Mr. BIG(Bert I. Gordon) directs this relatively entertaining tepid tale of a young man saving a princess he has never met but seen in his foster mother/sorceress's magic pool of water. He goes with six knights that he magically resurrects and a rival for the hand of the princess to save her and must in the process pass successfully through the seven curses so as to avoid having his loved one become lunch meat for a dragon. It would be easy to pick on the major flaws of this film - and make no mistake they are legion. The budget seems way under-financed for a vehicle like this. It does have one great star - Basil Rathbone as the wicked sorcerer Lodac - and a minor star in affable Estelle Winwood as the foster sorceress. The rest of the cast in the film isn't very good. Hero Gary Lockwood is almost acceptable, but the guys playing his knights from various countries are very unbelievable. Look for Vampira, Maila Nurmi, in an intriguing role as an old hag/vampire-type. The settings and props do not fair as well as the acting. The sword looks cheaply made. The dragon is not too convincing. There is an ogre that is okay by Bert Gordon standards, but nothing else really looks/feels authentic in a story like this. Gordon also adds some truly bizarre things that make the proceedings seem even more foolish: two bald men joined together as the sorceress's whatever, one curse is a HOT day, and other like things. All that being said, The Magic Sword has its moments and would probably be very entertaining for a younger audience. Rathbone does a fine job and was, for me at least, one of two very bright spots in an otherwise mundane film outing. He is as sinister as ever with his gypsy-like sorcerer attire and ever-precise enunciation of the wicked things he will do to Lockwood, his love, and the men that journey with him. The other bright spot is Winwood's performance. I have always enjoyed her for the gentle humor she brings to each performance, and here she seems like the prototype to Aunt Hagatha in Bewitched. Gordon directs with his usual flair - whatever that means. The best way to describe the level of this film is to borrow some of the lines Rathbone used toward the sorceress by calling her a tenth-rate sorceress. This film is something like a tenth-rate production of The Sevenenth Voyage of Sinbad.
Review of The Magic Sword
