Eye Candy #91 - "Hawk the Slayer"

Hawk the Slayer: I remember watching bits and pieces of it as a child, but since it also was referenced in my recent rental “Spaced” (the character Bilbo Bagshot knocks a guy out for saying “Hawk the Slayer” was bad), I figure I’d finally watch it in its entirety to bask in the wonderment of Hollywood fantasy films circa 1980. And all I can say is HOLEE CRAP. I’ve often thought I would never find a movie worse than “Invasion USA”, but “Hawk the Slayer” is that movie. There is no sci-fi/fantasy worse than derivate, boring sci-fi/fantasy made on the cheap, and “Hawk” has cheap in spades. “Hawk the Slayer” is like “Excalibur” if “Excalibur” blew. The plot (as if it mattered): two brothers Hawk (John Terry, acting with all the emotional depth of a fence post) and Voltan (Jack Palance). Voltan kills Hawk’s fiancee and their father, but is horribly scarred in the process. Hawk is given the family heirloom, a sword he can control with his mind (i.e. he can will it into his hands, which just happens to look a lot like a key grip throwing the sword at Terry from just off-camera). Voltan, being dastardly, kidnaps the abbess of a convent to ransom her to support his evil gang of warriors. Hawk is then approached to rescue her and assembles a dirty dozen of sorts to help him fight back (okay, he really just picks up four other guys, including an elf, a giant, a guy with one hand, and the least dwarf-looking dwarf you’ve ever seen). Packed to the gills with acting that swings wildly between wooden and maniacally, scenery-chewing BAD, “Hawk” has the same perverse watchability as a car wreck. I hope that Palance was out of his mind on drugs during the filming of the picture, because he’s certainly carrying on like he is. Woodchuck sez, “Oh yeah, you need to skip this one.”