Hawk the Slayer vs Talon
The FORBIDDEN Death Battle Prediction Blog Episode 31
Original Fight 20
Hawk the Slayer (Hawk The Slayer, 1980) vs Talon (The Sword and The Sorcerer, 1982)
If you thought Isis vs Electra Woman was an obscure fight, wait until you get a load of this…
The late seventies and eighties were a golden age for fantasy adventure. The three core rulebooks of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons came out in 1979, Tolkien’s Silmarillion was published posthumously in 1977 and brought renewed interest in the rest of his work, and Conan the Barbarian was firing on all cylinders with a hit film in 1982 and his long-running Marvel mag still topping charts.
Conan wasn’t the only fantasy adventure on the big screen. There was Star Wars (1977), Excalibur (1981), Dragonslayer (1981), The Dark Crystal (1982), Krull (1983), The Black Cauldron (1985), and on, and on, and on.
It was a good time to be a fantasy fan.
Heroic swordsmen were a dime a dozen, but today’s fighters are swordsmen armed with blades that went above and beyond the call of duty for a fantasy hero’s sword.
Why cut up close when you can cut from a distance?
Mindsword vs Trisword!
So Who Are These Characters? What’s The Them Here?
As stated, it’s “film heroes from the 70’s/80’s fantasy boom armed with swords that can cut from a distance.”
But it goes deeper than that.
Doesn’t it always?
I only give you the choicest themes, dear reader. On my honor, I will never give you something as un-thematic as Bane vs Venom or Batgirl vs Spider-Gwen.
Both characters are princes who swear vengeance on their father’s killers.
Both characters are legendary mercenaries led into battle solely by their conscience.
And both carry hidden weapons on their person that only get revealed during the final showdown.
Hawk
“This is a Story of Heroic Deeds and the bitter struggle for the triumph of Good over Evil and of a wondrous Sword wielded by a mighty Hero when the Legions of Darkness stalk the land.”
–Opening narration
“Voltan! You will die by this sword!”
–Hawk upon receiving his father’s mindsword.
You know, it feels really good to be surprised by a film. I went into Hawk the Slayer anticipating a turkey. What I found instead was a decent low-budget fantasy adventure flick that got the most out of its small budget.
Hawk the Slayer is to Dungeons and Dragons what Masters of the Universe (1987) is to Jack Kirby’s New Gods. Hawk the Slayer is the best Dungeons and Dragons film ever even though it’s got no relation to TSR. Hawk’s party of friends is the closest I’ve ever seen a film come to capturing the dynamics of a Dungeons and Dragons party.
Parties weren’t uncommon during the 70’s/80’s fantasy boom. Even Conan who at most adventured with a single guest star like Valeria, Belit, or Taurus in his stories got a party in Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984). But in the movies, parties usually just meet each other and forge their friendship through the shared struggles of the film. Hawk the Slayer is the only film I’ve seen where the party members enter the film already having a history adventuring with each other and having their own adventures away from the party. The way Hawk’s friends interact with each other and know each other in a way only teammates with history can makes them the closest party to a Dungeons and Dragons party I’ve seen on film.
Casual babies watch Critical Role. Real grognards watch Hawk the Slayer.
The film even gives a great example of a DMPC through the sorceress character that helps Hawk and his team. She facilitates their adventuring without overshadowing them. She helps them, guides them, gathers the team together and tells them where to go, and even helps them get out of being captured and provides smoke screens for their awesome surprise attacks (I could watch stock footage of Ranulf’s full-auto crossbow and Crow’s bow mowing down mooks set to disco music all day), but she never makes the heroes seem useless or incompetent. She is required viewing for any aspiring DM thinking about running a DMPC.
Dark Souls also stole her look for the Fire Keeper. Dark Souls steals a lot. It’s setting and story are a magpie’s nest of stolen imagery and ideas.
This is the story–in a fictionalized version of merry olde England, a warrior named Voltan plummets into insanity after returning from war to find that the woman he loves, Eliane, has fallen for his younger brother Hawk. He ties up Hawk and tortures him with a crossbow before Eliane scars his face with a torch and releases Hawk. Voltan accidentally kills Eliane trying to kill Hawk and descends even further into madness. He attacks his father demanding his inheritance–a weapon of great magical power–and Hawk arrives too late to save his father, but with his dying breath his father gives him the last of the elven mindstones. After forming a telepathic bond with the mindstone, Hawk places it in the hilt of his father’s sword to form the mindsword–and swears vengeance upon Voltan.
Years pass. Hawk becomes a famous mercenary often hired by the church to slay evil. He’s so experienced at his job that he hands out hawk emblem coins like business cards. It’s sort of like “Have sword, will travel. Wire Hawk.” He does a lot of work alone, but also has a long history with a motley crew–an elf (possibly the last elf) named Crow, a dwarf named Baldin, and a giant named Gort (likely a Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) reference).
Maybe it’s because his film came out before Conan set the model for future sword and sorcery heroes in 1982, but Hawk’s not like most of them. Sword and Sorcery heroes of 80’s cinema typically fall in one of two categories–hyper-extroverted, charismatic Conan clones whose emotions are strong, brutal, and obvious (Deathstalker, Dar the Beastmaster, He-Man), or hapless Bilbo Bagins clones who can’t really fight but get by on heart and wit (Galen, Taran, Jen). But Hawk’s different. He’s taciturn, stoic, and prone to having flashbacks about how badly Voltan screwed him. The film opens with Voltan killing Hawk’s father, and it’s only through flashbacks that we learn the extent of the bad blood between the brothers. Hawk feels like an old, seasoned adventurer in a way none of his contemporaries do.
Voltan resurfaces years after slaying his father as a warrior of evil with a faceless sorcerer as his patron who soothes the pain, physical and psychological, of Voltan’s scar in exchange for Voltan’s services. Voltan’s evil spreads across the countryside as he razes villages. So great is his evil that it physically transforms portions of it into forests of dark mists and evil.
When the lone survivor of one of his raids, a crossbowman named Ranulf, passes out on the steps of a convent, its nuns nurse him back to health but are forced to amputate one of his hands–though this doesn’t slow Ranulf and his awesome full-auto crossbow any.
Voltan follows Ranulf and takes the Abbess hostage. Ranulf goes to the High Abbot at the Fortress of Danesford for help and the Abbot gives him one Hawk’s coins and tells him to seek him out. He does, and Hawk takes up the mission. Hawk starts to put his team back together to rescue the High Abess and finally take down Voltan.
The director cited Kurosawa as an influence and it shows. Hawk reforms his party by having his sorceress ally teleport him into little vignettes featuring his allies. It’s very Seven Samurai (1954) and very cool. I dig how they interact once they’re all together. Gort and Baldin have great banter, Crow confides in Hawk, and they’re just fun to watch. It’s fun to watch them do adventure stuff.
The final showdown is between Voltan and Hawk at a church. Voltan has several nuns and Gort tied up and at the mercy of his goons. How does Hawk get out of this situation?
Hidden blade in the crucifix necklace given to him by Eliane.
He tosses it to free Gort who fights the goons and allows Hawk to have an awesome slow-mo bossfight with Voltan.
He wins, of course.
But at the very end, Voltan’s dark patron sorcerer teleports in like a wizrobe and takes his body away vowing that Voltan will someday return!
…But he never does.
There was neve a sequel. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. Let me know if you have a take in the comments.
I unironically think Hawk the Slayer is a good film and highly recommend it. I rank it up there with Dark Crystal (1985) and Conan the Barbarian (1982). Check it out.
…One last thing that I feel I should talk about because it’s not only interesting, but because I haven’t seen anyone talk about it.
Remember when I made the connection between Thundarr and The Night Land?
It’s sort of like that.
Hawk the Slayer takes place in the same universe as Lord of the Rings.
None of you saw that coming. Don’t even go into the comments and say you did. None of you saw that something.
Not only does Crow mention that his people have all moved on, but Baldin mentions while hungry that “he has a hole in his stomach as big as the pit of Gimli in the Iron Hills.”
You probably know who Gimli is. These are the Iron Hills.
But how can this be? Doesn’t Lord of the Rings take place in a different world called Middle-Earth?
It’s complicated.
The Lord of the Rings planet, called Arda, has gone through several ages where its geography has changed drastically. It actually started as a flat planet with a single continent in the middle like the iris of an eye. But it gradually changes, and Tolkien implies that it gradually becomes our modern Earth. Lord of the Rings ends with the 4th age of man and the elves sailing away to the Undying Lands (hence why Crow pines for his lost race). Tolkien said that the distance between the 20th century and the third age was about 6,000 years and that 1958 marked the end of the fifth age.
So, if anyone ever asks you what the last Tolkien story is, you tell them Hawk the Slayer.
Hawk’s Mindsword
With the last of the elven mindstones in its hilt, the mindsword responds to Hawk’s mental command. If he is ever separated from his sword, it will fly back to his hand. He can’t make the mindsword float in the air and fight, but he can use the mindsword as a ranged weapon by throwing it and calling it back to his hand. You can think of the mindsword as a sword version of Mjolnir.
The mindstone emits a green glow that seems to have evil warding properties. Portions of the land were made twisted and evil through Voltan’s influence and became eternally dark and filled with muppets and animatronics. While traveling through a blighted forest with Ranulf, his mindstone glows and Hawk warns Ranulf that it will not be within his power to protect him if he moves beyond the light.
The blade of the mindstone doesn’t seem enchanted, but it is very durable and has served Hawk through years of adventure.
Hawk’s Feats
–Hawk is an incredibly fast swordsman. He was able to deflect an arrow with his mindsword.
–Caught and threw back a hatchet.
–Deflected a throwing dagger.
–Fought his way through four men, killing all of them.
Talon
“Well then…let’s be off! We have a battle in the offer, kingdoms to save, and women to love!”
–Talon after the events of the film
The Full Movie. Get It Before The Internet Police Do!
The Sword and the Sorcerer is remembered because of the sword, not the sorcerer, and not anyone else in the film.
It’s a film I only recommend to people who are serious about deep-diving 80’s sword and sorcery flicks. If you like Beastmaster III and Deathstalker IV, then by all means check this film out. But you’re more discriminating in your film choices, skip this one and watch some of the films I listed in the intro.
It’s like a forgotten entry in the slew of low-budget fantasy adventure films Roger Corman made in Argentina to cash in on the popularity of Conan the Barbarian (1982). I keep expecting to see it on a list with Wizards of the Lost Kingdom (1985) and Amazons (1986), but no, Roger Corman had no hand in this turkey.
The movie starts with evil overlord Titus Cromwell using a scantily clad witch to resurrect ancient sorcerer Xusia, who looks like a wetter and goopier version of Ivan Ooze. The writers took this idea from the Conan story Black Colossus (1933), but the wizard Natohk from that story is far less of a loser than Xusia. Cromwell gets Xusia to use his dark powers and glowing fingertips to defeat the army of his rival king Richard off-screen and then pushes Xusia off a cliff.
What a loser! He had the power to devastate armies and he was done in by a sissy shove. Lame!
With his dying breath, king Richard gives his trisword to his son Talon who flees. Off-screen, Talon grows into a mercenary captain who, like Conan, has multiclassed into being a seafarer, ranger, warrior, etc. Eleven years after the death of his father, Talon has enough levels to return with his merry band of mercenaries to defeat Cromwell and his army.
It sounds a lot cooler than it actually is.
Talon teams up with a rebellion led by princess Alana, but while infiltrating Cromwell’s castle to free captives he’s smacked on the back of his head and captured. His soldiers then get captured off-screen.
You know, there probably was a decent film in this story. It’s just a shame we never get to see any of it.
Crucified in Cromwell’s dining hall, all seems lost until Talon starts pulling out the nails like a badass. Damn! Even Conan had to wait for someone to free him when he got crucified in A Witch Shall Be Born (1934).
Talon is about to get hacked to pieces by guards because they’re not about to let the steroidal rage monster get loose, but Talon’s men manage to get themselves free and come to his rescue. Talon gets his trisword back and hacks his way through goons until he corners Cromwell in the dungeon where it’s revealed that–gasp!–Cromwell’s advisor has been Xusia the whole time!
I guess they wanted to get a little more mileage out of the makeup guy they hired…
A three-way fight occurs and Talon, with holes still in his hands, cuts down Xusia, then Cromwell, and Xusia again when he gets back up like a slasher movie villain.
As cool as the trisword is, it isn’t what actually finishes Cromwell and Xusia. Talon kills them with a hidden blade in his gauntlet after shooting two blades and breaking the third on Cromwell’s magic sword.
Was that the actual sword of the title? That little Assassin’s Creed blade?
I guess the film subverted everyone’s expectations–if, you know, everyone expected it to be good.
Talon’s Trisword
Talons’ sword is never actually given a name in the film, much to its detriment. Something as cool looking as his sword needs to have a cool name. Allow me to be so bold as to dub it the trisword, for fairly obvious reasons.
The trisword looks like a giant’s shaver with its triple blades. It’s silly, it’s stupid, it’s preposterous, and it’s simply awesome.
While three pronged daggers exist in real life such as the sai of Raphael and Elektra fame, no one in all of history has created a sword with three blades.
In theory, the triblade could work like a sword catcher weapon such as a parrying dagger or jitte. An opponent’s single bladed sword gets caught between the blades of the trisword, leverage is applied, and the blade is moved out of the way leaving its wielder vulnerable or outright snapped. The problem here is basic physics. The closer the fulcrum is to the load, the less effort is needed to move the load. This is why historically sword catchers have been short daggers and not giant swords.
Another problem with the trisword is that the force of every swing is distributed over three blades instead of being concentrated on a single edge, but this problem is mitigated by Talon being inhumanly strong–strong enough to cleave three swords in half with one swing of the trisword.
The design of the trisword doesn’t facilitate sword catching, nor does it facilitate powerful strikes, but what it does facilitate is shooting off the blades as projectile weapons.
Eat your heart out Final Fantasy VIII. All hail the original gun blade.
The primary gimmick of the trisword is that its blades can be fired as projectiles, and when fired these blades have enough force to propel skewered victims through the air.
The middle blade doesn’t seem to be fireable as the giant guard that holds the three blades can be removed once the two on the sides are fired to convert the middle blade into a more maneuverable traditional sword. Talon does just that during his final showdown with Cromwell. It seems that whatever bizarre mechanism or magic device that launches the blades is housed within the guard and not the hilt.
I’ve heard rumors that there was a toy in the 80’s based on the trisword. This wasn’t an officially licensed toy, but was like one of those off-brand lightsabers that got made to cash in on Star Wars. But after scouring the internet, I haven’t been able to find a single shred of evidence.
If you can find an 80’s toy sword that shot off its blade and post evidence, I’ll cover a fight of your choice.
The trisword is a sturdy weapon able to break lesser swords in half, but it isn’t unbreakable. It’s blade broke in half after clashing a few times with Cromwell’s magic sword. We know that it was magic because it was glowing. You just had to have a glowing sword in your movie during the eighties.
In addition to the trisword, Talon also wears a gauntlet that contains a hidden blade. It’s actually this weapon and not the trisword that finishes off Cromwell and Xusia.
It’s not the number of blades you have that counts, it’s how you use them.
Talon’s Feats
—Juked a man so that he missed his tackle and went through a wooden wall.
–Defeated 3 guards bare-handed.
–Broke through a mob of enemy soldiers, stole one of their swords, and fought his way past them killing three.
–Was knocked out by a blow to the head.
–Was crucified in Cromwell’s hall and eventually pulled himself free of the cross. He pulled out the nails and everything! The caveat to this feat was that it took him a while to get all the way free. If his soldiers didn’t rush into the hall to engage the guards, Talon would have been cut down.
Still, after pulling himself free, Talon was able to join the fight against Cromwell’s soldiers and then boss battle Cromwell and Xusia with holes in his hands and everything.
–Cut through three swords in one blow.
–Survived having his innards squeezed telekinetically by Xusia the wizard long enough to fire off a blade.
So Who Wins?
Hawk slays Talon.
It’s a close fight. Talon is tougher and stronger, but Hawk is faster, and ultimately Hawk being faster matters a lot more than Talon being stronger.
Hawk is a durable dude, but getting chopped with the mindsword will drop him. He was dropped by a blow to the back of his head and while it sounds crazy awesome that he pulled himself out of crucifixion, doing so took a lot of time and a lot of effort. With this in mind, Hawks’ better speed and agility feats give him the win. Talon never caught a hatchet and threw it back. He also never deflected an arrow.
Could Talon cut the mindsword? I don’t think so. He severed three swords in one blow, but those were mook swords. The mindsword is something that’s served Hawk through years of adventuring. The blade might not be magical like the mindstone in its hilt, but it should be sturdy enough to last long enough for Hawk to defeat Talon.
The launching blades on the trisword are a neat trick, but they’re not any faster than an arrow, and Hawk has swatted arrows out of the air. And in terms of trick ranged weapons, the mindsword has the edge on the trisword. The trisword can only be used as a ranged weapon twice, or three times if Talon gets desperate and throws it, but Hawk can throw the mindsword and call it back to his hand as many times as he wants.
Hawk also has his trick crucifix. It doesn’t pack the omph of the trisword blades, but it’s far more likely to hit Talon than one of the trisword blades is to hit Hawk.
Wouldn’t that be amusing–the guy who pulled himself off a cross getting killed by a tiny crucifix?
In this fight, it’s not the number of blades that counts, it’s how they’re used.
Discussion ¬