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From: lah%ucbmiro@Berkeley
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ronald Lacey (Red Sonja)
Message-ID: <2693@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 12-Jul-85 16:15:57 EDT
Article-I.D.: topaz.2693
Posted: Fri Jul 12 16:15:57 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 15:42:01 EDT
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: lah%ucbmiro@Berkeley (1st Lt. RYN Leigh Ann Hussey)


The poor guy always gets to die horribly in searing pain, doesn't he?
I think he was far more effective in Raiders of the Lost Ark as the
Nazi torturer, Todt.  There is something terribly evil about a grown
man with a soft baby face -- makes one's flesh creep.

Has he shown up anywhere else?  Is he always a villain?

By the way, does anyone know if the "Grandmaster" is the sensei who's
been teaching them all in reality?  I know he appeared in the first
Conan movie, but I didn't recognise him behind all that hair and
un-swordsmanlike trapping.

Finally, a note on the swordplay itself.  Much less satisfying than
Conan I.  These folks haven't been doing their kata!  Nonetheless,
we're still seeing the same linking of forms from iai-do (usually a
solitary art, involving many different draws, cuts, ways of getting
the blood off your sword -- shaking or whatever -- and resheathings.
All of these parts are important, but in the Conan movies many of
the blood-shakes appear to have become cuts, and resheathings become
merely confusing unexplained pauses).

Y'all might be amused to learn that the ad in Variety (I think), re-
printed in the Society for Creative Anachronism's quarterly,
"Tournaments Illuminated" read something like "Wanted: Actress with
knowledge of swordplay, acrobatics and horsemanship, no models or
female body-builders need apply".  I wonder how many SCA fighters
are among the priestesses, if any (judging from their styles, I'd
say few.  I've never seen more clumsy, ineffective sword-waving).

The best part was the fight in the "Chamber of Lights".  "Yahoo!"
I said, "It's Robin and the Sherriff slicing candles again!" :-)

En garde!
Leigh Ann