Iron Warrior (1987)

Fresh and Exciting

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

I was flipping through the channels when I caught the very end of this, for lack of a better term, we'll call it a "movie". I saw an old lady dancing on a cliff. Then someone, I assumed he was the hero due to the cheekbones, shoves a torch in her face and she falls off the cliff.It was so utterly surreal that I wasn't sure if the movie was insane, or if I was insane and had created a vision of it in my madness. I resolved to record the thing the next time it was on and test the limits of my sanity. Yes, like a professor in a Lovecraft story, I had found a mysterious object that could warp your very mind and was convinced I could handle it. How wrong I was.There's not so much a plot as there are... several things that happen, none of which have any impact on the rest. Remember those cliffs I talked about? Well, get used to them, because almost every scene is shot on, in, or around them. Two kids play with something that looks like a tribble and one is kidnapped, inadvertently saving this poor kid from having to be in the rest of the movie. Three of Warrent's failed auditions for 'Cherry Pie' laugh on a video screen as a hula hoop prison twirls around what appears to be an older Ms. Frizzle from the Magic School Bus. A king is assassinated and the princess runs off to raise an army by not wearing a bra.I would like to reiterate: none of this matters. Not. A. Single. Bit. Except the part about the bra-less princess. I have a feeling that was the entire reason for this film being made.We then see the hero, he of the chiseled cheek, posing on a hill. His name is Ator, or Ugh-Toorrrrrr, or HrghTrgh, or whatever the actor is told to mimic, because English is clearly not their native language. Something happens with a woman burning his (or someone's, it's not entirely clear) house down with Ator inside. He survives by covering himself with a wet blanket and laughing at the concept of smoke inhalation.The movie then does what it does best: ignore what just happened and moves on to the next scene. The princess is running from some thugs on horseback and ErrTerr has to save her. She's taken captive by, and I truly wish I was making this up, tying each of her limbs to a horse. The obvious mannequin is then carried over a couple of pre-set spears. No, they don't stab her. No, she doesn't resist and dodge them. Her captors are just passing her over the spears five or six times while HrTuor kills them one by one. Somehow, they manage to keep the mannequin suspended even when they're down to one mook. Movie magic at its finest.I could go on like this. I really could. The movie never deviates from this pattern, one non-event following the next, each taking a bit of your soul away with it. The fights deserve mention for two reasons. One: there's no acting during them which is a nice break. Two: they provide a perfect example for how to do everything wrong. I showed the movie to two of my friends, both trained and certified stage combatants, and they punched me in the face for, quote "Ruining their careers by associating what they did with something like this," end quote. So there, this movie made two people hate what they do because it did it so bad. We're still friends, I deserved the face-punching.Music, costuming, cinematography, they're all the products of the '80's. Imagine a post-apocalyptic society rebuilding itself based on Mad Max and VH1 Classic music videos. Then shoot all that by a ten-year-old who got hold of daddy's VHS recorder and just figured out he can make people "disappear" by alternating the pause and record buttons. Set the whole mess to the worst synthesizer demo music you've ever heard wafting from the keyboard aisle at Wal-Mart and you've got Iron Warrior in a nutshell.

This is very different from the standard sword 'n sandal pics, and indeed the other two Ator films. It feels more like an art house film. Lots of swirling cloths, slomo-scenes, coloured filters, weird hair styles and make up and a WTF?! Ending. Our princess wears dresses made of swirling cloths in either scarlet or blue, she has pink lips and one pink eyebrow (weird) and her hair is kinda gathered into this crest like a Greek helmet which is just odd. Ator, has his hair done like a girl, beautifully braided and is too neat and styalised to be the 'warrior hero' he is supposed to be. The whole thing feels like a rock video, or an advert for something. The one great thing is that it isn't dubbed. This is by the director of the awful 1973 'Beauty of the Barbarian' and had I known that I might not have bought it. This is a terrible film. Nothing much happens, its very very arty ie: pretty in a very 80's kind of way, but not much substance. The music is again poorly chosen, though its not as cringeworthy as the skippy the kangaroo stylee stuff from 'beauty of the barbarian'. The characters are underdeveloped, and although Miles O'Keeffe is undeniably lovely to look at, even he cannot save this film. The ending is sudden, weird and non sensical, if you can make it that far. The special effects like Phaedra's spinning hula hoop are tacky. There is no tension, no emotion, no real story and even the sword fights aren't particularly exciting. Still, it is quite pretty, the scenery (its filmed in Malta) is beautiful, and it does have a shirtless Miles O'Keeffe.

When my friend and I walked into the theater to see this film, there were only four other people in the seats. All four of them walked out before the first 30 minutes had passed. That pretty much sums it up for this movie. It is a disjointed mess and almost un-watchable.

I saw another Ator movie on MST3K under the title "Cave Dwellers". It was one of the worst-made movies I've ever seen. Unfortunately, I saw Iron Warrior without the benefit of the MST3K crew, and it was very hard to endure. The film concerns the quest of Ator to stop a witch, but most of the time he just wanders around with no apparent agenda. He occasionally fights his brother, now the silver skull-masked "Master of the Sword", and is featured in many, many slow-motion scenes which seem to exist solely to make the movie last longer. Painfully boring, but it's a little better than Cave Dwellers in that it has some blood and nudity.