Hawk the Slayer is so committed to being a Conan rip-off that it came out a full two years before Conan did. Unfortunately, because it was so impatient, it didn't know that the proper hero for a sword-and-sorcery cheesefest is an unintelligible beefcake with pectorals the size of couch cushions, so instead, they got this regular-sized dude who looks like the rich asshole Drew Barrymore has to break up with in a romantic comedy in order to find true love. He does alright, though. For no reason at all, his name is Hawk. He doesn't have a hawk.

We begin with Jack Palance breaking into a castle and swording the king, who happens to be his father, even though Jack seems to be six or seven years older than him. You can tell Jack is evil because 1. He's Jack Palance. 2. He's playing a guy named "Voltan." And 3. There's something wrong with the left half of his face, so he hides his shame by wearing a Darth Vader helmet with a woofer cover riveted to it.

Turns out Voltan is Hawk's brother, even though there appears to be a half-century age differential between them. I guess the king got around in his old age. Now that I think about it, that might explain why Voltan is such a prick to Hawk. Imagine you were an only child for 50 years, and then all of a sudden your old man knocks up some young maiden and now you have to deal with a little brother for the first time. You're used to having the run of the place, having your buddies over whenever you want, but now you gotta babysit and keep quiet during naptime. And what if they had to share a room? Shit, man, my brother was born when I was five, and I still beat the crap out of that little bastard all the time. Granted, I didn't murder his girlfriend and enslave his people, so I guess that's why we get along nowadays.

Anyway, Hawk finds his father all stabbed up on the floor, and he automatically assumes that Voltan did it. (Way to give your broham the benefit of the doubt, dude.) Pops tells him to get something called the Mindsword down from off the wall and put this green glowy magic mood rock in the metal fist sticking out of the hilt. Now all he's gotta do is think about it and the sword slow-mo jumps right into his hand. Pretty cool. They oughtta make one of those for my remote control. Even if it didn't work, it'd still be awesome to have a remote with a magic fist sticking out of the bottom. Then again, you can probably buy one at Brookstone's or something.

So then Dad dies, and we skip forward a few years. Voltan's been raping and pillaging and hearing the lamentations of the womens all over the land, and there's nothing Hawk can do about it. But then this one-handed guy is hanging out with some nuns when Voltan kidnaps the head abbess. The other nuns are a trusting lot who just want to pony up the ransom, because, hey, no one named Voltan could possibly be an evil man. He's clearly just misunderstood.

Well, actually, they do have a point. For some reason, the half of his face that got burned by Hawk's dead wife (long story) never healed, so it hurts like a motherfucker all the time, and the only thing that makes it better is when he goes and hangs out with this sorceress inside a Uriah Heep album cover. I could imagine how something like that could make a dude a little difficult to deal with.

Anyway, the one-handed guy doesn't trust Zoltan, so he rides off to find Hawk and ask for his help. Hawk's a busy guy, you see, because everywhere he goes, a bunch of assholes are picking on somebody and he has to stand there with his hands on his hips and warn them to stop being such pricks or he'll bust out the Mindsword. I'm telling you, man, wherever the fuck Hawk is from is full of jerks. It's like everyone's descended from the Muntz clan.

Luckily, being a Good Samaritan allows Hawk to hook up with a bunch of badasses who want to help him waste his brother. First there's a blindfolded witch who shoots smoke bombs and bottle rockets out of her palms and is handy with a plot contrivance/prophecy. Then there's a giant with a big hammer who eats a whole chicken every time he's hungry. Then there's an elfin archer with the voice of Alvin and/or The Chipmunks who uses edit-fu to shoot arrows faster than the human eye can see. Then there's a dude who's supposed to be a dwarf but is really just a little bearded guy who bites the heads off live fish. In this company, the one-handed dude is a little outmatched, but he makes himself a semi-automatic crossbow that can spit out about a hundred bolts a minute, so he holds his own.

P.S. Did anyone notice that halfway through the review "Voltan" suddenly became "Zoltan"? Was that an allusion to the understandably obscure 1978 vampire canine film Zoltan: Hound of Dracula? Or was it an homage to the aforementioned Over the Top, in which a character underwent a similar name change toward the end of the second act...a character who happened to be named Hawk? Coincidence...or genius? Discuss.

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