The Beastmaster

Released in 1982, this movie was a complete flop and only became well-known, and something of a cult classic, when it became ubiquitous on cable throughout the 80s. To kids of my generation, this was one of their early experiences with Sword & Sorcery, and maybe the very first. It established in a lot of kid’s minds what the genre was supposed to be, and it still inspires a lot of affection to this day.

Bizarrely, this is actually based on a novel by Andre Norton, though is is “loosely-based” in the sense of “having almost nothing to do with it.” The novel is an SF work about a future Navajo who communicates with animals, and Norton apparently asked that her name not be associated with the film in any way. A pretty good call on her part, as while I don’t think the credit would be completely embarrassing, I don’t think she would have wanted to be well-known for this.

I hadn’t seen this movie for many, many years, so a return viewing revealed a lot of things I had forgotten or not noticed. For one, this is definitely a cut above other bargain-basement fare like Amazon Queen or Quest for the Mighty Sword. The sets look pretty good, the weapon props are solid, and the miniature work is not bad at all. The outdoor vistas were shot in California, but they manage not to look like it, and I was thinking they might have filmed in Spain or Italy. Even the score, by veteran Lee Holdridge (Splash, Moment by Moment) is pretty decent.

Another thing that surprised me was the amount of grit there is in this. It’s true that there is very little blood on screen, and the action is choreographed so all the gore would not show on camera – probably as a cost-saving measure as much as anything else – but what is implied is still pretty intense. At the beginning one of the evil witch-women (swimsuit models with repulsive old-age makeup on their faces) paralyzes the king and queen in their bed while she cuts out the queen’s unborn fetus. Nothing is shown, no blood at all, but the way the scene is framed lets us see the horror in the victim’s eyes as they watch, and it makes the scene gruesome regardless.

Then you have other touches, like the road to the city lined with people impaled on stakes, guards in spiked leather driven mad by torture and brain damage, and children sacrificed by throwing them into a roaring fire, and you have a movie that manages to be pretty hardcore despite the lack of overt blood and guts. Then there’s the race of bat-people who eat by wrapping their wings around their prey and digesting them into a pile of bones and green goo. Add in some brief nudity and I am startled this movie got a PG rating – there’s no way this would pass for even PG-13 now.

Marc Singer isn’t really much of an actor, but that’s okay, as he is mostly asked to be sinewy and mostly naked for this movie – this is one of those fantasy kingdoms where nobody ever wears pants. He handles the action scenes well enough, and he seems genuinely at ease with the animals he is working with. That’s good, as they are obviously not super well-trained. The tiger (painted black with Clairol) is kind of surly, the ferrets were unmanageable and had to be bribed with food, and the eagle was so famously difficult they apparently had to get the high-flying shots by dropping it out of a hot air balloon.

The villains are pretty good here as well, with the silent, brutish chief of the Jun Horde looking like Lord Humungous with bat wings on his helmet, and Rip Torn having an absolutely great time chewing the scenery as the fanatical, child-sacrificing evil priest Maax (pronounced MAY-axe, of course.) Having two villains helps keep the ending of the film from feeling flat, as just after the big throwdown with Maax, the good guys then have to turn right around and deal with the bestial Jun Horde. That battle scene – with masked warriors riding through fire, then hacking and slashing while they are still ON fire – makes for an exciting and visually spectacular climax, just when a less ambitious movie would be winding down.

The Beastmaster is not a great film by any real standard, but for what it was trying to do, it did really well. This is just an amped-up version of classic Saturday-afternoon fare like Goliath and the Dragon, or Hercules in the Haunted World. The script is not great, but it’s not painful. The storytelling is workmanlike and competent, and the production value is actually pretty good, certainly for a movie this cheap. Director Don Coscarelli wanted to make maybe the ultimate fantasy movie for weekend afternoons when nothing good is on, and he nailed it.