Today in pulp... a band of fearless rebels, a glowing sword, a mysterious 'force' and a masked baddie. Sounds familiar? Well the year is 1980, and the new decade has summoned a new movie hero. Sort of.
This is the epic saga of Hawk the Slayer!
In the early 1980s there were a slew of B-movies cashing in on the Star Wars phenomenon, but it took cinema much longer to latch on to sword and sorcery. Hawk the Slayer was the low-budget British Film that spanned the gap.
In 1979 writer Terry Marcel and musician Harry Robertson (of Hammer horror and Lord Rockingham's XI fame) were working on adapting a Ray Cooney play when they got chatting about Fritz Lieber and fantasy novels.
Marcel had an idea for a fighting fantasy spaghetti western, and he and Robertson soon worked this up into a script. Chips Productions would fund it and ITC agreed to be the distributor. The budget? Only £600,000. Hardly a fistful...
Undeterred they set about casting the movie. Jack Palance was their big hire as the villainous disfigured Voltan, and he brought a manic energy to a role he probably didn't suit.
John Terry was chosen to play Voltan's brother Hawk - even though he was 30 years younger than Palace! He kept an unemotional face very still under his mullet throughout the film.
Told partly in flashback, Hawk the Slayer is a revenge story: Voltan kills his own father to try and gain control of the last of the magical mindstones.
His brother Hawk vows revenge...
Hawk is given the mindstone by his dying father, which fits in the hilt of his now-magical flying psychic sword. If this sounds like a steal from Michael Moorcock's Elric novels it's because it probably is.
Voltan goes on an evil rampage across the country, finally kidnapping nuns and demanding a huge ransom for their release. In deaperation the abbey turns to Hawk to save the day.
Hawk recruits a band of mercenaries including a not-tall giant (Bernard Bresslaw), a not-small dwarf (Peter O'Farrell) and an all-seeing blind witch called Woman (Patricia Quinn).
Firepower is provided by taciturn elf archer Crow (Ray Charleson) and crossbow fiend Ranulf (Morgan Sheppard). Between them they bring Peckinpah-level violence to the fight scenes. Of which there are many.
Location filming took place in Buckinghamshire, with painted mattes used for background buildings and dry ice liberally used for atmosphere. Studio work was done in Borehamwood.
Special effects were very low-cost: ping-pong balls were used for fire bolts, silly string acted as a mummify spell, there was even an indoor snow storm created with torn paper.
Robertson's score was equally bizarre: disco synth! But despite its critical panning, Hawk the Slayer is still held in affection by many as a film that stays close to its Dungeons and Dragons roots.
There's lots of spaghetti western touches too: close ups of twitching eyes and hands ready to draw. It's a fast-paced movie too, apart from the final Hawk / Voltan duel which is entirely in slo-mo.
A sequel has been in development hell since 1981. And despite rumours of a Hawk the Destroyer movie in 2015 (with Rick Wakeman providing the score) chances of a franchise emerging any time soon remain slim.
Hawk the Slayer is certainly a movie you should watch once, not least to spot how much it foreshadows the fantasy movies that come after it. It's good fun, and £600,000 well spent.
And NOT rubbish!
More stories another time...
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"A dream to some. A nightmare to others!" As it's Christmas let's look back at a film that I think helped redefine an old genre, captivated the imagination and launched many successful acting careers.
Let's look at John Boorman's Excalibur!
For a long time the film industry found the King Arthur story amusing. Camelot (1967) was a musical comedy; Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) was pure comedy.
But director John Boorman had been thinking seriously about the Arthurian legend since 1969, particularly Sir Thomas Malory's 1469 telling of the story 'Le Morte d’Arthur'. The mythic theme greatly appealed to him.
Today in pulp I'm looking back at some Michael Moorcock books, and having a think about the New Wave of science fiction that started in the 1960s...
In Britain the New Wave is often associated with New Worlds magazine, which Moorcock edited from 1964 to 1970. Financial troubles caused the magazine to close in 1970, but it made sporadic comebacks over the subsequent years.
However he started as editor of Tarzan Adventures in 1957, where he introduced Sojan the Swordsman - perhaps his first stab at creating an 'eternal champion' character
Today in pulp I'm looking back at one of the greatest albums of all time.
What are the chances...
By 1976 Jeff Wayne was already a successful composer and musician, as well as a producer for David Essex. His next plan was to compose a concept album.
War Of The Worlds was already a well known story, notorious due to the Orson Wells radio play production. For Wayne it seemed like a great choice for a rock opera.
Today in pulp I'm looking back at a very popular (and collectable) form of art: Micro Leyendas covers!
Micro Leyendas (mini legends) are a Mexican form of fumetto, small graphic novels normally pitting the everyday hero against the weird, the occult and the unfathomable.
The art of Micro Leyendas is bold, macabre and very funny. The books often tell a cautionary tale of revenge or humiliation, much like a modern folk tale.
Today in pulp: what makes a good opening sentence for a pulp novel?
Now this is a tricky one…
The opening sentence has an almost mythical status in writing. Authors agonise for months, even years, about crafting the right one. Often it’s the last thing to be written.
Which is odd, because very few people abandon a book if they don’t like the first sentence. It’s not like the first sip of wine that tells you if the Grand Cru has been corked! Most people at least finish Chapter One.