Rod’s Fantasy Film Reviews
Ator,
the Fighting Eagle
(I
do not know why our hero Ator is a fighting eagle. Perhaps I missed something
important. There is a big eagle statue at one point in the film, but that may
be unrelated.)
This review
contains spoilers, puns, geeky references and attempts at humour.
This
is a film I was sure I had not seen before, however on viewing it there were
certain bits that stirred the memory, so maybe I did watch it back in the day
and it got banished from my mind. Overall, it is an enjoyable fantasy / sword
& sorcery film very much constructed using the Conan the Barbarian / Beastmaster
template. There’s a child born who is part of a prophecy. The evil one fears
him as it spells his inevitable doom and so hunts for the child in order to
kill him. The child is hidden, grows up and becomes a big muscle-bound
barbarian type who is really good at fighting. His village is attacked, his new
wife kidnapped, and so of he goes on a quest to avenge his people, rescue his
woman and whilst he’s at it he might as well fulfil that pesky destiny of his
too. There is a random elephant noise somewhere near the beginning of the film
also, but we never see any elephants. This perplexes me still. Anyway...
We
open with some nice fire and epic Conan-like narration talking about the
prophecy and giving some more general background info. Then Ator is born - he
is a huge and damn ugly baby. Surely, a clear sign he will grow to be a
barbarian warrior. One of the mid-wives seems rather more exhausted by it all
than the new mother, which is odd considering the poor girl just gave birth to
a giant baby (with a face like a cabbage patch doll). They notice the Mark of
Torrin, meaning this is the baby from the prophecy, and so poor Ator has to be
taken from his mother and hidden. This happens just in time as word spreads
fast and soon mother, midwives and others in the village all lay dead at the
hands of Dakkar’s henchmen. Dakkar is the High Priest of the Spider Cult and second
only to The Ancient One itself, by the way.
The
narrator, Griba, who looks a bit like Derek Smalls of Spinal Tap’s long lost
twin brother, takes Ator and dumps him on some random couple in a different
village. The mother already has one baby who she’s busy breast-feeding when
Griba arrives, but she does have that spare boob and so she is willing to
accept another baby into her family. The father is on his deathbed by the looks
of things and also agrees to take the child on after Griba promises him magical
herbs that will heal him. As you do. We then have a time skip and Ator is all
grown up and frolicking in a field with his sister and a bear cub - it turns
out Ator and adopted sister Sunya are in love, but since they think they are
siblings for real, it’s all a bit awkward. Imagine their relief when Dad finds
out about their feelings for each other and only then reveals “Hey, it’s all
good, you were adopted, you can actually marry your sister!” Yay..! (I
think...)
Much
celebration follows as a wedding occurs almost immediately - there’s drumming
and dancing, and... but wait! The bad guys decide to attack the village and
kill everyone - Ator is knocked unconscious by a blow that clearly misses him
by miles (a lot of that sort of thing in this film) and poor Sunya is
kidnapped. Ator and the bear cub then go off, encountering Griba and we have
the montage-type bit of the film where the hero is taught a variety of
different combat styles and gradually learns how to warrior better. He chooses
a cool new sword too. Ator is able to put his new skills to use by saving a
plucky blonde warrior woman from some assailants, though it turns out she
probably didn’t need his help and rides off in a bit of a strop.
Ator
is soon captured by a tribe of Amazon-like women who include the mystery blonde
woman - turns out she is called Roon. The women warriors have a fight to see
which one can win the right to mate with Ator, who is to be killed afterwards.
Death by snoo-snoo!! Roon wins but after finally talking to him and learning of
his quest (and marriage status presumably) she decides not to bonk and kill
Ator but rather join him. She has her own shallow seeming reasons - the vast
treasure horde of the Spider Cult. So they sneak out and flee the Amazon types
camp.
They
run into trouble when a random witch decides she has taken a fancy to Ator. She
is the archetypal siren of the tale. She traps Roon in a cave with a
disappearing Bambi, lures Ator into her den then drugs him with some wine
(seriously, he didn’t have to drink it, why would he drink it?? Things
definitely seemed dodgy. Must’ve been thirsty...) - she shows Ator a vision of
Sunya married to Dakkar and all happy with the spiders, and I think (it is
heavily implied any way) that she and our hero then get intimate together.
Luckily the bear cub (whose name I didn’t manage to get, never came up in the
credits either) rescues Roon who then rescues Ator - the witch’s true face is
revealed and it is very unpleasant, like something from an Italian zombie movie
of the same era. Gruesome. I almost expected the next scene to be Ator crying
in the shower, desperately attempting to scrub off his shame.
Next
up our heroes traverse the misty Jungles of the Walking Dead, but that doesn’t
really slow them down too much, rather an after-thought by the writers I got
the impression - after a short chase the undead just disappear and we arrive at
a tavern with some bloody uncomfortable-looking stone furniture. Roon decides
she’s going to rob and kill everyone for some reason, perhaps the food wasn’t
good (it looked like balls of pasta) or she was just showing off. Meanwhile
Ator goes off following Griba when he sees him at the entrance. Griba reveals
Ator’s Mark of Torrin which he himself had hidden when Ator was just a baby
using some magic talcum powder. He also tells Ator to go get the Shield of
Mordor (yeah, well that’s what it sounded like in the film, Sauron won’t be
pleased) which he would need to complete his quest.
In
an awkward scene in which Ator and Roon rub leaves on themselves to disguise
their smells, Roon sees the Mark of Torrin and scolds Ator for not telling her
about it sooner. Poor fella only just found out himself. They then go into the
Cave of Blind Blacksmiths which is rather amusing but ultimately tragic; the
warrior-blacksmiths cannot see thing, but they have an amazing sense of smell -
hence all the leaf rubbing. Ator then has to fight a shadow monster, but Roon
destroys it easily by covering the light from the gleaming shield - they take
the shield and go back through the other room, but Ator rolls a 1 for his
stealth check and they end up fighting the blind blacksmiths any way. I did
feel sorry for them, they were just minding their own business doing some blind
blacksmithing and now they’re all dead. Every one of them.
The
assault on the lair of the Spider Cult begins - it doesn’t seem a very fair
battle, Ator and Roon clearly are the superior fighters and Dakkar only seems
to have about 12 guys any way. Dakkar confronts Ator and is killed oh so
easily, disintegrated by the magic shield. Poof, gone, so much for him and his
evil laugh. Didn’t even get to monologue.... much. Sunya is rescued from a
giant cobweb made of rope (you ain’t fooling us, props dept). Roon finds her
precious treasure horde, but is then killed, apparently by the same bunch of
guards she and Ator already took out easily. Obviously a lot tougher than they
looked. But it’s not quite over yet - Ator still has to fight the Ancient One, who
it turns out is an enormous fake spider. Obviously very old as it has mobility
problems and clearly can’t even spin webs anymore, the guys having to help out
with a prosthetic... Well, after a little flailing about Ator kills it and the mirrored
surface of the magic shield then shatters.
Ator
and Sunya then skip off into the sunset... The end.
Unlike
many of the other films of the era and of the same ilk, this one is pretty
family friendly being PG certificate. There is a lot of fighting, but mostly
just badly choreographed and with hardly any blood and no guts at all. Similarly,
there is almost no nudity (one scene where a woman bathes in a stream, but far off
in the distance). And the villains didn’t really pull off the evil, threatening
vibe particularly well, so no real sense of foreboding or menace to put you on
edge. The giant beast at the end was no scarier than Ator’s ‘80s hair-do
(wondered when the rest of Whitesnake were going to show up...)
It
was pretty horrendous for me though because the bad guys are the Cult of the
Spider and I do have arachnophobia. In Skyrim I had to install a mod which
turned all the spiders into bears so I could actually play the awesomeness. So
that was not nice about this film. Head priest Dakkar (also played by a fellow
named Dakar...) seemed to delight in letting the eight-legged horrors crawl on
him, popping one on his bald head at one point... urghhh. So... damn, spiders,
why’d it have to be spiders..?! Start the plane Jacque!!
The
pacing is good, and there’s a clear introduction, beginning, middle and end.
Although saying that, the end of the film does feel slightly rushed. Certainly
doesn’t outstay its welcome. Everything wraps up very quickly considering the
build up we’ve had - Mr head priest is dispatched in a flash (literally!),
there’s a bit of a twist (no spoilers here though!) but it’s all dealt with so
matter-of-fact-like. And the gigantic fake spider ‘The Ancient One’ similarly
poses no serious threat since it appears to be glued to the ground and was only
filled with blackcurrant Ribena or something anyway. Then the most bizarre
thing of all - the song at the end....
Throughout
the film music was suitable, even acceptable - typical Conan-esque dramatic and
epic fantasy type music. Oh but then right at the end, we have a song which may
have been a big hit in the Italian pop charts in the early ‘80s, I don’t know,
but it sort of had that vibe to it. And the film even freeze-frames on our hero
and his beloved one skipping through a field of flowers whilst the credits roll
and that romantic song plays us out. I found that a bit bizarre - Conan doesn’t
do that. What the heck, Ator? That was worse than the gigantic spider for me.
All
in all, I actually really enjoyed this - it is a fun adventure, very silly at
times, but I’ve seen worse (believe me!) They could’ve made a bit more with the
link Ator seemed to have with the bear cub, but that would’ve been skirting
very close to Beastmaster territory. I am sure that wouldn’t have worried them
too much though. And I feel there was this potential yet undeveloped love
triangle they could’ve had with Ator, Sunya and Roon. Surely the treasure
wasn’t the only reason Roon went with Ator and ultimately died..? Was she
really that shallow? Ah well, there we go. They made 3 sequels to this which I
also intend to watch in the near future, so stay tuned... perhaps the elephant
will get more screen time in those.
Rod’s
Rating: 6½/10
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