Hawk the Slayer

Two years before Conan made sword and sorcery respectable, Britain got in first with this, shot for pocket change and adored in spite of itself. John Terry is Hawk, wielder of the last elf-forged Mindsword, a blade that answers to thought and flies to his hand on very visible wires; Jack Palance is his evil half-brother Voltan, chewing every stone wall in the kingdom at a volume you can nearly see. Hawk assembles the traditional band of oddballs (an elf, a giant, a one-handed man with a rapid-fire crossbow) to bring Voltan down. Harry Robertson's score, a berserk collision of medieval woodwind and disco synth, holds the whole thing together on sheer nerve. It is cheap, stilted and completely charming, the sort of film whose flaws are the reason people love it.