Death Becomes Him
Death awaits his latest suitor in Black Angel (1980)
Black Angel is the directorial debut of Roger Christian (Nostradamus), who served as art director on the original Star Wars. It played before The Empire Strikes Back in the United Kingdom, Australia and Scandinavia during its original theatrical release and was believed to be lost (after the bankruptcy of Rank Film Laboratory) until 2011, when it was found by archivists at Universal Pictures and subsequently restored.
The Empire Strikes Back
Luke confronts himself (as Darth Vader) on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
George Lucas' decision to use step-printing (a photochemical process by which frames are doubled, tripled or quadrupled from their original duration to create a strobing type of slow-motion, popularized more recently by Peter Jackson in the Lord of the Rings films) for the Dagobah scene (set inside the Force cave) was a direct result of seeing the powerful impact it had on Black Angel's swordfight scenes.
The Lady in/by the Lake
A crusader knight is saved by a spirit who rescues him from a lake in Black Angel (1980)
King Arthur retrieves His talismanic sword from a spirit in a lake in the film Excalibur (1981)
The film only runs 25 minutes, but the influence it had on Excalibur is unmistakeable. The visual sparseness it has, as well as the dreamy quality it contains, would be more fleshed out in the later film. Roger Pratt's (Brazil, 12 Monkeys) cinematography is superb. Listen to the Trevor Jones score and you can understand why John Boorman hired him to compose the music for his own sword and sorcery tale.
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