Ator - lord of fire

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Movie
German title Ator - lord of fire
Original title Ator l'invincibile
Country of production Italy
original language Italian
Publishing year 1982
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Joe D'Amato
(as David Hills )
script Michele Soavi
Marco Modugno
(as Sherry Russell )
production Patrick Murphy
music Carlo Maria Cordio
camera Joe D'Amato
(as Federico Slonisko )
cut David Framer
occupation
chronology

Successor  →
Ator II - The Invincible

Ator - Lord of Fire is the first of three films with the title character Ator, which the Italian director , screenwriter and cinematographer Joe D'Amato made after the success of Conan the Barbarian , in order to benefit from the popularity of the new genre with his considerably less lavish works to benefit from the barbarian film. The film later ran on television under the title Troll - The Sword of Power .

action

Ator is born in the indefinite distant past. His birth, in which his mother dies, is accompanied by omens which indicate that one day he will destroy the cruel spider cult of the Great Spirit. Because of this omen, Dakkar, the high priest of the cult, has all children born that night killed. But the warrior Griba foresaw this and therefore brings Ator to foster parents, whom he leaves in the dark about the child's identity and destiny.

Years later, Ator is revealed by his foster parents that he is not their biological son when he expresses his wish to marry his sister Sunya. At the same time, Dakkar learns that Griba has been seen near the village where Ator lives. Driven by initially undeclared hatred of Griba, Dakkar orders Griba to be killed.

During the wedding ceremony, Dakkar's Black Knights attack the village. They kill all the villagers, but Griba is not one of them, knock Ator down and kidnap Sunya. After Ator has come to, Griba takes care of him. He reveals his destiny to him and teaches him the martial arts that will be necessary to kill Dakkar and free Sunya.

When his training is complete, Ator sets off, but is soon captured by a tribe of Amazon warriors. They wish that he and the chosen warrior Roon will beget their next queen and then be sacrificed. This does not happen, however, as Roon helps Ator escape; her motive is to get to the treasure in the temple of the spider, which she alone would not be able to do.

Together they set off and have to overcome various inconveniences on the way: Roon must save Ator from the seductive arts of the witch Indun, Ator in turn saves Roon from violent undead . In a cave deep in a volcano they steal the magical shield of Mordor, with Ator first fighting a sword fight with a shadow . Then they overpower the blind smiths located in the same mountain and then go to the temple of the spider. In the ensuing fighting, Roon is killed; Ator kills Dakkar and is about to free Sunya from the giant spider's web when Griba appears. He wants to prevent Ator from completely destroying the cult of the spider according to the prophecy , because he himself was once the high priest of the spider and was ousted by Dakkar. He only saved and taught Ator to use as a tool in the fight against Dakkar. Ator is angry and pushes Griba into the web, where he is at the mercy of the approaching spider.

After freeing Sunya, Ator kills the spider, wiping out the cult.

meaning

Ator - Lord of the Fire is one of the first attempts to copy the general concept of Conan the Barbarian with extremely little financial and film technology . Objectively speaking, however, the result is embarrassing, as the cheapness of the film is ubiquitous and obvious. Thus, on scenes largely dispensed with; preferred locations were normal Italian forests and some partially grassy ruins from Roman antiquity (the Temple of the Spider, for example, is immediately recognizable as an ancient theater and is by no means imposing). Dakkar's dreaded Black Knights never have more troops than 14 men. The Great Spider was only built in parts, so that you can never see more of it than the hairy legs waving haphazardly in all directions and a part of the body that has no resemblance to a spider, but simply looks like a curved black carpet . On the whole, has Ator - Lord of Fire among cineastes reputation, testimony to be complete cinematic incompetence of everyone involved. But precisely because this film failed on all levels, it has achieved a high level of awareness among film connoisseurs. Ator - Lord of the Fire belongs to the category of unintentionally funny B-films , which also includes Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space .

Trivia

  • The first performance in Germany was on November 5, 1982.
  • Leading actor Miles O'Keeffe had starred in front of the camera as Tarzan alongside Bo Derek in the film Tarzan - Lord of the Jungle the year before.
  • The well-known soft porn actress Laura Gemser appears here in a supporting role as a witch for her “in-house director” and long-time friend (this scene is also based on Conan the Barbarian ).
  • In the sequel Ator II - The Invincible , which was written two years later, Ator's previous fate is recounted in abridged form at the beginning; however, the flashback has almost nothing to do with the actual plot of the first film, apart from the film excerpts used and the names of the characters.
  • D'Amato gave the following description of his collaboration with Miles O'Keeffe for the Italian fanzine “Nocturno” : “As a performer he was already very bad, a beautiful athletic build, I don't doubt that, but as far as the lecture was concerned, he had a job have to change. By God, a golden boy in many ways, but not even casual in the action scenes, where he was supported a lot by armorer Franco Ukmar , who did an incredible job on him. Incidentally, his background as a bodybuilder made him very clumsy and came across as paralyzed. ”(Translated from the Italian quote by Marco Giusti : dizionario dei film italiani STRACULT . Sperling & Kupfer , Milan, 1999, 51f. ISBN 8820029197 )

Commentary on the film

  • "This film actually fulfills everything that makes a trash film so likeable: actors who in some cases shouldn't have been better, trick effects that come from the first year of training and fed up with logic errors." Carsten Henkelmann on "Sense of View".

Even the German FSK-16 version of this film has been cut by at least one fight scene: When Roon has to fight her last fight with five black knights, you can only see them circling the Amazon. Miles O'Keefe can be seen again in the next scene.

Reviews

  • “Impressively bad ' Conan ' plagiarism from Italy, which spurred the film industry there to a whole series of other, no less horrible hymns to the bang batch.” - Lexicon of fantasy films
  • “The boundless incompetence of all those involved defies description.” - Variety
  • “(…) Nothing particularly remarkable apart from the make-up art.” (Rating: 1 star = weak) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon “Films on TV” (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 54

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Entry in the Archivio del Cinema Italiano
  2. ^ Sense of View
  3. ↑ Ronald M. Hahn , Volker Jansen, Norbert Stresau : Lexicon of Fantasy Films. 650 films from 1900 to 1986 . Heyne, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-453-02273-4 , p. 40.
  4. ↑ Ator - Lord of Fire. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used