Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991) User Reviews

Not Bad for a Piece of Crap

[garyq · 4/10 · 13 May 2011]

Not much is expected from low-to-no-budget Sword & Sorcery film, and this one delivers a little bit more than not much.

First the airing of grievances: The dialog is stilted often difficult to listen to. The campy synthesizer background music is so bad that it can be distracting. The acting is somewhat better than average for the genre, which is to say it is usually poor but sometime okay. Lyle Wagner and Russ Tamblyn are good. Lawrence Tierney absolutely shines, but his screen time is much too short. The rest of the cast never really rises above the level of acceptable.

This film is not without merits, however. It delivers what one expects: sword fighting; a lovely woman in need of rescue; an evil wizard in need of vanquishing. The underlying story is quite good. It was well developed and internally consistent, and when everything is finally explained there aren't any major plot holes. Some parts of the story are kind of clever, and certainly better than what one usually gets from this type of movie.

If you are able to tolerate a sub-par movie for a better than average story, watch this. If you need crisp & snappy dialog or subtle & thoughtful acting, watch anything else.

Its hard to disappoint me with a medieval fantasy...

[goriddle · 3/10 · 19 December 2002]

I don't know what it is about Fred Olen Ray. I hate his movies, but I always buy them thinking the next one will be a winner. He is notorious for the most annoying giant monster encounters ever. Hmmm, let me see if I can explain this... Man says "hey look at that monster over there!" camera cuts to giant monster then back to man "I wouldn't want to mess with him!". Giant monster in his movies never interact with normal sized men. I hate that! Why even put them in the movie?! If you must see a Fred Olen Ray picture, watch Phantom Empire.

Pure pain.

[BandSAboutMovies · 2/10 · 23 August 2018]

My search for new movies leads me many places. Sometimes, you see the names Russ Tamblyn (Satan's Sadists) and Lyle Waggoner (Love Me Deadly) and you say, let's take a chance. And then you regret it in the way one regrets saying, "OK, just nine more slices of pizza."

Lord Khoura (Waggoner) and Ulric (Tamblyn) have battled over the Blade of Aktar for years. Now, Ulric's daughter Melina has enlisted a swordsman called Thane to get the sword and her father back.

There are exactly three reasons to watch this: Lawrence Tierney from Pulp Fiction as a slavemaster, Michael Berryman shows up and stop-motion dinosaurs.

According to director Fred Olen Ray, there were sets left over from Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death remake. Before they were taken down, he wrote a film, hired actors and shot the film in four days, then shot Bad Girls from Mars in the day that he had left.

Make no mistake. This movie is a complete waste of time. And not even an interesting one. If anything, please use my painful time enduring this film as a warning to never suffer through it yourself.

Hilariously Inept

[BMovieMogul · 5/10 · 30 April 2008]

A few years ago, I was shown a high school movie shot with a group of friends, a VHS camcorder, and no money. Same genre. This movie is on par with that. I'm actually impressed that every "actor" in this movie could deliver the ridiculously flourished lines from the script with straight faces. That's not to say that they had any talent either. I was either laughing or banging my head against the wall throughout. I particularly enjoyed watching the villain who reminded me more of a TV evangelist than a wizard. I half expected him to deliver a sermon before unleashing the ultimate evil upon the world. Of course, having past experience with Fred Olen Ray, I knew what to expect. So I can't really say I was disappointed. It's funny to see the exact same "Planet of Dinosaurs" stock footage that he used in a prior movie, "Phantom Empire".

This movie scrapes the bottom of the sword and sorcery barrel, but manages to be hilarious in it's ineptitude. Recommended for MiSTies.

Oh, this one hurts

[grnhair2001 · 1/10 · 1 July 2016]

While this movie would work for riffing, it doesn't work in any other way. You know you're in trouble from the get-go when the first action sequence is filmed in a desert landscape filled with ATV tracks. It's supposed to be the Middle Ages, of course. It's hard to tell if the script or the acting is worse, and the endless modern slang is a mistake. Perhaps it's both acting and script at fault, but whatever the explanation, it's all quite cringe-worthy.

Cave Dwellers and Deathstalker are great movies compared to this.. and trust me when I say they are not great.

There are one or two moments in here that don't make you wish you were somewhere else, doing anything else, but I don't recommend watching to find them

Bad, Bad, Bad

[bensonmum2 · 1/10 · 21 March 2009]

It's been awhile since I last posted one of these user comments - and what a winner I've returned with. Wizards of the Demon Sword was made during a period rife with extremely bad sword and sorcerer movies, yet it has the dubious distinction of being about the worst I've thus far run across. It didn't take long for me to realize just how much I was going to dislike the movie. As soon as the film's supposed hero appeared on-screen, I found myself instantly and negatively comparing him to the hero of another putrid sword and sorcerer movie, Deathstalker II. And any comparison with that jackass is definitely not a good thing. Antoher big problem is the plot. Wizard of the Demon Sword's plot isn't worth devoting a minute of time or an ounce of effort to. It's a mish-mash of recycled ideas that any fan of this genre will have seen dozens of times - and usually done much better. In fact, nothing in the movie is worth devoting much time and effort to. So I'll wrap this up with by saying that the tired plot, the poor acting, the non-existent special effects, the dull screenplay, and the lousy direction make Wizards of the Demon Sword a poor excuse of a movie that offers nothing in the way of entertainment. A 1/10 is almost overstating it. In the end, I was left asking myself what in the world Russ Tamblyn, Lawrence Tierney, and even Michael Berryman were doing in a stinker like this.

Not good but fun

[danielkarlsson-59736 · 5/10 · 27 October 2021]

It's a campy film and none of the actors seem to take it seriously.

Neither did the writers, by the look and sound of it.

Everyone seems to have fun while making the film, however.

It has a pair of cool stop-motion monsters.

If you like it cheesy and tongue-in-cheek, with hot ladies and brawny guys you might enjoy this film.

But don't expect an epic masterpiece.

What the f@ck....

[buchass · 1/10 · 12 December 2008]

.....ONE OF THE WORST FANTASY SWORD AND SORCERY EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF THE CINEMA..really, trust me...For all fantasy sword and sorcery all over the world, this film is an insult to fantasy, and to Troma. The film is awful, its look like an early 90's soft-core movie. The story its horrifying, the costumes make me cry, the music..., the actors are porno style. I don't know, the film its a piece of crap... Its really bad but, strangely don't make laugh, it just too bad, a suffering. Its a journey of pain to see this film until the end. Hum, i think we can say that Fred Olen Ray is really a unhappy director. If you like this brilliant film, i recommend: "Nymphoid Barbarian In Dinosaur Hell".

What you'd expect, given the talent and budget

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 5 September 2017]

WIZARDS OF THE DEMON SWORD is a rubbishy sword and sorcery flick made by Fred Olen Ray and put out by Troma. It basically consists of a handful of characters wandering around in the desert (it was shot in California) and battling off henchmen in some lame sword fights where the blows are slow and sometimes don't even connect. There's brief topless nudity from a random starlet and spliced-in dinosaur footage from PLANET OF THE DINOSAURS. Poor old Russ Tamblyn looks embarrassed to be here while Michael Berryman is wasted in a small henchman role. The less said about Blake Bahner's turn as wooden hero Thane the better. At least nobody can be surprised about the quality of this film given its obvious pedigree.

One of the best sword and sorcery movie ever!

[german-6 · 10/10 · 27 August 1999]

Wizard ofthe Demon sword is a must see for all the "sword and sorcery" fans. It is one of the best movies from the great movie maker Fred Olen Ray (also Bikini Drive-inn, Evill Toons, Cyberzone and a lot more). Great movie, produced by Troma.

entertaining, but the title fools you ;-)

[monabassil · 6/10 · 21 November 2001]

Don't let the title fool you, it's much more attractive than the movie actually is! Still, the film wasn't bad. The acting was odd, the effects were from the Stone Age, but the humor, the adventure, and some fantasy elements make the movie worth watching...on a boring afternoon when you have nothing else to do. I paid 1 buck for it so I don't feel like it was a waste of time and money!

the last 'great' bad guilty pleasure movie from Fred

[movieman_kev · 7/10 · 7 October 2007]

Thane is on a quest with Melina to save her father from the evil wizard, Lord Khoura in this hilariously awful low budget swords & sandals film. The last really watchable 'good' bad movie by Fred Olen Ray, this film can't even be described. Sure one can tell you the loose plot of the movie, but it can't even wish to convey the lunacy of the hilarious bad stilted dialog, the atrocious but belly laugh warranting 'special effects', or the (lack of) acting that will have you on the floor. Case in point there's one scene that has Thane punching Melina in the face. You're probably sitting here reading that thinking what the hell can be funny about that, but just the way it's directed and shot is extremely funny. This is NOT a film for anyone who wants to see any resemblance of a good movie. But for us select few who are real fans of Ray, this is a treasure.Not as great as Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers but definitely up there with Star Slammer.

My Grade: B

Eye Candy: Heidi Paine and an uncredited extra both get topless

Cheap, cheap

[lor_ · 15 June 2023]

My review was written in May 1991 after a Cannes Film Festival Market screening.

Sword and sorcery was never cheaper looking than in "Wizards of the Demon Sword", a poverty budget special by genre-meister Fred Olen Ray. Troma pickup is strictly a video title.

Filmed on trerrain familiar from B westerns and Hollywood serials of yore. "Sword" is actually about the knife of Aktar, supposedly able to unlock evil forces. Russ Tamblyn and his beautiful daughter Heidi Paine have been entrusted with its safekeeping. Evil Lyle Waggoner has captured Tamblyn, but Paine is on the loose.

Macho warrior Blake Bahner accidentally teams up with Paine and film limnsl their misadventures trying to spring Tamblyn. Slapstick and bad pusn are attempted repeatedly without success (a wise man who helps out the duo is named Seer of Roebuck).

Hambone acting, especially by heavily made-up Waggoner and his chief enforcer, Amazonian warrior Dawn Wildsmith, is fun, but the swordplay here is unimpressive. Cheap sets, stock footage and silly insert sequences of crudely done stop-motion animation of dinosaurs are serious drawbacks.

Dan Speaker, who devised the swordfighrts, is personable in tne buddy role opposite Bahner.