REVIEW: IRON WARRIOR
REVIEW: ALFONSO BRESCIA [ 1987 ] 94'
REVIEW: FILMIRAGE S.R.L.
CAST: MILES O'KEEFFE, SAVINA GERSAK
CAST: ELISABETH KAZA, IRIS PEYNADO
PERSONAL RATING:
CRITICAL RATING:
WTF-FILMOMETER: WHO WILL KILL TROGAR!? HMM. . . LET ME THINK. . .

"During a time when the world was dominated by witches and wizards there was a brief season of serenity - a reprieve from chaos lasting 18 years - until the evil witch, Phaedra, was released from her prison of darkness. . . Now, Phaedra has her time, to cast into the winds the power of her rage and her instrument of devastation - Trogar. . . less man than machine. Trogar and his minions of misery. . ."

I would normally take this time to go into random details about the production of a film, its creators, and how they fit into the rest of the cinematic community. Some of you may be happy (and some not) to discover that I'm going to forgo all of that today - I'm doing it for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, I'm quite honestly void of any useful information in the least in regards to the production of this film with the exception of noting that director Alfonso Brescia is one of the biggest underachievers in all the land of the boot - he directed the excruciating space epics WAR OF THE ROBOTS, COSMOS: WAR OF THE PLANETS, and STAR ODYSSEY, all of which utilized the same sets, music, and special effects footage. The fact that the film being reviewed here is not one of those listed should give you something to look forward to.

Anywho. Secondly, and more importantly, I'm just too damned happy that this is my last review of the Ator cycle to care about all that stuff. Don't worry about all the piddly details of the production, the talents, or lack thereof, of the crew involved, or any other such things. Instead, come dance and sing with me - after the repugnant mush that was QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD I find it impossible to not be happy about concluding this feature that I dumbly obligated myself to.

"But writer," you ask, "isn't this the third film of the Ator series. Is QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD not the conclusion?"

You're quite right, made up person who has no name - let me explain a bit. Against my better judgment and that of several close associates, I watched all of the Ator films prior to getting down to reviewing them. The first two are relatively newfound favorites of mine and my opinions on this, the third, will be made clear quite soon enough. The fourth film, however, was one of the most grueling viewing experiences of my admittedly brief lifetime. I'll admit that the film reviewed here may certainly take the cake in terms of being shear cinematic torture, but I still had to sit through the putrid lump of celluloid that is ATOR IV no fewer than three times over the past few weeks in order to complete my review - it's an experience I don't plan on repeating. I've seen enough up-skirt shots of Eric Allen Kramer at this point that I could invite the local children to play in the kiddie pool of vomit that's been disgorged in the process. . .

All that in mind, my decision to review ATOR III last and the inherent glee with which I am doing so will hopefully make a bit more sense. Or maybe it made sense all along. But would you give up the chance to use such poetic phrasing as "kiddie pool of vomit" if you had the chance?

I didn't think so.

ATOR III, or IRON WARRIOR as it was released in the States, begins looking more than a little like an 80's music video. One has to hand it to Brescia for this opening scene, as he imparts more cinematographic skill into these few brief minutes of film than D'Amato managed with all three, much less one, of his entries into the series. In the ruins of some ancient civilization that, by the time line given by the first two films and seemingly continued by this one, should not exist, two young boys are playing with something that looks uncomfortably like a tribble. Dashing about the ruins is a mysterious figure in billowing and tattered black garments - she captures one of the boys (Trogar) and runs off with him in a series of jump cuts, leaving the other child (Ator) behind with the tribble. We zoom in on the young Ator, confused and angry, and are whisked off to the land of homages-to-much-better-movies.

I'll describe these homages here but will leave you, the reader, to decide where they've come from for the time being.

It seems that the good witches, led by Deeva, are pretty pissed off at the evil witch Phaedra having kidnapped the poor brother of Ator. They're so pissed, in fact, that they've encapsulated her in a spinning hula-hoop prison and are screaming at her through the glory of cheap rear-projection. Deeva quiets the noisiest of the lot, who all look to be reject back-up dancers from whatever bands may have been popular at the time, and tries her best to talk to Phaedra - because she's good, you know? Well, Phaedra, not surprisingly, hasn't had a change of heart in the past couple of minutes of screen time and decides that keeping the boy and being evil some more is a lot more fun than being a good witch. As such, Deeva and her cohorts sentence her to 18 years of solitary confinement and take away from her the power to kill - oddly, they leave with her the power to confuse and befuddle mortals in a variety of ways and viewers to wonder just how the hell these good, honest, witches ever made it to power in the first place. Eighteen years passes in the blinking of an eye and, as the narration quoted at the head of this review so proudly declares, Phaedra is freed by a boat manned only by cowering monks and the new and improved Trogar, who seems to enjoy wearing a shiny silver skull on top of his head. But really, who wouldn't?

After a brief and generally useless shot of Deeva silhouetted in the setting sun, we catch back up to Ator. At this point in his career - and possibly at this point as well, I honestly haven't seen anything else he's in - Miles O'Keeffe had little to offer theater audiences than his admittedly excellent physical condition. While the first two films certainly attempted to take advantage of this attribute, they tended to do it rather poorly. Brescia takes this film a step in a better direction by realizing that O'Keeffe's only real draw was his appearance - this film truly takes him to the level of being the best looking barbarian most audiences could ever hope to see - and uses that fact well to its advantage. As such, our first glimpse of the full-grown Ator shows him exercising his swordplay before an oddly placed mirror atop a cliff face overlooking the sea. His costuming this go around is miles (no pun intended) above that of the previous films and succeeds in lending some credibility to the idea that he's a warrior. His exercises are rudely interrupted when something smacks into the mirror and breaks it - the tribble! Meanwhile, in an undisclosed part of the world, a young woman is naked and her legion of female servants are taking up the task of dressing her - the only drawback being their unfortunate decision to give her a hairdo that makes it look like the top of her head could double as a battle axe.

But no matter.

As it turns out the young and previously naked woman was none other than Princess Janna - and today just happened to be her birthday. We are taken to the kingdom of her father, where Brescia attempts some nice atmosphere but fails pretty completely, where Janna is being treated with gifts from her loyal subjects. Without warning, the evil Phaedra (backed by a wind machine) appears and levitates up to where Janna and the King are seated. She offers both of them a vase that shows their fortune - Janna's has the tribble inside while her father's has a skull with worms crawling in and out of it. Phaedra offers up a bit of witty dialogue here - her best in the film in fact - in saying, "The worms are hungry, the maggots are eager. Don't leave them waiting your majesty!" No sooner has she said that and disappeared than the hulking freak that is Trogar bumbles in and ruins the party - he attempts to look menacing, fails, and kills the King's guards anyway. The King shows Princess Janna to a secret passageway and she manages to escape just before Trogar breaks in once more and brings the man's life to a rather unintentionally amusing end. The young Janna runs out of the castle and straight into the hands of a band of weird cannibal things who are waiting outside - she escapes them as well, only to discover Trogar waiting for her on a cliff face.

Elsewhere in the world, Ator is riding around on a white horse. He happens upon a seemingly young woman (clothed in an entirely too revealing blue-green outfit) as she is being attacked by a few random bad guys on horseback. Ator wastes no time in dismembering them - including a meant-to-be comical bit where one of the bad guys shows off his swordplay before the warrior, only to be struck down by one sudden blow. The young woman tempts Ator into following her and, in true CONAN THE BARBARIAN [1982] fashion, makes love to her. In a disgusting twist of events, the young woman turns out to be Phaedra (EWW!!!), who sets the hut where Ator is resting on fire. Deeva appears out of nowhere and orders the warrior prince to rise and save himself - he accomplishes this by throwing water on an animal skin, covering himself with it, and waiting for the hut to burn down around him. Brilliant! He survives, naturally, and runs off to find Princess Janna - she's in no good position herself, it seems, as she's lying on a sacrificial alter surrounded by the cannibal things with a sword balanced oh so carefully so that its tip is to her throat.

It doesn't take much screen time for Ator to find her, though night has passed into day in the process, and his first order of business is to scare away the weird cannibal things - they were just playing with rocks anyway, so it's no big loss. But when he attempts to free the princess - who is chained to the alter for good measure - his sword is blocked by that of the mighty Trogar. A battle of broadswords ensues, much of it in slow motion, with Trogar eventually allowing Ator to get a hit in on him - this leads Trogar's body to vanish even though his many layers of clothing are left neatly behind. Princess Janna thanks him for saving her and informs him that her father is in mortal danger and is possibly already dead. She intends to follow her father's final wish to head to a neighboring kingdom of friends and raise an army to fight the evil Phaedra - Ator agrees, but decides that he must check up on Janna's kingdom before he can commit entirely. He leaves Janna behind and heads into the King's hall, where he finds everything oddly in order and the king oddly oblivious of recent events - this is, of course, because he's not the king but just another of Phaedra's minions. Her scheme uncovered, she orders her minions to attack - Ator makes short work of the multitude of guards but has slightly more trouble during his second encounter with Trogar. The princess arrives and sneaks Ator out through a secret passageway and the two escape.

Ator confirms that Janna's father is dead and they begin to make their way to the aforementioned friendly neighboring kingdom - roughly three feet into their journey another multitude of Phaedra's soldiers show up. Ator takes care of the majority of them without issue, but four of them (on horseback no less) lasso up Janna between them and ride off - bringing the young princess dangerously close to being skewered on a number of oddly placed spears. Ator will have none of this, of course, and after takes goes off in hot pursuit of them. Along the way he picks up each of the randomly placed spears - not so randomly placed after all, it seems - and impales each and every one of the offending soldiers. This utterly ridiculous scene concluded, the two continue on their journey to that darned friendly neighboring kingdom. Brescia proves to us with the following trip that he has a considerably better understanding of the dimension of time than D'Amato displayed in his entries into the series - we are treated to several shots indicating the passage of days, making the trip to the kingdom one that takes several of them. I, for one, commend him for this, simple a thing as it is. Anywho, after a few days Ator and Janna arrive at their prized destination only to discover that the entire population has been dispensed with.

Bummer.

To make matters worse, still more of Phaedra's soldiers are hanging around about the place and ride in to make our heroes lives more difficult. Both of them escape, needless to say, and after a random appearance by Phaedra herself - attempting to dishearten them, as always - they're off to find a temple to Deeva so that Ator might ask her for guidance. In the midst of the asking a statue of Deeva's head explodes (!) and an earthquake starts up. It's important to note that Brescia, again, sets himself a step above D'Amato by not padding these types of scenes with stock footage - with the possible exception of a few establishing shots of the sun / moon, I can't say that I noticed any stock footage in the film at all. Ator and Janna are separated in the confusion - after which Ator is whisked off to a daytime dream about what happened to his brother Trogar and Janna is made to sit naked in an unidentified (but very large) room while her father is crucified in a window. Right. This nonsense ends with the two being united again and heading off once more into the wild blue yonder. They reach a long rope and plank bridge crossing a deep ravine - halfway to the other side they discover enemy soldiers are cutting the supports. Ator and Janna rush back, but not before the one side of the bridge drops out from beneath them. The two attempt to climb up the other side, but are stopped by the appearance of Trogar - again. Ator, realizing he's at quite the disadvantage with Trogar waving his sword about just above his head, opts for jumping into the ravine instead. Janna thinks likewise and the two would-be heroes plummet to their untimely deaths.

Okay, mayhaps not. Deeva intervenes and Ator and Janna find themselves whisked magically into a set of caverns. Here Deeva lets them know that they must set off on a quest to find some golden box thing that's located on a rather unstable model island in the middle of a wave pool. Cool. Ator and Janna offer up no arguments and head off to the island via the magic of editing. Once there they enter into a tunnel, are once again separated, and are chased around by not one but two giant rolling strangely spherical boulders of death that cause cheap pyrotechnics to go off when they hit the walls. Eventually the two giant rolling strangely spherical boulders of death collide and, predictably, explode! Our heroes escape once again and enter into the main treasure chamber, where the weird gold box thing that only Deeva can open is floating above an alter. Ator snatches it and the whole place goes crazy - leading to the one scene in the film that I have the biggest problem with. The home of the treasure erupts into an earthquake, as does the rest of the island, and random soldiers appear who try to steal the weird gold box thing from our heroes. Now, in the background of an earlier shot in this film a very modern staircase can be seen. I was willing to give that amiss since the film makers didn't draw an unnecessary amount of attention to it at the time. During the ensuing battle with the random soldiers, however, they commit an unforgivable sin by having Ator and the soldiers fight on the obviously modern staircase. This struck me as being every bit as jarring as the hang glider from the first film but offers up none of the absurd charm associated with that scene. Bad Brescia, bad!

While Ator and Janna are swimming their way back to the mainland the evil Phaedra pops in for a visit with Deeva - a lot of confusing talking takes place and Phaedra reveals what she claims to be the real weird gold box thing and chucks it at Deeva. This, naturally, encases her in a big chunk of ice. Right. Upon arriving at the shore, Ator is greeted by the final (yay!) appearance of Trogar - all of his magical powers can't help him this go around and Ator gives him a thorough trouncing that ends with Trogar being fatally wounded. A child's voice is heard saying, "Brother, why have you killed me," and, after Ator removes the shiny silver skull, Trogar is revealed - finally - to be Ator's long last brother. Miles O'Keeffe manages some actual acting in this sequence - at least for a few moments - in honestly looking sad that his brother had to meet such a bitter end. This scene really should have played as the conclusion of the film, but the creators obviously had other things in mind. Ator and Janna head off to find Deeva again and give her - or Phaedra as Deeva at least - the powerful weird gold box thing before heading back to the kingdom. During a celebration Ator discovers that he's been tricked once again and that Janna has been kidnapped by Phaedra for what is soon to be the final time. The following five minutes or so are confusingly done and involve Ator stabbing Phaedra a lot - to no avail - before setting her on fire and finding Janna, who was formerly dangling from the cliff face, tied up on an altar. The three punk rock rear screen projection witches from the beginning of the film return, letting us know that it's time mankind had a shot running things, and the movie ends.

If you've seen any of his earlier films then you probably weren't expecting much from Alfonso Brescia's entry into the Ator saga - I know that I sure as hell wasn't. Brescia has, after all, proven himself time and time again to be a hack of the highest caliber. It's all the more surprising, then, that IRON WARRIOR is the best film of the series from a purely technical viewpoint. Whereas D'Amato utilized his standard point-and-shoot style of film making for his entries, Brescia honestly tries (and occasionally succeeds) to give the proceedings a bit of class and atmosphere. Even better, that annoying little demon that crops up from time to time in the other films of the series is totally absent here - I'm speaking of stock footage of course. Joe D'Amato used stock footage in lieu of real special effects work whenever he possibly could have - leading the conclusions of his films, originally intended to be exciting, to be laughable at best. Brescia's IRON WARRIOR is a classier film than the entirety of D'Amato's Ator films combined - from the shooting to the costuming to the effects work, the film is all together superior to the other three. He even manages to throw in a bit of generally tasteful nudity this go around, something that D'Amato oddly avoided in the films he helmed.

But you know that there has to be some reason it only rates a single star here. Rest assured that there are plenty.

Whatever IRON WARRIOR may gain in technical achievement it surely loses in regards to the plot - often pointless and more often entirely nonsensical, the film seems considerably lacking in anything that can be described as a coherent narrative. Brescia decided to forgo the typical plot lines of the first two films (man avenging his family and rescuing his beloved or keeping a madman from getting his grubby hands on an ultimate weapon) in lieu of ridiculously staged action sequences and pointless artsy setups. This leaves IRON WARRIOR to be pointless, at best, once the conclusion finally arrives. To make matters worse, the directors more derivative side is in full control this go around - 'homages' to the STAR WARS, INDIANA JONES, and SUPERMAN franchises are all far too present here and serve only to keep the viewer preoccupied with how much better those movies are as the scenes are played out on screen. Then, of course, there is the strange case of the modern staircase during the island sequence of which I've already expounded quite enough. Returning again to offer a score for the film is Carlos Maria Cordio, but aside from his decent opening theme the rest of the music sounds to be rehashes of cues from his previous productions - one cue, in particular, is nearly identical to one heard in Joe D'Amato's film ROSSO SANGUE [1981]. There's also a hell of a lot of unnecessary slow motion photography throughout the film - it works in some cases but, more often than not, just bogs down the pacing of some of the action sequences. This is all a pity, really, as IRON WARRIOR had the potential to be the best film of the series.

None of this means that Brescia's film is not fun - in spite of how confusing it is and with the exception of a few draggy scenes of witch conversation, IRON WARRIOR moves at a swift and enjoyable pace. And Miles O'Keeffe is definitely at his best this go around in terms of both his performance and his physical appearance. IRON WARRIOR, like every other film in the series, is terrible at the very best - but it's slightly less terrible in production quality than the first two films and considerably less horrid in every conceivable way than the last of the series. IRON WARRIOR is crap, to be sure, but at least it's amusing crap. If you've seen the first two films then feel free to check it out - and if you have a choice between this and QUEST FOR THE MIGHTY SWORD then please please do yourself a favor ignore that there's even a choice to be made.

This concludes WTFFILM's feature on the Ator saga, though through the magic of non-linear writing you should still have one film review to go. Enjoy it - as it serves as a remarkably entertaining substitute for actually watching the film to which it is dedicated.