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| No battleaxes appear in this film! |
It just doesn't do it that well.
A slice of not-particularly sleazy '80s Italian exploitation cinema (shot largely in Custer State Park in South Dakota), the film tells a fantastical, pseudo-prehistoric story of two feuding half-brothers, the amiable Ela (male model Sam Pasco, in his only non-'adult movie' role) and the ambitious Vood (George Eastman aka Luigi Montefiori).
Initially, Vood is driven out of their hunter-gatherer tribe of Zog-worshipping good guys after he kills their leader and then the wiseman (at their leader's funeral).
But then, wandering near an active volcano, Vood stumbles upon a conveniently-shaped spike of iron that he realises will make a powerful weapon.
Egged on by luscious dark-haired priestess of Eferron the Earth Trembler, Lith (Pamela Prati as Pamela Field), who appears out of nowhere like the shopkeeper in Mr Benn, Vood takes back control of the tribe, driving Ela out, and laying his plans for world domination.
While Vood is leading the tribe in a violent wave of conquest against other tribes in the area, Ela falls in with blonde-haired Isa (the lovely Elvire Audray, who you may remember from Amazonia - The Catherine Miles Story), who - like Lith - also wanders in like a Dungeons & Dragons random encounter.
She happens to be the daughter of Mogo, the headman of a pacifist tribe of lakeside dwellers.
A proto-'old hippie', Mogo (William Berger aka King Minos in Hercules) is not impressed by Ela's warning about Vood's aggression nor his determination to take the fight to him.
Eventually, Vood's growing army discovers Mogo's village and the final confrontation looms...
Directed by Cannibal Ferox's Umberto Lenzi, except for a few moments of cheap gore and a nip- and willy-slip or two, Ironmaster is tame fare that unfolds at a snail's pace, especially when just as you think something interesting is about to happen, it doesn't.
The film's just over an hour-and-a-half long, but, often, feels much longer.
As the meme goes, there was a time when I was growing up that TV and movies made me think quicksand was going to be a big problem in my life, but Ironmaster would have you believe it's lions.
Every so often, out of the blue, lions jump into shot, growl, scare people, and - usually - exit stage left.
Despite its attempts to frame itself as an allegory about the nuclear arms race, Ironmaster is an ill-judged attempt to jump on the 'caveman movie' bandwagon.
Its screenplay by Alberto Cavallone, Lea Martino, Dardano Sacchetti, and Gabriel Rossini, is underwhelmingly pedestrian.
However, the movie is riddled with moments of unintentional humour, from the mammoth models seen early on, through the assemblage of strange wigs and the actors' wardrobe of fur bikinis and slippers (Vood's penchant for assless chaps - which presumably he invented - are of particular note), to the preposterous way Vood's tribe go from poking things with sticks to smelting iron and forging swords in the space of 24 hours.
An added historical bonus is the gobsmackingly bizarre way, in preparing for the final battle, Ela suddenly "invents" archery!
Obviously, Ironmaster isn't a documentary, or even vaguely based on any sort of facts, so it's not the sort of sword-and-sandal flick where such matters should be taken into account.
Yet, the liberties Lenzi and his team of writers take are hilarious and make the film difficult to treat with any semblance of seriousness.
Another bizarre aspect of Ironmaster is that Ela appears so 'roided up that he moves like he's had an accident in his underpants. Which is ironic as he's clearly not wearing any.
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