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King Ator (Eric Allan Kramer) is killed by evil God Thorn, and his
magic sword, once given to Ator by Thorn, is broken in two. Ator's wife
and son survive though, and she brings the child and sword to the
treacherous troll Grindel (Don Semeraro) to bring up the boy and make the
sword whole again. Then she asks the troll to kill her, but he gives her
an aphrodisiak that also gives her immortality, turning her into an
eternal slut who from then on walks the countryside in a half-mad state. It's
only days away from the 18th birthday of Ator's son, who's conveniently
also named Ator (and also played by Eric Allan Kramer), and he's more and
more anxious to get his hands on his father's sword, which was promised to
him on his birthday, but yet the troll tricks him out of the sword time
and again - until Ator finds it on his own account, uses it to cut the
troll in two, then takes of to free his love DeJanira (Margaret Lenzey),
the woman who wanted to save his father from Thorn and has been kept in
his prison in suspended animation ever since. To muster up enough power to
free her though, Ator has to find the treasure of the South and sacrifice
it to the Gods, which he manages to do after defeating the treasures robot
(!) guardians and its guard dragon. Freeing Dejanira after that doesn't
seem like much of an effort. Ator and DeJanira encounter a prostitute
being mistreated by one of her customers, but Ator saves her from the man.
She wants to thank Ator by giving up her body to him, and when he refuses
she is revealed to be his mother who can now die in peace as someone has
saved her for herself and not her body. She quickly does just that. Almost
immediately after mom has died, DeJanira is kidnapped by the men of Prince
Gunther (Donald O'Brien) an ugly man but sensible artist obsessed with
beauty who wants to make her his bride - with the approval of his troll
sidekick Hagen (Don Semeraro again), who has set his eyes on ruling the
region in the prince's stead. And since Gunther's sister Grimilda (Laura
Gemser) has set her eyes on Ator, the three of them cook up a devilish
plan: They return DeJanira to Ator, but really it is Grimilda, who can
this way spend the rest of her life at his side without him ever knowing.
Immediately, Ator falls for it, too, but soon he sees through the charade
and dashes back to the castle when it's already almost too late and
Gunther wants to turn DeJanira into one of his statues by sinking her into
a vat of boiling bronze. Of course, Ator has no problem defeating all of
Gunther's guards, and when Gunther sees himself with the back to the wall,
he throws himself into his vat of bronze and takes Hagen with him. Ator
and DeJanira are reunited again, and free for more adventures ... Ok,
I'll freely admit it, this is a bad movie: It's grossly underbudgeted for
a story of its scale, the props, costumes and sets are definitely on the
cheap side, the monster masks are so bad they are almost ridiculous, the
action is less than breath-taking, the story is an awful and incongruent
mix of legends from around the world with a few genre mainstays thrown in,
and the cast couldn't be any smaller than it is, which gives you the
impression of a grossly under-populated world. All that said though, for
some reason this film is also lots of fun - fun in a so-bad-it's-good-sort
of way of course, but fun still. Everything from the wild story mix to the
bad monsters and effects to Eric Allan Kramer's borderline-ironic
performance is just so laugh-inducing you will find yourself enjoying this
movie - enjoying it for all the wrong reasons maybe, but enjoying it
still. A must-see for bad movie enthusiasts. By the way, the ending of
this film suggests a sequel, but that never has happened - and maybe it's
better that way ...
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