“Once, in a world that was, or never was, in a time that might have been, or could yet still be…”

And with that enormous shrug begins The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire aka The Archer and the Sorceress, a movie so ambivalent it can’t even decide what it’s called or when it’s happening. Airing on NBC on April 12, 1981, The Archer was the brainchild of director and producer Nicholas J. Corea, fresh off his work on The Incredible Hulk (1978-1981). It was intended as the pilot for a sword and sorcery TV show that, perhaps mercifully, never materialized. To be fair, the sorceress Estra (Belinda Bauer) tells us what’s going to happen five minutes into the movie as she confronts the hero Toran (Lane Caudell) with his destiny:

“He will seek and not find; he will eat the sun and drink the storm; he will search for Lazar-Sa but find only smoke and false images.”

There was a lot of smoke, probably because they had rented a smoke machine and wanted to get their money’s worth before they had to bring it back.

The fact that The Archer might have turned into a full scale sword and sorcery series got me thinking about the state of TV in the early 1980s. 1980s primetime was dominated by soaps like Dallas (1978-1991), Dynasty (1981-1989), and Falcon Crest (1981-1990), and M*A*S*H (1972-1983) also continued to be wildly popular. A sword and sorcery primetime show seemed unlikely.

Children’s media was another story. Barbarians in particular were everywhere you looked on shows like Masters of the Universe (1983-1985) and Thundarr the Barbarian (1980-1981). They usually share characteristics that seem to owe much to Conan the Barbarian’s aesthetic (probably filtered through the original run of Marvel comics (1970-1978): a muscular hero with a square haircut; a sexy sorceress; an evil wizard; goofy sidekicks.

Which brings me to a problem: how the heck am I supposed to review all of these sword and sorcery titles when they’re so similar? This is going to get boring fast.

Solution: we’re going to play a game. Each film will go head to head against the next entry, with the winner advancing to the next round. By the end, we’ll have determined — scientifically! — the best sword and sorcery title of the 1980s. Neat.

Hawk the Slayer vs. The Archer: Fugitive from the Empire

What Happens: Toran, son of Brakus (George Kennedy), leader of the Hawk Clan of Malveel, sets out to avenge his father’s murder and find the sorcerer Lazar-Sa. He’s accompanied by Estra, the aforementioned sorceress (whose mother was killed by Toran’s grandfather on Lazar-Sa’s orders), and Slant (Victor Campos), a gambling, wisecracking merchant. Armed with the Heart Bow, Toran faces Gar the Bar-Draikian (Kabir Bedi), aka the Dark One, and his army of snake people. When you find yourself doing a perhaps unintentional prosthetic-heavy impersonation of Hawk the Slayer, you know you’re in trouble.

Protagonists | Winner: Archer

Toran and Hawk are both a couple of dopes avenging slain loved ones, but Toran has approximately 100% more facial expressions than Hawk, so he gets my vote. The Heart Bow, which shoots explosive projectiles and occasionally prevents Toran from making bad decisions, is much more useful than Hawk’s Mind Sword.

As witches go, Estra has the advantage of being able to summon and/or become fierce/ adorable creatures as necessary (and communicate telepathically with her dead mother, which seems less fun) while Hawk’s sorceress companion specializes in teleportation, mist, and silly string. So, let’s call that even.

It’s the sidekicks that clinch this category in favor of The Archer. Where Hawk had three to four very annoying companions as well as that convent full of dumb nuns, The Archer keeps it simple with just Estra (who can hold her own in a fight and provide banter) and the gambler Slant, who is also irritating but at least there’s only one of him. He also makes the excellent point (when Toran accuses him of being a money grubbing opportunist) that he has to hustle because he grew up poor and starving unlike the pillaging Toran — way to call out barbarian privilege! Though I guess they have to hit their protein goals somehow.

Antagonists | Winner: Hawk

Toran’s villainous, mustachioed cousin Sandros (played by the non-Cardassian-for-once Marc Alaimo, top right), frames him for patricide so he can take over the clan himself, starting out as the main antagonist. But the true villain is Gar the Bar-Draikian, who has a mysterious affliction/ scar on his face that he hides with a mask-helmet combo. Gar’s minions, the snake people, look surprisingly great — their make-up was the work of famed makeup artist John Goodwin (The Thing; Men in Black), and it compares favorably with work on Star Wars (better than original trilogy Bossk!) and even Star Trek more than a decade later. But more problematically: why are there snake people? Where did they come from? Why do they listen to Gar? We never find out.

The clear winner in the antagonist category, Hawk’s brother Voltan (Jack Palance), has similar face problems to Archer’s villain, but more energy than Sandros and Gar combined, so this category has to go to Hawk. If Voltan had had an army of snake people instead of his useless son Drogo, Hawk would’ve been toast.

Other Extenuating/ Aggravating circumstances | Winner: Hawk

This was painful, but Hawk is actually the better film.

While Hawk’s soundtrack had its odd charm, The Archer’s is electronic dreck. Composed and performed by Ian Underwood (formerly of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention) it sounds less like avant-garde synth magic and more like a cat stepping on a keyboard. There are endless sustained notes, meandering musical lines, smashes, and occasionally a runaway drum machine, but that’s it.

Plot-wise, The Archer is full of holes, perhaps to be expected for a pilot without the rest of the show. But even taking that into consideration, why were there so many characters in Malveel that we never see again? What the heck is a Bovum Ferryman (apparently it’s Richard Moll/ Bull from Night Court under some serious face prosthetics, see top left)? What’s the point of teasing an important backstory between the Draikian Captain Ria (Robert Feero) and Gar when Ria is immediately killed? Hawk wasn’t exactly scintillating cinema, but at least I mostly understood what was going on. The Archer also has the unfortunate tendency to fill silences with villainous laughter, which is only cute when a group of snake people do it because they hiss and shake their heads around so you know they’re laughing because while their makeup is amazing they can’t really move their mouths.

Hawk’s effects and overall look were pretty slipshod, but so are The Archer’s, which is made worse by the fact that it was more ambitious. There are lots of choices that look and feel like cheap shortcuts. For example: the clan dinner where Brakus tries to make peace looks and sounds like Saturday night at Chili’s with your bowling team. Brakus’ braids are super uneven — did he do them himself?! The Hawk clan are fierce hunters, so our introduction to Toran comes as he chases a panther (one of Estra’s familiars) with his pack of dogs. Those dogs I’m pretty sure are just the crew’s dogs. There’s a couple of German Shepherds, a Lab, some Bluetick Coonhounds, and I’m pretty sure I saw a Sheltie at one point.

Costuming in Hawk is pretty standard sword and sorcery fare, Hawk’s Han Solo vest notwithstanding, but the look of the medieval in The Archer is an even weirder than usual mishmash, including Roman centurion, ‘60s biblical epic, spaghetti-western-style Native American (?!), Varangian, and most notably, the Golden Horde (which seem to be the basis for the warring clans of Malveel). That’s one that doesn’t get as much airtime so it was an interesting choice, anyway.

Overall Winner: Hawk the Slayer (1980)

So, against all odds, Hawk reigns as the best sword and sorcery film of the 1980s so far (don’t worry, Conan is coming). Meanwhile, I leave you with Cinefantastique’s bruising assessment of The Archer:

“When one’s eleven-year-old child turns from the TV and says ‘This is dumb!’ the death knell has been sounded.”1