What can you say about a film that tries to emulate another film for the sole purpose of capitalizing on its runoff?
Not a whole lot.
"Sword of the Valiant" feels like "Excalibur's" evil twin brother. Boorman used green gels on his lights in his Arthurian film to accentuate the green in the wilderness of the dark ages, and to underscore another theme. "Sword of the Valiant" also lights its characters with green gels clipped over the lights, but probably only because Boorman did it in his film, because there's no real purpose for it here. Boorman's "Excalibur" had fog effects, Maximillian like armor for the knights, pitched fights on a variety of terrains, and bases its tale on the King Arthur legends. "Sword of the Valiant" does this, but with a cheap-budgeted feel.
The acting, for what it is, is hit or miss depending on the actor and/or scene. There's little in the way of high drama here, but the performances are certainly above B-movie quality. Yet even here it depends on the character. A couple of the female supporting cast, notably the antagonists, are horribly directed, as is the case with much of the film's performances. Miles O'Keffe does a pretty good job of portraying a young knight in search of adventure, but his character never really does anything beyond going through the motions of the plot. Sean Connery does a good job, as usual, though the glitter and mini antlers on his head were just too much. I don't know who decided to go with that scheme, but it's pretty silly. Fortunately we know it's Connery underneath all that, and his performance helps to take away the two rediculous facets of his costume. The stunning Cyrielle Claire gives a performance that is much like that of everyone else in this film; good, but somewhat flat due to lack of direction. Everyone gets the job done in the end, but no Oscars will be found here.
And, as has been mentioned, the musical score is one of the worst ever married to a film. It almost sounds like some public domain music I've heard pasted onto cheap 16mm documentaries. It's that bad.
But the worst thing about this movie is the cinematography. It's cheap, bland, uninspired, and just plain worthless. A lot of zooms are used, as are a lot of cheap edits from equally cheap angles. I might blame the cinematographer, but somehow I get the feel he was just doing this gig to get a paycheque. There's no real heart to the look of the film, and that's the real killer for this movie. For if it had been better shot, then some of the other negative qualities might've been mitigated.
The art direction is probably the one real plus for this film. Connery's antlers and glitter aside, the costuming is fairly good, and the locations, though not very well shot, are likeable, and also fit the overall feel of the film.
And for those of you laughing at Mile's O'Keefe's "page boy" haircut you should know that a page-boy was squire in training in a medieval court. Pages were young boys who ran errands and served both lords and ladies of a castle, learning manners and other skills that would serve them should they ever reach knighthood. Their hair was usually cut short with bangs all around. This is where the term "page boy haircut" comes from. The worst that can be said is that poor Miles was given a pretty bad wig. That and the hair was probably too long for the period. Otherwise it's fairly accurate.
For a knock off of a high budgeted production "Sword of the Valiant" does OK. In fact given what's presented the film could've been a lot worse, but a talented cast and good art direction can only take a B-movie so far, particularly one that's poorly shot. I first saw this film back in the 80's on HBO, and picked up a cheap copy of the DVD yesterday. The transfer, as can be expected, isn't all that good, even though it's MGM publishing the title. In fact the only real clean (non-grainy) image is on the trailer that comes as a bonus feature. Go figure.
It's worth a look if you have nothing else better to do, but don't expect too much from it. If you're a die hard fantasy or medieval film fan, then it should entertain. That and the Linet character is fairly easy on the eyes :-)
