Did you know that snake venom on moss can restore the sight of someone who has had their eyes burned out with torches? That's just one of the many nuggets of wisdom I picked up from the totally bat-shit crazy Thor The Conqueror (aka Thor il Conquistatore).
This is Italian '80s, swords-and-sorcery at its finest with a picaresque plot that makes no sense whatsoever, where things happen without rhyme nor reason and the titular hero of the piece is a rapist and a simpleton with delusions of grandeur.
After a bizarre opening with stirring music and nothing happening for a couple of minutes, baby Thor is born to a barbarian with a stubby sword just before the proud parents are slain by bandits led by Gnut The Archer (Raf Baldassarre) - for no explicable reason. Thor is spirited away by his father's pet sorcerer, Etna (Christopher Holm), whose main power appears to be the ability to transform into an owl.
Misogynist Etna (who may - or may not - be a ghost) raises Thor as his own son, teaching him such gems as "women are stupid and are only good as playthings and to bear children" (both men make Deathstalker look like a feminist), and often forgetting he has access to potentially useful magic at key moments when Thor might have benefited from a helping hand.
Etna acts as a combination narrator and Greek chorus, several times addressing the audience directly even when Thor is right there. He also has a habit of hanging around whenever Thor is getting it on with one of his lady friends!
At one point Thor is tormented by static visions of papier-mâché monster faces and fun fair ride skeletons, but this - like much else that happens along his journey - has nothing to do with anything.
For some reason Thor has to attack the Queen Of The Virgin Warriors, but instead defeats a couple of her hand-maidens (who wear wicker baskets as helmets) and then forces himself on a third, Ina (Maria Romano).
He then ties her up and drags her half-way across the country. When she finally has a decent chance to escape - as Thor has wandered off and gotten himself ambushed by a tribe of nature-worshipping primitives - she instead decides that she's actually rather fond of the man who assaulted her and so goes to rescue him.
The primitives were guarding the "Golden Seed" - which look like a stash of corn - and I think the movie is possibly supposed to be some prehistoric allegory about how Thor brought agricultural to humanity (or something). At one point, later on, a passing mention is made of Thor being descended from the god Thor - but this is totally out of the blue and not backed up by any evidence on the screen.
Having wandered into a random valley and declared it his kingdom, the irredeemable Thor heads off to the Land Of The Unknown, which is basically a beach, where he and, now pregnant, Ina set up home.
They are soon approached by a local village that has decided to make Thor their "Chief Of Chiefs" (no, I don't know why) and they promptly hand the village's oldest virgin over to him as a mate... which, Ina, is disturbingly in favour of.
There's then a battle with Gnut The Archer and his boys again, while Ina is giving birth to Thor's child.
Thor defends the village with the world's first horse, magically summoned by Etna ("Centuries from now it will be called a horse," the demented wizard helpfully explains), which scares the jeepers out of Gnut's crew and sends them all packing. So, yes, he does get revenge on the man who slew his father - and shot an arrow into him as a baby - but it's more by luck than judgement.
A true spectacle of ineptitude across the board, oddly Thor The Conqueror (despite its uncomfortable gender politics and generally bleak, ugly presentation) is a pinnacle of the "so bad, it's good" genre of low-budget movie making.
It isn't particularly gory, there's very brief nudity and pretty much all the sex occurs off camera, but it's the head-scratching story that will hold your attention as you try to puzzle out why things are happening... and asking where the giant snakes and pterosaurs from the DVD cover are? (spoiler: neither of these monsters appear in the movie. In fact, there are no monsters at all. Just lots of grunting cavemen and a handful of women).
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