The son of Torren learns of his heritage, goes to avenge the deaths of his fellow villagers, and rescue his sister/love interest from the evil Dakkar and his spider cult. Ator battles giant spiders, swordsmen cloaked in shadow, re-animated dead warriors, and horribly hideous witches.
The Italian peplum returned in full force after the spaghetti western killed it in the 1960s and 1970s, due to the international success of Hollywood-produced hits like Conan the Barbarian and other sword and sorcery epics of the early 1980s. Prolific filmmaker Joe D’Amato’s contribution to the genre is the quadrilogy of pictures he made featuring the blade master named Ator. The first of the series is Actor the Fighting Eagle. This is a supremely silly little time waster that was rightfully mocked on an infamous episode of MST3K.
I was duped into renting this Movie as a kid; the VHS box art is a misleading thing of beauty, and I struggled to get through the first thirty minutes. The bad dubbing, poor fight choreography, and overall lack of action led to me turning it off. 35 years later, I’ve decided to tackle the movie and finish what was started long ago. And still, I found Ator’s inaugural adventure to be a complete bore and a chore to get through. I’m typically a sucker for movies with swords, wizards, and besieged kingdoms, but Ator is a failure on almost every level.
Roger Corman’s creed of “just capture an image.” looks to have been the thought here as everything looks flat and drab. Miles O’Keeffe struts through the film looking the part, but aside from that, he doesn’t come across as a magnetic leading man. Think of someone like Jan Michael Vincent and the, by comparison, dangerous charisma he possessed. Even fans of this type of movie will find nothing remarkable in this cheaply produced cash-in on the Conan the Barbarian craze of 1982.
Directed by: Joe D’Amato
Written by: Joe D’Amato, Michele Soavi, José María Sánchez
Starring: Miles O’Keeffe, Sabrina Siani, Ritza Brown
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