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Iron Warrior
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray ALL - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (25th September 2023). |
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The Film
 Witch Deeva (Devil Fish's Iris Peynado) creates two boys Ator and Trogar to protect the kingdom's newborn princess heir Janna and fulfill a destiny to destroy Satan's mistress on Earth. Said mistress Phaedra (Castle Freak's Elizabeth Kaza) then tries to circumvent her fate by abducting Trogar, Deeva banishes her to the underworld for eighteen years. When Princess Janna (Curse II: The Bite's Savina Gersak) comes of age, Phaedra crashes the party with a gift of prophecy that she spells doom for herself and her father (Tim Lane) at the hands of the Iron Warrior, a shell of a body that was once Trogar possessed and controlled by Phaedra. Janna is able to escape while Deeva psychically compels grown Ator (Tarzan The Ape Man's Miles O'Keeffe) to come to her rescue and guide her to a neighboring kingdom where they can raise an army to reclaim her kingdom. Along the way, they must fight off the Iron Warrior, Janna's own now possessed soldiers, the various attempts of Phaedra to bewitch and seduce Ator with the image of her younger self (Urban Warriors' Tiziana Altieri), as well as the seemingly indestructible Iron Warrior. At a perilous moment, they are spirited away by Deeva who tasks them with retrieving the golden Chest of the Ages from a sunken city to destroy Phaedra once and for all. Technically the third of the Ator films (one of the few film franchises in which all entries received the MST3K treatment) following Joe D'Amato's Ator The Fighting Eagle and The Blade Master although Filmirage's subsequent Ator film Quest For the Might Sword is known in some territories as "Ator III: The Hobgoblin" (as well as "Troll III" which is also an alternate title to Contamination .7) Iron Warrior was produced by Ovidio Assonitis' Brouwersgracht Investments with Trans World Entertainment offshoot Continental Motion Pictures (Monster Dog, The Falling), replacing series director D'Amato with the usually more inept jobbing director Alfonso Brescia (Naked Girl Murdered in the Park). Performances are flat and the story credited to Brescia and English dubbing artist Steven Luotto is fairly basic beneath its quirks, including the chatty and catty chorus of witch sisters of Deeva and Phaedra. What keeps the film a compelling view is the novelty of well-chosen locations in Italy and Malta locations in the latter case the sets left over from Robert Altman's Popeye as gorgeously-lensed by Wally Gentleman who had supervised the optical effects for Assonitis' Beyond the Door and is assisted here by future Full Moon regular D.P. Adolfo Bartoli (Beyond the Door III) and Roberto Forges Davanzati (Tentacles) along with the editing of Roberto Silvi (The Ninth Configuration) that contrasts ancient ruins with music video-esque mystical dimensions and keeps the story moving with sensuous transitions sometimes literally "unveiling" locations in which the protagonists find themselves transported. Kaza gives the only real performance and it is a fun scenery-chewing one while the rest of the cast is dubbed by familiar dubbing actors under the direction of Leslie La Penna, brother of the more prolific Italian voice actor and dubbing director Tony La Penna. The more action-oriented passages of Carlo Maria Cordio's score sound appropriately lush while the suspense cues sound like reworkings or dry runs for his score for Killing Birds. The film was rated PG-13 upon release, dating as it does from the time when that rating encompassed light bloodshed and some incidental nudity (provided here by Altieri and Gersak, whose wardrobe is often see-through as well). 
Video
Released theatrically by Trans World Entertainment and on VHS by Media Home Entertainment in the United States and direct to video by Rank in the U.K., IRON WARRIOR appeared on Blu-ray in 2010 in both Italy and . Both discs reportedly had sync issues but this was rectified in 2019 when Scorpion Releasing put out a Ronin Flix-exclusive Blu-ray (followed by a general release version in 2021). The Scorpion release utilized rights owner MGM's existing 1.85:1 widescreen HD master, but this is not the case with 88 Films' whose 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC widescreen master comes from a new 2K scan of the original camera negative and is framed in the 1.66:1 aspect ratio (a compromise ratio of some Italian films during the eighties and early nineties that protected for both overseas theatrical 1.85:1 matting and 1.33:1 television that was either opened up or cropped depending on whether there was a hard matte in front of the lens). The framing difference is negligible with the tops of heads only rarely skirting the top of the frame at 1.85:1 but the grading differs, with the older master boasting deeper blacks and saturation of primaries but also some sharpening as well as possible attempts to get rid of the yellow tinge of some scenes that appears to have less to do with age than with the filter Bartoli claims Gentleman employed in front of the lens. In comparison, the newer transfer can have an "ungraded" look occasionally, but the slightly grayer blacks might also be due to the various methods of diffusion in the form of lens scrims, smoke, and even sheets of the same sort of diaphanous fabric that make up Gersak's dresses. While I find the newer transfer preferable, I would have that the upgrade is not necessarily substantial or essential if not for the disc's extras.  Although the back cover states that the disc is region B-locked, it does play in region A-locked players.
Audio
The Dolby Stereo track is presented here in uncompressed 24-bit English and Italian LPCM 2.0, clearly rendering the post-synched dialogue and sound effects effectively enough while the mixing of the scoring is sometimes uneven, sometimes requiring volume adjustments between scenes dialogue scenes and those dominated by music. Optional English subtitles are included for the Italian track. 
Extras
While the U.S. Blu-ray edition was a barebones affair, 88 Films' have gone the distance with a new commentary and interviews. First up is the audio commentary by film historian Eugenio Ercolani and critic Nanni Cobretti in which they reveal that, while Assonitis had always had his eye on the U.S. market and had no qualms about stepping in and taking over a production to shape it to his specifications, in the case of this film he had not intended to do so, having apparently greenlit the film without knowing it was part of a franchise the screenplay was apparently reworked from a script for the original third Ator film D'Amato had intended after the announcement of a third Conan film and was abandoned when that film failed to materialize and left it in the hands of journeyman director Brescia who had directed Assonitis first production The Labyrinth of Sex (Assonitis having before been a distributor picking up Italian films for sale on the Asian market). The commentators reveal that what motivated Assonitis to take over the production differs in testimony, with Assonitis claiming that it was due to an accident Brescia suffered in Malta while others (see below) claim that he had already stepped in and moved Brescia to the second unit before the accident. They discuss the film's inspirations including amusing departures from the sword and fantasy genre to scenes "inspired" by Superman and Raiders of the Lost Ark as well as the career of O'Keeffe in comparison to other models and athletes turned actors in fantasy films of the period, and how Assonitis became CEO of Cannon Films for four years through his business relationship with the notorious Giancarlo Parretti who bought Cannon, MGM, and Pathι while nearly bankrupting Credit Lyonnais in the process. The most fascinating part of the track is the discussion and speculation on who was really responsible for the film's photography, with the commentators revealing that Wally Gentleman was more of an effects technician with no cinematographer credits other than short films created to demonstrate his research in optical and in-camera effects, and the likelihood that the film was actually shot by Bartoli (more so than Davanzati or Assonitis' regular cinematographer/sometimes co-director Roberto D'Ettorre Piazzoli).  Assonitis appears in "The Directing Producer" (21:22) in which he speaks disparagingly of the other Ator films and his desire to give a more music video aesthetic to the photography and editing of the film (with some backhanded compliments about Brescia's professionalism. He also discusses how he inherited a contract with O'Keeffe and had to fulfill the two picture deal before it expired also casting the actor in the lead of Ruggero Deodato's Lone Runner the simultaneously lunar and prehistoric setting of Malta and the Popeye village location. He also briefly discusses his work at Cannon and parting ways with Parretti (who he met through Parretti's partner Florio Fiorini who was also convicted of fraud in the MGM deal). In "Framing the Warrior" (14:58), Bartoli states that Assonitis moved Brescia over to the second unit on which he was also working before the accident, that he had worked under Gentleman whose yellow filter was responsible for the film's otherworldly look but that he also worked as an operator for Mario Vulpiani (How to Kill a Judge) for pickup scenes shot at Castello Orsini-Odescalchi in Bracciano, as well as having to send Enrico Lucidi (Queens of Evil) when he suffered a tear duct injury due to an accident with the camera and a careless grip. In "Ovidio's Henchman" (15:19), producer Maurizio Maggi reveals how he had started working for Assonitis as an operator under Piazzoli early on, and had also worked with Gentleman on the effects for Beyond the Door (as well as his own post-production fix of a misaligned in-camera effect) as well as the effects knowledge gleaned from working under Mario Bava and his regular cameraman in the early days Ubaldo Terzano, as well as his move to producer starting with Assonitis' and Brescia's Super Stooges vs the Wonder Women functioning as an on-set organizer to Assonitis' sometimes uncredited producer.  The disc also includes the film's theatrical trailer (1:21).
Packaging
Not provided for review were the reversible cover or the first pressing exclusives of a limited edition slipcover and poster with art by Daniel Ibanez and booklet by Barry Forshaw.
Overall
While not necessarily a good Italian fantasy film from the end days of the genre Iron Warrior is at least an ambitious breath of fresh air for the Ator series.
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