REMEMBE RING

Jay Slater looks back on a cult British sword and sorcery movie, interviewing cast and crew members including Shane Briant, Terry Marcel, Derrick O’Connor, William Morgan Sheppard and John Terry…

Hawk the Slayer (1980) is the right stuff. Shot at a time when sword and sorcery role-playing games were hugely popular, Terry Marcel’s pic is low budget and crude, and yet remains one of the best examples of the genre: not because it is good, but because it is so entertainingly bad. It became an English rose, a pop culture classic that inspires a growing fan-base every year and rightly so. Not a frame is wasted, the film does not take itself seriously yet does not degenerate into a parody and benefits from a Jeff Wayne-type score with pop disco. Hawk the Slayer simply shines.

The plot is sublime. A nasty villain, Voltan (Jack Palance) who is Darth Vader medieval style, and his sidekick son Drogo (Shane Briant), kidnap a nun (Annette Crosbie) as ransom. Hawk (John Terry) is persuaded by Ranulf (William Morgan Sheppard), a one-armed mercenary with a repeating crossbow, to join a small-time outfit and battle Voltan.

Hawk’s team consists of Baldin (Peter O’Farrell), a comic-relief dwarf; Crow (Ray Charleson), the last of the elves who could be mistaken for a robot; Gort (Bernard Bresslaw), supposedly a giant, and admittedly, a big guy; and a mysterious sorceress played by Patricia Quinn. Her arcane skills are impressive: a magic staff projects silly string, she can blast victims with fluorescent ping-pong balls and to relax, Hawk sits within spinning hula-hoops.

Sheppard has nothing but good memories. “Simple job: casting director, straight audition and interview. It was originally just a fun job, which grew into something else. The screenplay was tight. And the movie, like all good movies, played even better than it read,” he reminiscences.

Sheppard does not believe that the film suffered from weaknesses: far from it. “It is what it is. More money may have improved the final action sequence, but I doubt it. I loved it and had a great time working on the film, It was a very happy shoot.

“A cold February, but we all knew each other and knew our jobs. A moment when I could not get my horse to gallop fast enough – I was a famously lousy horse-hating rider and did too many horseback roles – John Terry ‘goosed’ my horse with his sword and we took off. Without warning me... The horse took off with me terrified and hanging on,” he laughs. Sheppard trained in swordsmanship at RADA and relished his role with gusto and had nothing but good memories. “The film brings an innocence of parody, an honesty where so many film makers are too cynical, and has a director.”

Briant enjoyed the experience but more importantly, the film was a paying gig. “Playing Jack Palance’s son was a motivating factor in accepting the role, but please remember I was a young actor and money paid the bills.”

With that being said, he fully enjoyed the role stating that it was a fun film to work on and that he had remained good friends with Terry. But it was Palance that fascinated him. “On the first day at Pinewood Studios, when we broke for lunch, I wondered whether Jack Palance knew his way around, so I asked him if he was going to have lunch in the executive restaurant.

“He stared at me with those piercing eyes and replied in a low tone, ‘Why? Do you want to buy me lunch?’ I was temporarily stumped and replied, ‘No, of course not. I simply wondered if you had any friends at Pinewood.’