hwg1957-102-265704 A farmer called Jack kills a giant and rescues a princess Elaine for which he is rewarded. Later the princess is kidnapped again and Jack goes in pursuit and along the way encounters witches, mutineers, a cabin boy, a Viking and a leprechaun who speaks in rhyming couplets before getting to grips with the main villain Pendragon in his remote sea bound castle. Not as good as a Ray Harryhausen movie (which it is obviously aping) but not bad. The special effects are variable but the costumes and settings are attractively colourful and the musical score by Paul Sawtell and Bert Shefter adds to the adventurous atmosphere.Kerwin Mathews as Jack is typically Kerwin Mathews and Judi Meredith as Elaine fares better in her hypnotised evil role than as the bland princess. Fortunately Torin Thatcher plays Pendragon and is most enjoyable as the magician coveting the kingdom. Surrounded by strange looking witches, wearing an odd hat and mouthing silly dialogue he is still commands the screen when he is on. He's one of British acting's unsung heroes. Anna Lee has a small part as Lady Constance and is regally beautiful as always.It's entertaining enough but could have done with a little touch of Harryhausen.

morganmpoet Saw this when I was about 8 or 10 years old on the big screen. It blew my mind. Have not been the same since! Classic fantasy, superb visuals & as many have noted, the witch attack scene completely terrified me. And the skeleton 'sleep' witch was in my nightmares for many nights.This is an early film, animations are not Harryhausen but I am not as down on the animations as some here, they are enjoyable & fit the film well enough. The center piece is Pendragon's castle & what a castle it is! If I could live anywhere within a fantasy film it would be there.Torin Thatcher is superb as always, he has the most evil chuckle when amused & he has the chops to chew scenery with the best of them, he was a wonderful actor. Everyone else does their part well, Kerwin Mathews is just right as Jack.Yep Evil Elaine is a hottie! There are some bizarre mash ups in terms of themes what with leprechauns, Vikings etc. But it certainly doesn't drag & the castle scenes are stupendous.All in all, one for the ages, forgive it's shortcomings in terms of budget & some of the animation sequences, become a child again & remember what it was like to be terrified & amazed. A personal favorite of mine that branded my mind forever. All is forgiven because this film shaped my entire direction in life in terms on my interests in fantasy, art & creative processes, it was my first exposure to a world I never knew, imperfections & all, it is a classic IMO.

Lee Eisenberg Stay calm. It's going to take a little longer than usual to tell the whole story.When I was in kindergarten I used to go to a community center after school. The people who ran the community center would occasionally show us tykes movies. Mostly it was fare like "E.T.", "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" and "The Little Mermaid", all of which we watched multiple times. But there was one movie that they showed whose title I didn't learn. We watched this movie only once, but a few scenes stuck in my mind: someone gives the princess a box from which a dancing figure emerges; someone walks down a staircase and casts a spell on the box, causing the figure to turn into a monster which kidnaps the princess; someone tries to save the princess.I remembered these few scenes vividly, but nothing else about the movie. For years I wondered what the movie was called. Finally, I wrote an article in one of IMDb's query sections. I described the scenes that I had vividly remembered for all these years and asked if anyone knew the movie's title. Someone quickly answered: "Jack the Giant Killer". So, I've finally seen the whole movie. And it's a really fun movie. It was a surprise to see that I had only remembered the first ten to fifteen minutes of the movie, but I might not have originally seen the whole thing. Whatever the case, the whole movie is something that you're bound to love. Princess Elaine is one smokin' hot gal, but she looks especially sexy in her evil form. Something about the chalky skin and yellow eyes makes her extra good-looking.It's so funny how the mind remembers certain things perfectly and other things not at all.

Matt matt This was the first movie I ever saw at a drive-in in '62. It completely transported me to a realm of story book fantasy, and upon finding a VHS of it several years ago, I found it still carried it's old magic. Moderns may not be able to see past it's dated special FX, but I find moderns to be desperately self-centered and shallow. I recently asked a 26yr old lady if she liked the Marx Brothers, and she whined, "I was only born in 1984!", as if anything before that date was irrelevant.This brings me to my real motive for writing this review. Upon seeing that "Jack The Giant Slayer" was being released, I was prompted to see how the "Killer" movie was regarded on the net. I searched "Jack The Giant Killer" on Google, and found it listed buried in "Slayer" hype. The exact wording of my search was discarded by Google as irrelevant to some aspect of advertising or modernity that assumed it knew better than I what it was I was looking for. Even the IMDb listing for "Killer" was below the IMDb file for "Slayer".It makes me wonder what else is being shunted aside as students and researchers go about their business on the net.Don't tell me it's my business to decode Google's ignoring of the exact spelling of a search. There are subjects I look up that I am so ignorant of that I would never know what I have missed due to Google's arbitrary search results, especially if my search terms are somewhat ambiguous.All that aside, I hope that anyone seeing this can feel a bit of the magic that made this such a special movie for me at the age of 8, and again at 50.