I was lifted high this morning as if by the fist of some airy djinn, some cheek-cracking wind cartoon face blowing me up, up, ever upward, excelsior, heavenward. Dizzy, grinning, rampant as I freefell to the news they are making a sequel to my favorite ever movie, and it looks just as bad as the original. Same director, cheesy-ass cast, just ideally horribly perfect. The Sword and the Sorcerer, you are no longer alone. Your sequel lives at last.
I must have watched that shit a thousand times, acted out the parts, ghost-fought the enemies, spoke aloud the hero’s lines, swung across ravines with the princess, laughed, punched the air, fired off the blades of his tri-bladed Sly Sword. He has a sword with THREE blades, and two of them can be FIRED off to SHOOT at people, and the blade in the middle kicks ass, and if that is not enough (and it isn’t), the hilt detaches to reveal itself as a DAGGER! It is the greatest movie weapon of all time. It would chop Krull’s glaive in fucking half.
The movie just made me sigh with adolescent heart sadness, just collapse with the love of it, just sink into my mattress for want of it, aching for it, needing it. If it were alive, I would have called it on the phone and twisted the cord around my arm and chewed gum while we gossiped for hours. I fucking loved it, love it. It is beautiful, the purest thing I know.
I read the novelization, which, if you can find it, you will discover is the filthiest, most lurid filth and lure put to text. Crazy scenes of dudes crucified and thrown onto a dinner table so a banquet can be placed around their writhing body, their “organ” subject to mockery and pluckery. Insane shit to make housewives explode, like beyond the dreams of any werewolf or vampire fuckbook. Snakes, snake people, and an education in debauchery. Witches, witch people and bleeding statues. And that sword.
“Do you remember how flushed we were as youths, my love, watching the ducks and the horses make love?”
Oh, and the hero rips himself off of the cross and fucking spikes a guy with the nail in his hand. Turned on yet? Hottest, most violently awesome work of fucking literature and film ever ever repeat the word ever forever.
At the end of the credits, during the crawl, it reads, “Talon will return in ‘Tales of the Ancient Empire‘” and those words, that hope, that idea that there would be more, more Talon, more blades, more princess more snake witches, more organ plucking, more horses, and larger statues bleeding even greater quantities of blood, more and rougher beards, just sent me to heights of boystasy. I made my He-Man figures act it out.
It never came. This was 1982, and I would read Starlog magazine looking for news of the sequel, I would ask at the bookstore, I would look in the movie “bible” at the video store. There was no internet to tease with rumors, there was…nothing, just me taping Christmas wrap tubes together, tubes my jird would kill for now, and throwing them like sword blades at Man at Arms and Battle Cat. Anyway, forgot about it…
Until this morning when I saw it is not only being made, but is almost done and comes out this fucking June. I want to sleep until June. It looks like they are doing it totally right. Like, it’s the same refugee from Euro-cinema director (his most famous film is probably Cyborg, one of the Jean Claude Van Damme films that came out after he was over), so perfect. The dude who played Talon is back playing himself as an old man, and it has Kevin fucking Sorbo and Christopher motherfucking Lambert. It could not be more ideal. OMG OMG OMG! I can not fucking wait. It will be total Cosmic Boy meltdown in line at that theater. Hurry, hurry, blessed June. I wish I could make a fucking cocoon and just emerge with popcorn on that saintkissed day.
Oh! The chick who played Witchblade in that shitty Witchblade tv show is in it too! EPIC!! Fresh cheese thrown in with the aged cheese! Trash culture from past and present unite in one glorious volcano!
I want to die with happiness. This is my Phantom Menace. It’s like Charles Dickens came back from the grave to finish Edwin Drood. It is the most significant cultural achievement of my lifetime. I am committing joyicide all morning. Flying like a blade fired from heaven’s sly sword. Love love love. Hearts!
