Ator the Fighting Eagle

When Conan the Barbarian cleaned up in 1982, every Italian producer with a quarry and a spare loincloth went looking for their own, and Joe D'Amato got there fastest with this. Miles O'Keeffe, all hair and cheekbones, plays a chosen warrior raised in secret who sets out to topple a spider-worshipping cult and rescue the woman he was raised beside, a detail the film would rather you did not dwell on. It is cheap, dubbed and padded with a great deal of wandering, and it climaxes on one of the great terrible movie monsters: a giant spider so obviously a puppet on strings that it loops back around to lovable. D'Amato shoots it flatly and moves on, because there were sequels to make. The glossary keeps naming it as the definitive knockoff, and here it finally is.