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The
Magic Sword
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 Lodac and one of the King's Guard |
 Lodac the Evil Sorcerer |
Transforming herself into a bird,
Some
miniature people, prisoners of Lodac, are
Sybil tricks Lodac into letting her grab his Magic Ring while he rages at the defeat of his dragon. Lodac now prepares to unleash the final curse, number 7. But we never find out what curse number 7 is because Lodac has lost his Magic Ring and his power to harm George. Armed with Lodac's Magic Ring, Sybil turns herself into a black panther and attacks Lodac, who dies a bloody death. At the demise of Lodac his magic spells are dissipated and the six brave knights are restored to life.
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The Magic Sword Dragons, ogres, demons and wildly imaginative special effects — in vivid color — to thrill youngsters and adventuresome elders. Lively attraction for vacation-time. Pure escapist entertainment, this thrill-filled fantasy overflowing with imaginative Eastman Color special effects shapes up as a solid attraction for the youngsters and the young-in-heart. Supported with a colorful promotion campaign by United Artists, this figures to be an above-average grosser whenever the youth trade is out of school, at holidaytime or during Summer vacation. Excitement, a story book romance, and a nice sprinkling of humor have been deftly blended into a fast-moving show by producer-director Bert I. Gordon. And the moppets will go wild over the special effects — a magic sword, a 25-foot ogre, boiling craters, green fire demons, a vampire witch, midgets locked in a cage, hags, a gloomy castle and a two-headed flame-breathing dragon. Basil Rathbone hams it up grandly as an evil sorcerer, while Estelle Winwood gives her comic all as a whacky witch. Handsome Gary Lockwood is Miss Winwood's foster-son, in love with the beautiful princess, and Anne Helm portrays the latter in true fairy tale fashion Bernard Schoenfeld's screenplay finds Rathbone kidnapping Miss Helm. Lockwood, protected by his magic sword, seven brave knights and wicked Liam Sullivan set out to rescue her. Rathbone's black magic eliminates the knights, and Miss Winwood accidentally takes away the power of the magic sword. Rathbone captures Lockwood and forces him to watch Miss Helm being prepared for the dragon. Lockwood escapes, finds his magic powers restored, and slays the dragon. Rathbone kills Sullivan, and Miss Winwood, now changed into a black panther, takes care of Rathbone. The seven knights return to life, and Lockwood and Miss Helm live happily ever after. —Film Bulletin, April 16, 1962 |
The silliness and over-the-top acting in The Magic Sword would normally have triggered complaints from the critics, but, as this film was intended as entertainment for children, the critics didn't complain.
"The veterans in the cast delivered the best performances. Rathbone was an effective heavy." —Michael B. Druxman, Basil Rathbone: His Life and His Films (South Brunswick and New York: A.S. Barnes, 1975)
"Basil Rathbone is well-cast as an awesome and menacing sorcerer." —Hollywood Reporter, April 1962
 Lodac and the hag |
 Lodac forces the princess to watch a horror. |
Producer/Director Bert I. Gordon started working on the film, which he called St. George and the Seven Curses, in January 1961. The March 6, 1961 issue of Boxoffice Barometer reported that filming on St. George and the Seven Curses had been completed, but United Artists didn't release it to theatres in the USA until March 1962. The title was changed to The Magic Sword shortly before the film was released in the USA. In the United Kingdom, however, the film's release was delayed until March 1964, and then it was released under the original title.
Looking at The Magic Sword today, the special effects seem primitive. But in 1962 they were considered good. Bert Gordon was recognized as one of the top special effects experts in the industry. He budgeted $100,000 for special effects alone.
It was reported in Fantastic Monsters of the Films, that the model of the dragon took nearly four months to construct, was some twenty feet in length and was “operated manually by six men on the inside.” On screen, the dragon’s scale appears as a more monstrous 150 feet in length… and that’s not to mention its fire breathing capabilities.
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Movie Magic for The Magic Sword There's slick color photography and scores of unusual special effects in this terror-fantasy film that holds much for students of cinematography and moviegoers alike. "The Magic Sword," an exciting terror-fantasy photographed in Eastman Color for United Artists by Paul Vogel, A.S.C., is a tour de force of spectacular illusions achieved through a highly complex combination of special effects techniques. ... "The Magic Sword" is a colorful tale of derring-do based on the legend of St. George and the Dragon. By combining animation, traveling mattes, split-screen and superimposition techniques, Gordon has ingeniously created battles, first with a 25-foot ogre and later with a giant two-headed fire-breathing dragon which, on the screen, appears to be forty feet long. There are also haunted forests, magic mirrors, demon-possessed caverns, fluorescent ghosts and a variegated collection of off-beat characters including evil sorcerers, assorted hags, "little people," giants, pinheads, dwarfs, specters and birdmen.
In creating the battle with the dragon, the live action involving George and the captive princess, was filmed first, and the miniature dragon photographed and printed-in to the scene later. One of the main problems was to cue the live action so that, at moments when the dragon would be charging and spraying flame, the live actors would back away and simultaneously be illuminated by the glow of the flames. Intricate timing charts were prepared so that the action of the dragon could later be cued to the exact frame to match that of the live players. Another important consideration in the dragon battle sequence was that of visual continuity. Great care had to be taken to insure that the perspective of scenes showing the dragon would match those of the live-action scenes, Vogel explains, since the camera constantly cut from high to low angles. It was also important that the dragon remain the same size in relation to its human adversary throughout the sequence. When the dragon was shown alone, cinematographer Vogel was careful to select camera angles that would faithfully duplicate the point-of-view of the man fighting the beast. ... An interesting effect involved bringing to life six stone images of knights who had presumably been ossified by an evil sorcerer centuries before. The shot of the "stone" knights was achieved by taking a frame of the live scene showing the knights standing in a row and, through a series of photographic processes, producing an extremely high-contrast black and white print of the scene having almost the quality of a line drawing. Shading was then carefully added to create the illusion of three-dimensional stone figures. Then, by means of a dissolve precisely matched to the original scene, the knights appeared to take on life, color and movement. The effect which presented the biggest challenge to Gordon and cinematographer Vogel, and which required the greatest amount of time to create, had to do with the appearance of disembodied demon heads floating in space in a haunted cavern. Gordon had speculated that the desired weird effect could be produced by painting plaster models of shrunken heads and death masks with fluorescent paint and then illuminating them with ultra-violet or so-called "black" light. Here the problem was to get the paint to glow brightly enough to register on film. Since a "floating" effect was required, it was impossible to undercrank the scene at less than 20 frames per second—and even with an exposure of f/2 it was necessary for Vogel to pour a tremendous amount of the barely visible "black" light into the scene in order to get the fluorescence to show up on film. After the heads had finally been successfully photographed in a frosty green glow, the problem remained of superimposing them, properly balanced, over the background scene. This was done in the optical printer, and a great deal of experimentation with printer lights and filters was necessary to get the heads to burn through with just the right degree of ghostly translucence. The resultant sequence on the screen, especially when accompanied by weird sound effects, creates a spell of flesh-crawling horror. The most costly sequence to shoot took place in a fog-shrouded forest. Built on the sound stage at the Samuel Goldwyn Studios, the set was a tangle of peculiarly stark, tortured-looking trees unlike any flora on earth. The "trees" were actually upended cypress stumps with "branches" formed by the roots writhing into the air and seeming to clutch at the characters as they rode by on horseback. ... Whereas many film-makers specializing in fantasy limit themselves to photographing miniatures straight on, Gordon treats miniatures in the same way that he would live players—using a variety of angles, over-shoulder shots and closeups. He feels that this creates added realism, ties the effect in more closely to other visual elements, and gives the audience less opportunity to pick the effect apart. "In a straight type of picture you can get away with almost anything," he points out. "But in an out-and-out fantasy your audience is looking for things to jump on, defying you to fool them. Because they have this chip-on-the-shoulder attitude you have to make sure that every effect you use is as good as you can possibly get it. It is for this reason also that I engage the very best technicians I can get—for example, A.S.C. cameramen like Paul Vogel, Ernest Haller and Joseph Biroc. I learned long ago that there's no substitute for talent." —Darrin Scot, American Cinematographer, March 1962 |
"Entertaining, often (unintentionally) hilarious adventure. Young knight Lockwood sets out to rescue beautiful princess Helene, who's been kidnapped by evil sorcerer Rathbone. In their better moments, Lockwood and Helm seem like refugees from a Beach Party movie; Rathbone and Winwood offer knowingly hammy performances." —Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin's Classic Movie Guide, 2015
"With his usual skill, Basil Rathbone breathes life into the role of the evil sorcerer in this juvenile fairy tale. Filmed in color, producer Bert I. Gordon's recent production contains more values than usual." —"The Basil Rathbone Story," Chiller, 2001
 Lodac yells to the dragon to destroy George. |
 Lodac sees Sybil as a panther about to attack him. |
Liam Sullivan, the actor who played Sir Branton, shared this memory of Basil Rathbone during the filming of The Magic Sword: "Basil Rathbone was a funny man. A story teller. Every time the camera stopped Basil had another story to tell. He was just wonderful." —quoted in Tom and Jim Goldrup’s book The Encyclopedia of Feature Players of Hollywood, vol. 3 (Bear Manor, 2012)
According to a press release for The Magic Sword, Basil Rathbone interrupted his "Evening with Basil Rathbone" tour to portray Lodac because he considered the warlock "the most villainous, treacherous, wretchedest evil-doer it has ever been my very good fortune to play."
The Magic Sword Here is a tongue-in-cheek fairy tale which rises to heights of satirical splendor at times and sinks to ordinary contrived narrative at others. If designed for children, it is somewhat macabre; if for adults, it could get sniggers. but all-in-all, it's a well-mounted, ingeniously created piece of merchandise that has excellent special effects. It is a fantasy which combines witchcraft, sorcery, romance and knighthood, all woven into a tale of adventure, a crusade to rescue a beautiful imprisoned princess from the clutches of a nefarious sorcerer. Basil Rathbone is the sole name of consequence, although Estelle Winwood is known because of past stage roles. Anne Helm as the princess and Gary Lockwood as her rescuing lover make a good team, while Liam Sullivan is quite adequate as a traitorous knight. Highlights of the picture are the effective special visual effects, created by Bert I. Gordon, who also wrote the story, produced and directed it. some of such effects are people reduced to the size of little dolls, a fire-breathing dragon, mirrors that have television effects and numerous other gimmicks that keep the story going at a fast pace. The Eastman Color is good. —Box Office, April 16, 1962 |
"The kidnapper of the Princess is the dastardly Lodac, played by the wonderful Basil Rathbone, who brings a touch of class even to cheaply produced kiddie-fodder like this." Richard Cross, 20/20 Movie Reviews
In Season 4 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (episode 11), the cast poked fun at The Magic Sword, including promoting a fake product called Basil Rathbone's Dog Biscuits. The "commercial" went like this:
"You know, you get out of your dog what you put into it. And I only put in the best: Basil Rathbones. . . . We all need affection, occasional grooming and lots of snacks. Dogs just go nuts for the taste of Basil Rathbones. One Rathbone a day will clean Doggie's teeth and freshen doggie's breath. . . . Hey, these are too good to be good for you. Basil Rathbones! And Pesto-flavored Basil Rathbones for the pretentious dog."
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The Magic Sword can be streamed and downloaded for free from Archive.org!
https://archive.org/details/TheMagicSwordWidescreenQualityUpgrade
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See Page Two for pictures of posters, lobby cards and promo photos.
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Images on this page and page two are from the film The Magic Sword.
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The Magic Sword is available
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