The Warrior and the Sorceress

Date: December 18^th, 2012

The Warrior and the Sorceress is a 1984 film starring David Carradine, who is perhaps best known for the role of Kwai Chang Caine in the 1970's TV series Kung Fu. His starring in this low budget fantasy flick shows how far he fell after his great success in Kung Fu. Here he plays a character named Kain (I'm sure that is not a coincidence), who is a wandering warrior that comes into a desert village which is dominated by two adversarial warlords. He plays them off against each other in order to liberate the villagers from their tyranny. If this plot sounds familiar, it is because this movie is a cheap ripoff of Akira Kurosawa's classic film Yojimbo (which was also remade as A Fistful of Dollars).

But enough of this talk of plot and film history, let's discuss the nudity. We have to start with the lovely and talented Maria Socas. She plays the titular sorceress who is being held captive by one of the warlords. The sorceress has the ability to create a powerful sword, but she is refusing to do so. She apparently does not, however, have the ability to create clothing. She literally (and I literally mean "literally") is topless throughout the entire film. At one point, she does start making the sword, and white hot sparks are flying every which way as the blacksmith hammers the steel; common sense would suggest she should be wearing a protective apron, but no, still topless. Going into battle against the evil slave trader? No armor, still topless. Running around at night in the cold desert air? Topless. This Argentine beauty stars in a couple of other movies in the same genre, such as Deathstalker II, which I am going to have to seek out.

There are plenty of other nude women with lesser roles in the film. The warlord Bal Caz is attended by naked serving girls (unnamed in the movie credits). The other warlord, Zeg, gets his jollies by drowning a naked woman in a vat of water. Then there is the infamous scene with the dancing girl, played by actress Cecilia Narova (credited as Cecilia North - more on that below). I don't want to spoil the surprise, but let's just say that when she removes her top, you find out she is twice as much fun as a normal woman.

The movie was apparently made in Argentina and has an international cast. Curiously, in the credits, the names of many of the cast members have been anglicized. Thus, the Spanish actor Guillermo Marin, who does an excellent job playing the decadent Bal Caz, is credited as William Marin. The girl that Zeg drowns is Liliana Cameroni, but is listed as Lilian Cameron. Armando Capo, playing the slave trader, becomes Arthur Clark. And there is Cecilia Narova, as mentioned, as well as several others. Were the film makers trying to hide something?

The writer/producer/director was John C. Broderick, who was best known as a producer on various films in different genres.

The film also stars Anthony De Longis. You may not recognize the name, but he was in a lot of sword and sorcery flicks, and is known for his stage fighting and for handling a bullwhip (he trained Harrison Ford for one of the Indiana Jones films). Since David Carradine must have learned a thing or two from three years on Kung Fu, I expected the fight scenes to be excellent in this film, but I would rate them as mostly just OK.

Overall, the film was not particularly good. I think Broderick should have hired a professional writer. The backstory needed a little fleshing out. The acting was mostly good, although I had a hard time getting used to Carradine in this role. His character is very similar in many ways to Kwai Chang Caine, and so unfortunately I found it jarring when he spoke and acted differently. That's the curse of having played a popular character. If you are too young to have seen Kung Fu, this might not bother you. The props, costumes, and set design were pretty good, but somewhat variable. Some areas of the stronghold looked like they were made of styrofoam or plastic, but most were alright. Warlord Bal Caz had a pet lizard creature that looked laughably pathetic - clearly a cheap hand puppet.

But let's be honest, the main reason to see this flick is because of the nudity (in combination with the mythic atmosphere, I suppose). In that regard, it gets an "A".

IMDB link. Rated R.