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The Devil's Sword
[Mondo Macabro]
1984; color
Directed by Ratno Timoer
Starring: Barry Prima, Gudi Sintara, Advent Bangun & Enny Christina
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Those of you who frequent the BMB are probably familiar with Mondo Macabro by now, as we have reviewed almost every one of their domestic releases to date. For the benefit of the rest of you, they’re a UK based company which has focused it’s efforts on bringing viewers obscure movie gems from foreign shores. (Well, foreign to those of us who live in the United States at least.) To put it another way, they’re like the Something Weird of wacky world cinema. Also much like SWV, MM doesn’t exclusively stick to a particular genre; they’ve released gory horror films, spy flicks, Euro-sleaze, psychological thrillers, and at least one film containing the unbeatable combination of martial arts, science fiction, sword fighting heroes, oversexed females and men in crocodile suits. Which, not so coincidentally, brings us to the subject of this review, The Devil’s Sword. Generally speaking, blurbs from DVD box covers cannot be trusted. With this in mind, you’d think that a sleeve which promises “sex, savagery, and mystical martial arts”; “an astounding voyage into the unknown”; and “an outrageous journey into a world where sex and magic breed monsters” couldn’t possibly be accurate but, even given my limited capacity as far as understanding what the fuck went on in this movie, I would have to concur with all of those blurbs. Especially the second one, since astounding and unknown are two excellent adjectives to describe this movie’s plot. (Especially the second adjective!) Despite my better judgment against trying to describe the storyline, I’ll give it a shot. It all starts out at some point a long, long time ago, when a wise old scraggly-haired wizard witnessed a meteorite falling to, uh, wherever wise old scraggly-haired wizard dudes lived back in the day. Shortly thereafter, he decided to seize this opportunity and forge a deadly sword - perhaps a devilish sword - out of the meteor’s molten metal aftermath. The deal with the sword is, it’s full of electric energy, or some kinda shit, and whoever is in possession of it ultimately hold’s the key to the world’s power, metaphorically speaking. (I think.) Naturally all the power hungry evil do-ers (namely the oversexed female leader of an underwater world of wackiness, the Crocodile Queen) and justice loving do-good-ers (namely sword fighting hero Mandala, played Barry Prima) want to get a hold it and, essentially, the entire film is a round about fight for this all powerful object d’ magic. I think. Honestly, the plot of this movie completely escaped me. Fortunately, this is one of those movies that you don’t necessarily need to fully understand to enjoy. You do need to be able to suspend all logical thought processes though. (Which shouldn’t pose too much of a problem for those of you reading this.) And I don’t mean in a believing in the existence of Dracula kind of way. I mean that when an evil crone is chopped in two by a flying guillotine you have to accept that she can live on to become whole and attempt to kick some more ass, until she is beheaded and her head is then buried in a rock wall by a flying boulder. (And even at that point she’s not quite dead, she can still yell and complain; just like when Agnes Skinner is beheaded in that Simpsons Halloween show where Homer is Henry VIII.) Oh yeah, and you have to be able to believe in flying guillotines. Plus the existence of partially rubber-encased crocodile men; underground worlds where humans don’t need oxygen; a Cyclops whose one eye looks mysteriously like those heat generating lightbulbs you get in certain hotel bathrooms; and probably some other stuff I forgot. Suffice it to say, it’s a lot to take in in one setting. But I am gonna give it another shot. Maybe after we go to press and I have a clearer head. In case the movie itself isn’t kooky enough for you, be sure to check out the extras section which features, among other things, a seriously bizarre interview with the one and only Barry Prima.
—Bunny
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