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An invocation of Odin begins the thrifty odyssey, a scraggly prophetess waxes most arcane by Nordic shores. "No one but the sands can answer that. Sands filtered by the sea. Can you make the sea talk?" Maiden (Elissa Pichelli) and son (Luciano Polletin) in the wilderness, her husband is a Viking king (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) away on a mission and presumed dead, their wedding meant to bring tribes together was instead crashed by a warlord (Fausto Tozzi) carrying severed heads. "First rule of the warrior is to ignore pacts and alliances." The penitent wanderer (Cameron Mitchell) takes to protecting the exiled queen, his savage past colors a need for redemption along with a thirst for vengeance. (Confronted with the prospect of domesticity, he all but quotes Zarathushtra: "Use my daggers for kitchen work? Never, woman!") Norsemen on terra firma, meaning an unofficial Western, in fact a more credible one than Mario Bava's official horse operas. Noble chieftain turned ferocious marauder, the stranger removes his Gothic helmet to reveal the peroxide orange locks he now shares with the offspring of the woman he raped. The usurper is aware of fateful justice heading his way, the witch's omen is a sun disk scrawled on the beach, it reappears as a tattoo on the wrist wielding the blade. "My knife will seek your black heart." As foes cross paths, Bava's ornamentation kicks into gear—their showdown commences in darkness as a torch goes out at the tavern, then climaxes deep in a grotto saturated with copper and sapphire gels. The coda confirms the mingling of genres with a nod to The Searchers. "The gods have not forgotten." With Amedeo Trilli, Renato Terra, and Sergio Cortona.
--- Fernando F. Croce |