Sorceress (1982)

2 1/2 Stars (out of 4)

Twins and Grins

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The "B" filmmaker Jack Hill had a terrific career, starting with Roger Corman, making the great Spider Baby, a series of excellent Pam Grier films, and other delights. At the dawn of the 1980s, for whatever reason, his career was in decline, and though he's still alive as of this writing, he never made another movie after Sorceress. To be frank, Sorceress is not a good movie, and it's apparent that there was a fair amount of behind-the-scenes tinkering before Corman decided it was release-worthy. To that end, Hill's name was taken off the film (though he remains credited as producer).

But though Sorcerer falls far below Hill's usual standards, it definitely works as a so-bad-it's-good camp classic. Let's begin with Leigh and Lynette Harris, identical blonde twins that had posed naked for Playboy and were not adverse to posing naked again for this movie. The twins are button-cute but cannot act and do not look like warriors. At all. The movie's bright idea is that the bad guy needs to sacrifice the first born twin in order to rule the world, but no one knows which twin was the first-born. Except that someone figures out how to do a test with smoke or something and the suspense is over.

Another twist is that the girls have been raised as warriors and fighters, but with no information about gender or sex, so when they take off their tops, they have no idea of the effect it has. This also allows the handsome hero, a cheerful, handsome barbarian (David Millbern), to introduce the twins to their first sexual encounter. He seduces one twin, and the other can feel the experience from a distance.

There's a bearded warrior who decides to protect the twins, and all his dialogue looks to be badly dubbed. He travels with a strange goat-man that bleats constantly and is really annoying. (He must have been the movie's idea of a R2-D2 and C-3PO-like comical sidekick-type that everyone was trying to copy at the time.) There's an underground catacomb full of zombies; the clueless characters eventually escape simply by climbing back out again. There's also a giant flying lion in the sky, shooting laser beams at a giant floating head. The giant flying lion wins, but I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not.

Also, there's no actual sorceress in the movie, even though it's called Sorceress.

In any case, experienced moviegoers will have a good time laughing at this -- and enjoying the scenery -- from beginning to end. Kino Lorber released Sorceress on Blu-ray, and it comes with very revealing interviews by Corman (who, even though he has made something like 500 movies, remembers all the details of this one movie), and screenwriter Jim Wynorski, who went on to a prolific "B" movie directing career of his own, as well as two other crew members. They all have great stories of this movie's strange production, and they have differing views of Hill; I wish Hill had been available to tell his side of things. We also get a collection of "B" movie trailers for this and other titles, including another upcoming Blu-ray, Space Raiders (1983).