Complete Monster: King Titus Cromwell begins by attempting to conquer a rival king's lands. He achieves this by reviving an ancient sorcerer named Xusia. Cromwell kills his rival King Richard, and betrays Xusia and leaves him for dead before killing Richard's wife as well, but misses Richard's son Prince Talon. As King, Cromwell has enemies subjected to torture and constantly tries to expand his domain with destruction and death. When Prince Mikah of the resistance is captured, Cromwell sends him to the torture chambers and desiring Mikah's sister Alana, he tries to force her into bed by threatening her brother's life. He later invites the heads of other lands to a banquet, planning to murder them and steal their lands. The entertainment there is Talon, whom Cromwell has had crucified with six-inch nails.
Designated Hero: Talon is an asshole that almost everyone in-universe praises as an All-Loving Hero. He routinely insults everyone he comes into contact with, stops a rape only to immediately proposition the intended victim to persuade him to help and his only care for getting involved in the plot at all is revenge on Cromwell. All of his most heroic deeds are completely offscreen and only relayed to the audience via Character Shilling.
Presumed Flop: To many today, the film looks like a B-movie and little more than a Cult Classic, especially compared to the much, much-more known Conan the Barbarian (1982) that was released in the same year. But Sword grossed $39.1 million in its domestic theatrical run, while Conan grossed $39.6 million.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Elizabeth, Cromwell's mistress/servant girl, is almost certainly Talon's sister who was abducted at the start of the film. Trouble is, basically nothing is done with this as her character and Talon have only one interaction and the connection is never made between the two of them. She could've very easily had a bigger role but she's later killed off after a failed rescue.
