When his father dies of mysterious causes, and leaves behind a kingdom ravaged by famine and disaster, Malachy (Luke Goss) must return from exile to take up the thrown and resolve the chaos. However, no sooner does he return, than he is met by a mysterious traveller named Kramer (Simon Thorp) who has the answer for his kingdoms blight - Witches, led by the evil Red Queen (Sarah Douglas). Now Malachy and his friends must hunt down and destroy the witches, before it is too late.
In spite of the fact that this is a low budget, B-movie made for TV, this film was a fairly entertaining experience. The story at first comes across as being pretty unimaginative and predictable, but as it progresses, this stops being boring as more unexpectedly expected events happen. Coupled with some action packed sword fighting scenes, the result is a mesmerising story. The acting quality overall is, honestly pretty poor, but fortunately the core cast (Goss, Douglas and Thorp) make up for it. Also, one of the major techniques of making a b-movie is to focus on a small group of characters, and avoid large crowds with individuals that stand out, and this film not only did that, but also managed to work around that problem very well. The special effects are decent and, considering it is a low budget film, the detail in the costumes and set designs is incredible, although if one looks closely there does appear to be a mismatch between east and west. So although this can't be called the best fantasy film of the decade, if one gives it a chance it can definitely be bewitching.
