to men, while at the same time harshly reproaching men for the choices they have made. Rurik loses his own fam- ily, and is later provided with the satisfaction of slaying the man respon- sible, but for inflicting his own ran- dom violence against the innocent, he is punished with a short time in the bosom of the family he might have had, which is then taken away from him, leaving him to wander till the end of his days, rootless and damned. Though the resemblance between the two films is sometimes obvious, no critic at the time noted I coltelli’s conscious debt to Shane. It may be that, whether for legal or artistic rea- sons, Bava decided to downplay this connection himself. According to Cameron Mitchell, a final scene was shot in which Moki noticed Helmut/ Rurik’s departure, broke away from Arald’s paternal clutch, and ran af- ter him, calling his name. This was a wise deletion, as such a finale would have upset the complex poignancy of the film as it now exists, for the sake of a gratuitous film reference that would have seemed parodic in such a context, and may also have provoked unwanted laughter. Even as it is, the film has its
faults. The pre-credits scene, how- ever arresting it may be in terms of its elegiac solemnity and powerful imagery, finds Shuna imparting more spoken information (including unfamiliar names) than can be eas- ily absorbed by viewers just settling into the picture. It is another mis- calculation to have asserted the cow- ardice of Aghen—represented by a shield he wears over his heart—over his villainy; it is true that he mur- dered and beheaded Rurik’s family, but because the film never intro- duces us to these living characters, their loss carries no dramatic weight. By extension, Aghen never accrues the aura of an indomitable evil that must be reckoned with—quite the opposite of Jack Palance’s formi- dable opposition to Alan Ladd in Shane. Instead, when Aghen dis- rupts Arald’s wedding with the trib- ute of the heads, the King publicly
THIS French reissue affiche art from the 1980s shows the influence of John Milius’ recent success, CONAN THE BARBARIAN.