Hawk the Slayer by Terry Marcel (1980)
Thanks to Peter Jackson’s Tolkien adaptations, fantasy movies have become synonymous with really long runtimes. Not so with Terry Marcel’s Hawk the Slayer, which tells its epic tale of good and evil in under 100 minutes. Unfortunately, Hawk the Slayer feels like it’s three hours long because it’s just soooo boring. (Sorry, Tim and Bilbo.) All of the elements are there (e.g., a prophesied hero with a magic sword, a diverse group of companions, an evil warlord) and I respect the smaller scope (our heroes are just trying to rescue a nun from the aforementioned warlord, who is played to scene-chewing perfection by Jack Palance) and dig the ’80s visual effects, but Hawk the Slayer’s no Krull or Beastmaster.
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