aka La Guerra del Ferro

• Directed by Umberto Lenzi
• Written by Alberto Cavallone, Lea Martino, Gabriel Rossini and Dardano Sacchetti
• Starring
  • Sam Pasco
  • Elvire Audray
  • George Eastman
  • Pamela Field
  • William Berger
• Produced by Luciano Martino

The director and co-writer of this feature is Umberto Lenzi, best known for two incredibly sucky films: Cannibal Ferox (aka Make Them Die Slowly) and City of the Walking Dead. You’ll be happy to know that Ironmaster sucks even worse, but in a wholly different way.

First up, a fact that may be lost on most casual viewers; in looking at the cover, one would assume that this is another of the Conan ripoffs that poured out of Italy in the early eighties like a plague of locusts. That impression is fostered by the cover illustration, which honestly has absolutely nothing to do with the movie; apparently, the struggling artist was given neither production stills nor even a plot synopsis, but rather, he was told, “It’s Italian, and it’s called Ironmaster,” and left to his own devices.

In actuality, the inspiration for this movie is Quest For Fire (1981), and that inspiration can be seen when we look at the original titles. Quest For Fire is a French film, and its native title is La Guerre du Feu, literally “The War of Fire.” Ironmaster was an Italian/French co-production, and its title in its two native languages is La Guerra Del Ferro/Le Guerre du Fer, literally “The War of Iron.”

Isn’t that interesting? I hope you think so, because it’s whole buckets more interesting than the movie itself.

We open with a theme which rivals the Beowulf soundtrack for sheer inappropriateness, as well as being marvellously goofy; it sounds like a Spaghetti Western score with vocals rendered by Mongolian throat singers. (The music here is provided by the team of Guido and Maurizio De Angelis, who that same year also did the score for Yor, the Hunter From the Future. It seems their philosophy here was, “Come on, we can do worse than Yor…”)

We’re supposedly twenty thousand years back in time here, when homo sapiens spent most of their time wrapped in loinclothes and wearing really hokey wigs. (Wait, that can’t be right…) The Zot tribe lives near a herd of buffalo, which whom the viewer will become intimately acquainted; however, they somehow find themselves unable to find meat, due to the fact that the animals have all hidden from recent earthquakes. The chief goes through a litany of animals they can no longer find, including “the succulent squirrel,” and even mentions that fact that, damn, they’re surrounded by buffalo, but how can they hunt buffalo with nothing but sticks? (Imagine a Plains Indian laughing his ass off right here.) We’ll overlook the fact that this is the Stone Age — stone, right, boys? As in, sharpening one by flaking off chips and putting a pointy end on your stick?

Well, they may have forgotten about pointy rocks, but politics is alive and well in the Mesolithic. The chief is looking to retire, and by tradition, that title should go to the “son of his woman,” Vood (George Eastman). Unfortunately, the cheif is aware that, being played by George Eastman, Vood must be a stinker, and wants to pass the chieftainship on to Ela (Sam Pasco in his one and only film role), who exhibits his virtue by having the only cleanshaven face in the tribe (try doing that with a pointy stick), as well as a clearly-defined and waxed torso.

We then get a clear view of why these people are hunting: Their idea of hunting, say, two wild boars is to creep up as silently as they can all on one side (no surrounding allowed), then scream and wave their axes so the boars will run off and they have to chase them. You know, I may be Captain Suburban White Boy, with only booklearnin’ for my survival training, but could probably end up ruling the tribe in six hours flat. Face it; according to this movie, Early Man was stupid. We’re talking homo barely sapiens here.

They do finally catch one boar (in a manner that lets you know that that standard “No animals were harmed…” disclaimer ain’t showing up in the closing credits), and are on their way back to their cave when they are beset upon by the Mud People (who smear their flesh with grey clay — what movie did I say this was inspired by?); in the confusion of the attack, Vood takes the occasion to off the chief.

At the chief’s funeral, Ela presents the charge that Vood killed the chief, at which point Vood presents his well-reasoned defense by attacking Ela and accidentally killing the medicine man. Oops. Vood is banished to wander away (through the buffalo, naturally), and Ela is proclaimed chief.

Immediately thereafter, there’s an earthquake, and everybody once again demonstrates their stupidity — the main body of the tribe by hiding in their cave (exactly where I don’t want to be when things start shaking), and Vood by hiking toward the erupting volcano which is causing all of the shaking. Did I mention that Early Man was stupid?

All night long, Vood watches the eruption, which means we get to see about five minutes of stock footage, culled from different eruptions of different volcanoes. In the morning, trekking around the red-hot landscape, he discovers something interesting: A straight piece of iron, cooling in a rut in the ground. He apparently cools it down by hitting it with a rock and grabbing it several times, and discovers that it’s pretty damned hard.

Finally realizing, “Hey — I’m on a volatile volcano,” Vood comes back down into the valley and immediately encounters a lion we’ve seen before. (No, this looks nothing like a savanna, and no, we never get to see any females, who actually do the hunting; just males.) He manages to kill it with his iron stick, and wonders at its strength, and just then…

…Well, just then, a brunette named Lith shows up, calling Vood by name and saying that she’s been sent to him by the great god Enferon, god of the volcano and all rumbly thingies, to show him the power of the unbreakable weapon. (My own suspicion is, she was sent by the great god Lenzi, who keeps his own inscrutible counsel.)

Emboldened, Vood makes himself a hood of the lion head (well, that’s what it’s supposed to be — it actually looks like he found and slaughtered the world’s largest teddy bear) and confronts Ela at the cave. Naturally, Vood’s iron stick breaks right through the wooden haft of the weapons Ela grabs (and here I am, yelling at the TV, “Stop trying to parry! Just stab at the guy who looks like George Eastman!”). That’s about all it takes (well, that and another imperious pep talk from Lith) for the tribe to call for a recount (ain’t topical humor wonderful?), and suddenly Vood is chief.

Ela is taken and staked out in the Land of the Ursus (that’s plural — one ursu, two ursus), which we soon find out are pitifully primitive apemen. I mean the makeup, not the monkeymen themselves (although that too is true). And somehow, I’m not sure how, they still look like distinctly Italian monkeymen. He manages to escape them, and wanders through the buffalo again (they edited it really hard, trying to make it look like Ela is being menaced by a stampede, but it’s pretty damned obvious that the buffalo are trying to avoid him). I’m justing thinking how that looks in a caveman’s litany of accomplishments: “I have survived being ignored by the buffalo!”

At a stream, Ela meets his own deus ex machina girl, a blonde named Iza from the tribe of Mogo (her father), out picking herbs. It turns out that the herbs she’s been gathering are just right for treating the cut that Vood left in Ela’s side, and he decides to accompany her back to her village.

Meanwhile, Vood has struck upon the same thought that comes into the head of every man who comes into possession of an unbreakable pointy stick: Conquest! He takes his men up the side of the mountain to gather lumps of the “black rock,” which they then smelt at the cave. That’s right; skipping the Bronze Age altogether, these cavemen who fifteen minutes ago couldn’t figure out how to gang up on a buffalo now have the means to melt iron in their campfire (!!!) and pour into rock molds, from which it emerges a perfectly formed iron sword. Next, Vood invents the assembly line, and arms the entire tribe.

Meanwhile, Ela and Iza continue traveling, fighting ursus, and generally eliciting the question, “Just how far from her village did Iza wander, alone, to pick herbs?” And yes, they do get to run through the buffalo again.

With his new swords, Vood makes an attack on another tribe, and it goes beautifully; they slaughter half of them, and put the other half in servitude. The chief accomodates them by giving the obligatory “Hey, you can’t just come in here and — UURK!” line.

The returning warband makes a wonderful distraction for the ursus chasing Ela and Iza, and Vood makes a side trip to kill the ursu tribe (letting us see that the ursus too had fire; in other words, before the iron came along, this tribe had exactly nothing on the monkeymen).

And just to show us how far iron leads to debauchery, Lith institutes free love in the tribe. Then they go out and slaughter another tribe.

Well, finally, Ela and Iza make it to her tribe and meet Mogo, an old man who is also Clean-Shaven Cave Man #2. (Well, not really a cave manl the tribe lives in thatched huts on the edge of a lake.) Mogo refuses to prepare for war; the tribe is so pacifist, they don’t even eat meat. As Mogo says to Ela’s protests that they must fight, “We must oppose this violence with wisdom, with persuasion that comes from the heart.” At least he didn’t actually break into a chorus of “Kum Ba Yah.”

I hope you’ll forgive me for skipping a bit of inconsequential stuff, like a lion entering Mogo’s village, doing nothing, and leaving. We do get to find out Vood’s ultimate use for the slaves; he uses them to mine the black rock, which he uses to make more swords, which he uses to gain more slaves, which he uses to mine the black rock… It was stupid then, and it’s stupid now. But as Vood expresses with the clarity of a general, “What’s the use of having invincible weapons if you can’t use them?”

Anyway. Vood finally gets around to attacking Mogo’s village, while Ela, Mogo, and a few other men are out tracking the lion. Vood leaves a handful of people in charge and fumes about missing Ela, while Ela and his guys bide their time in the woods (and have a completely irrelevent run-in with a cave-dwelling tribe of lepers). Oh yes, and we get to see plenty more buffalo.

Knowing that Ela plans an armed attack on Vood, and being a man of conscience, Mogo leaves to make is own way in the woods, and is promptly slaughtered by Vood’s patrols. It’s a stupid death, in that it never comes up again; it doesn’t galvanize anyone into action or anything. I mean, it probably means a lot to Mogo himself that he’s gotten slaughtered, but it never means much of anything to anyone else.

Eventually, Ela and his handful of men sneak back into Mogo’s village and kill Vood’s guards, then send Lith with a message for Vood to come alone for a final combat. Naturally, Vood has no intention of doing so, but naturally Ela expects that. That’s why he invents — the longbow! That’s right, as long as we’re skipping from the Stone Age to the Iron Age, we might as well fast-forward all the way to the Battle of Agincourt. He even invents Zen and the Art of Archery, with all of its “Be the arrow” jazz.

Which means that Vood’s overconfident men accompany him and rush the camp, only to find out that every man and (plentiful) woman in Mogo’s village is a crack archer. After losing most of their band, they desert Vood to the final swordfight with Ela. Vood dies, naturally, but his final words are, “One day, there will be another Vood.” (Yes, but I be he’ll spell it differently.)

But there’s one last scene: Iza has made it very clear that all of this violence violates the principles by which her father lived, and on which the vilalge was based. So, in the final act of this little war, Ela tosses all of the swords and bows into the water, one by one. The end.

Truthfully, that last scene filled me with immense relief. Because that meant that this one pitifully stupid tribe, at least, would have been slaughtered by the next Vood to come along, which means that none of their blood runs in my veins.

What else needs to be said? I’ve already mentioned the music; it didn’t get any better. I hate to judge actors’ performances based on a dubbed version, but it’s pretty apparently that most every actor was cast for his/her ability to stare straight ahead without shrieking, “This will murder my career!” George Eastman is the only halfway competent performer here (and the only one who ever really made a living from movie-making after this), but hey — no one’s going to get much respect wearing that mangy excuse for a lion’s head.

Somehow, I can only hope that all of these human tribes got wiped out, and that I am myself actually descended from the monkeymen. Given the options, it’s not that bad.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 64
• breasts: 0
• explosions: 2
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0