Paperhouse

Based on the novel 'Marianne Dreams' by Catherine Storr, which had previously been adapted into the fabulous 'Escape Into Night', 'Paperhouse' is the story of 'Anna' (Charlotte Burke) who, while suffering from glandular fever discovers herself slipping into the dreamworld  of her own drawings where she meets Marc (Elliott Spears), another of her Doctor's patients, who's unable to walk due to his muscular dystrophy.  Very much subjected to the whims of the bad tempered Anna, who veers wildly between kindness and petulance, the pair find themselves trapped in the lonely house held seige by a warped and angry caricature of her absent father (Ben Cross).

The kid actors are kid actors and the dubbing of American actress Glennne Headly is massively distracting but director Bernard Rose's interpretation of the story is an intriguing one with some bold visuals but it pales in comparison to it's predecessor.  His idea to replace the terror of the watching stones with the hammer wielding father is the most 1980s of ideas which, with mention of his drinking, gives the whole thing a whiff of psychodrama that robs the story of some of it's supernatural menace but it isn't without it's charms.

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Excalibur

The early 1980s saw a veritable host of fantasy movies arrive on cinema screens - inspired no doubt by the 'magic' sword waggling of the first two Star Wars movies - such as 'Hawk the Slayer', 'Dragonslayer', 'Clash of the Titans', 'The Beastmaster', 'Conan the Barbarian', 'Krull', 'The Dark Crystal' and of course John Boorman's epic retelling of the story of Arthur and the magic sword that waggles above all other waggly magic swords, 'Excalibur'.

Forever doomed to be the second best retelling of the Arthurian legend - "You can't expect to wield supreme power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you"- Boorman's version is still a bold if slightly overlong, stark if often a tad indistinct, violent and misogynistic reinvention that discards the epic chivalry of Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur and in it's stead presents a version of the legend that literally glows with mythic resonance whilst never shying way from the blood and mud that would characterise such a time - "Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here!" (I'll stop quoting 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' now, I promise).

To tell his story Boorman assembled cast of then little known but now budget busting actors including Helen Mirren as (Morgana Le Fay), Patrick Stewart as King Leodegrance, Liam Neeson as Gawain and Gabriel Byrne as King Uther Pendragon but it's Nicol Williamson as Merlin who dominates every scene he's in and is sorely missed from those he isn't.  This movie was Boorman's passion project following a decade of career highs, lows and 'Zardoz' and when he finally got the go ahead he threw everything he could at the screen telling a story that encompasses the entirety of Arthur's life which perhaps was not necessarily the best idea but restraint is in no way a characteristic of this film and as an auteur piece it is perfectly realised whilst as a love letter to the pervasive power of the Arthurian legend it is, almost, unsurpassed.

"Look upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this night, this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, "I was there that night, with Arthur, the King!" For it is the doom of men that they forget."

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Hawk the Slayer

Co-written by novice director Terry Marcel and legendary Hammer composer Harry Robertson (The Oblong Box, The Vampire Lovers, Twins of Evil) and born out of their shared love for sword and sorcery novels, 'Hawk the Slayer' crams every Tolkien and Robert E. Howard trope it can afford - a witch, an elf, a dwarf, a suspiciously ungigantic giant, a magic sword and massed armies of several - into it's £600,000 budget (of which star Jack Palance was reportedly paid a sixth) to create a ridiculously fantastic travesty of a movie that personally I have a bit of a soft spot for.  

The storyline is essentially a thinly disguised riff on The Magnificent Seven with the six shooters swapped for swords and bows and with the action relocated to a chilly, dry ice drenched park in Buckinghamshire.  Obviously made with an eye to the international market the producers cast two Americans in the leads, the aforementioned Palance and debutant action hero John Terry and they are both, well, they're both pretty terrible.  Of the latter it's perhaps kindest to say that he's ineffectual and wooden and way out of his depth but would mature into roles in 'The Living Daylights', 'Full Metal Jacket' and 'Lost' whilst the former gives a scenery chewing performance of epic awfulness.  Acting around them we have a troupe of reliable Brit supporting actors such as Carry on... staple Bernard Bresslaw (who would return to the fantasy genre again three years later in Krull), One Foot in the Grave's Annette Crosbie, Patricia Quinn (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), Harry Andrews (Theatre of Blood), Patrick Magee (The Skull) and Roy Kinnear (The Bed Sitting Room) all of whom do much of the heavy lifting and keeping admirably straight faces.

Released at a time when fantasy movies of this sort were extremely thin on the ground and when interest in the fantastical was hitting fever pitch in the wake of Star Wars, Hawk was a box office bomb but one that quickly acquired a devoted fan following and whilst no sequels were ever made (until Garth Ennis' 2022 comic series) it has been credited with triggering the flurry of similar movies that followed in it's wake such as Dragonslayer, Excalibur, Conan the Barbarian, The Beastmaster and the aforementioned Krull to name just a few.

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