The Sword and the Claw is a 1975 Turkish film and is the best kind of terrible. The story is simple. A king is overthrown by corrupt noblemen. The prince is born and raised by lions, eventually returning to unseat the usurper. There are plot twists that are so laughable that I can’t believe the writers went for it. The movie looks cheap. In the opening assassination, the swords look like painted cardboard and the bow looks like a brightly painted child’s toy. On the flip side of that complaint, there is an impressive castle used in the final battle. Being raised by lions and being feed lioness milk and raw steak all of his life, the hero is supernaturally strong, pulling trees out of the ground and beating soldiers with the trunks. He is eventually discovered by an underground rebellion. The fight choreography is silly and outlandish, as are the musical choices. A light, whimsical score accompanies some bloody battles. Eventually, the hero gets his claws, metal gloves fashioned with blades to mimic a lion’s claws. The rest of the film is pretty much him slicing people’s faces open while his allies fight with more traditional weapons.
The English dub is performed by the most bored, dispassionate cast that I’ve ever heard, and the audio quality is terrible. I looked for a different audio track, thinking that one in the actors’ native language would be higher quality, but I could only find the English dub. The Sword and the Claw was preserved from the only 35mm theatrical print known to still exist. While the source material is the original theatrical print, picture quality is just okay.
The release includes a second movie called “The Brawl Busters”, an 83-minute Korean martial arts movie. These two movies were shown together as a double feature in the U.S. Brawl Busters wasted no time and opened with a vicious fight. There is almost no character development, just a series of assassination attempts on a nobleman who is considered a great martial artist but also a cruel despot. It has a hard to follow plot, but I believe the audience is supposed to be cheering on the assassins. There was a comical, failed assassination attempt that I do not think was intentionally humorous. In a later fight, rubber knife blades wiggle as they are swung and some villains wear metal claws that look like cardboard covered with metallic paint. The picture quality on the Brawl Busters was marred by almost constant film damage. Lines and specks danced all over the screen for the duration of the film and the audio quality was rough.
The only other special feature was chapter selection and a 10-minute trailer compilation. While there were some other films squeezed in, the compilation mainly focused on “Super Argo” movies, a very cheap superhero franchise. They look hilariously bad with some of the cheapest costumes I have ever seen in a “real movie”.
Watching through this release, I have to take points away on the audio and picture quality. Additionally, the Brawl Busters had some nice fight scenes but was nearly unwatchable when people were not throwing punches and kicks. To balance the scales, the trailer compilation was fun and the feature film “The Sword and the Claw” was a silly, wild romp. Was it a great movie? No. Did it glue my eyes to the screen? Absolutely. I had to know what ridiculous thing was going to happen next. If that sounds like the kind of movie you’d enjoy, pick up this release, just don’t expect a lot of extras.