El Caballero del Dragón (The Knight of the Dragon) is the kind of movie that had to have slipped into reality as some kind of prank by the cosmic trickster. I mean, did you know that Harvey Keitel, Klaus Kinski, Fernando Rey and Spanish New Wave singer Miguel Bosé starred in a movie in which a knight tries to battle a dragon and ends up finding a UFO?

“He was a visitor from another world, an alien in medieval times. So they called him a Knight, and his spaceship, a Dragon.” I mean, the tagline for this movie spoils the idea, but that’s how it goes.

Also — Kinski is pretty much John Dee speaking to angels while the man who will one day clean the brains out of Vincent Vega’s car attacks a spaceship with a sword.

You can watch this on YouTube and tell me if it really exists. I’m still kind of amazed that it took me so long to find this. And we love Star Knight so much, we reviewed it twice; the first time was back in November as part of our 50-film review blowout of Mill Creek’s Sci-Fi Invasion box set. And we love Mill Creek for it.

Griffin, a young boy in 14th century Cumbria is celebrated by the villagers because he is able to see visions that have protected them from the black death. But now, as other towns die around them, they are asking him to help dig a hole to the other side of the world. But what they find is a whole new Earth they never expected!

While melting and casting copper ore to build a gigantic cross to ask for God’s protection, the villagers make a hole that leads them to a ladder to 20th century New Zealand, which is the last place that you’d expect in a movie that has been set up to be an adventure in the past.

Much like The Wizard of Oz, the film stock changes to color as our adventurers find their way to our time, but despite being joined by the brave Connor, Griffin’s visions grow more grim.

Director Vincent Ward would go on to write Alien 3 and direct What Dreams May Come.

This is a really interesting, if off, taking on a medieval adventure. I’m interested to see what others think of this one, which you can watch on Tubi.

Barry Prima was one of the biggest stars of Indonesian cinema, appearing in several  Jaka Sembung movies which were adaptions of a comic book, including Jaka Sembung (The Warrior), Si Buta Lawan Jaka Sembung (The Warrior Against Blind Swordsman), Bajing Ireng Dan Jaka Sembung (Jaka Sembung vs. the Ninja), Jaka Sembung Dan Bergola Ijo (Jaka Sembung and Bergola Ijo) and Jaka Sembung Dan Dewi Samudra (Jaka Sembung and the Ocean Goddess).

Also known as The Devil’s Sword, this is based on another comic and has a sequel as well, which is called Mandala Dari Sungai Ular (Mandala from the Snake River).

Once upon a time, as they say, an old man found a meteorite and forged it into a sword. Then he hid it until the time was right for its use. That time seems like right now, because the Crocodile Queen is kidnapping all the men of the village and turning them into her sex slaves, while still allowing them to steal women of their own.

Our hero floats around on a rock and has laser beams that can come out of his hands.

Our villainess is the only person in this whole country willing to admit that she gets horny.

Our monsters are goopy, gory and awesome.

And the sets? You’ll want to live within them.

For some reason, my week of sword and sorcery has had plenty of crocodile-themed enemies in it. I hope the universe isn’t trying to tell me something.

You can watch this on YouTube.

Have movies ever been as good before or since this one?

Nope. They haven’t.

The first of three Columbia Sinbad films, all boast the genius of Ray Harryhausen and his Dynamation stop-motion magic.

As we meet Sinbad and his crew, they’re helping a magician escape a towering cyclops. Things don’t get any easier — or less exciting — for them for the next 88 minutes.

Our hero (Kerwin Matthews) has the goal of marrying Princess Parisa (Kathryn Crosby) to bring peace between her father’s kingdom of Chandra and his homeland of Baghdad. But during the festivities, the sorcerer Sinbad saved portends of dark times to come and a war between Baghdad and Chandra. Unless he returns to Colossa, all is doomed. No one listens, so he shrinks Parisa, which means that Sinbad must go to Colossa to find the egg of a Roc, the only thing that can restore her.

What follows is an adventure packed with a dragon, a mutinous crew of criminals, a sword battle with a skeleton and a second and even more vicious cyclops.

Director Nathan Juran had already worked with Harryhausen on 20 Million Miles to Earth. The creature in that movie, the Ymir, had its model reused to create the cyclops in this film.

This is the kind of movie that’s ideal for a lazy and rainy Saturday. It’s filled with imagination and moves so quickly that you nearly want to watch it again the moment it wraps up.

For some reason, I’ve decided to see how Sinbad is treated all over the world, which means that I’ve now gone to Russia to watch Sadko, which was exported to the U.S. by Roger Corman in 1962. Ten minutes were cut, the movie was dubbed into English — the script adaptor was a young Francis Ford Coppola — and Sadko was renamed Sinbad. So perhaps I’m not watching Sinbad at all.

Actually, I’m not. I’m watching a Russian opera and here I thought this was going to have stop-motion creatures battling people. Instead, I’m watching the story of Sadko seeking the sweet bird of happiness, which is not a metaphor.

That said, this movie has some ingenuity, as the land of the Ocean King is obviously not underwater but all tricked out with in-camera special effects. I mean, there’s a moment where our hero rides a seahorse to escape.

While this doesn’t have the Harryhausen effects that the Sinbad title — American kids were fooled into seeing a Russian film in the midst of the Cuban Missle Crisis, so if there’s ever anyone as carny as Corman, you let me know — but that doesn’t mean that this isn’t a spectacle.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Known in Italy as Sangraal, la spada di fuoco (Sangraal, the Sword of Fire), this is the first of two barbarian movies that Michele Massimo Tarantini made. For a director better known for his commedia sexy all’italiana films, this is pretty decent. By that, I mean that you have to have an affinity for Italian sword and sorcery. If you haven’t figured out that I do, well, now you do.

This also has the alternate name, Barbarian Master, which is a very metal movie name.

Sangraal (Pietro Torrisi, who started his career in peblum movies like The Ten Gladiators and ended it in sword and sorcery movies like Gunan, King of the Barbarians) is Sangraal, whose father’s kingdom has been decimated by the evil warlord Nantuk (Mario Novelli, Warriors of the Year 2072, Amok Train, Eyes Behind the Stars). He leads his people to a new land which is ruled by Belem (Luciano Rossi, whose career hits all of the Italian trends, from westerns like Django to the Eurospy Killer 77, Alive or Dead to giallo sich as Death Carries a Cane and Death Smiles at a Murderer and poliziotteschi, war films and exploitation in Salon Kitty).

Nantuk has become a king, yet the Goddess of Fire and Death* (Xiomara Rodriguez) demands more. Sangraal must die or Nantuk will lose everything. So he does what any madman usually does and crucifies our hero — hello, Conan the Barbarian — and forcing him to watch everyone in the village be killed**, including the Goddess personally murdering his wife. He’s saved by the archer Li Wo Twan (Haruhiko Yamanouchi, the only actor I know who has been in both Joe D’Amato and Wes Anderson movies) and Belem’s daughter Ati (Yvonne Fraschetti, Demons 2).

This movie actually has something to say about love, loss and grief, as a wizard tells Sangraal that he must give up on the memory of his dead wife and keep on living if he wants to defeat Nantuk, who is devoted to killing him. Then again, as you deal with these issues in your life, I doubt you will ever battle an evil king. That said, perhaps you’ll find something in this to help you.

You have to give it to the servants of Nantuk. When Sangraal challenges our antagonist to a duel to the death by the traditional rules — with no interference — they refuse to help, even when their leader demands they kill our hero. And then, they just let Ati go at the end.

This movie has taught me that goddesses can be killed, if you have a magic crystal crossbow.

Also — and perhaps most importantly — Sabrina Siani (who is pretty much the queen of these movies, thanks to appearances in The Throne of Fire, Ator the Fighting Eagle and, most importantly, her turn as Ocron in Conquest) is in this as the Goddess of Gold and Life.

This is why I watch movies, to be battered into happiness by Italian barbarians battling half-naked and fully naked evil beings.

You can get this from Revok.

*If you’re watching this and wonder, “Have I seen this village get destroyed before?” You’re right. It’s the exact same footage that is in The Throne of Fire.