Wizards of the Demon Sword (1991), Or Is That A Demon Dagger In Your Pocket?

Dearest friends, it is I, the Duke of DVD, returned once again from a long sabbatical, a sojourn that sent me to the farthest corners of the world, in order to return to you, my dear readers, the cinematic offal that you so crave! I've crept silently through darkened hallways, stepping over the moldering carcasses of sacrificed druids, their faces frozen in rictuses of pain. I've endured the 301 Flayings of the Man-Child of Lower Cambodia. I've burrowed with stunted dwarves, delving deeper and deeper, unearthing nameless entities best left buried.

Yes, friends, I've blown entire stacks of Coke Rewards(tm), launched Russian rockets from Chinese platforms, drove a Kia, and subjugated an entire realm to the east of Moldavia, in order to bring you what you most desire. "But Duke!" you interject, spraying your befouled environs with blue cheese fragments and bone meal. "Surely you took some time for yourself!?" Yes, I did, and thank you for your concern, friend. I spent a liberal amount of time soaking in the hot springs of Calhoun Holler outside Possumrape, Kentucky, followed by a month-long trip into Indo-China to visit a hedge-wizard with a knack for curing gonorrhea (for a friend, I assure thee!).

Despite these side ventures, I never lost sight of what my reading public wants: Troma movies. That is why, today, I return to you at the turn of the tide, when you thought all hope was lost, as you were just about to dump your last bottle of Ativan into a half-empty bottle of grandma's cough medicine. Fear not, for I am with thee! Gaze upon what I've brought you, and despair!

As most of you know, I worship at the altar of Troma, but even I must admit when I've bitten off more than I can chew safely, and in this case, folks, I have. Today's rotten pile comes to us in the form of Wizards of the Demon Sword, which is basically a Conan-meets-Princess-Bride movie of epic suckage. I scarcely know where to begin, so let's just do the obvious and start from the beginning, shall we?

This title sponsored by Mordor and the letter "Z".

The movie opens with the unspoiled, clad-in-white Melina (Heidi Paine), who is running through a desert landscape from a group of road agents, whose lack of weapon skills is only matched by their penchant for wearing all-leather. She tricks them for a while, pretending to have leapt off a 5' cliff, which apparently they thought of as too steep for a human to survive. But after a bit one of them gets clever and uses a horse to pursue her, finally capturing her with a net. One of the other ruffians, who appears to be in charge, orders her brought back to the castle. They are about to leave when a hunky hero arrives firing crossbow bolts before asking any questions.

"Guys, I can see my house from here!"

He introduces himself as Thane of Hawksridge (Blake Bahner). He dresses like Conan doing Broadway, and wields a massive two-handed sword that is ludicrously over-sized. He dispatches the bandits in short order, and then we get some expository scenes in which Melina informs him that she's the daughter of Ulric (the awesome Russ Tamblyn or Dr. Jacoby from Twin Peaks!), keeper of the famed Demon Sword--which is really just a dagger. It seems that Ulric has been captured along with the Sword, and taken to the castle of the evil Lord Khoura (Lyle Waggoner), who is determined to use the nefarious Demon Sword for his own person gains.

Satisfaction. Fuck yeah.

Thane (of Hawksridge!) is all for stopping that shit, so he sets of with Melina to find the fabled Seer of Roebuck (guffaw! played by Hoke Howell), who is supposed to help them in some way that the bourbon I'm now drinking has made me forget. At any rate, they're off! Meanwhile, at Khoura's castle, we see his #1 henchman is really a lady, who dresses like she's right out of the Thunderdome. Khoura, who is trying in vain to activate the Demon Sword, realizes that he needs fresh virgin blood to do so, so he sends his dominatrix out to find some.

"This is the Demon Sword?! I thought it was one of them glass dildos..."

Thane and Melina, meanwhile, have arrived at a village. We get a humorous scene involving a slave trader (played by the amazing Lawrence Tierney) who sells sex slaves, both young and old. Thane and Melina eventually find their way into a hookah den of sorts, all the while asking where the Seer of Roebuck is. Some humor is thrown in here, when Thane gets a dance from a bellydancer and slips a large coin into her bustier. They finally get directions to the Seer and are off to see him.

I must hand it to the folks at Troma, they threw in totally unnecessary yet awesome claymation dinosaurs. Seriously. They're sprinkled throughout the movie, have almost zero interaction with any of the actors, yet, well, there they are. Thane will comment on them from time to time, but that's about it. I still got a smirk from seeing them.

And here we get a rare glimpse at the Harryhausen species of dinosaur.

Finally, our intrepid adventurers arrive at the Seer of Roebuck's hovel. The Seer himself resembles a late-stage Alzheimers Dumbledore and his manner of speaking is like a cross between Mr. Magoo and Burl Ives. Meanwhile, back at Khoura's castle of awesome... actually, we get scenes cut back here from time to time but nothing really much happens other than Khoura spouting some admittedly awesome dialogue that is so over-the-top hammy it deserves light applause. We get a scene where Khoura's henchwoman does some spell in order to take over Melina's body somehow, and try to kill Thane remotely, but that doesn't work.

"Hi, I'm Kenny Rogers, welcome to Jackass!"

Finally, Thane and Melina leave the Seer (having learned what? I'm not sure), and on the way slay a flying dinosaur and eat it. While sleeping, Khoura's henchmen find them and kidnap Melina, yet leave Thane alive for some fucking reason, and tie him to the ground. Thane awakes with a snake on his chest, that rattles despite clearly being a boa instead of a rattlesnake. Like us, the snake soon becomes bored with Thane and leaves. A wandering swordsman by the name of Damon (Dan Speaker) happens by and frees Thane, only to challenge him to see who is the most saturated with testosterone...I mean, the best swordsman. It ends in a tie, and they become best buds, with Damon pledging his sword arm to Thane's cause. Away they go to Khoura's castle!

Snakes on a Thane

Melina is finally reunited with her father in Khoura's Dungeon of Shame. Thane and Damon arrive in short order and proceed to penetrate large numbers of leather-clad guard-ass with their giant...swords. One thing of note here: a guard with long hair that is basically the head guard keeps goading his underlings into attacking (and dying via) Thane and Damon, yet he himself keeps fleeing, only to arrive again with another group of guards, and then fleeing again. Hilarious stuff! Thane and Damon make short work of most everyone in the castle not named Khoura. The evil man himself finally shows up with Melina and her father, with the Demon Sword (dagger) in his belt.

Damon is killed, off-screen, by Khoura, and Thane attempts to attack Khoura but fails due to his magic. Khoura ends up with a death grip on Thane's tunic, for some reason or other, and Melina draws Thane's attention to the freakin' Demon Sword/Dagger, just sitting there, tucked into Khoura's belt. Thane simply looks over, draws the dagger/Sword out, and plunges into Khoura's chest, simple as that. Khoura screams and disappears in a flash of light. Thane hands the Demon Sword back to Ulric and then starts making out with Melina right in front of her dad, who rolls his eyes and walks away. The end.

"Compensate much?"

Friends, have I ever lead thee astray? "Yes!" you bleat, dropping a half-chewed chicken carcass out of your greasy fingers, "You told me it was safe to perform ass-to-mouth on the Whore of 701 Delightful Diseases!" Ahh, yes, there was that...well, anyway, I shall not lie to you this day when I say that Wizards of the Demon Sword does indeed have a tiny bit of merit to it. Sure, the claymation dinosaurs are laughable, as is the blatant Conan plagiarism, but when you get past all that you will find that Wizards does have a few worthy ideas, mostly due to the humorous dialogue. The fighting is atrocious, the sets are best forgotten, and the plot will drive you mad waiting on the actual wizards of the fabled Demon Sword to show up (They never do! Who are these "wizards"?!).

But still, if you like cheese, and I mean thick, sloppy, dripping off week-old nachos directly into your greasehole cheese, then you could do worse than watching Wizards of the Demon Sword...but just barely. Incidentally, it's also laughable that The Hills Have Eyes great Michael Berryman is given top billing on the cover as well as featured on the cover art, yet his scene is all of 10 seconds long.

In the end, I would have to say this, like most Troma movies, deserves a split score. I give it 1 Thumb Up if you are a fairly well-adjusted person, capable of tying your own shoes and shitting in a pot without soiling passersby. I give it a solid 2.5 Thumbs Up if you are a fan of Troma movies, or the type of person who likes to spend a busy afternoon hooking up a golf-cart battery to your inflamed nipples.

"Et tu, Thane?"

Until next time, my dearest friends, I bid thee adieu.

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DVD Review: GG Allin & the AIDS Brigade, Live in Boston 1989

It's probably safe to say that most of the world has no idea who singer-songwriter/performer GG Allin was. It's also probably safe to say that most of these are happier not knowing.

Among the few who do know of him and his work, Allin is justifiably infamous. Noted for his abrasive punk rock music and legendarily extreme live performances, Allin claimed to see himself as "the last real rock n'roller," reasoning that true rock n' roll should be confrontational, rebellious, and even dangerous. This manifested in his lyrics--which were often unabashedly misogynistic, misanthropic, racist, and lauditory of drugs, rape, and even pedophilia--but most famously through his concerts, which were less musical performances than displays of aggression, hatred, and personal degradation. Allin routinely performed his entire sets naked, bloodied himself on the microphone, destroyed equipment and leapt into the audience to physically assault his "fans." He would defecate and urinate onstage, sometimes rolling in or even eating his own excrement. He promised in interviews, quite seriously, that one day he would commit suicide onstage. His shows were routinely ended not by Allin himself, but by apalled club owners pulling the plug or the local police forcibly shutting him down.

For those fascinated by Allin as a figure in underground music, or perhaps just morbidly interested in the musician's legendary spectacle, the new DVD from MVD Entertainment, GG Allin and the AIDS Brigate: Live in Boston, 1989, delivers all one could hope for or fear. It also offers cultural anthropologists and psychologists and fascinating if disturbing look at one of the most extreme, violent, and self-destructive figures in American rock n' roll.

Allin, rockin' with his cock in (for a change)

The DVD actually presents three live performances by Allin--the titular gig and then two "bonus shows" recorded on consecutive nights in 1993 (in Seattle, WA, and Portland, OR, respectively). Of the three, the Boston show is by far the most tame. Allegedly because Allin had already been banned from most clubs in Boston at the time, he and his band The AIDS Brigade hit on the idea of dressing in drag in order to smuggle GG in for the gig. We see rehearsal footage of GG and the Band going through the set, which is businesslike and uneventful--just a normal punk band going through their songs. Likewise, footage of the band getting made-up before the gig shows a young, fresh-faced, and possibly stoned Allin joking with the band members, discussing changes to the set list, and basically acting like a normal human being rather than a raving, drooling lunatic. Having read a lot about the man's more infamous antics, this was not at all what I had expected.

The gig itself also confounded those expectations. Obviously filmed by a friend of the band using low-end home video equipment, the footage shows again a relatively normal-seeming punk rock band--albeit dressed in garish drag--running through their songs in front of an appreciative and honestly rather muted crowd. Never having heard any of Allin's songs, I admit I was surprised by how solid the band was musically. Sure, it's noisy at times and Allin's voice is a gruff, gravelly rasp, but he is at least intelligible, and at its core the music is basically straightforward, driving rock n'roll. The only real extreme parts here are the lyrics, as Allin growls through such "hits" as "Cunt on the Loose," "I Wanna Rape You," and the diabolically catchy "Expose Yourself to Kids." Toward the end of the show Allin does lift his skirt and flash his penis at the crowd briefly, but nobody--neither the club owner nor the laughing, chattering crowd--seems too bent out of shape about it.

After that short gig was over--from beginning to end it's just over half an hour, not counting the pre-gig footage--I was beginning to wonder if maybe all the myth of GG Allin had been hyped out of proportion; whether the shocking transgressions of the past had been rendered quaint with the passage of time, as so often happens in art.

Then--I watched the "bonus shows."

There are quite literally NO screengrabs I could get from the bonus shows that would be publishable on Blogger. Therefore, here's a shot of Allin and his band rehearsing, fully clothed and unbefouled by excretia...as far as I can tell.

Seattle, Washington: 1993. GG Allin and 3/4 of his band the Murder Junkies are standing on a brightly lit stage, waiting for their guitar player to arrive. Allin is dressed in combat boots, underwear, a dog collar and an infantry helmet, and nothing else. A large black tarp is spread on the stage, and Allin removes his underwear and stalks naked before the crowd, covered in jailhouse tattoos and sweat. He rips the pages from a Bible and sets them on fire in the middle of the stage. Allin defecates and urinates onstage, rolls around in the excrement and ashes, and uses a turkey baster to administer a self-enema. Finally the guitarist arrives, and the show starts in earnest.

Something has clearly happened to Allin since the show in Boston, as now he's the raving lunatic I'd been led to expect. (He explains later that he has just been released from prison--details on the unsettling reasons behind his incarceration are available on his Wikipedia page.) He runs through many of the songs from the previous show, completely naked, stopping only to taunt the crowd, inviting women up to urinate on him and daring men either to come up and suck his cock or else present theirs for Allin to suck. (Strangely, no takers on either offer.) He cuts his own forehead open on the microphone and is soon covered with blood as well as excrement and sweat. He leaps into the crowd and is pummelled by the bravest of the concertgoers, sometimes striking back, others simply taking it. He rips the shirt off one female "fan," and pulls a hapless and completely unwilling girl from the backstage area while he sings "I Wanna Rape You," making the viewer worry that an actual sexual assault may be in the offing. (Apparently the stage hands were concerned about this as well, as they eventually drag him off her and shuffle the thankful girl offstage.) Allin gets more and more out of control, throwing heavy mike stands into the crowd and rolling around in the filth onstage, finally draping the dripping tarp over himself like a cloak. The show ends when the club owners cut the power to the amps, enraging Allin and sending the naked rocker into the crowd in search of violence.

The next night in Portland Allin repeats many of the same acts--the fire (this time lighting up a Bible and a t-shirt for the band Sub-Pop, whom he calls "The Ruiners of Rock n' Roll"), the defecation, the enemas. Even his leaps into the pit and backward rolls back onto the stage--exposing his anus to the crowd--have a certain oddly scripted quality. What's not scripted is the escalating violence of this gig compared to the last. Allin throws his mic into the crowd like a bolo, many times connecting with the heads of attendees. His fights with his "fans" are more violent and extended, as he gives and gets boots to the head, punches to the face, and wads of juicy spit. Allin destroys three or four microphones, shouting some songs at the top of his lungs without amplification. This show ends in a near riot, and Allin--whether infuriated by the lights going out in the club, or sensing that the crowd was turning even uglier than usual--abruptly grabs his gear and flees the stage.

Really, describing these concerts is like describing a car wreck; watching them is like watching some plotless Japanese body-horror flick--the Guinea Pig series, maybe. Only it's real. Even if much of it was just performance, the things that happen actually happen, and watching Allin rolling onstage, threatening and attacking and degrading the audience and himself, is like watching a madman's visions of a tormented soul in Hell come to life.

Allin and company get prettified before the Boston gig

After my viewing, I wondered why MVD had released this dvd as "live in Boston," spotlighting the tamest of the three shows. Is there some legal chicanery at work? Would they have more likely faced censure for selling the naked, coprophagus, violent shows as the "main event," and sought some measure of protection by designating the extreme performances as "bonus material"? Perhaps--I don't know. But viewed as a progression, the gigs show a journey from relative sanity to complete self-destructive madness. Maybe this is a false perception--maybe Allin was just as bad in 1989. Still, it's a viewing that's stuck with me, disturbed me, and continues to fascinate.

Would I recommend this DVD? Not to the casual viewer, certainly. You need to know what you're getting into. If you're interested in Allin as a figure, in extreme underground music from the late 80s/early 90s in America, or in visual and mental endurance tests, then yes, this is for you. As for everyone else--maybe it's better you don't know.

Buy the DVD from MVD, if you dare.

It's All Downhill from Here

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