John Norton (Rusty Joiner) is not named John Carter because that would be too obvious. He buys an isolated farm and is an ex-soldier. The farm is located near a cave that is a portal to "The Nine Worlds." He has reluctantly obtained the position of "The Sentinel" a guardian of the portal between worlds. He is aided by a blind Native American.He is also tasked in saving the Elf Princess (Masiela Lusha) from an acting career and the hordes of Orcs who desire to capture her for sacrifice, a sacrifice that would open the portals and allow the Orcs to conquer other worlds with their bows and swords. Seriously. Oh yes they also have one Nazgul.The Orcs looked and grunted convincingly. The fire was all CG, apparently fire insurance is hard to come by. The storyline, as you can tell, wasn't great and at one point I had wished they had copied "John Carter" more, however the lack of a budget prevent exotic scenery . The production starts out as if it was going to be a decent film. But then suddenly everything takes place down on the farm. The idea of getting real help to combat an army of Orcs seems alien to John Norton, who would rather fight them alone save for the occasional person who drops by.This film is in no way connected to LOTR except for the fact it borrows species from it.A desperation rental.Parental Guide: No f-bombs, sex, or nudity. Filmed in Salt Lake City.

The idea of the film is pretty fun: there are gateworlds between the nine realms and they open pretty much whenever it suits them. At the gate to Earth there is a wizard standing guard to preserve balance. The wizard is an old man with a lot of guns, though, and his magic is gun powder. When he dies trying to protect the last elven princess, a soldier coming back from Iraq takes his place. The rest of the film is people shooting orcs and dragons.The problem is that the idea was completely lost on the filmmakers. They try to make it slightly fun and campy, but the bad acting, the clichés, the myriad inconsistencies, the plot holes, they all work together in making the movie a failure. Unlike another Arrowstorm film "Shadow Cabal", which I thought was awesome, this one has lame visual effects, lame battles, lame dialogues, lame everything.I reiterate that this idea had a lot of potential, pitting experienced modern war veterans with experienced medieval war orcs, with magic thrown in for good fun. Instead it felt like one of the bad sequels to Tremors, made by Asylum.

Oh my, the hate against this film... yes, the low budget DID reuse props from other films (especially LotR) so does every film company, big or small. You'd be amazed just how many films and TV shows ended up using that "cheezey" armor from the first Starship Troopers. Granted, the heroine using a "sting" replica was a little too obvious, but ya use what ya can get.As for the people complaining of "never missing", either they're blind, or we watched different movies. I was laughing my backside off at how much dirt was flying. Apparently "Special Forces" training has magically gotten a whole lot worse lately, as the guy could only land about 1 in 10, and Scooter couldn't figure out how to walk a machine gun into a target at all; something anyone who's played video games in the last 3 decades knows how to do.The actual tactics were surprisingly accurate. Don't know if that was accidental or intentional, but the orcs used actual movements, tactics, and formations that were used historically when we had that equipment. The soldier used fairly realistic military strategy. The redneck acted like a redneck. I gave points for that, even though Im not sure it was deliberate. Its so incredibly rare to see people in films that have even the least clue of what they're supposed to be doing.Overall, yes, it was low budget. Yes, the story was rather predictable. Guess what, that plot is rather standard fare for a good quarter of the fantasy/SF genre anyway. Your not gonna find a new angle after 7 decades of works. It burnt up a few hours, wasn't as bad as Sci-fi or BBC effects, wasn't as insultingly stupid as most USA and TBS TV movie plots, had a few cute faces, some chuckles, and one or two moments of decent bad-assery, if you actually knew what you were seeing.I've seen a hella lot worse here with better ratings.

"Orc Wars" (aka "Dragonfyre") was like watching a recording of a LARP event. And personally I am not one to enjoy the whole LARP scene, and I surely wasn't impressed by this movie.The orcs, well they looked like something that was copied and pasted right out of something from the Tolkien universe. So whether or not that was good, well that is debatable. Sure, the costumes and armors were great, but it was just lacking originality, because it had all been seen in the "Lord of the Rings" movies. But they get an effort for trying and for putting this much effort into the costumes.For the story, well just don't get your hopes up here, because the storyline was just downright embarrassing to witness. It was as stupid as it was uninspiring.The acting was fair enough, just don't expect anything groundbreaking or overly innovative here.As much as I enjoy sword and sorcery fantasy, then "Orc Wars" was just bad entertaining and a waste of time. And truth be told, then I actually fell asleep during this and had to get up and turn it off to find something else to catch my interest and attention. I got no idea how it ended, because I gave up about half way into the movie or so, and even there having missed out on a lot of it from falling asleep...