Leofwine_draca BERSERKER: HELL'S WARRIOR is an ultra-cheesy historical-action-science-fiction B-movie. That's a hell of a combination, and the fact that it was made in South Africa just adds to the whole weirdness of the thing. The DVD case sells this as a straightforward gritty historical war flick along the lines of the VIKINGS TV series but it turns out to be a thoroughly cheesy B-movie masquerading as such.And, truth be told, it's a pretty poor show. The narrative attempts to invoke some Norse mythology involving Odin and the other gods but in the end this turns into an unholy cross between HIGHLANDER and the Hong Kong flick THE ICEMAN COMETH. The first half which is set in the Viking camp is by far the worst, committing the cardinal sin of being cheesy and boring at the same time, but things do improve a little in the second. Be warned, throughout the movie you'll be exposed to some of the poorest over-acting you'll see in a movie.We're treated to the spectacle of a couple of warring brothers travelling to the present day where their battles continue. The CGI effects are pretty awful, it has to be said, and you wonder why the likes of Patrick Bergin and Kari Wuhrer are present, although at least the latter disrobes frequently to distract the viewer. There's a little gore thrown into the mix, along with the unwise decision to include some vampire stuff (as if it wasn't enough of a mixed bag to begin with), but overall the extremely poor production values make this one hell of a mess.

Enchorde Recap: According to legend, the Valkyrie Brunhilda defied Odin and was chained to a rock surrounded by an eternal fire. Only a warrior pure in heart can pass through the flames, free Brunhilda and release her from Odin's claim, and have her for himself. Now, war is brewing in the Norse lands, and the King needs an alliance with the Berserkers. The Berserkers are warriors claimed by Odin's valkyries, lusting for war, blood and flesh, and therefore outcasts, but superior in battle. The leader of the Berserkers is a scorned son of the King, Boar, and his price for the alliance is his brother, the future king, Barek. But after the King is victorious in battle, he refuses to give up his only remaining son, breaking his oath to Boar and betray him and kill him. Boar is saved only by Barek's call upon Odin. But this is only the start of the battle between the brothers, and their final battle is about to start now, a millennia later...Comments: I had hopes that this would be a movie based upon some Viking ground, far too little quality movie about Viking has been done. It started out very good too, with detailed longships and armors, nice and fitting sceneries and an OK battle.The foundation in the Aesir myths is thin and seems very corrupted to me. Odin is much more vengeful, spiteful and absent than I remind him from school, and the valkyries has been turned into some vampire-demons. I'm no expert, but that seems outright wrong.But the fatal mistake made by this movie is to move the time-setting from the original time-period to today. If the two brothers had fought it out in the correct time, with some decent battles, this movie would have been much better. Now the setting, suddenly is changed to present day Stockholm. Still, Odin is present and is sending Boar and his berserkers for Brunhilda and Barek which gives silly scenes when armor-clad and painted berserkers swordfights with Barek among the industries. Beautiful mountains and woods have been exchanged for cement. And when allowed to focus upon single fights, instead of massive battles as in the beginning, I quickly saw that the fights and skills of the actors are slow and clumsy.The end result is thin story, sometimes hard to follow and other times just silly, and the only that could save it, the action, is drawn from slow, dull and clumsy swordfights. It draws very little from Aesir myth or Viking tradition. Thus both story and action fails, and the movie is just plain bad.Finally, as a Swede, this movie is a little confusing. Supposedly filmed entirely in South Africa, it still contains some familiar Swedish signs, plates and what seems to be an authentic police car. However, the effort is poor and only goes so far, as to really set it in Sweden. No names are Swedish (perhaps with Anya as the exception), no familiar sceneries are Swedish, they (supposedly) speak a little (ancient?) Norwegian, not Swedish. And uniforms, both police and medical, are clearly not Swedish. If they were not going to even try to do it correctly - and really give the illusion that it is set in Sweden, why bother at all? 4/10

nyspooky I had no background knowledge of this movie before I bought it, but it sounded cool and I've been wanting to see a really kick-butt Viking movie for awhile now... alas, this film was not what I was looking for. I had hoped for the best, but instead, was delivered a boring Nordic soap-opera that seemed to drag on too long despite its 84 minute running time. The film's premise is intriguing enough: It's about a Viking warlord who defies his God and Odin is so enraged that he curses the warlord's son, named Barek, to death and rebirth as a Berserker. This Barek guy is then forced to live enraged, insane, and violent lifetime after lifetime. The movie is filmed competently enough, with some rich cinematography and quasi-good performances by the actors, but again, I found myself bored and questioning when this dribble would end. The filmmakers had a chance to make something rather entertaining and semi-unique but they dropped the ball. Perhaps it could've been improved with some cheap exploitation tactics thrown in such as gratuitous nudity and lots of gore... I mean, we are talking about "Berserkers" here, aren't we? Vikings were supposed to be BAD enough, what with all the raping and pillaging, so aren't Berserkers supposed to be even more extreme? All in all, unless you're a fan of The Young and Restless (etc...) or, are yourself, in fact, an insane Berserker who likes self torture, I'd probably steer clear of this drab piece of celluloid.

Sam I was an extra in the opening scene where the combined forces storm Eric the Red's encampment. Never knew where to see the final product. Then stumbled upon it on Cinemax one night. Needless to say that I can't be seen, anywhere (I was just filler in a war scene, anyway).Didn't expect too much going into the film, but things look better when they are on the screen than they look in real-life. The story wasn't as basic as it had sounded and their were some nice twists in the ending. I'm glad to see it wasn't a "straight forward Hollywood finish". Rest assured that Paul Johanssen is a total tool (cheesy sense of humor).Impressed with the final thing, but only cause it exceeded my low expectation.