The film was directed by Charles Band and here he is still noticeably creatively young, as is his studio so far called Empire Pictures, which later became known as Full Moon. The author lacks the ability to make a rich action picture of the direction of b-movie. There is a lack of visuals to demonstrate the various magical elements present in the script, along with the dynamics of the narrative. A slow rhythm is carried over almost the entire timekeeping, where the viewer observes a leisurely story, something resembling a terrible tale of witchcraft, curses, monsters, a forest hut and an evil sorcerer. But it is in many studio works of the “full moon” that all the charm is in some magical naivety transmitted from the eternal fantasist Band, who creates even a horror on a fabulous skeleton.
Therefore, when viewing the current picture, you involuntarily notice its visual misses with frequent plot sags, but you catch the painfully familiar atmosphere of a strange strange dream, turning into a nightmare, where much is devoid of clear logic or explanation. The emphasis is rather on a gloomy tale, when a heroine devoid of special prehistory from the real world with a prosaic freeway suddenly turns into a forest thicket inhabited by incomprehensible visions, demonic creatures, an enchanted sufferer in love, a passage to another world ... This sorcerer’s patrimony is filled with a special spirit, where time seems to have stopped, not allowing the tragedy of the past to go into memory, forcing again and again to stir up the forest with its echoes, interfering with new fates and heroes until finally the higher forces mark a just end.
Working a lot with chiaroscuro, instead of memorable prophesy, the director still quite acceptable copes with the task. He can easily be accused of visual inefficiency, which will be just a statement of fact, once again pointing to the earliest period of creativity from the studio, which never went beyond the "bimowish" productions even in the most successful time. However, a lot brightens up the musical design from the maestro Richard Band, who with his compositions always knew how to go incredibly close to the essence of the story, this time giving out a sad motif symbolizing the tragedy presented. There is almost a screen adaptation of generalized children's fairy tales about an insidious sorcerer, his ugly minions, a forester, an old woman and an enchanted girl, entering into the eternal struggle of Good and Evil. Naive. Simple. Cheap. But still fabulous, even if everything is also naive, simple and cheap.
5 out of 10