• Written and directed by Howard R. Cohen
• Starring
  • Rick Hill
  • Maria Ford
  • Brett Baxter Clark
• Produced by Steven Rabiner
• Executive produced by Roger Corman

Deathstalker and a semi-harmless waif (Maria Ford) journey to the castle of an evil princess holding a tournament. Deathstalker is really there to look for his stolen sword, but they also find that wining contestants are mysteriously disappearing — and being turned to stone!

Some thoughts:

I’m surprised that, half-way through making this movie, somebody (the writer-director, say, or the producer, or one of the stars) didn’t say, “Hey! I just realized how lame this movie is, and I can’t bear to finish it.”

I mean, in an action-oriented movie, there’s one thing you absolutely must have, even if your plot, dialogue, actors, locations, etc., all suck: You must have good action scenes. At first I thought it was just lousy choreography in the opening sequence. Then I said, “No, it’s not the choreography — the actors have no skill.” (From looking at this movie, you’d think there wasn’t an actress in either LA or Bulgaria who could swing a sword.) Finally I decided it was both.

And I want to kill either the editor or the scriptwriter, who also happened to be the director (I probably oughtta off ‘em both to be safe). Why couldn’t any of the scenes in the first twenty minutes actually lead into the next scene? Case in point: Deathstalker and the girl are in the cave, one of the princess’ lion-headed thugs causes a cave-in, saying, “You’ll never get out alive!” Rocks fill the passageway. (Note to self: If ever trapped by a cave-in, try to follow the unexplained light source to freedom.) The girl changes clothes gratuitously in the back of the cave, Deathstalker enters frame, fade out… and when we fade in again, Deathstalker and the girl are arriving at the tournament! What was the point of that?

Other thoughts:

I have to admit, it’s been a long time since I saw a fantasy movie where one of the heavies was a sword-wielding bull-dyke — with a sycophantic harem, no less.

So when and where was styling mousse invented anyway? According to this movie, it was roughly contemporaneous with the wheel…

The fight soundtrack was off several times — I head a lot of hits before they were actually struck.

Really patchy makeup job on the turned-to-stone warriors.

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: more than I could keep track of
• breasts: 13 (although I may have counted a couple twice)
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0 (given that most of the cast was Bulgarian, that’s not surprising)