Friday, February 23, 2018

ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1983) **


Miles O'Keefe stars in this Conan rip-off from Joe D'Amato.  It is curiously lacking the exploitation goodness you’d expect from that Italian sleaze merchant.  Instead, what we get is long stretches of extreme boredom punctuated with moments of side-splitting hilarity. 

O’Keefe stars as Ator, who must rescue his wife (Ritza Brown) from the clutches of the evil Spider King (Dakkar).  An Amazon warrior (Sabrina Siani) in search of gold and adventure, joins him on his quest.  In the end, Ator squares off against the king and does battle with his giant spider.   

For a while there, I thought this was going to be worse than its more famous sequel, Cave Dwellers.  I mean nothing happens for about the first twenty minutes.  (Heck, the first five minutes is filled with old guys spouting prophecy after prophecy.)  The plot moves along at a sluggish pace, but some of the side journeys Ator takes are amusing.  I liked the part where the Amazon women held wrestling matches and the winner got to use Ator as breeding stock, and the scene where Laura Gemser tries slip Ator a Mickey is right out of a Hercules movie from the ‘60s.   

Dakkar makes for an OK villain, if only because of his willingness to let spiders crawl all over his bare arms and bald head.  The giant spider is probably the most memorable part, and for all the wrong reasons.  The budget was so low that they could only afford to show four of its legs at a time.  The editing during Ator’s final showdown with it is downright hilarious too.     

AKA:  Ator.  AKA:  Ator the Invincible.

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