bad/awesome flixxx review: The Beastmaster (1982)

what a score! I found this on DVD for $3.99. A favorite of mine from way back in my Venusian days, Marc Singer, John Amos, and Rip Torn star in this badass Conan style fantasy film from the director of Phantasm, Don Coscarelli!



I'm not gonna give you a total play by play on this one, b/c I think it totally deserves a look up or a rental or whatever. I dug it so much, I'm gonna look for Beastmaster 2 (which is most probably terrible). Anyway, to give you the brief rundown here, Rip Torn (Mayax) is like a big shit sorcerer, and he works for this King Zed. Zed's wife is pregnant, and these witches that work for him tell him that the King's unborn son is gonna kill him. So Mayax is like, "bullshit, I'll kill him first" and he sends one of the witches to kill the baby (still inside the mother). The witch transports the baby from the womb of the queen to a cow's belly, kills the queen, and they lock Zed up for years. The witch gets the baby from the cow and brands his hand and is about to sacrifice him when this old peasant dude comes outta the woods and chops her with this handy little boomerang blade thing. Then he raises Marc Singer (Dar) as his own. When Dar is a teenager, his old man notices that Dar has psychic powers with animals and tells him he's special. Fast forward, and this gang of assholes called the Junn Horde burns Dar's village to the ground, killing his dad and his dog. So he goes off to kill them and meets a black lion, a black magic hawk, 2 cute little ferrets, an unbelievably hot redheaded chick named Kiri (who he bangs, and then later finds out its his own cousin, but they never say shit about it. hey, if its good for Jerry Lee Lewis, right?). Later on he meets John Amos and some kid who is his little brother. Seeing John Amos in this makes me wanna watch "Coming To America" really bad. This flick has beautiful scenery, rad views, animal telepathy, animal sight kinda like in Thundercats with the sword of omens, rings with fucking eyeballs in them, witches, Rip Torn with braids and skull bow-bows, these Bird worshipping dudes that can wrap their arm/wing/talons around someone and suck them dry til there is only bones left, and these berzerker dudes with toxic green leech earwigs driving them insane



one thing bothers me about the film upon further review.. at the end when Dar is fighting the main Junn Horde dude that looks like the guy from the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon with the big headdress, why doesn't he use his freakin animal psychic powers on that dudes horse?? He could have just told the horse to dump his ass in the fuckin fiery moat, know what I'm sayin? Also, one other cool thing, our good friends in the NC band Caltrop named a song off of their last album "Junn Horde". They are awesome, check them out. And if you dig sword and sorcery flicks, this has you written all over it. I personally prefer it to both Conan flicks... more soon prettys!