Vic Anselmo
Knife and Swordmaker

Perhaps best known for designing and making the sword for the 1982 film The Beastmaster, Vic Anselmo has a long history of knife and swordmaking, dating back to his early childhood.

Born in 1945 in Brighton, Massachusetts, Vic was an "outdoorsy kid," which he credits for his early interest in knives. In 1956 his family moved to California where Vic spent all of his free time in the woods, hunting, trapping and practicing his shooting.

In 1957, while attending Washington Irving Junior High School metal shop class, Vic made his first knife. "It was rough, you know, just a hunting knife," Vic recalls. "But all of the other kids liked it and pretty soon I was making other knives and trading them for things."

In 1958 he had expanded his knifemaking, working out a deal with a local wrought iron scrapyard. The scrapyard owner would straighten and soften truck leaf-springs for Vic. Vic would then painstakingly file the steel down by hand to make his blades, then take it back to the scrapyard for heat-treating.

Married very young, Vic had three children by the time he was 19. Like most makers in those days, he had a variety of day jobs and made knives at night. He would go to gun shows and trade his knives for guns -- sometimes trading that gun for yet another until he had traded six or seven times at one show to eventually get the piece he wanted. Vic was also skilled at gunsmithing, and did some of that on the side as well.

"I remember when I got my first grinder, and finally stopped filing blades by hand. I saved up a bunch of S&H Green Stamps and traded them in for a tiny little grinder. I used it for everything. I flat-ground my blades and made guards and pommels out of chunks of brass."

His skill continued to improve over time and soon people wanted to buy his knives at the gun shows. In 1967, Vic broke his wrist very badly, an injury that would plague him for the rest of his career. Even after multiple operations, the condition of his wrist has never improved.

It was in 1968 that Vic met John Nelson Cooper. "A great guy," Vic recalls, "but a gruff old character. Boy, could that guy make knives -- as many as 100 a month. In those days, we didn't have belt grinders, we used cone-lock sanding drums. Mr. Cooper had several Baldor buffers set up with different grit shop-cloth on the drums. He'd go from one to the other and shape, hollow-grind and polish knives, one right after the other. He taught me how to hollow-grind and that started me on a whole new way of making knives. He was a wonderful man."

A few years later, Vic began working out of Mr. Cooper's shop in Burbank, where Mr. Cooper wanted Vic to make production Cooper knives. Vic recalls, "I was always a difficult guy to work with - I always wanted to do things my own way. I only ended up making two Cooper knives, and even those had 'Anselmo' stamped on the blades." Vic stayed on at Cooper's shop, though, making his own brand of knives. Unlike Cooper, Vic always stamped his maker's mark on the front of the guard, rather than the blade. He felt that annealing that area of the blade and stamping the mark would stress the metal and weaken it.

It was at Cooper's that Vic met the young Jody Samson. "He was a nice, long-haired kid that used to come around and try to learn everything he could. It wasn't long before Mr. Cooper decided to hire him, because everyone could tell he had talent."

Vic was still selling the majority of his knives through gun shows, and he remembers one show held at Disneyland where he, Cooper, and Jody each had separate tables arranged in a line.

After a few years, Vic decided to strike out on his own. With $90 in cash, an old drum sander driven by a washing-machine motor and pulley that he had made himself, Vic moved into a small shop in an industrial complex. His next-door business neighbors were Jennings Compound Bow and B&B Sales (at that time one of the biggest handgun retailers in California). They all got along great and Vic did some gunsmithing work for B&B. "We used to say that you could get shot, skewered or stabbed all in one place..."

It was during this time that Vic started making balisong (also called "butterfly") style knives, based on knives from the Pacific islands -- possibly the first US maker to do so. Vic remembers Les Diassis coming into his shop one day and seeing what Vic was making. Les decided to build a business around this knife style and asked Vic to come work for him. Vic made the very first knives for the new company, "Bali-Song Knives," a successful company that would later become "Benchmade Knives."

Just like he had with John Nelson Cooper, however, Vic found himself unable and unwilling to work for someone else. "I was just never good at taking orders. I was a free spirit and kind of a rowdy guy with a hot temper." Vic went back to making knives and hand-building muzzle-loading guns in a shop in the back of Marty's Gun Shop. Jody Samson took his place at Bali-Song.

Vic still takes pride in the muzzle-loaders he made then. Just like with his knives, he made everything by hand from bar stock. "I even hand-made the screws," he adds.

In 1981, Vic was approached by the production company that was making a film loosely based on the Andre Norton science-fiction/fantasy novel "The Beastmaster." They showed Vic production drawings they had made for the sword they wanted, and Vic could tell from the beginning that it would not work. "I don't -- and won't -- make heavy movie props," Vic told them. "If you want a real sword, I'll make you a real sword." He, in true Vic Anselmo style, had a couple of demands: that he be given shop space and equipment at the prop department, but not be an employee; and that he be allowed to redesign the sword to his own specifications. The production company agreed to his demands and Vic got to work.

Vic spent three weeks making the sword, entirely from scratch. Even the guard, spacer and pommel of the sword were hand-ground from solid blocks of brass.

In addition to designing and making the sword carried by Marc Singer in the film, Vic also made the aluminum prop sword carried by John Amos. In the course of the film's production, Vic also made numerous knives for cast and crew members, among them a bowie knife for John Amos (a picture of this knife is in the book "John Nelson Cooper, Knifemaker to the Stars").

Vic has a number of stories about the five and a half months he worked on the sound stage every day of filming, though he visited the location shoot in Lake Piru only once. After shooting was complete, Vic sharpened the sword and had fun with the crew chopping up the set. "The sword did great," Vic recalls.

Unfortunately, in the confusion that usually follows the conclusion of filming, the original sword disappeared and was never recovered. When the second movie was filmed, a fiberglass replica of the original sword was used.

In 1983, a year after the film was released, Marc Singer asked Vic to make him a copy of the sword for his personal collection. Vic wasn't happy with the way it came out, primarily because it was a rush job. "It didn't have the same balance as the original, but Marc had to have it in 6 days," Vic relates.

After working on "The Beastmaster," Vic decided to try something different. He became a security officer, and later the captain of security, at a local university. For seven years, Vic never missed a day of work and received numerous commendations and awards, until he suffered a major back injury in 1991. "That laid me up pretty bad," Vic says,"and started a downward spiral in my life."

Following another divorce and several other changes in his life, Vic also began having problems with his lungs -- a result of being a heavy smoker for many years. His health deteriorating, Vic moved to Florida, which he describes as "paradise."

He spends his time these days in the outdoors he has always loved, fishing and shooting. He has a Tommy gun as well as a number of other handguns and rifles that he still enjoys shooting. He laughs about the fact that his backyard is occasionally visited by alligators.

"I raised two families making knives. I'm retired now, but I am coming briefly out of retirement to make this one sword again, exactly the way the original was made. Because of my bad health, I don't expect I'll be able to ever do this again."

Albion/Film Swords is proud that Vic has chosen to re-make this famous sword for us, and provide the sword and his original drawings for use as a pattern for a limited edition reproduction.

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