Ator, the Fighting Eagle

There is so much bad in this movie but not painfully bad, fun bad. But not fun enough to call it so bad it's good either. The cinematography is pretty bad. So bad you'd think Robert Eggars zipped back in time to direct a couple of scenes. The monsters are cheap and the effects. But it can be a great movie to riff during a pizza night. But as a serious action movie, it's just meh at best.

Ator the Fighting Eagle comes to the land of myth and legend, only to disappoint with one of the most cliched and worst sword and saddle films of all time.

Incest, Miles O'Keeffe, and a baby bear? Who cares if it's incoherent beyond measure and incompetent beyond belief, just so long as you've got the RiffTrax commentary to carry you through. SECOND VIEWING: Imagine taking all of the byzantine mythology of something like LOTR or CONAN, then stripping it of character, depth, and coherenceâ"throw in a little incest, and this is the stink you get.

B-class at its best!

Everything about this barbarian movie feels cheap. The storyline is weak, the storytelling is clumsy and the editing is rough. The scene in which Ator tries to convince his father to marry his own sister after confessing his love to her is priceless.

The first of the Ator series. Ator: The Fighting Eagle is a cheesy Italian sword and sorcery film about a young man who bears the mark of the Taurus who is destined to fight of the evil forces in a tribal world. One of the worst fantasy films I've ever seen, it is no wonder the sequels scored an even lower rating.

Hastily made film to cash in on the success of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Young warrior Ator meets his ultimate destiny in destroying the powerful Spider King, after several perilous diversions. A film where good settings and costumes make up for other budget shortcomings. Probably best remembered for uncomfortable scene where Ator awkwardly asks his father for permission to marry his sister.

One of the worst Fantasy/S&S movies in the history of the planet. It may not give "Plan 9 from Outer Space" a run for its money, but it has its own so-bad-it's-good charm. Miles O'Keeffe plays Atar--as Michael Keaton said in "Night Shift": "Barney Rubble, what an actor."

I saw this at a packed dollar theater on a Saturday night and the audience riffed it gloriously, a full decade before MST3K. Not for the comically impaired.

Let me tell you the days of high adventure! back in 1982 a little sword and sorcery flick called "Conan the Barbarian" opened the flood gates of imitators from all over the world. If you are familiar with cult films and cheap cash-ins then you should know that Italy is the king of imitators and none more blatant of a knock-off than the Joe D'Amato's "Ator the Fighting Eagle", which copies it's American counterpart so closely that it is derogatorily referred to film lovers as "Italian Conan". After having his parents slaughtered, a small baby survives and is given to a peasant family to raise by a warrior to as the child is prophesized to defeat the sadistic and iron fisted ruler known as the "Spider King". When the boy grows to manhood, the day of his wedding to his sister (don't ask!) gets interrupted by the Spider King's warriors who kidnap his bride. Now Ator must rescue is sister.. err... wife and defeat the Spider King while completing little side quests along the way. Being knick-named "Italian Conan" it is safe to assume there are many parallels one can draw between the two films... and there is. Our hero Ator teams up with a sexy blond thief, gets seduced by a witch and his main quest is to rescue a young woman from a cult leader that worships spiders as opposed to snakes. Hell the Spider King is even dubbed by a James Earl Jones sound-a-like! Even with all the blatantly stolen plot points, Ator still has some differences. First is the underdeveloped character of Ator, who is rather naive child compared to the brutal raising of Conan. He is not a thief or a gladiator... he's just a simple peasant trying to rescue his wife that just happens to be his sister... again don't ask. His sidekick is replaced by a bear cub and there are plenty of new side quests in which Ator must battle blind warriors, amazons and even reclaim a magical mirror shield. Like most cheap foreign knock-offs, what hurts the film most is the miniscule budget which affects every aspect of the film. The special effects are deplorable (including a giant spider complete with visible strings lifting it's legs), the costume designs are downright laughable (Miles O'Keeffe and Edmund Purdom sport the fakest wigs this side of Jamie Lee Curtis in "Halloween II") and the cinematography is none existent. Don't get me started on Joe D'Amato's lack of directing (hiding under the pseudonym David Hills) as he proves again with "Ator the Fighting Eagle" that he defines the word 'hack'. "Ator the Fighting Eagle" is not surprisingly an awful "Conan" rip-off but like most Italian imitators it entertains due to unintentional laughter. The un-special effects, dialogue and even the James Bond "For Your Eyes Only" sound-alike song playing over the end credits are sure to get a chuckle out of any B-movie connoisseur. In an amazing turn "Ator" did well enough to inspire even more sequels than the character that 'inspired' it with a total of three: "The Blade Master", "Iron Warrior" and "The Quest for the Might Sword" all of which are far worse than the original which may not seem possible.