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Reviews
Hawk the Slayer (1980)
Pretty bad, but not as bad as it should be...
I watched it again a few months ago and have to say was rather impressed. It's pretty bad, but has many of the request elements for a decent D&D movie in the correct order. Mysterious hero with tragic past, evil overlord with mysterious connection to the hero and similarly troubled past but also with an idiot son who envies his dad's immense power. Then there's the "Seven Samurai"/"Lord of the Rings" questing party thing, some cute nuns, lots of eating roast legs of various meats, a dwarf befriending before tragically dying, a magic sword and a generally happy though quite depressing end where everything's sort of okay but that doesn't save Hawk's old girlfriend who was murdered by Jack Palance even before the damn movie started! You kind of end up thinking, "that script must've been pretty good... what a shame it was made in the '80's..." And it's got both Bernard Bresslaw and Roy Kinnear!
Doctor Sleep (2002)
Nice, but hang on...
Okay, I quite liked this low-key, atmospheric Brit-Art Horror flick, but I gotta admit I was astonished to learn it was based on a novel... Or rather, I was astonished to learn it wasn't based on the novel I thought it must've been. The similarities in theme (and the photocopying of at least three scenes) to Peter Ackroyd's "Hawksmoor", probably the most disturbing Gothic novel of the last 100 years, and Alan Moore's "From Hell", the quintessential Jack the Ripper Comic Book (crikey!), made me gibber with delight, but, well, what the hell's going on? Does the novel plagiarise outrageously or is the director simply "citing influences"?
I dunno, but I loved the wee house-in-a-suitcase. In summary, it's pretty cool, but read "Hawksmoor".