The Sword of the Barbarians

This movie stunk. The English dubbing was horribly amateur, like some video company wanting a release in North America hired a bunch of high-school teachers to dub the film and did it in one try to save money at the recording studio. Ignoring the dubbing, the acting was completely off-key. Sometimes the characters looked like they were trying to get their lines over with after practicing a dozen times in front of the mirror, other times they were over-acting, it was the typical acting style you see in high-school dramas.

The choreography was a joke, not only can you tell it's totally fake with the lack blood and the bad acting, but what makes it funny is that they try to make it look real by moving the camera angles in such a way to hide the fact that they thrust the sword to the side of the opponent or to cover up the fakeness. The directing and photography is equally bad, the camera work is shaky, sloppy, and even out-of-focus at times.

The film shots were poorly set-up. They were at bad angles, frames, and positions. I'm sure the director knew this during editing, but they probably were operating on a miniscule budget, so they couldn't afford enough film and decent filming equipment. You can tell the budget is so small by the fact that they lacked enough decent props and backdrops, didn't have any special effects besides camera tricks, and had micro "villages" and settings that had the camera always close-up to hide this fact. Lastly, the music was completely cheesy, like it was made and composed for an electronic keyboard.

To sum things up, this movie is a completely forgettable, straight from film to VHS, watch-on-a-Sunday-afternoon-when-nothing-else-is-on-TV flick.