Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD.<\/p>\n
In a year full of mediocre and below superhero movies I felt it appropriate to revisit one of the great guilty pleasures of the eighties, Don Coscarelli\u2019s fantasy adventure The Beastmaster.\u00a0 Long after Hancock is forgotten people will still be watching this low budget treat.<\/p>\n
As with many fantasy epics, it all begins with a prophecy.\u00a0 Maax, the evil fanatical sorcerer played by Rip Torn is foretold that he will die at the hands of Dar, the unborn son of King Zed.\u00a0 Maax is banished by King Zed, but not before instructing a witch to remove the unborn Dar from his mother\u2019s womb and disposing of the child.\u00a0 Dar is rescued by a farmer who raises him as his own.\u00a0 He discovers that he has a unique ability to communicate with animals wherein they can see through each other\u2019s eyes, literally.\u00a0 After his village is destroyed and his stepfather killed, Dar sets out to exact his revenge with the help of his four creature companions, the eagle, the tiger, and the incomparably cute ferrets, Kodo and Podo.\u00a0 Along the way Dar finds time to flirt with the scantily clad Kiri, played by Tanya Roberts.<\/p>\n
The film has definite similarities with another eighties fantasy adventure, Conan the Barbarian, also released in 1982, but still has charms of its own.\u00a0 The assortment of creative enemies and creatures is enthralling and a bit scary at times.\u00a0 As Dar,\u00a0 Marc Singer exudes a Mark Hamill like charm and is thoroughly satisfying, likable and believable as our hero.\u00a0 One need not dissect the scenes of swordplay to identify their lack of exuberance and authenticity, and the main villain seems underdeveloped and far less scary than his minions, yet the film works on so many other levels as to render these flaws forgivable.\u00a0 The animals in the film all perform wonderfully with the ferrets nearly stealing the show.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The film is brutal at times and refuses to placate its audience which I believe has helped it remain above similar, but less creative fare.\u00a0 If you are tired of the subpar dreck that Hollywood keeps churning out then revisit this little gem. It is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it is a hell of a good time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Byron Potau. Viewed on DVD. In a year full of mediocre and below superhero movies I felt it appropriate to revisit one of the great guilty pleasures of the eighties, Don Coscarelli\u2019s fantasy adventure The Beastmaster.\u00a0 Long after Hancock is forgotten people will still be watching this low budget treat. As with many […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dvd","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}