In revisiting all these sword and sorcery films I keep dredging up old memories of when I first saw them. I originally encountered Deathstalker in the typical fashion; the folks were going out somewhere so rented me some crummy barbarian flick to ‘keep me quiet.’ I watched it as usual and then went off to bed, and the next day went about my regular Saturday morning business. After a while I wandered into the living room and discovered my Dad viewing the film, me arriving just as Playboy model Barbi Benton was chained to a rock, having her clothes torn off by a giant guy with a boar’s head.

“This,” he proclaimed sternly, “is disgusting!”

Oddly enough though, he didn’t turn it off. Probably just to check how disgusting it was, I’m sure.

The film opens with a bunch of badly made-up Neanderthal-looking guys leaping through a stone archway, which is fairly original I suppose. Anyway, these exceedingly ugly creatures are chasing some poor schlub who has a tied-up scantily clad maiden in his possession, their intention to ravish the girl and presumably kill the guy. The fellow sees a potential way out in the form of a nearby horse, but unluckily for him the steed belongs to (dun-dun-dah!) Deathstalker (Richard Hill). In a rather too undercranked fight scene Deathstalker (Stalker to his friends) takes care of the Neanderthals, and then kills the would-be horse thief for good measure. But before we start thinking Stalker’s a nice guy, he forces himself on the captive girl. Of course he’s studly and good looking, so before long she’s totally into it – another fine public service message from the B-Movie Department of Sexual Etiquette. Anyway, some old guy shows up with a message for Deathstalker, and the girl makes her slightly reluctant escape.

Stalker has been summoned by King Tulak (George Sorvic), a down-on-his-luck monarch reduced to living in a field and eating dogs. Tulak’s magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard) usurped his throne, and is also holding the King’s daughter Codille (Playboy favourite Barbi Benton) captive. Tulak wants Deathstalker to rescue the Princess and overthrow Munkar, but our hero is having none of it. He’s happy just riding around, um, stalking death presumably.

One feels there should be a small fanfare at this point to herald the arrival of the next scene. It’s a fairly generic shot of Munkar’s men dragging some random peasant behind their horses, but it’s significant because it also shows up in most of the Deathstalker sequels, at least one of the Barbarian Queen movies and the 2003 Deathstalker remake Barbarian. Anyway, the scene resolves into Munkar’s general Kang (Victor Bo) attempting to get the location of a special sword from a witch named Toralva (Lillian Ker). Deathstalker shows up in time to kill most of the guards, but Kang (I assume Koloth had the day off) uses a magical talisman to transform into a bird and escape.

Toralva tells Deathstalker that Kang is actually Munkar in disguise, which is actually a pretty good gimmick – when the guy playing the main villain has finished his allotted three days of shooting he can transform into a different (and hopefully cheaper) actor. The talisman is one of the Three Powers Of Creation: the Amulet of Life, the Chalice of Magic and the Sword of Justice. Munkar already has the Amulet and the Chalice, and only needs the Sword to become all-powerful. Toralva tells Stalker to get the Sword from its hiding place (a cave), where an ugly little demon puppet in a jawa robe protects it.

The demon guy’s name is Salmaron, and he is apparently trapped in the cave as part of a curse placed on him by Munkar. Which makes you wonder, because if Munkar can banish somebody doesn’t it stand to reason that he’d be able to get hold of the mystical Sword that’s hidden in the very same cave? Especially since Salmaron just happens to have it lying around in case one of the big Neanderthal guys just happens to attack, which is what just happens next. Stalker grabs the Sword and it turns into a cheap lightsaber effect that scares off the big brute. The Sword also transforms Deathstalker into a child, since only ‘a boy who is not a boy’ can lift the curse or some crap. Outside the cave, Salmaron returns to his human form (August Larreta).

Stalker and Salmaron soon happen across a village being overrun by some generic thugs. Defending the place is another warrior type named Oghris (Richard Brooker). Stalker pitches in to help and soon the bad guys are history. Oghris is on his way to Munkar’s tournament, where the best fighters in the land will compete for the ultimate prize: to be named Munkar’s heir. Stalker decides to tag along, thinking this will be a good way to get access to the wizard.

That night a mysterious masked figure enters their camp and proves to be a skilled swordsperson while trading blows with Oghris. It’s only when her robe falls open to reveal a spectacular pair of bare breasts that our heroes learn the assailant is a woman. And what a woman: Kaira (Lana Clarkson) is another warrior on her way to participate in Munkar’s games. It isn’t long before she and Stalker are doing a little unarmed combat of their own, if you know what I mean...

After some footage of a nudie slave market that’s also notable for the number of times it’s been recycled, we enter an orgy at Munkar’s palace complete with acrobats, mud-wrestling chicks and all the slave girls you can rape. Munkar welcomes the fighters before unveiling his latest amusement; Codille chained to a rock and wearing not very much at all. Munkar invites the assembled warriors to fight over who will be the first to defile her, our first contestant being the aforementioned big guy with the boar’s head.

The orgy turns into an all-out brawl but eventually Stalker claims the Princess as his own. Curiously Munkar seems to be oblivious that Stalker has just rescued her with the Sword of Justice, which is possibly even stranger than him completely failing to recognize Salmaron – y’know, the guy he cursed and turned into a demon and all. Maybe he’s just kinda forgetful.

So Munkar agrees to send the Princess to Stalker’s bedchamber, but in fact the wizard has a more nefarious plan. This next bit is the scene that everyone who has seen this movie remembers, and usually not in a good way. Munkar puts a spell on Gargit (Marcos Woinsky), the nasty captain of his guards, transforming him into a duplicate of Codille. There are no special effects employed in this sequence, instead a series of quick cuts from Gargit grabbing his crotch yelling “It’s gone! It’s gone!” to Barbi Benton rubbing herself orgasmically is used to realise the illusion. Now, I’m all for Barbi Benton rubbing herself orgasmically (or being chained to a rock and defiled, for that matter) but this is just... ewww!

And it gets worse; s/he goes to Deathstalker’s chamber and the big lug immediately tries to violate (it wasn’t until writing this review I realised that there were so many fancy euphemisms for rape) the poor girl. Guy. Ick. Anyway Gargit is so traumatised by the experience that his voice goes back to normal, making Deathstalker realise that something’s amiss. The girly-man leaves and in the corridor encounters the delightfully topless Kaira, who tries to help what she thinks is the distressed Princess. Suddenly Gargit reverts to his normal form, and although Kaira kills him she is mortally wounded in the process.

The next day the tournament begins, and assorted warriors – including the boar guy, a dude with a huge hammer and a skinny guy with a knife instead of a hand – fight for Munkar’s amusement. Later that night the sorcerer finds another way to amuse himself by torturing Oghris. Quite why he bothers to do this is a bit of a mystery since Oghris turns out to be working for him anyway; he’s been planted to kill Deathstalker, while the tournament is a ruse to wipe out any warriors strong enough to challenge Munkar’s power. Oghris goes to Stalker’s chamber and basically comes out and says ‘look, I work for Munkar and I’m here to kill you.’ What follows is a not-in-the-least-bit-homoerotic fight as the two oiled up muscle guys wrestle while clad only in loincloths. Eventually Deathstalker emerges the victor.

And the next day he’s all smiles again, fighting the boar guy in the tournament. Stalker wins this fight too, possibly becoming the tournament winner. That’s the last of the fights, at any rate. The next time we see Stalker he’s just sorta wandering around the castle looking for the missing Powers of Creation. Munkar has transformed back into Kang and is leading the hunt for his nemesis – unfortunately his guards are such a bunch of wusses that they get their asses kicked by Codille, Salmaron and the slavegirls. Meanwhile Stalker finds the cave where the Amulet is kept and fights off a hopeless attack by Kang. Which is strange, because it was established early on that Munkar needs the amulet to change form, but if the amulet was in the cave how did he transform into Kang? And why am I thinking about this when the writers so obviously didn’t? This pseudo-Munkar gets beheaded and Stalker takes the amulet, but you can’t count a crap B-movie sorcerer out, and Munkar quickly reattaches his head.

Outside in the courtyard Stalker is attacked by several Munkar duplicates, but the warrior defeats them (or at least their suspiciously inflatable-looking stand-ins) with the Sword of Justice. Next Munkar uses the gauntlet to make the Sword turn red-hot (or at least glow with a familiar and above all cheap original Star Trek phaser effect), but this is somehow cured by Codille rubbing his chest – not that I object to Barbi Benton rubbing Rick Hill’s chest, at least only as far as wishing she was rubbing my chest instead.

As a last resort Munkar surrounds Stalker in a wall of flame, but the hero just saunters through it and nonchalantly takes the Goblet from Munkar, who just kinda gives it to him. What, a ring of non-lethal fire is the best he do? At the beginning of the movie everyone was talking about how badass he was. He doesn’t get long to regret it either because an angry mob turns up, ties Munkar between two horses and rips him in half in a (quite impressive) explosion of blood and entrails. Meanwhile Deathstalker decides that the Three Powers Of Creation are too powerful for mere mortals, and decides to destroy them. How does he do this you ask? He says, “I destroy you!” and they go all white and glowy and – the movie ends. Just like that.

Deathstalker is an extremely low budget movie (duh – it’s a product of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures), but at least some of the money went to the right place. The cast is actually fairly tolerable, certainly no worse than the TV rejects in The Sword And The Sorcerer. Rick Hill could do with a smidgen more charisma and there’s an air of the pantomime villain about Bernard Erhard as Munkar, but I’ve seen worse (Hell, I’ve seen worse in other Deathstalker movies). Even British actor Richard Brooker is decent, not bad considering his only other acting job was as Jason in Friday the 13th Part 3: 3D. Then there’s the lovely duo of Lana Clarkson and Barbi Benton, but you aren’t likely to be too concerned about their acting. In these no-nudity-clause days when even Playmates won’t disrobe for the camera (mentioning no names, Angel Boris and Carmen Electra) it’s refreshing to see Benton and Clarkson spend most of the film virtually naked. Yes, that’s the word, refreshing.

And yes, my Dad was right, Deathstalker is pretty disgusting, if by disgusting you mean ‘full of gratuitous nudity.’ But then why else do we watch these things, for their pointed social commentary? Corman’s South American sword & sorcery cheapies feature some of the highest quantities of nubile flesh on display in the whole genre, which is presumably the main reason they still sell. The only sour note is the fact that the female characters almost always lose their clothes by having them ripped off by some would-be rapist. While I find this par for the course in an exploitation movie I can appreciate that some viewers may find it distasteful.

One of the things that I’m always drawn to in these films, for both good and bad reasons, is the production design. Deathstalker scores fairly well in this area; the sets are cheap but they are fairly elaborate and dressed well enough to look cool. Thankfully they don’t detract from the setting - nothing’s more annoying than some mythical ancient guys in loincloths running around an obviously medieval castle. Corman is to be congratulated for paying out to build all this stuff, though he got his money’s worth: the same walls showed up time and again in subsequent Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen movies, as well as Amazons.

Sadly all the cash shelled out for the production design was apparently saved on the script. It starts out well enough with plenty of action and titillation, but completely falls apart halfway through. Once Lana Clarkson’s character is killed off it’s as if director John Watson and writer Howard R. Cohen simply couldn’t decide what to do next, leaving characters (literally) wandering around aimlessly looking for the plot. Barbi Benton’s character and the former demon guy are more or less forgotten, and the ending is so ham-fisted and rushed you wonder if they ran out of film before shooting was over. It’s a pretty poor show in a movie that’s 80 minutes long to run out of story in the middle.

On the other hand, Deathstalker is never boring. It’s occasionally amusing, the fights are slightly better than one might expect, there are loads of tits and a couple of neat gore moments - my favourites being the bits where Munkar is feeding bits of an apparently willing slave to his pet glove puppet. All of this is more than you can say for the only other film I can think of that inspired three increasingly crappy sequels and a remake, Tim Burton’s Batman.

What was the deal with that pig guy, though?

Dave Thomas, 26^th August 2004