This initially promising entry in the sword and sorcery stakes boasts a well-known cast of British personalities and a fun opening sequence involving Sean Connery's Green Knight. Unfortunately this is the best part of the film and what follows is below average stuff; a poorly-edited mish-mash of episodic adventures lacking in both clarification and continuity. Now, I know the dreaded Golam-Globus partnership produced this mess but this is below the standards of even their usual Chuck Norris movies. One of the many problems with SWORD OF THE VALIANT is that it doesn't know what kind of film it wants to be. One minute it's a Saturday morning matinée type adventure in the style of THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD, complete with athletic stunts and lots of sword fighting, and the next it's a silly comedy with some truly appalling scripted lines which fail to be funny. Then a romance comes along and drags the pacing down and the overlong running time makes it feel like a three hour long bloated epic of a movie.In the end it's the editing which kills this film off and drags the entertainment value down. Some individual scenes in themselves actually aren't bad and are quite entertaining, especially the action bits. Director Stephen Weeks (one-time horror director with I, MONSTER) handles the camera well and creates a visually interesting film. As for the special effects, well, apart from the cheap disappearing unicorn/invisible ring shots, they're low budget but fun. I especially liked Sean Connery's decapitation at the beginning of the film complete with ultra-cheesy model head used. The weird red toad effect was...interesting as well.Miles O'Keefe takes the action hero leading role of Sir Gawain. Sadly, his ridiculously-bewigged performance isn't one of his better parts and his fighting skills seem to consist of him swinging a sword around randomly trying to not hit the other actors or furniture. Although he's wooden, the camera takes ample opportunity to show off his muscular torso and he strips off more times than Sybil Danning would in one of her films. As for the supporting cast, well it's nice to see all the familiar faces but nobody really puts in a good performance here. Actors are usually over the top or understated, to one extreme, which is never too hot. Sean Connery probably comes off the best as the hilarious Green Knight, decked out in a leafy suit of armour, a ludicrous wig (which looks like a mop) and green-painted skin. He hams it up a treat and adds to the film during his brief appearances.Lots of stalwart British talent on view. Trevor Howard plays it up as a grumpy wizened king whilst Douglas Wilmer is very effective as the evil Black Knight. Ronald Lacey (who incidentally is reprising his role from a previous 1973 version of the tale, again directed by Weeks) is the snivelling evil bad guy again and seems to be pretty much accustomed to the typecast part. It's great to see Wilfrid Brambell in one of his last roles before he died as the grumpy porter, and horror legend Peter Cushing makes a welcome appearance as a court aide but is sadly underused. Cyrielle Claire is plain ineffectual as the romantic interest. Despite the many flaws this film contains, those interested in medieval legends and the movies will want to check it out because some of it isn't bad. It's just a shame that some disaster happened post-production and turned it into such a tiresome ordeal.

The old English tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is brought to the screen with a charming blend of action , imagination ,thrills , adventure , and tongue-in-cheek humor . The medieval legend of a supernatural chivalrous young squire who challenges the king's men to kill him . Being middlingly starred Myles O'Keefe as Gawain , Sean Connery as the Green Knight, and appealing Cyrielle Claire as Lynette ("The Lady of Lyonesse"). In Camelot on New Year's Day, King Arthur's court is waiting for the feasting to start when the king asks first to see or hear of an exciting adventure. At this a gigantic figure, entirely green in appearance and riding a green horse, rides unexpectedly into the hall. He wears no armour but bears an axe in one hand and a holly bough in the other . He insists he has come for a friendly "Christmas game": someone is to strike him once with his axe on condition that the Green Knight (Sean Connery) may return the blow in a year and a day . There appears Gaiwan (a wooden Miles O'Keefe) , a rookie knight in the court of King Arthur (Trevor Howard) who is sent out on a quest brought on by a challenge issue by the magical Green Knight . Gaiwan must solve a riddle in one year or die .This flabby fairy tale adventure contains witchery , fantasy , cheesy special affects, stagy acting , surreal imagery and grimly marches . The picture has good settings , as thick rolling fog , deep forest , dark castles and rocky seacoast ; this movie delivers on locations ; however , it results to be mediocre and a little bit boring . Connery can only be on-screen for a few scenes but he adds zest to his character , he steals the show as an ironic Green Knight . Ronald Lacey, who played the character Oswald, also played the same character, also called Oswald, in "Gawain and the Green Knight" which was made in 1973, and basically, it was the same movie, same actor, same role .This lumbering film version of one of the Arthurian legends is badly done , as the motion picture was regularly directed by Stephen Weeks . Filmmaker Weeks was one of two young British directors to emerge in the terror field in the late sixties , the other , Michael Reeves died at 25 . He began his professional film career at age 17, directing a series of short films . He made his film cinema short film, 'Moods of a Victorian Church' (1967) at age 19, and his first cinema drama, a film set in the First World War in France '1917' . Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was Stephen's second picture at age of 22 and he realized other horror films such as ¨Madhouse mansion¨ or ¨Ghost story¨(1979) and adventure movie such as ¨Gawain and the Green Knight¨ (1973) also with Peter Cushing , Ronald Lacey , Murray Head as Sir Gawain and Nigel Green and its remake titled ¨Sword of the valiant¨ (1983) and not much of an improvement . Rating : 5/10 . Well worth watching but only for Sean Connery fans .Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, and is of a type known as the "beheading game". The Green Knight is interpreted by some as a representation of the Green Man of folklore and by others as an allusion to Christ. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important poem in the romance genre, which typically involves a hero who goes on a quest which tests his prowess, and it remains popular to this day in modern English renderings from J. R. R. Tolkien, Simon Armitage and others, as well as through film and stage adaptations. It describes how Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table, accepts a challenge from a mysterious "Green Knight" who challenges any knight to strike him with his axe if he will take a return blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and beheads him with his blow, at which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head and reminds Gawain of the appointed time. In his struggles to keep his bargain Gawain demonstrates chivalry and loyalty until his honour is called into question by a test involving Lady Bertilak, the lady of the Green Knight's castle.The poem survives in a single manuscript, the Cotton Nero A.x., which also includes three religious narrative poems .

Juvenile fantasy/adventure with an impressive cast of old reliables (Sean Connery, Peter Cushing, Trevor Howard, Lila Kedrova, Douglas Wilmer and Wilfrid Brambell) all operating below-par alongside the resistible - indeed wooden - presence of would-be star Miles O'Keefe (fresh from two similarly low-brow Ator films). Bafflingly, Connery went on to the equally unappetizing and silly HIGHLANDER (1986)...even if, I have to say, that one's something of a guilty pleasure for me!The hairstyles designed for the film give new meaning to the phrase "bad hair day"! Besides, the look of the film is pretty cheap (I watched this via MGM's pan-and-scan DVD, which certainly did it no favours); the death-knell is delivered, then, by the inappropriate and ultra-cheesy electronic score! Certainly harmless in itself but overlong and not exactly rewarding in any way; strangely enough, the director had already tackled the story a decade earlier in GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT (1973), which is yet another film that I haven't had the opportunity to catch up with since missing out on it on local TV in my childhood...though I can't say that I'm particularly looking forward to it now!

Well, opinion on this movie is universally, shall we say, not very kind (to put it mildly) with numerous critics who have all hastened to point out the many flaws present within that serve to destabilise the films overall structural coherence. As for myself, whilst certainly conceding the films many shortcomings, I have a real fondness for it!Firstly the movie doesn't take itself at all seriously and is played throughout with it's tongue wedged very firmly in it's cheek. The overall look of the film is excellent with some great locations used for the shooting. In addition it boasts some real star casting including the always excellent Sean Connery and Peter Cushing. The costuming department excel here also with some really great suits of armour. OK, so there IS a problem with the way the film has been edited, thus rendering it disjointed and often bizarre, but who cares? It's never boring and is a harmless way to spend an hour and a half of pure escapism. In short, it's great fun!