#ator the fighting eagle

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982)

[mst3kgifs]

Not a lot of respect for privacy from a woman who won't even share her own name.

[thedurvin]

Tragic: local man watches shitty old sword-and-sorcery movie that turns out to be the boring kind of stupid instead of the fun kind

[emma-dennehy-presents]

Decided to get down with some top tier Conan the Barbarian rip offs. Starting out right with Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982). This gem was hastily slapped together after Conan released in Spring 1982. It was out in Italy by the end of 1982 and the US in early 1983. Hopefully I can continue with Ator 2, aka The Blade Master (which was hastily slapped together after Conan the Destroyer dropped in summer 1984). That is up to the God of Seeds/Peers.

It is probably one of the better ones to test the waters with, as there are notable RiffTrax and MST3K versions available. Watch at your own risk, with these 80s fantasy movies. I doubt there exists one without highly problematic elements, and casual SA abounds.

[macmanx]

Strap into your animal skin hang glider and soar to new depths with Mike, Kevin, and Bill. It’s Ator, the Fighting Eagle!

[mancegaydar]

Related to people saying they picture asoiaf as looking like 90's fantasy TV-

I want an asoiaf adaptation that looks like a Roger Corman low-budget, absolute piece of crap 80's sword-and-sorcery movie. That's the aesthetic I think we deserved

I want that Mystery Science Theater 3000-ass look

[movieposters1]

[laughableillusions]

I miss it when high fantasy media was like “let’s just make up a bunch of bullshit with glitter and awesome costuming and then that’s the movie.”

Legend, Krull, Ladyhawke, Dark Crystal, Willow, Time Bandits, The Adventures Baron Munchausen, Labyrinth, even fucking Ator The Fighting Eagle…

All those movies have very little exposition on What The Deal Is™️ and leave an air of mystery and intrigue because things are not explained to you. Now people get mad if the movie doesn’t hold their hand and tell them what is going on all the time in every scene and it’s bullshit.

High fantasy isn’t supposed to make sense it’s fantasy

[forthegothicheroine]

What are some of your favorite bad fantasy movies that you’d recommend? The world wants to know

Sure thing! Some of these I found or are also shown on MST3K or Rifftrax (I'll put asterisks on those), some through my own strange film journey.

Hawk the Slayer*: A very D&D movie, if your DM included silly string as a weapon alongside scenes that were supposed to be dramatic. The lengths you had to go to before The Princess Bride and Lord of the Rings for a D&D movie!

The Sword and the Sorcerer*: Sleazier than the above, containing the iconic and nonsensical Triple Sword, one of the dumbest weapons in all of fantasy fiction!

Sword of the Valiant: This "adaptation" of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is on here for one reason and one reason only- Sean Connery as the Green Knight with holes cut in his armor to show his nipples. Just as the Pearl Poet intended!

The Magic Sword*: Both Rifftrax and MST3K have done this, because it has Basil Rathbone and Bert I. Gordon's terrible special effects and a hero who has to keep being saved by his mom. Watch either the original or the Rifftrax version for the whole company of knights with different bad accents!

Prince Valiant (1954): Another iconic Gawain movie, where Texan-accented film noir actor Sterling Hayden plays an incredibly loveable Gawain in a relationship with his squire so homoerotic that my husband and friend and I kept pausing the movie to look at each other and go "We're all seeing the same thing, right?" It's more cheesy than outright bad, as another bonus.

Cave Dwellers*: You could start with the supposed first movie in the series, Ator the Fighting Eagle, but the character is completely retooled into a barbarian engineer genius between movies and the lore is literally made up from one scene to the next, so just start with Cave Dwellers.

Deathstalker: On the one hand, this movie makes me fall over laughing. On the other hand, it is about as gross and sleazy as you can get outside of actual horror or porn. The sequels, Deathstalker II and Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell* are more accessible, but for better or for worse, not as jaw-droppingly awful.

Jack the Giant Killer*: "Seize the bone!"

[theactioneer]

Miles O'Keeffe, Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982)

[garbage-connoisseur]

Ator, The Fighting Eagle (aka Ator l'invincibile)

Just a heads up, this movie has spiders in it, and I will be showing them in this post.

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

In a time of magic, the ruled by an evil overlord worshiping a spider god. However, it is prophesied that he shall one day be overthrown by a hero of good. On the prophesied day of the birth of the hero, a mass infanticide is committed. Where all newborn babies are murdered by the followers of the overlord. But one child is saved, and taken by a mysterious stranger to be raised by an adoptive family, who is of course unaware of the child's true destiny, even though all those baby murders just happened. Now, as a young, strangely muscular and very handsome young man, our hero has fallen in love with his sister, which fortunately his parents are totally okay with, because they're not blood related, and so that's totally fine actually guys. But in the middle of their marriage ceremony, the overlords evil henchmen raid the village, killing everyone and kidnapping The Chosen One's sister-wife. Now it is up to our young hero, dressed in a loincloth and accompanied by a cute but dangerous critter, to save her and bring about the end of the evil tyranny.

Wat, let's focus on that cover again... What sort of animal companion do you think Ator has besides him? He's named "The Fighting Eagle" on the cover, and next to him is a saber-tooth tiger. Perhaps this is ripping off Beastmaster? That one has the hero accompanied by a black panther, an eagle and two mischievous ferrets. Well...

Okay, that is a VERY cute bear cub... I'll let it slide.

Now that Ator has something to avenge and a damsel to save, it is time for him to meet a mysterious stranger from his past with the worst wig you have ever seen, so he can be told of his destiny and also have a training montage.

Soon after Ator gets caught in a tiny net by a group of warrior women however.

Thankfully it all turns out to be a big misunderstanding. You see, as a tribe of amazons, they just need him for a a big fighting tournament, which will decide which one of them will bear the child that will become the next leader of the tribe. Oh, and after that they'll just kill him. But thankfully our himbo is such a pure boy, that he impresses the winner of the tournament with his goal of winning back the love of his life and also slaying the evil warlord and his spider god, that she agrees to let him go, on the condition that she gets to tag along, and get all the treasure. Also, she's definitely not going to be all tsundere about it.

It's around this point that the movie sorta forgets where it's going for a little bit to instead have a little filler chapter or two, in which our himbo protagonist gets himself into trouble because he's too pure for this world. Ator follows the vision of his sister-wife into a cave unaccompanied by his cute animal sidekick and amazon companion. In this cave he meets a mysterious horned woman in a room whose primary furniture seems to be a king-sized bed. The woman offers him a golden chalice containing an unknown liquid to drink, which he immediately does without question.

He then proceeds to have to be rescued from the very obvious Circe-type enchantress trap by his significantly smarter companions.

While Ator & co. are busy side-questing, someone on the writing team remembers that they're supposed to be moving towards a big final battle, and decides to alert the spider-loving big bad, who is conveniently named Daker, exactly like his actor...

And he mobilizes his vast army of exactly ten people to prepare to defend against the guy destined to kick their asses.

I won't spoil the ending, even though you can probably all guess it. Bu I will show off the genuinely cool giant spider, which they make sure to never show too much of at once, which keeps it from looking too goofy. I'm honestly very impressed!

Overall Ator: The Fighting Eagle is a quite charming, if very cliché Italian sword and sorcery flick. It checks off all the boxes, but unlike many such 80s sword and sorcery movies there's no gratuitous nudity, attempted sexual assault scenes or other sleaze, which alone puts it in the better end of the scale (and is honestly surprising given that it was directed by Joe D'Amato, who is best known for his sexploitaiton films). This is the first of four movies featuring Ator and so far only the first and third have had blu-ray releases.

While it was pretty trope-heavy and meandered for a bit in places, it was also competently made for its genre and well worth watching if you enjoy movies like The Beastmaster or Conan.

[aloneandforsakenbyfateandbyman]

Ator, the Fighting Eagle (1982)

[tlaquetzqui]

The fight choreography in Ator the Fighting Eagle is not worse than in Rings of Power.

A fourth-rate Italian Conan knockoff that nobody would have heard of if not for MST3K and Rifftrax, same fight choreography as a half-billion dollar flagship show from Earth’s largest corporation.

GG.

[thedurvin]

Watching all these 80s movies makes me understand the Bechdel Test more because they all keep failing it. Like out of Golden Child, both Gremlins, Toxic Avenger 1 and 2, CHUD, Ator the Fighting Eagle, Conan the Barbarian, Sorceress, and Eyes of the Serpent, the last one is the only one that passes, and even that one it’s because of a single scene where a depraved evil princess tries to seduce her female cousin in a dungeon.

Sorceress might since its main characters are female twin sisters but most of the times they talked to each other it was about how they grew up without anyone telling them what genders are and being confused about why dudes keep ogling them (it is not a very good movie)

[antonjesus]

Ator: The Fighting Eagle (1982) | Full Movie | Laura Gemser | Miles O'Ke...

[joeyvintage]

ATOR: THE FIGHTING EAGLE (1982)