Distributed and executive produced by Roger Corman, Deathstalker was one of the earliest movies in the '80s sword and sorcery craze, which began shortly after the release of 1982's Conan the Barbarian (or in some enterprising b-movie hustlers' cases, shortly before) and continued for most of the rest of the decade. These movies are a bit like the slasher movie in that they all contain the same basic elements, but each filmmaker, screenwriter, and cast (and the setting) injects each one with its own distinct flavor (or lack thereof in the worst ones).
So, Deathstalker. It's goofy and it's dumb, the kind of goofy and dumb a 10-year-old boy in 1983 would have dreamed up if you'd asked him what he'd like to see in a sword and sorcery movie, which is the kind of goofy and dumb I can get behind. A lot of these Conan knockoffs run out of gas after the halfway point, but Deathstalker never repeats itself and never stops changing things up, whether it makes a damn bit of sense or not, and like I often say, making sense is overrated. (Have I often said that? It feels like I have.)
"Hold up there, tough guy," you're saying to me, which is a little patronizing, but I'll allow it. "Weren't you complaining about the sexual violence in Death Wish II in your last post? How come you're giving Deathstalker a pass?" Good question. Deathstalker contains attempted rapes, and here I was writing about it like it was a feelgood romp. This may be hypocritical, but Death Wish II's rape and attempted rape scenes linger on the woman's distress, portray the mostly black and Latino perpetrators as animals, seem like they're included because the director has a fetish for sexual violence, and have a hollow ugliness that made me feel bad. Deathstalker is a cartoonish goof that takes place in the rape-and-pillage era of barbarians where everything is transactional and everyone's humanity has been scraped away, and every attempted assault is almost immediately interrupted by an oiled-up hunk saving the woman and getting into a swordfight with the perpetrator. Nothing is lingered on or completed. The scenes are pretexts for other things to happen. My take may be hypocritical, but Deathstalker is not serious about anything it's presenting.
Deathstalker is about, um, Deathstalker (Rick Hill, Georgia Tech and Canadian Football League running back turned chisel-jawed b-movie actor turned motivational speaker), an amoral barbarian swordsman riding his horse through the landscape, stealing to survive, killing other barbarians with his sword when they give him the business, making sweet love to random scantily clad ladies, and looking out for number one. A deposed king asks him to be a hero and take care of the usurper of the throne, the evil magician Munkar (Bernard Erhard), a bald guy with a serpentine creature tattooed on his dome and a Chihuahua-sized pet monster named Howard who eats eyeballs and fingers. Munkar not only has stolen the throne, he's stolen the king's daughter Codille (Playboy Playmate and Hollywood Square Barbi Benton). Deathstalker tells the old man to take a hike and that heroes are fools. Sick burn, Deathstalker.
Something tells me Deathstalker and Munkar are going to battle it out anyway. That something is a someone, an old witch who seems to be old friends with Deathstalker. We don't get the back story. This is a Roger Corman movie. There's no time for that. While hanging in the witch's hut after saving a maiden from some of Munkar's goons, Deathstalker learns from the witch that Munkar has a special amulet and a special chalice that are helping him hold onto power, but he needs the special sword to complete the trilogy of important objects and control the world. Intrigued, Deathstalker decides to take on Munkar and snag the trilogy for himself. Oh yeah, that sword is in a nearby cave.
Deathstalker wedges his oiled-up pecs, biceps, and glutes into the cave and meets its inhabitant, a smart-mouthed troll who used to be a man but has been living in the cave eating roaches and rats for 30 years after Munkar hit him with a spell. A giant appears out of nowhere with the sword, but Deathstalker easily takes it and chases him off. Deathstalker turns into a little boy, leads the troll out of the cave, and turns back into an oiled-up beefcake, and the cave troll turns into a middle-aged man, Salmaron (Augusto Larreta) who makes a lot of funny sounds over the course of the film. He's like the Conan version of Mr. Bean. The transformation has also turned his American accent Argentinean.
The duo pick up a couple friends on the way to Munkar's castle, another oiled-up hunk named Oghris (Richard Brooker, who played Jason in Friday the 13th 3) who is entering Munkar's battle-to-the-death tournament where the winner will be declared his heir (I'm sure Munkar has no ulterior motives and will honor the results) and a sword-wielding babe named Kaira (Lana Clarkson), who wears the wild outfit of a black cape and no top, letting her breasts hang out in the evening breeze among her new male friends. She's wearing a barbarian-era metal-studded bra/bikini-style top once they hit the castle, though we never learn where she acquired it.
It's nonstop action, cheesecake, beefcake, wizardry, boobs, butts, legs, pecs, biceps, sword impalings, pratfalls, and classic good times from here on out, and we all learn a little something about how power corrupts at the end. The tournament competitors are all humans except for one giant dude with a pig-face (played by an Argentinean pro wrestler) (though my favorite of the tournament fighters is a scrawny guy with an enormous amount of pizzazz who gets smushed with a giant mallet but really gives it the ol' razzle-dazzle before that), one of Munkar's lackeys gets gender-swapped with Barbi Benton, a former friend turns traitor, and, I'm seeing double here, 30 Munkars appear in the final showdown (or maybe just eight). My favorite line of dialogue: when Oghris is strapped to a torture device that is painfully stretching him, Munkar says to him, "I trust you are comfortable," and Oghris replies, in a mildly irritated tone, "I am not!" This movie is so stupid, and I'm glad I watched it for a second time.
