The Magic Sword

Basil Rathbone ponces it up unmercifully in his crimson Aunt Jemima scarf, and Estelle Winwood is...well, Estelle Winwood. Bert I Gordon, we love you! (for some reason).

so objectively this is a 30. but it made me feel so warm inside with its cheese, its corniness, its bombast, its pure adventure, its cheap effects, and its basil rathbone dressed as a gypsy sorceror in eyeshadow hamming it up that dammit i want to rate it a 70.

More hammy and cheesy than the sandwich of your dreams. A really weird little movie, with a delightfully unpredictably plot. So bad it's good is, after all, still a kind of good.

Perhaps I overrated this one, but in spite of its extremely low budget, I found it a charming medieval fantasy. Enhanced by winning--if hammy--performances by veterans Basil Rathbone and Estelle Winwood.

As cheap as one might expect from a Bert I. Gordon's film. Still, if you like 7th Voyage of Sinbad, Jack the Giant Killer, Prince Valiant, and other campy medieval fantasies, this is for you.

A tedious doomed 1962 action adventure full to overfilling with mediocre plot and uninspired acting. Nothing much stands out as being particularly bad, but then nothing is particularly good either. Many of the special animations are very cheesy. Sound effects and music in general are annoying. Mostly extremely silly plot points, such as riding a horse around an ogre until he gets dizzy and falls, makes it hard to enjoy, but laughable for the absurdity and unintended comedy.

Something of an unpolished gem; Gordon keeps the scenes briskly moving with his usual panache and modest special effects. Kinda fun to think there's some Basil Rathbone vs. Maila Nurmi scene chewing here but it's hardly a highlight for either of them. Ultimately underwhelming, even for its time. [MST3k: Kind of a lazy effort from the boys, but with some better than average skits for the Joel era.]

Silly and inoffensive (other than the accents, hoo boy). The best parts are Estelle Winwood being a helicopter witch mom.

Mst3k score: 7/10