Barbarians at the Gates of Hollywood: Sword and Sorcery Movies of the 1980s by P. J. Thorndyke

Author:P. J. Thorndyke [Thorndyke, P. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

Deathstalker (1983)

Director: James Sbardellati (as John Watson)

Writer: Howard R. Cohen (as Howard Cohen)

The first of Roger Corman’s Argentinian movies was the most famous of his sword and sorcery efforts. James Sbardellati, who had been assistant director on two Corman-produced pictures; Humanoids from the Deep (1980) and Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), as well as first assistant director on The Beastmaster (1982) took to the director’s chair for Deathstalker.

Rick Hill plays the title character of Deathstalker, a callous brute as far as barbarian swordsmen go, who is out for himself and himself only. “Heroes and fools are the same thing” he declares when the ousted King Tulak tries to persuade him to sneak into his castle and kill the wizard Munkar who has usurped him and kidnapped his daughter, Princess Codille (Playboy regular, Barbi Benton).

Munkar, a shape-shifting villain with a facial tattoo that inexplicably switches from one side of his head to the other throughout the movie, is holding a tournament to choose his successor. Naturally this draws every hero, fool and pig-headed brute (literally) from miles around to his castle for several days of wrestling, swordplay and debauchery.

There is also a quest to reunite the ‘three powers of creation’. Two of them – the amulet and the chalice – are held by Munkar. The other – the sword – is safeguarded in a cave by a disfigured ape-man called Salmaron. Directed to the cave by a witch, Deathstalker uses the sword to defeat an ogre and then lifts whatever curse Salmaron has been suffering under, reverting him to a middle-aged human who turns out to be the movie’s comic relief character.

On the way to the tournament, they pick up the warrior Oghris played by Richard Brooker (fresh from playing Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th Part III) and warrior woman Kaira (Lana Clarkson who would play several such characters for Corman in the years to come).

Meanwhile, in Munkar’s suitably gothic castle, Princess Codille is placed in the wizard’s harem and the tournament’s contestants whoop it up in debauched scenes of feasting, fighting, raping and mudwrestling. In fact, the constant scenes of leering men having their way with screaming women makes the whole thing extra sleazy (and in this genre, that’s saying a lot). The campy humor carried over from Sorceress jars somewhat with the icky-ness of Deathstalker’s shenanigans where even our ‘hero’ isn’t above forcing himself on Princess Codille after foiling her assassination attempt. That the ‘princess’ is in fact one of Munkar’s henchmen transformed into a doppelganger means that the whole thing was probably played for laughs but there is no denying that Deathstalker looks dated in more ways than one.

Deathstalker proved to be one of New World Pictures’ highest-grossing movies ever, but by 1983, Roger Corman found himself running into financial difficulties. Even with its lucrative deal with Aries Cinematográfica Argentina, New World Pictures simply wasn’t raking in enough cash anymore. One reason for this is that the drive-ins – the usual arena for Corman’s pictures – were folding up and giving way to the home video market.

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