Two Heads Are Better Than One?

Just over ten years after ‘Sir Gawain & The Green Knight’, Stephen Weeks got a second bite at the Arthurian cherry and, with the help of Israeli producers Menahem Golen and Yoram Globus, cranked out ‘Sword of the Valiant’, a sleeker, more expensive, more fantastical version of his earlier film.

For all the improved special effects and more elaborate sets, however, ‘Sword of the Valiant’ is a lesser effort. At least ‘Gawain’ had grit – this just has gloss – eighties gloss – but on a budget, which shows up its pretensions and proves to be a constant distraction. Sir Gawain is played by Miles O’Keefe, a man who had played Tarzan opposite Bo Derek and is less an actor than a nicely marbled side of beef. Weeks had wanted Mark Hamill, but the producers had their own ideas, so Weeks got his own back by giving O’Keefe the most ridiculous wig possible.

Sean Connery plays The Green Knight, and gives a performance which doesn’t bear much analysis other than wondering how much he got paid. Much more than Wilfred Brambell, I would have thought, who makes his last fleeting screen appearance here.

On the plus side, the wizard is played by David Rappaport, who was never a great thespian but is always a welcome presence. He doesn’t save this tripe, by any means, but he makes bits of it easier to swallow, and it’s always nice to see Peter Cushing and Trevor Howard doing stuff, even if it is beneath them. Ronald Lacey repeats his earlier role, and is more odious than ever (being creepy looking is a great gift for a character actor, one that intensifies with age).    

Director Weeks never made another film, although he is still with us, presumably working on his next production. I’ll bet I can guess what it might be.

Heads You Lose

‘Gawain and the Green Knight’ is a story that dates from the late 14^th century. In it, a mysterious green hued axe wielding stranger enters King Arthur’s court and requests that someone behead him. The only person to take up the challenge is the youngest of the Knights, Sir Gawain, who borrows the axe and slices the man’s head clean off. Somewhat disconcertingly, the stranger picks up his severed noggin, places it back on his shoulders and says that he will see Sir Gawain at the Green Chapel in a year and a day at which point the stranger will have his turn, i.e. a go at hacking off Gawain’s head.

It’s a great opening. The story soon becomes a mystical romance with much mystical nonsense about foxes and girdles and kisses and, in the end, the Green Knight decides only to shame him, not to decapitate. I haven’t read it, of course, but I have hopefully conveyed the gist of it and the importance of learning. Director Stephen Weeks presumably has read the story, as he has made not one, but two film adaptations of it, which is particularly impressive bearing in mind that he only directed four feature films in total.

The first version, simply titled ‘Gawain and The Green Knight’ takes a lot of liberties with the text, inserting more exciting and action packed incidents from other medieval stories. It’s okay, and occasionally has a pleasantly strange European art film feel to it but, fatally, is a bit dull. Even worse,  ‘Monty Python and The Holy Grail’, which is clearly an extended parody of this film and others like it,  has rendered the original impossible to take seriously.

It gains points, however, for featuring two of Britain's greatest character actors, the capricious Geoffrey Bayldon and the waspish Murray Melvin. It then loses a point for having Robert Hardy in it, before regaining it simply because Hardy has such a ridiculous fucking haircut, which sounds, overall, like a win.