To maintain his powers, the evil wizard Traigon must sacrifice his firstborn child to the god Caligara.

After giving birth to twin daughters, Mara and Mira, his wife refuses to tell Traigon which was born first.

She flees with the young children and convinces a peasant to raise them as warrior boys; the pursuing Traigon inflicts a mortal wound upon her.

When Traigon returns, he resumes hunting down his now-adult daughters (the Harris sisters), still intending to sacrifice them to Caligara.

The twins enlist the help of a satyr, Pando, a young, curly-haired barbarian, Erlick, and a Viking, Baldar, in their struggle to defeat their own father.

Erlick is stripped naked and about to be impaled from below, but is set free just in time, when he reveals his royal blood as a king's son.

Erlick and Mara have a romantic interlude, which Mira can feel telepathically; Pando, seeing her writhing around, gets excited, but Baldar, saying that he is sworn to protect the twins, restrains him.

Hill says Corman approached him to do a sword and sorcery film inspired by the success of Conan the Barbarian.

Hill claimed that Roger Corman never delivered the budget he promised, forcing him to compromise on both special effects and music.

)[10] Hill says the Mexican crew "worked their hearts out on the film" but also told him "this production had the most problems of any movie they had ever been on - all kinds of things went wrong.

[12] Like many New World films of the time, it re-used James Horner's musical score from Battle Beyond the Stars (1980).