Are we honestly expected to believe that the father, who has raised Ator to be his own son has absolutely no issues with him falling in love with the woman who, for all intents and purposes, is his sister? Even more problematic is the fact that Ator, finding out quite abruptly that he and Sunya are very much not related, has absolutely no appreciable reaction to finding out that not only was he adopted but that no one knows who his parents are and that he was abandoned by some random fellow who brought him out of the woods. The script completely ignores the logical aftereffects that dropping these two major emotional bombs would cause and takes us directly into preparations for the wedding. I can accept Dakkar as the mighty Spider King. I can accept Miles O'Keeffe as a mighty warrior. I can even accept the absurdity of the prophecy that strings the movie together. But even I have trouble with suspending my disbelief to a point that I can accept that a father and mother would willingly support such a marriage and that Ator would react so favorably to finding out that he's the bastard child of unknown parents.

Ho hum.

Back in the film the Spider King is outside catching some rays and seriously trying to aggravate his beloved pets. He finds out from one of his minions that Griba has been sighted in the village that lies on the edge of the spider kingdom - the world this film encompasses must be quite small considering that the Spider King knows just what village the man is talking about. He orders the soldier to kill Griba and, before you can say, "Off with his head!" the spider soldiers are off once more. In the village with no name the marriage of Ator and Sunya is in full swing (that was fast!) which can mean only one thing - horrific choreographed dance numbers! Mere moments after the two are successfully wed the spider soldiers high tale it into the village and start to massacre its populace - Ator's step-father-in-law is murdered, Ator himself wounded, and Sunya kidnapped so that she can be forced into becoming the wife of the Spider King (no explanation is offered as to why he chose her over any of the other women in the village and it's obvious that the only reason for it is to give Ator all the more reason to seek revenge). Ator awakens to find himself the only survivor in the village and - along with the baby bear - heads off into the countryside alone.

He spies what appears to be one of the spider soldiers standing next to a stream - as luck would have it the man is Griba. He offers Ator a thorough trouncing, stating, "You have learned to fight like a tiger - that is not sufficient. Now you must learn to use your head and fight like a man." Griba speaks to the poor sap in riddles that he can't possibly understand - though O'Keeffe's facial expressions show that he's definitely trying to - and takes him under his dead puppet skin wing to train him to be a true warrior. This involves a few minutes of poorly staged fight sequences between Ator and Griba in which the former is, more often than not, sweaty and mostly naked. While fighting with sticks outside Ator notices a woman being trailed by a few random thugs on horseback. He rushes to help her and manages to take out two of them while the she takes out the third - Griba is pleased. Ator is offered nothing but resentment for intruding and discovers that the men were after her because she had stolen from them (a warrior-woman who also happens to be a thief, where could they possibly have gotten that idea?). As quickly as she appeared the woman is gone with the men's horses in tow.

Griba deems Ator ready for combat by running off and leaving the young man with the mighty (chuckle) sword of Thoren. Ator is more than happy with this change of pace and rushes off on his quest to avenge his step-father-in-law's death. Not two minutes into it he manages to get himself captured by a group of Amazons (???) who are, for whatever reason, living in the woods outside the spider kingdom. They intend to use Ator to mate with whichever woman is deemed worthy so that a new member of the clan can be produced - unfortunately the young stud is to be put down shortly thereafter (I can't help but think of A BOY AND HIS DOG [1975] when this plan is made known). It just so happens that the young warrior-woman-thief is one of the Amazons and, as luck would have it, she wins the competition for Ator. Upon learning of Ator's plight the warrior-woman-thief, who's name is Roon, opts to assist him in destroying the temple of the spider instead of going with the plan of her comrades. While her motivation (to steal the treasure of the kingdom) may be questionable, the decision to start the plot going again is welcomed.

As Ator and Roon travel towards the kingdom together a relationship begins to develop - we know this because they play tricks on one another like grade school children while the romantic music from the incest conversation plays in the background. So much for Sunya, eh? This doesn't last long, however, as the evil witch Circe - I mean Indun - traps Roon in a cave and draws Ator into her lair by pretending to be Sunya. Ator falls quickly under her spell and is about to make creepy witch love to her when Roon escapes, sends the baby bear (who has been following Ator for the duration of the film) in for a diversion, and removes the sheet that covers up a magical mirror that, when uncovered, reveals Indun to be more than a little crusty around the edges - how Roon knows that the mirror behind the sheet is the only way to defeat Indun, or that there's even a mirror behind the sheet for that matter, is left to the audience to decide. Indun is none too happy, however, and quickly summons a legion of inept undead soldiers - two of whom manage to lose their footing in precisely the same spot as one another. Needless to say that, in spite of the literal drenching of this sequence with atmospheric mood lighting, the horde of undead soldiers is considerably less frightening than one would have hoped and prove less a challenge than a minor inconvenience for our two heroes - Ator and Roon need do nothing but duck into a cave to throw them off track.

As a random tangent from the film at large, Ator and Roon stop off at a local bar and brothel - one has to question the logic of building such a place in the middle of a forest full of undead soldiers (perhaps the contractors had as little trouble with the pesky vermin as our heroes). Roon wastes no time in taking an opportunity to start a commotion and steal a sack of money from the overweight owner of the place - Ator is distracted by the appearance of Griba in the doorway and leaves Roon to defend herself from the understandably peeved customers and staff. The fact that she takes to slaughtering a number of them when she could just have easily overpowered them in a slightly less permanent fashion certainly doesn't bode well for the idea of her being one of the good guys. In the meanwhile, Griba leads Ator to a cave and reveals to him the crudely stenciled birthmark that proves he is the son of Thoren - he also sends the young lad on a side quest to find the shield of Mordor (can't imagine how they came up with the name for that one) which is supposed to render him immortal for as long as he wields it. Back at spider kingdom H.Q. that darned big eagle head is crying blood again, revealing to the Spider King (funnily enough referred to as Dakkar - the name of the actor himself) that the son of Thoren is alive. Natch. He orders his henchmen about a bit more, leading to another stunning reprise of the chanting of, "Long life to the spider!"

Ator catches up with Roon, who is aggravated at his earlier abandonment, and the two head off to the obviously-stock-footage volcano that houses the shield of Mordor. Roon warns that they will have to pass through the cave of the blind warriors - men who have lived in the dark so long that they're sense of smell have taken over for their sense of sight. Luckily for our heroes there is a cluster of plants right outside the cave entrance that, if rubbed on the skin, will somehow render them effectively invisible to the warriors. No one bothers to even offer up an explanation for this in the least and we're left to think that the blind warriors are just asking for trouble by not being more observant in their choices of shrubberies. But I digress. As Ator is rubbing one of his arms with a bit of random plant matter Roon observes that he has the sign of Thoren and demands to know why he hadn't told her. Ator retorts that he only found out a bit ago himself and that, "a man's destiny is only revealed to him when he is halfway through his life." He obviously wasn't paying attention to the earlier narration and, since we as the audience did, this revelation of his "destiny" so late in the film has no real impact.

Gratuitous leaf-rubbing and philosophical banter about predestination concluded, Roon and Ator head into the reasonably well-lit cave of the blind warriors - they turn out to be a horrid race of people who spend all day poorly blacksmithing and taking random swings at people who, by the film's logic, they shouldn't know are there. It becomes pretty obvious from the get go that these goof balls don't pose any appreciable threat to our heroes, either - nothing in this film really seems to - and they descend into the cavernous interior of the volcano and find the chamber that houses the shield of Mordor. For whatever reason, this chamber in the center of the volcano comes complete with spiffy skylights that give the place a nice and welcoming atmosphere. Right. Everything is going well enough - Ator has found his shield (obviously inspired by that found in Medusa's lair in CLASH OF THE TITANS [1981]) and Roon has become momentarily distracted by a treasure hidden away in a back room. Suddenly Ator's shadow comes to life - complete with shadow sword - and starts trying to beat up on the utterly confused warrior. With the way this scene is portrayed it seems that were he to simply steer clear of the chamber walls the shadow would be incapable of doing him any harm. Instead we are treated to a few moments of simulated tension before Roon cleverly decides to cover up the shield who's reflection of light is causing the shadow to appear - huzzah.

It seems that the leaf scent that kept the blind warriors at bay is starting to wear off, however, and as our heroes make their escape the entire cave erupts into a massive handicapped brawl. The film now reveals what all the viewers have expected - fighting by sense of smell alone just isn't the same. Ator and Roon make short work of the warriors and head on their merry way to the spider kingdom. Luckily for them, it's just down the block a ways. Inside the Spider King's main chamber - which happens to be the same set as Griba's training room from much earlier in the film, only slightly redressed - there stands a collective of men in amazingly funny hats who are doing absolutely nothing while Dakkar plays with his spiders. The two manage to sneak past all of them without raising any alarms and scurry down into the depths of the Spider King's lair and discover his treasure. If you recall, Dakkar was surrounded by a circle of men in funny hats - all of whom were facing directly towards the center of the circle. Ator and Roon both travel in a wider circle around the group of men, meaning that, at any given moment, one or both of them should have been well within no fewer than three of the funny hatted guys' fields of vision. To assist in visualizing this I have devised a crude diagram - Red indicates Dakkar, Gray the funny hatted guys, and Green our two heroes. The dotted line indicates the direction of travel taken by Ator and Roon, while the black-->white gradients indicate the typical human field of vision as it relates to the funny hatted men. Keep in mind that the number of funny hatted men indicated in the diagram is less than the number of those present in the film in order to keep it from getting too cluttered - the overall concept indicated therein still applies.

Anyway, no sooner have our intrepid adventurers discovered the entire treasure of the Ancient One than a crack squad of all of two spider guards make an attack - one doesn't need a lot of imagination to see how that works out. The men in funny hats upstairs finally become suspicious after Ator introduces the two black knights to the front of a large gold plate and, faithful little minions that they are, await Dakkar's order to kill the intruders. Ator and Roon somehow manage to completely avoid the guards, who seem to have slipped momentarily into a dimension well away from this film, and are greeted by none other than Dakkar himself as he stands in the center of his chamber. As the two heroes are about to advance he summons a group of guards who have been laying in wait - it's important to note that these are just more of the black knights seen throughout the film and that they pose as little threat to the characters here as they have elsewhere. The black knights are made short work of and, as Dakkar descends from his throne to do battle with Ator, the funny hatted guys finally start to appear but in numbers drastically lower that that previously seen. Dakkar begins to hack away at Ator with his sword - just as it appears he might actually get a blow in against Ator the young son of Thoren unveils the shield of Mordor. For reasons not even hinted at this causes Dakkar to explode. Right.

After the battle is concluded Roon allows Ator to run off and find his beloved Sunya - who has now been curiously absent from the film in all forms for over half an hour. Just as he leaves her Roon is surrounded by what seems to be the entire army of the spider kingdom - ho hum. In a cavern in an undisclosed part of the kingdom Sunya is... ehem... stuck in a gigantic ropey spider's web - the execution here makes the similar scene from THE HORRORS OF SPIDER ISLAND [1960] seem almost professional by comparison. Almost. Slowly encroaching on the trapped young bride is what appears to be a direct relative of the spider-mobile from THE GIANT SPIDER INVASION [1975]. Ator approaches the web with the obvious intent of saving Sunya when Griba appears quite unexpectedly wearing even sillier clothing than in previous scenes. In an aggravatingly idiotic plot twist, Griba has been using Ator to get rid of Dakkar so that he can become the high priest of the spider kingdom. Great idea. An inevitable sword fight between master and pupil ensues and ends with Griba... ehem... stuck in the mighty web of the Ancient One. Sunya is freed and she and Ator make their escape, leaving Griba screaming, "I am your prieeest!" to the giant spider puppet who, we can assume, takes revenge on Griba for his previous transgressions against puppets as mentioned earlier in this review.

Ator and Sunya head outside and the former promptly uses the shield of Mordor to lure the giant spider puppet out into the open - this finally reveals it to us in all of its, umm... glory? The Ancient One proves to be just another incompetent villain along the way and Ator has no trouble defeating the beasty in a man-vs.-giant-marionette battle of mildly epic proportions. His final enemy defeated and the spider kingdom appropriately brought to its knees, Ator heads off in search of Roon. Not surprisingly she was unable to hold her own against ten to twenty armed funny-hatted guys and dies in Ator's arms, never having seen Ator's beautiful bride and still holding on to hope that the two of them might have loved one another under different circumstances. Shortly thereafter everything in stock footage creation starts to explode through a variety of special effects that are quite obviously not the film makers' own. An abrupt cut takes us, once more, to the forest, where Ator, Sunya, and the baby bear are running about in happiness. There is a freeze frame on Ator and Sunya and the end credits begin to roll, accompanied by a song so horribly performed that it just might fit.

Those of you who have gotten this far have, no doubt, come to the inevitable conclusion that this is a very, very bad film. What may not have occurred to you, however, is just how transcendental that level of bad is. We've all heard tell of movies so inept that they come out the other end of things and end up being enjoyable again - ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE is a prime example of just that. Saying that the film was a rushed production hardly seems to cover it - D'Amato, who directed a total of five other films that same year, managed to have the film written, produced, and ready to go in time for an Italian release in October of 1982, just half a year after the successful European release of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. While that film obviously played a significant role in providing ideas for D'Amato's opus, including the character of the female warrior-thief, the black high priest, the cave of blind warriors, and the initial attack on Ator's home village, other sources (notably Homer's The Odyssey and the 1980 film CLASH OF THE TITANS) were also plundered wholesale for ideas. The result is a highly illogical mishmash of loosely connected plot points from other, better, films handled so ridiculously poorly that one honestly can't help but laugh at the ensuing mess. Not satisfied with taking mere ideas from other films, D'Amato also sorted through previous science fiction and fantasy epics to cobble together the explosively nonsensical conclusion to the film - this practice of robbing other films of footage would reach its zenith with D'Amato's QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD in 1990, but we'll get to that ugly beast in due course.

As mentioned previously, this film received a limited theatrical release in the United States where audiences generally found it to be just what it was - a highly derivative and even more incompetent action / adventure piece with no critical merit to speak of. Obviously unsuccessful on these shores it still proved financial motivation enough to put into motion a chain of events that would lead to not one but three successive films, all of which are a step down from the first (if such a thing can be imagined) - the third and fourth films of the series suffer the most in this respect, while ATOR L'INVINCIBLE 2 retains much of the absurd charm that keeps ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE from being as aggravating as it really should be. Out of all of them, this first entry into the series is the only one that I deem necessary viewing - it's pure Z-grade nonsense at its absolute best and one of the most amusing bad films I've ever come across.