Hammer of the Gods (2013)

Elevator Pitch: In a time of conflict between the Vikings and the Saxons, a young Viking warrior is dispatched by his dying father to locate his elder brother somewhere in the badlands of Britain, who must lead the clan into battle. The young man, with a number of friends, departs on the search, the group facing dangers on the way, requiring them to fight their way onwards. A young woman joins them, and in various skirmishes their numbers are reduced. When the brother is found the survivors must face new dangers.

Content: There is a lot of almost mindless violence, some of it for no reason I could identify, with the warrior’s weapons of choice including swords, axes and a sort of sledge hammer with a point on one side. A bit of female nudity and a lot of shouting, most of it in the dark. They use the F word a lot – would Vikings have actually spoken in that way?   The various skirmishes take place and those involved are covered in blood quite a bit of the time. Just  bit difficult to see why it was an 18, although there are inferences that both adversarial homosexuality and incest take place.

A View: I could hardly wait for this to be over, but I hung on to the end, the sort of “Apocalypse Now” climax. I will describe one event as an indication of its awfulness. The group come across men stoning a woman who is running about on the end of a chain. They randomly kill all the men, but when the woman continues to be hysterical they kill her as well, with an axe. This terrible oeuvre joins the ranks of “DON’T SEE” on this site.

Additional Info: My own estimate of the cost might be $1 million, mostly spent on the posters. It took a record low of $164 on its opening weekend in the States, and a grand total of  $438.