'The Magic Sword' was by Bert I. Gordon's standards a fairly lavish affair, shot in splashy colours by veteran cameraman Paul Vogel between prestigious assignments like 'The Time Machine' and 'The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm'; designed to get the most out of it's shoestring budget by Franz Bachelin and with a jaunty score by Richard Markowitz. (Ross Wheat has a credit as "dragon trainer"; I wonder what that involved?)
It's not always easy to tell how much of this is intended seriously or tongue in cheek, as when young Sir George describes the magic sword Ascalon as "It's just great". There are odd nasty moments of that remind us that Gordon usually made horror films, most shockingly when the two pretty young Princesses Laura & Grace are introduced only to be almost immediately fed by Lodac to his pet dragon. The casting of Estelle Winwood as a scatterbrained old sorceress is obviously intended to provide light relief, while Basil Rathbone keeps a straight face throughout as the satisfyingly evil Lodac. The anachronistic American accents of juvenile leads Gary Lockwood and Anne Helm are almost a convention of this particular genre; but I was puzzled that Maila ('Vampira') Nurmi only played 'the Hag' when she was made up to be ugly (Danielle De Metz substituted for her during her masquerade as the beauteous Mignonette), since Ms Nurmi was easily hot enough to have satisfactorily served as the Hag's seductive alter ego.
It's not always easy to tell how much of this is intended seriously or tongue in cheek, as when young Sir George describes the magic sword Ascalon as "It's just great". There are odd nasty moments of that remind us that Gordon usually made horror films, most shockingly when the two pretty young Princesses Laura & Grace are introduced only to be almost immediately fed by Lodac to his pet dragon. The casting of Estelle Winwood as a scatterbrained old sorceress is obviously intended to provide light relief, while Basil Rathbone keeps a straight face throughout as the satisfyingly evil Lodac. The anachronistic American accents of juvenile leads Gary Lockwood and Anne Helm are almost a convention of this particular genre; but I was puzzled that Maila ('Vampira') Nurmi only played 'the Hag' when she was made up to be ugly (Danielle De Metz substituted for her during her masquerade as the beauteous Mignonette), since Ms Nurmi was easily hot enough to have satisfactorily served as the Hag's seductive alter ego.