Mini Review
Day 29: Sword and Sorcery!
The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984)
In a very bizarre coincidence for Junesploitation, I have somehow chosen another film based on the story of Yojimbo (1961) with the ‘Sword and Sorcery’ film for today’s film with The Warrior And The Sorceress (1984). Yes indeed this is the ‘Sword and Sorcery’ version of Yojimbo, from producer Roger Corman and starring David Carridine.
The plot as you can imagine is basically Yojimbo, change a few basic things like the setting is the planet Ura, the main character is Kain (David Carridine), there are two rival warlords with Zeg (Luke Askew) and Bal (Guillermo Marin) with Kain playing both sides in order to free the people with the help of Sorceress Naja (Maria Socas).
The Warrior And The Sorceress is quite different from other films of the same genre as this is quite bloody, has a fair bit of violence and a lot of female nudity with the character of Naja being topless the entire time. The film overall is fairly entertaining for the most part, (it does drag a little at points) with solid performances from Carridine and Askew with the rest of the cast being over the top and quite hokey, which really works for the type of film it is.
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Mini Review
Day 30: DTV!
Puppet Master (1989)
Here we are, the final day and film for 2022’s Junesploitation and what a wild ride it has been. For the final day the prompt is ‘DTV’ meaning ‘Direct to Video’ and I decided to go with a film from Full Moon who are ‘DTV’ legends with the cult classic Puppet Master (1989). It may be quite surprising this is a film I have not seen before and having it as the final film for my viewing felt right.
In the very convoluted plot, a group of psychics are brought back together after the death of a man they all worked very closely with. They all meet at an Inn, see that their colleague is in fact dead and are then stalked by a group of puppets that seem very much alive. As it turns out, said colleague found the secret of André Toulon, the last known alchemist who learnt an Ancient Egyptian method of reanimating objects and perhaps has taken that work further.
For a film called Puppet Master there is not a lot of screen time used for the actual puppets, instead the story focuses on the mystery of the ‘puppet master’ and honestly it isn’t all that interesting. The messy plot can be difficult to keep up with, once there is a glimpse of the puppets that is all you want to see and not really scenes about psychics who are generally unlikable. When the puppets are on screen the film is instantly better, they all look fantastic and are certainly some naughty little critters. The human element boggles the overall film down, it is worth watching for the puppets and a special mention to the Leech Woman who is adorable and terrifying.
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Reviews written by Marcella Papandrea
Please check out FThisMovie.net, with many thanks to the crew for the concept of Junesploitation and some excellent prompts for 2022!
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