Review of The Magic Sword

George (Gary Lockwood), the son of a sorceress (Estelle Winwood), falls in love with a princess that he has seen in a magic pool and, when she is kidnapped by a wicked wizard (Basil Rathbone), sets forth on his magic horse, with his magic shield and titular sword to rescue the maiden and do righteous battle with a two-headed fire-breathing dragon. The juvenile but entertaining high-fantasy may be director Bert I. Gordon's best work (faint but still praise). Typical of Mr. B. I. G., there are lots of sloppily matted effects-scenes involving giants of some sort or other and some displays of amateurishly over-done scary-makeup (especially caking Maila Nurmi, TV's sexy 'Vamipra'). The rest of the special effects range from adequate to laughable and the film is full of minor continuity errors as the sets rarely match the exterior set-up shots (notably the witch's cabin or the cave). Rathbone makes a pretty good gaunt gloating villain and Winwood is fun as the slightly dotty sorceress Sybil, otherwise the cast is nondescript, as is the script. The film is entertaining in an eye-rolling way to boomers keen on revisiting their childhoods but likely was more 'magical' to young audiences in 1962 that it would be now. A harmless time-passer from a legendarily economical director with B. I. G. Ambitions.