“When sorcery thrived and wild adventure was forever in the offering,” according to our narrator, the nefarious Titus Cromwell (Richard Lynch, who took a break from menacing Charlie’s Angels and Buck Rogers on TV) comes ashore Doom Island. With the help of a witch, he releases the slimy sorcerer Xusia (Richard Moll) from a tomb.

Cromwell employs Xusia’s black sorcery to help conquer the rich kingdom of Ehdan. Plague and death soon decimate the land, but Cromwell decides to get rid of his sorcerer before he gets too uppity, throwing him over a cliff (which unfortunately killed stuntman Jack Tyree when he missed the airbag during his fall).

Cromwell kills the king and queen of Ehdan, but the young Prince Talon wields a special sword that fires its three blades like missiles. Where the sword comes from, or where you go in Ehdan to order replacement blades, is never explained. Talon escapes.

Years later, Talon (Lee Horsley) returns to Ehdan as an all-purpose warrior, buccaneer and kingdom restorer. Prince Mikah (Simon MacCorkindale) and his sister Alana (Kathleen Beller) consider themselves the rightful heirs to Ehdan and plot to overthrow Cromwell. “The rebellion begins tomorrow, spread the word!” This is actual dialogue from the movie.

They don’t get very far. Cromwell captures Mikah on the eve of the big rebellion. To rescue him, Alana turns to Talon. After some hilarious double entendre about how the princess will pay anything for Talon’s sword, Alana gets herself captured. Using a secret storm drain, Talon sneaks into the castle. Then he gets himself captured.

Cromwell is to marry to the spunky princess, who has a habit of gaining a man’s trust, then putting her knee into their groin. The King is paranoid that the sorcerer Xusia will pop up at any moment to exact some terrible revenge. Meanwhile, Earl Maynard – from Black Belt Jones and Truck Turner – leads a gang of mercenaries who sneak into the castle to free Talon.

Directed by Albert Pyun and written by Tom Karnowski, Albert Pyun & John Stuckmeyer, The Sword and the Sorcerer sits alone atop the trash heap that includes rip-offs of Conan the Barbarian, rip-offs of The Road Warrior, and in some cases, both.

Budgeted at $2 million – and looking like $1.5 million never made it on the screen – the independent production became almost as big as the blockbusters it was copying, grossing $40 million in the U.S. I saw this in the theater and recalled several scenes vividly: a slimy sorcerer pulling a witch’s heart out, a boy getting his hand pinned to a tree by an arrow, and the first crucifixion that ends happily.

This flick is not good, let me be clear about that. It looks like crap. The fight choreography is a joke; bad guys are either thrown into walls by Lee Horsley, or stand still long enough to be hit with a sword. To conceal the lack of craftsmanship, the majority of scenes are shrouded in either mist or darkness. The casting is subpar, even for a silly B-movie.

That said, I could see why The Sword and the Sorcerer was a box office hit. The filmmakers put together a product that was more complex, even more elegant, than something like The Beastmaster. The script actually has some wit attached to it. There are also enough double crosses and betrayals to inspire Machiavelli. The writers even named the chief conspirator of the show “Machelli.”

David Whitaker composed a swashbuckling musical score that’s a notch above the B-movies of the day, even the great B-movies. And instead of employing ambitious special effects or setups that would have looked cheesy, the script features what the filmmakers could handle: people running in and out of dungeons, with lots of fighting and lots of beautiful naked women. I liked it as a 9-year-old, and I like it now.

Producers Robert Bremson, Brandon Chase and Marianne Chase also made an exciting Jaws rip-off starring Robert Forster called Alligator. A title card before the end credits of this one announced, “Watch for Talon’s next adventure. Tales of the Ancient Empire. Coming soon.” But when the film ended up being a smash, instead of risking their take on another Talon, the producers quit while they were ahead and retired from the film business.