The Beastmaster

The Beastmaster (1982)

Runtime: 118 minutes

Directed by: Don Coscarelli

Starring; Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, Rip Torn, John Amos, Joshua Milrad

From: MGM

Hey
Beastmaster’s
On

Last night, Shudder’s 24/7 streaming channel played this motion picture between last year’s Deathstalker & the original Deathstalker-appropriate. Now is the time to discuss what for people middle-aged like me growing up in the United States was a film that didn’t light the box office on fire but found its legs on cable television, where several channels-including HBO-had it in constant rotation for years.

This is a silly sword and sorcery film w/ a standard plot: evil wizard Rip Torn (sporting a hysterical prosthetic nose) wishes to sacrifice the unborn son of the King, the unborn son is saved but he grows up unknowing of his parentage, he becomes a hero & is on a trek to vanquish the villain while teaming up w/ a variety of different pals. Nothing wrong with a standard plot & archetypes—in fact, more modern movies would be better off not “subverting expectations” or especially inserting unneeded “humor.” Just follow the archetypes instead; they’ve endured for a reason. The new idea here is that the hero can communicate with animals and even see through their eyes.

Yes, The Beastmaster can be nitpicked to death. Among the fantasy names, John Amos is known as SETH. A “black panther” is clearly a tiger painted black. The animal sidekicks are a black eagle, the black tiger, and… a pair of FERRETS, cute critters that I know from some friends in college can be kept as pets. However, I won’t nitpick the movie-instead, The Beastmaster was a cheesy good time where each animal assists our heroes on several occasions in creative fashion.

Marc Singer was decent in the role (so was Tanya Roberts) but more memorable were Amos as the main sidekick and Torn as the evil bastard. Originally, a real-life evil bastard was to play the heel but as he did often, turned down the role due to money disputes—Klaus Kinski. As stated recently in other reviews, I’ve come to appreciate practical effects, sets, & locations compared to digital and greenscreens. California and Nevada deserts presented the appropriate vibe for this genre.

Mix in cinematography from an actual Oscar winner (John Alcott), a score from Lee Holdrige that was appropriate for this fantasy, & some creepy moments you’d expect from the guy that gave us the Phantasm movies… Beastmaster was fun even for a middle-aged adult like me. Did it need to be a full 2 hours long? That can be debated.

Neither sequel has ever been tackled by me—hearsay tells me that both are bad yet I imagine that especially the second could be hysterically bad. There’s better than a 0% chance that’ll be tackled one day in the far-future