Review of The Beastmaster (1982) by Vince K — 23 Aug 2010

Here's a movie I haven't seen in over 25 years - The Beastmaster (1982). Let me start off by saying that The Beastmaster is totally fucking cool. Marc Singer is completely awesome as Dar (The Beastmaster), and should've been a bigger star (he was killer on V though). The movie has a lot of good merits. But - there's a lot of stuff wrong here.

The movie's story almost seems to be a complete rip-off of Conan the Barbarian's. Dar's entire village is slaughtered, and the filmâ??s villain is also an evil priest-guy with a cult. There's even a cauldron with human body parts in it, EXACTLY like in Conan. Conan was a popular film - is this all coincidence or sheer thievery? (After checking, I call coincidence, both films came out the same year). Although, even though The Beastmaster does not have the spirit of the first Conan, at least he can speak to animals. (Like cute ferrets.).

Thereâ??s lots of shit wrong â?? like why did they paint a tiger black? Was it supposed to be a panther? Panthers DO NOT look like tigers. Maybe the store was out of panthers. And I can't imagine it was easy to hold the fucking tiger down and do that to him. When Darâ??s dog is pulling him away from the fire, the dog loses his grip but Dar keeps being pulled backwards. Ha. The three blind witches have hideous face make-up but the rest of their bodies are totally normal, even sexy. A scene later on in the film shows 6 witch hands over the cauldron, AFTER 2 of the witches were killed. Iâ??m pretty sure his love interest in the film (Sheena and That â??70s Showâ??s Tanya Roberts) was his sister, making their love incestuous, but I guess Iâ??m wrong. The climax seems to start in the middle of the movie. You get the feeling itâ??s going to be over soon but then goes on for another 50 minutes. And I love cheesy old special effects. Theyâ??re way more awesome than CGI. But I think in Beastmaster they couldâ??ve shown a little moreâ?¦ effort.

On the other hand â?? the winged creature things (awfully scary brutal monsters who end up helping Dar) are totally the most awesome and wicked thing ever. The special effects on them are not THAT bad at all. It even seems like they were inspired by Mothman. And Marc Singer really brings The Beastmaster to life. Heâ??s powerful and full of character and emotion (I love how he cries when his father hurts his feelings by calling him a freak in front of everyone, right after he had saved his ass and everything.) And itâ??s nice that they decided Dar should be shirtless the entire movie. Singer has an excellent physique.

Don Coscarelli is one of my favorite horror movie directors, even thought the only horror movies he ever made were all four Phantasm films. Those are some of my favorites, even the ones people consider bad. So I was surprised he was behind this, I never knew. Thereâ??s 2 sequels to The Beastmaster, which I would love to see. I think it would be cool if Dar did something like travel to the future. Thereâ??s a lot you can do with the character. There was a TV series 10 years ago that seemed kind of neat, but I was totally pissed off that the actor did not look like Marc Singer at all. He looked like aâ?¦ fag.

After perusing Amazon for the sequels, I found out that theyâ??ve never been reissued and go for a shitload of money. Even my DVD copy of The Beastmaster I bought over ten years ago is worth $75 dollars. Holy fuck. They could make a lot of money re-releasing them. On Blu-Ray. Thank you.