Kain (David Carradine), known as the Dark One, journeys across the desert lands beneath the twin suns until he reaches a town amidst the rocks. As he takes a minute to survey the scene, he sees a young woman struck down by a gang of soldiers, and all for the crime of trying to fetch some water from the well. He goes over, bristling with rage, but just as they begin to square off against each other an elderly man, Bludge (Harry Townes), steps in and leads him away, recognising that he has a reason to be here, a destiny...
One of umpteen sword and sorcery movies produced in the eighties after the success of the big screen blockbuster Conan the Barabrian, this was conjured up by Roger Corman's New Concorde company, having left New World behind for an even cheaper outfit. What was on offer here was an uncredited remake of Yojimbo, except Akira Kurosawa forgot to include a great big tentacled monster in his effort, an error assuredly rectified on this occasion. As his work was an uncredited adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's book Red Harvest, Corman evidently thought he could get away with it.
Not that The Warrior and the Sorceress was anywhere near rivalling that Japanese classic in anyone's heart, and somehow they managed to take a simple story and render it well nigh impossible to follow: not because it was massively complicated, but because as it progressed you couldn't muster the energy to care. Once Kain finds his bearings, he sees the town is split into two warring tribes who have reached a stalemate, and perceives a way of freeing the townsfolk from their tyranny by pitting his wits against them both, playing one tribe against the other to destroy them. Once you had that in mind, you could sit back and allow the movie to drone on to its conclusion.
There were a few points of interest, however, one of them being the female lead Maria Socas who was the Sorceress. Nothing too remarkable in that, you would have thought, this was a fantasy flick after all, but her presence aimed towards a different kind of fantasy as she spent ninety percent of her scenes topless. For no reason other than it might keep the audience awake, but that wasn't the only breast-based oddity, as later on one of the bad guys announces he has some special entertainment in tribute to Kain and out steps a dancer with four bosoms! After she gyrates around for a minute or two of padding out the running time, she approaches Kain and a stinger shoots out of her bellybutton to paralyse him.
See, that was the thing about many of these sword and sorcery B-movies, there was usually at least one moment, a sequence, which made you sit up and take notice because the filmmakers had gone all out to create something memorable, even if it did take up a short amount of time before it was back to the trudge through the clichés. Some of such instances here included the other bad guy leader communing with what looks at first glance like Kermit the Frog, but turns out to be a lizard puppet who speaks to him in gargles, and the aforementioned monster from the pit which boasts a mouthful of fangs but is put to death by Kain's sword. On that subject, the whole movie builds up to the sorceress making a magic sword for him for the final showdown against a new tribe who look as if they've wrapped their heads in clingfilm, but once the weapon is fashioned, there's nothing magic about it at all: even when William Smith lookalike Anthony De Longis gets hold of it there's nothing out of the ordinary. Not as out of the ordinary as some of the stuff here, that was. Music by Luis María Serra.
