We recently covered the ridiculous (but fun) Kickboxer IV: The Aggressor but now we got some fascinating follow-up news! Director of Kickboxer IV (and also Kickboxer II: The Road Back ) Albert Pyun is considering teaming up with Sasha Mitchell once again for another Kickboxing epic, this time in the form of 12 part web series and we even have an official synopsis (although it is an early draft and some things could change before the final product emerges). You may notice that hero’s name is changed from David to Daniel due to Pyun not possessing the rights for Kicboxer franchise (that’s also considered for a reboot by a big studio) but don’t let that bother you, he’s essentially the same character. Here’s the synopsis from the Pyun-man himself!
“In hiding in South America for the past 20 years, happy working as blacksmith and raising his family off the grid in a small high mountain village in the Andes, Daniel (SASHA MITCHELL), is reluctantly drawn into a conflict between a drug cartel and his village. In the aftermath, an old friend of Daniel’s from his days running a gym, JOE ( Michael Dudikoff?), now a DEA agent stationed in the region, offers his help.In a bigger skirmish with Cartel soldiers recognize Daniel as an ex-kickboxing champion and set out to force him to fight in UFC style fights to the death the Cartel stages deep in the Amazon jungle and Cartel territory. In an attack, Daniel’s family is captured by the Cartel and force marched deep into the amazon jungle. Danny goes after the Cartel, and, with the help of a village elder and Joe, tracks the Cartel deep into the Amazon. In the process, Daniel is captured and forced to participate in a MMA event staged by a Cartel for the pleasure of all Cartel bosses worldwide. The Pay For View signal is pirated around the world so audiences watch Daniel using his old style Muay Thai and Kickboxing against modern MMA styles.
A Pay For View Cartel event with, for Daniel, the prize his family’s life.”
Pyun plans to start filming as soon as he’s done with Cyborg Nemesis: The Dark Rift. It could be as early as July, and setting is interestingly Ecuador. He also confirmed that he would absolutely love to include Michael Dudikoff (American Ninja, Avenging Force) as a local DEA agent and Sasha’s ally. As they worked together before on the manic Radioactive Dreams it would be timely reunion for those two.
Sasha Mitchell playing with his dog, as far as we know the dog doesn’t have a role in the new Kickboxer series, yet…
No matter what this cover claims, Mark Hammil is NOT Guyver!
This movie starts unassumingly enough with a Japanese scientist facing a vicious gang lead by none other by the legendary Michael Berryman. Scientist does the only logical think he can do in this situation, ru… TURNS INTO A FREAKIN’ GILLMAN!? That doesn’t really help him much ’cause it seems that every single member of the gang has a “turn into a monster” switch. The poor dude never had a chance.
Little while later the detective is on the case, we know he’s the detective ’cause he is Max aka Mark Hamill with MUSTACHES!Although that makes him look a bit more like an old pervert when I think about it. He finds the daughter of the scientist in a local Martial Arts club and that’s where we meet our hero! Yes, the main character of this film is not by any means an SF/ Geek Culture legend like Hamill, nope! It’s an irritating blond highschooler called Sean who’s just this moment getting his ass kicked five ways to Sunday by a long haired dude who strangely wears a combination of Aikido hakama and Metallica shirt (it seems some things have changed sense the last time I went into the Aikido dojo).
The girl Mizky (Vivian Wu) takes the news surprisingly well, but I believe that’s just because of the actress’s inability to display any kind of convincing emotional reaction. Hamill takes her to the murder scene hoping the girl would provide any kind of clue and Sean fallows them. Maybe he’s jealous or something? Anyway trying to eavesdrop he stumbles onto a strange metal object and decides to keep it. A bit later he decides to pay Mizky Segawa a visit ’cause she promised him a date- despite the fact that her father just died hours ago!!! Now this Sean is either an asshole or a moron… or quite possibly both! I already said that he is a terrible lead character, right?
Disappointed he heads back and he’s luck doesn’t’ get any better. He gets ambushed by a street gang. And their leader is no one other than Aikido- Metalhead dude.He decides to continue what he started in the dojo, with a bit of backup this time. Son tries to defend himself but he’s martial arts are so pathetic that he almost gets killed but than something extraordinary happens… the alien bio- armor Guyver activates and merges with him and despite a bit dodgy effects suit is pretty cool. He of course completely destroys criminals but stays on the street dumbfounded trying to realize what the hell just happened.
Are all gangs really this retarded?
In the meantime the evil director of Kronos Corporation (David Gale who you may remember from such films as the Re-animator and Bride of the Reanimator) is giving Berryman a lesson for his failure to deliver the Guyver which he calls the most powerful weapon in the universe. It turns out that Lisker (Berryman) brought him a suitcase that contained no Guyver (but it did have a broken toaster in it). Having no other clues he orders him to find Sagava’s daughter and bring her to him. Also he displays his supreme evil by smashing a previously mentioned toaster!
We all know it’s all toasters fault!
Hamill is connecting the dots back to Kronos Corp. but other policeman (being stupid or corrupt) are trying to stop him. He disobeys and continues his investigation. Sean who can at this point only be described as a stalker again visits the girl again and after seeing she is completely heartbroken asks the immortal question “May is something wrong? Man, are you dense, retarded or something? You fallowed her to the murder scene last night, don’t you remember!? Of course he uses the opportunity to try to get in her pants. Unfortunately a neighbor comes barging in and he runs away seeing his opportunity for sex is gone. He returns a bit later with some food hoping for another chance with Mizky but founds Berryman and the his band of merry Zoanoids kidnapping her. Also Berryman shows that he is the hit with the ladies He offers a trip to Brazil to the muscled up lady with crazy hair and she practically jumps all over him. Sean doesn’t know what to do but then Max appears out of nowhere and spoils everything for the mutant team. Seeing they are getting away the already pathetic rapper dude transforms into a freakin’ JAR- JAR BINKS ON STEROIDS!
Hamill asks the girl what is happening and she screams “They want the Guyver” And the Guyver is right beside her without her even knowing it- what an incredible series of coincidences! All of the goons go all Moster Squad-y and that’s the moment when you finally realize how much they dropped the ball with the monster costumes. I mean, this movie is almost exclusively based on monsters a and this is what we get? Rejects from a Mighty Morphin Power Rangers show? That’s kinda’ tragic.
You Don’t Mess with theZoanoids!
After beating the living crap out of Hammil they concentrate on the girl and Sean and finally unleashes his power. Well, not really first he fails even at that but than after getting Hulk mad he proclaims “I am the Guyver” and truly becomes one. Bio-armored Warrior vs Monster- OK, that’s something that will finally make this movies watchable, right? WRONG! Jar- Jar start rapping like a 5 year old white kid challenging Guyver to fight and at that point all I want to do is turn off this film and never speak of it again. For some strange reason we decide to soldier on and when fighting finally starts it’s half- way decent. Some fancy karate moves , some of those Aikido take downs that he failed to learn in the beginning, some unnecessary and poorly placed acrobatics but all in all fun scenes. But then when they finally have something going for them they make the scene last way too long and in the end you root for the bad guys when they finally overwhelm the Guyver and… KILL HIM? Hellyeah!
And that’s all she wrote. At least he can hope, right?
I guess this is the end? Nope... Misky wakes up in the chambers of Cronos Corp. and the evil and the old man, director of the Kronos Corp is touching her. This is disturbing. He then shows her a few things, mostly Zoanoids, genetically altered human beings in tubes. She seems too stupid to understand any of that.
She’s a keeper, that one!
He envisions Zoanoids ruling the world, Zoltoid in the white house and such (Obama anyone?). He demands information on Guyver and then starts touching her once again. She tries to run but he takes her to Dr. East who is strangely the same person as Dr. West (from Re-Animator). She spots Hammil in one of those tubes and starts crying.They try to blackmail her in revealing the secret to activating Guyver right there but she kicks the old pervert in the nuts, grabs the Guyver (in it’s portable form ofc) and starts running away. Some comical scenes ensue and one of the mosters swalows the Guyver. Evil director is loosing his mind again but Guyver comes out… now fully grown and regenerated- he freakin’ regenerated the whole human being! How that human being fit into the stomach of that monster we will never know… Two of them set free Max (Hammil) and then we have some Road Runner/ Wile E Coyote runing scenes spliced with a bit more Guyver on Monsters action. Guyver finally defeats the whole Ziltoid gang but Hammil ends up turning into one himself. Just think about it, you get Star Wars alumni for your SF/ Action flick, you give him supporting rule and then you turn him into a freakin’ talking bug.., that dies immediately after transformation.
No, you are not stoned, Mark Hammil did in fact turn into a giant bug!
Their mourning is interrupted by the evil director aka ZOALORD and after demanding Guyver armor one more time he decides to take it himself… BY TURNING INTO A GIANT RED DINOSAUR/ SPIDER HYBRID! Now this confrontation could theoretically be exciting but it mostly happens off camera because of the budget limits and it ends as B- Movies always end, with a really big explosion (those at least are not expensive. Minsky and Sean look at one another, he takes off the Guyver armor and in the process ends up butt naked. Japanese girl seems overjoyed by that*. They walk into the “sunset” but then we see two shadowy figures in the background. Those turn out to be the corrupt cop (from the beginning) and Jar- Jar Binks Rapper (why, oh why is this man still alive?). Cop decides to give a little jab to Jar- Jar and he seems exhilarated by that fact- possibly ’cause he’ll have opportunity to spill a bit more of his lame rhymes while torturing somebody. Than the move thankfully ends. Whoa, this was a hard one- I can honestly say that we barely made it.
Happy ending?
Verdict: First problem of this movie I already pointed out and that’s sub- par costumes. But just as big the problem is the main character. You should root for the hero but this guy, this guy you want to see dead, possibly by decapitation. Good news- of course that actually happens during this movie (unfortunately it doesn’t stay that way). This is what happens when American’s try their hand in adaptation of manga/anime 20 years before the effects for doing so were available!
Live action Guyver with it’s bloody and crazy fights scenes could have been a cool flick but this just looks like a adaptation of Power Rangers with just one Ranger and fifth of the budget! Better waste your time on the original manga/ anime, it’s leaps and bounds above this monstrosity.
Trivia: Director of this movie Steve Wang actually did end up working on Power Rangers: The Movie 4 years later. Producers hired him due to being the only American experienced in making this type of movies but after he started suggesting various ways to “make film better” they quickly changed their minds and fired him.
Frank Zagarino is The Saxman! This is what you get when you combine jazz and martial arts. Now, who would come to such idea? No one else than Cedric Sundstrom, the director of equally terrible American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt and American Ninja 4: The Annihilation. And who would accept the challenge of producing such thing? Well, none else than AIP , of course, which is production house owned by Prior brothers.
The first thing we see in this movie is half-naked Zagarino, doing some exercise. He is Michael Keller, the saxman who serves a jail time. Michael is sitting on bed in his cell, trying to remember when was the last time he played sax. Someone may think that man in Mike’s position should have a bit more important things on his mind, but not and Cedric. Anyway, flashback sends us back for 3 years, into one nightclub, where Mike is playing smooth jazz on his sax. His old buddy Mackie (played by Arnold Vosloo) approaches him after the gig. He asks for a favor from sax player. Mackie needs Mike to drive him on a date. But it turns out that it was just a cover up. Mackie forces Mike at gunpoint to drive him to mob boss Jack Fisher (played by Oliver Reed), in order to deliver him 500000$ and snuff-porn films. But they enter police chasing, which ended up in Mackie been gunned down and Mike arrested for running over a cop. He gets sentenced to 5 years in state prison, with the possibility of letting him under parole after 3 years. And all of that had happened 3 exactly years ago so Mike gets free.
Good times!
Now he is back at his fiance Lisa (played by Nancy Mulford). They have much to talk about, eventually ending up in argue. To get things smooth Lisa invites him to sex. But instead of accepting sex invitation, Mike goes to toilet in order to play a sax while sitting on toilet seat. I guess those are the consequences of prison life. Tho, he did accept second invitation and there we have sex scene. But, scene of a man making gentle love with his beloved fiancee has been interrupted by scene of filming porn movie!!! What a twist!!! From softcore to hardcore! And not just the any hardcore. No, in this hardcore a Rambo look alike takes the knife in a middle of sex scene, wanting to kill his partner. So, this is sick hardcore! Thankfully, police raid had busted in, thus interrupting this sick act of having sex-murder.
Rambo quits fighting and starts his porn career!
The producent of this snuff film is Tyron Richardson (played by Sean Taylor), one of the Jack Fisher’s men. Instead of reading him his rights, which is tradition at any normal arrest, Detective Marsh (played by Norman Anstey) said to Tyron: “I’ve been wanting your ass for a long time.” Could this mean their future cooperation in making some sort of homosexual snuff film? Only time will tell.
Tyron, Tyron, I’ve been wanting your ass for a long time!
Fisher and his men believe that Mike still has their missing money so he kidnaps Lisa. Mike decides to call upon his old Vietnam friend Harry Crawford (played by Jeff Celentano), to help him rescue his beloved fiancee. As it always happens Mike Keller turns out to be an ex-Marine. This movie is boring and full of cliches so I’ll make this short. In rest of the movie we are treated with numerous cliches like : Saving Lisa (which they did pretty fast), Fisher raping Zags’ fiancee for entire 3 seconds (after several previous unsuccessful attempts to get erection – keep in mind that he is old) almost getting heart attack while doing that, Zagarino falling through tent into toys, crippled man miraculously walking again, finding porn makers hideout in 5 seconds, wooden leg of one of Fisher’s man, shooting porn actress, corrupted cop, Fisher’s nervous breakdown after his bitch got killed, house set on fire….
Old wood heats best!
Conclusion: This film is a boring, dumb, cheap, below average action movie. Also, very predictable, you always know what will happen next. Oliver Reed gives decent performance here, even in his career descend period, thus stealing the movie from Zagarino (which again isn’t that hard). If you are bored, and have a lot of free time and bag of popcorns, this movie is a good choice for passing time. And nothing else.
While we close off our (extremely successful dare I say) Barbarian Month on WM I would like to present you one of my personal favorites. An animated show by brilliant Harry Patridge (aka Happy Harry)who ingeniously combined Space Opera and Sword and Sorcery genres with his off beat humor to produce something that has authentic 80es Animated Show look and all the brutal carnage you can take.
Kingdom of the spiders shall last 1000 years, and people shall suffer 1000 years, for it is written. And this time shall be known as the Age of Darkness and the shadow of the spider shall be the law. Indeed, the people shall pay tribute to the word of the master and live in bondage in the valley of the shadows, even to very mists of a volcano that sleeps above. When 1000 years is done a man will come to promise different way and he shall be named Toran and many will believe and many will be prosecuted. The sign of Toran will bare witness to the legend, but Toran will fail. For the wrath of the Spider King is mighty indeed. People of the valley shall weep, for there is no hope, for it is also written that the Spider King will reign until the day the mountain speaks forth in anger. Then out of the darkness prophecy relives, for Toran casts the seed upon the wind, and even in death to hymn his born a son.That’s pretty much it.
The son of Toran is born on stormy night, in a small village. We see woman holding a baby with rather large head, being quite upset. On the other side of village, in a shack, a lone man wakes up. Saying nothing else than “It is done”, he gets up and leaves the shack. Then, we see golden black man, playing with his spiders. Yes, that’s right. He is no one else than the High Priest of the Spider (played by Dakkar). Word travels fast across the land, and the news about arrival of son of Toran have reached to Spider King. Obviously shaken by such news he announces to his servants that child must die, before he reaches manhood. Sounds familiar?
The child must die!!!
The man from the shack comes named Griba (played by Edmund Purdom) to take the new born baby from her mother, and she gives her son to him without either of them saying a word. That’s what I call motherhood! Anyway, Griba manages to take baby far away, just moments before men of High Priest of the Spider came to village, slaughtering everyone in their way. But he couldn’t keep the baby for himself, so he decides to give him to young, but poor couple from another village, with promise that, for their effort, they will receive provisions, armor and hunting weapons.
Transaction complete!
Many years later, baby has grown up into Ator (played by Miles O’Keeffe), the greatest gay icon of his time. He is in the field, playing with his sister Sunya (or at least he thinks she is his sister). Ator and Sunya (played by Ritza Brown) are apparently in love (?!). Ator fails to understand the fact that he can’t marry Sunya (what about incest being sick?). They’ve had a short discussion after which Ator decides to visit his father, in order to ask for a hand of his sister!!! Funny things is that everyone in the village looks exactly the same like 20 years ago, including his parents, who haven’t aged even for a day. Now, back to marriage proposing. In normal and traditional occasions, every sane father would kick out such sick and twisted suitor. But no! When Ator popped the question, after previously explaining the situation, his father and future father-in-law (that happens too), replied to him “Ator, you don’t know how really happy you made me” (!!!), after which he started explaining to his adopted son events from the beginning of this review. So basically, general happiness in the village, preparations for the wedding, Ator wearing a girly boots while being happy that he will become his own brother-in-law, etc… But, as it always happens, right before the wedding started, evil High Priest of the Spider attacked village, in orgies of blood and intestines… It seems that professional soldiers are no match for peasants armed with rakes and pitchforks… Still, soldiers outnumbered peasants, ending up with many casualties on both sides, and village torched to the ground… Oh yeah, they kidnapped Sunya, and during that act we could clearly see genuine medieval panties.
Genuine medieval panties.
After leaving the village, Ator encounters Griba, who tells him about prophecy according to which Ator will end tyranny of Spider King. Griba takes Ator under his command, and starts training him in swords fight and karate (?), providing our hero with the armor and swords. During one of their trainings, Ator helped lady in distress (what a gentleman), who was attacked by some bandits. No, in this movie she didn’t thank him by allowing him to harvest the fruits of her loins, so they departed. Anyway, without any previous explanation, Ator goes to some random cave where he finds The Mighty Sword of Might aka Toran’s sword.
Mighty sword of might!
During hunt in a forest, Ator gets captured by Amazon women warriors (not again!). And not just by any Amazon woman, but by the girl he saved from bandits couple of scenes ago. To get this short, after a speech consisted of shitload of more feministic bullshits, Amazon queen announces that her girls will fight in tournament and the prize is content of Ator’s underpants. And not only that… The victor of competition will have the honor and the duty to be fertilized by our muscular hero, thus bearing a child that will be future queen of all tribes. I wonder what they will do in case that child happens to be a male? Meh, it’s best not to think about it. Anyway, as you have already guessed, victorious girl is the woman Ator saved from the bandits. And who captured him in return. Her name is Roon (played by Sabrina Siani). Her orders are clear: spend the night with Ator, get plowed and fertilized, and kill him in the morning (black widow syndrome; or is it mantis). But when Roon heard about his kidnapped love and his intentions to desecrate the Temple of the spider, she got softened and decided to join him. For that goal, they needed to get away from Amazon village. There is one more problem. Toran’s sword is being held in the center of village and guarded by Amazon warriors. So they sent a bear, who was Ator’s gift to Sunya (I should have probably mentioned that earlier), to do their dirty job. How brave… Distraction was successful, they’ve got the sword and escaped the village.
Fertilizing time!
Somewhere along the way, Roon got trapped after following mysterious deer of mystery, which lured Amazon girl into cave and then ridiculously disappeared. On the other side, Ator encounters evil sorceress, after following the image of Sunya. Evil sorceress shows him a vision where Sunya is now with the High Priest of the Spider (once she went black, she never came back), seduces him, and right when he was about to heat her oven, Roon rescues him, by shooting an arrow into sorceress’ mirror, thus making her look like a hideous monster. Seems to me like another rip-off, this time of Odyssey. Since our heroes got reunited at evil sorceress, they choose to get some rest at a local inn. Only thing worth of mentioning there is a fat inn keeper girl (played by Chandra Vazzoler), who serves the bean and shows her tits.
Mystery deer of mystery
Now Ator and Roon are in the other cave, surrounded by blind blacksmiths and blind warriors. No one is attacking them so they proceed deeper in the cave where Ator finds mighty shield of might. He fights with his shadow, takes the shield and, on his way out, he heroically kills blind people. Such a bravery! True warrior indeed!
Shadow-warrior
Grand finale takes the place inside Temple of the Spider. Ator and Roon are outnumbered by black knights, but they eventually kill every single one. Just to mention that the scenes of swords fighting aren’t worth mentioning. Only High Priest of the Spider has left. Fight between him and Ator lasts for some time, but it ends up with High Priest of the Spider seeing his own reflection in the mighty shield of might, which makes him explode (???). Now the only thing left to do is to save Sunya, who is trapped in giant spider web made of ropes. But it’s not that easy. Ator there finds Griba, who reveals to him that he was just using our hero in order to become the next High Priest of the Spider! What a twist! I bet you didn’t expect that. Anyway, after a short fight, Ator pushes Griba into ropes (sorry, i mean spider web), frees Sunya and both of them hit the road. But it turns out that Griba wasn’t enough meal for Spider King, so the giant spider (which can be barely seen) went outside to pursue gay Ator. There, Ator uses a Sunlight reflection of his mighty shield of might in order to distract Spider King, come closer, and cuts him with the mighty sword of might, thus ending his reign. End of Spider King tyranny is represented with archive footage from Animal Survival show.
You blew up!
Conclusion: This is, by the far, the worst Conan of Barbarian rip-off!!! Poor casting, terrible acting, awful scenes of fight, low budget, ugly women, Miles O’Keeffe being even more gay than in Sword of the Valiant, static camera, boring and repeating choreography… The fact is, women do like Miles, but Miles doesn’t like them… It would be much better for everyone that writer and director of this calamity David Hills, should have stick to making porn movies as did in following years. Also, don’t miss pathetic ending scene. It’s to throw up your life. In short: This movie shall last 90 minutes, and its viewers shall suffer 90 minutes, for it is directed.
During this (Barbarian) month we covered a wide range of Sword and Sorcery flicks and as you noticed nearly every single one of them was a rip off of ‘s Conan The Barbarian. Well, not this film!
This movie is a rip-off of Kurosawa’s legendary Yojimbo! Literally you just take Yojimbo, change a setting to the desert planet of Yura, replace fantastic Toshiro Mifune with less than fantastic David Caradine , add some bad creature effect , a four breasted stripper and sparkle it all with a doze of acid and voila- you get The Warrior and the Sorceress!
Disclaimer: David Caradine looks nothing like this mighty dude!Disclaimer 2: Woman with an extra set of breasts has only a small cameo !
A hooded warrior (Caradine) arrives in the town. Right off the bat we see the half- naked sorceress Naja (Maria Socas) being tortured by one of the gang members. He quickly decides to cause the commotion in this case by fighting the knights guarding the city’s well. As you can guess they prove no match to his (caugh, caugh) Kung Fu skills. Left unguarded well gets overan by villagers making the leaders of both city’s clans extremely unhappy.
Just look at those bare legs of Caradine, the sign of the real Warrior!
With his reputation preceding him The Warrior visits the first of the clan leaders, the fat man. Dude looks like a giant bold baby, surounded with naked women and his personal assistent
the Lizardman (who’s by all accounts- a hand puppet)*. They strike a dead right there and then and Caradine walks away with a … of gold. in the meantime… Fat man’s cometitor is trying out a sword made by the priestess. She promised to make a sacred sword of Yura for him, sadly she did not deliever and was imediatly returned to the her cell.
Man’s best friend- his lizardman!
Soon the two sides confront each other in the city’s square. Caradine, a supposedly big asset to the fat man decides to sit this one out and completely changes the complexion of the fight. But just as thing were starting to heat up the slave-owners entered the city gates. As they all love slaves they stop what they’re doing and start biding with the monstrous slave-owner Burgo. After a fine day of selling and buying the slave-owners dance the night away. But little do they know that the Fatman and his trusted lizard poisoned Burgo’s wine in an attempt to frame their competition aka the mighty Zeg. Things seemingly go as planed ad the scaly slaver prophets his revenge with the brilliant words “gather our army and avenge out deaths”. Hopefully he dies at that instant, that would be cool.
He doesn’t look too good, does he?
Dark Warrior seeing all that goes staight to Zeg and offers to sell an information. He explains fat man’s scheme to Zeg, takes some gold and then start roaming around the castle. He finds the Sorceress in the dungeons. She starts rambling something about the secrets and prophecies and then finally agrees to come with Caradine. He starts cutting through soldiers with his usual ease and they succeed in escaping. Next thing Warrior does is almost unforgivable, he steals the (fat) man’s best friend, his lizardman and delivers him to Zeg.What follows is the exchange Sorceress for Lizardman and we finally start to wonder does the Warrior have a plan or is he just enjoying fuckin’ with everyone (and getting rich in the process).
Because of all the stuff he (seemingly) did for him the Warrior is invited to the grand feast at Zeg’s place but uses opportunity to AGAIN free the Sorceress (and kill a ridiculous tentacled monster but the less said about that the better). He plays dumb and continues the drinking at a main table but this time Zeg’s got a surprise for him! Yeah, the main selling point of this movie a stripper (backed with techno soundtrack), but not just any stripper, a four boobed stripper!!!
Just in case you find yourself in this kind of a situation…
Scenes with her are so funny and absurd that they almost make this mess worth a while. Ending her act she attacks Caradine and he chokes her to death but not before she poisons him.For some reason they do not kill him right there and then but they chain him and put him in the cell.
Let’s celebrate our new-found partnership!
Then Zed offers an alliance to the fat man which he jolly excepts. when they hug to celebrate he stabs him to death and finally succeeds in reaching the complete domination. Unfortunately just as he was at the top of the world the bunch of lizard-like slavers launched the attack on his army. Naja, the Sorceress frees the Warrior with Caradine’s help finally forges the magic sword of Yura and using it they lead a rebellion against the powers that be- in this case the Slavers. Warrior suddenly appears leading the villagers and then… does what he always does, funny circular motions that are usually supposed to represent Kung Fu. The power of the mighty sword of Yura that we waited to see entire film is… NOTHING AT ALL. The damned sword doesn’t even have cool sound effect that goes with it and doesn’t seem to help Caradine the slightest. He even menages to loose it half-way into the fight with Zeg’s former general and still win fairly easily. Damn, that Sorceress is an incompetent bitch!
David Caradine + Sword of Yura = Everyone dies
After massacring every last Slaver and all of their human underlings (with minimal help from the villagers) Naja tells him “to holy victory” * which is supposed to mean something but it doesn’t. Being the cool cat that he is he leaves them all and walks into the sunset into new adventures that thankfully didn’t get filmed or captured in any way.
Yeah, hi to you to!
Verdict: Idea a of Samurai film by the way of of SF/ Fantasy seemingly has some potential but that potential is mostly wasted. Caradine seems to be having a good time and feels constable in his role but the fact is he made his living by acting martial artists and never bothered to learn any and that completely undermines all his effort. If you want to be a convincing warrior in a Sword and Sorcery flick you need to look the part/ or have some serious sword-fighting skills and truthfully (ignoring the man’s significant cool factor) he really had none. Also the movie is considered one of the most violent and bloody barbarian flicks and that may be true but the doesn’t make silly action scenes any better. The only thing that separates this movie from the rest of the pack is the presence of four-boobed stripper and mind0 boggling weirdness of her scene is the only thing worth watching in this film.
Knowing how cheap Corman is, this girl probably had real four boobs, I can’t imagine him paying to get them made…
Trivia: When the director of the film John C. Broderick originally read the script he called Corman and said that he couldn’t do it because movies was not based of Yojimbo but an (almost) straight scene for scene rip- off. Corman said that the same was true of The Fistfull of Dollars and that Leone had no trouble because Kurosawa used an American book Red Harvest as a model for his film- so there is no real original. He got Broderick to direct but that statement was of course a blatant lie- because Leone was sued and forced to pay compensation to Kurosawa for remaking Yojimbo without his knowledge. Thankfully for Corman almost no one knows of existence of The Warrior and the Sorceress so he’s safe… FOR NOW.
Something we felt the urge to share with you good people! A brilliant tribute to Big Trouble in Little China, a gem of B- filmmaking by legendary horror/ SF/ action maestro John Carpenter. It’s crazy- ass fun ride in which ancient Chinese Kung Fu magic meets southern-American trucker badassness – with deadly consequences of course. Video is a fantastic mix of overly popular PSY’s Gangnam Style and some memorable scenes from this legendary flick! Surprisingly original Lo Pan, 80- something year old prolific cult- actor James Hong even makes an appearance, you can catch him in the elevator scene in 2:10!
For those who haven’t seen Big Trouble in Little China, bow your head in shame… and then watch this video. That will be the start of your redemption.
In the era of “Conan the Barbarian” rip-offs, someone came up with idea that new Conan doesn’t need to be a man by default. Women can also be savage barbarian warriors. And who would take such an idea into realization? Roger Corman production of course. Though, he wasn’t the first. I believe that “Barbarian Queen” is an attempt of making cash-in of “Red Sonja”, despite the fact that both of these movies had been released in 1985.
’80s assumption of men being complete pigs, who wouldn’t accept “No” for an answer is also represented here, on the very start of the movie. We see cute girl sitting by a river, innocently picking flowers (yeah, right). Suddenly, while she was going back to her home through forest, a lasso came out from nowhere and gets tied up around her ankle. On the other end of rope, couple of evil men were pulling young (and pretty sexy) girl to them, in order to fulfill their unholy intentions of raping her. Mission was a complete success (just to mention), after which “Barbarian Queen” title card comes up.
Now we are at nearby peaceful village. Everyone is in the rush. And for reason. There is a wedding to be prepared. And the groom is no one else than Argan (played by Frank Zagarino). Honoring the tradition that it is bad luck if groom sees the bride before the wedding, his future wife Amethea (played by Lana Clarkson) is preparing herself hidden in hut. Amethea is asking her bride-mates if they happen to know where is her sister. One of the bride mates replies to her that her sister went to pick some flowers by the river (sounds familiar?) and hasn’t returned back yet. Still, the show must go on. But, moments before ceremony begun, an arrow comes out of nowhere and hits the priest right in his forehead, at which point bandit raid started. The long bloody battle takes the place, with a lot of raping, casualties on both sides and village burning. However, Amethea and her bride-mates had survived, but not without personal loses. Her bride-mate and future husband had been taken away. There, she decides to get them back.
I used to attend wedding ceremonies but then I took an arrow in the head!!!
Traveling among the river with two more women warriors, Tiniara (Susana Traverso) and Estrild (Katt Shea), Amethea stumbles upon a bandit outpost where another of their girls is being held. Naked of course. Old man with a beard is preparing to rape her. He is famous for his brutal raping, making girls to scream out loud (he probably possesses large tool). But Amethea kills him with her sword through his neck, thus ending his days of raping, while other 2 girls made a decoy for his pals. Soon, it all ended up after a brief sword fight, finding her sister Taramis (played by Dawn Dunlap) in state of shock, with Amethea’s Conan style words “If I can’t kill them all, let the Gods know I have tried”. Whatever.
Love knows no age!
Somewhere along the way, Amethea picked up Dariac (Andrea Scriven), a rebel orphan kid who connects her to underground rebel organization. There we find out that bandits are actually kingdom’s men. Rebels take her to The City, where Argan is being held and forced to fight in gladiator battles. Amethea and other girls who follow her went under disguise into the city, but Tiniara gets captured and raped. Funny thing is that seems that in this town women don’t have a right even to speak, and men are allowed to rape any woman they want. Eventually, all of them got captured when Amethea tried to stop another raping, previously causing a small riot in the city. She had been taken to the leader of raping army himself, evil man Arrakur (Arman Chapman) who wanted to discover location of rebel’s hideout. His interrogation consists of very funny character delivering, demanding that Amethea takes her clothes of and attempts of raping her (well, dough). On the other side of the castle, in much less pleasant torture chamber, Tiniara got killed during her escape attempt.
Interrogation methods.
Meanwhile, Estrild had managed to infiltrate the castle (boudoir section), where she finds Argan enjoying the orgies of women, wine and more women. She informs him about Amethea’s intentions of rescuing him. At first, Argan didn’t sound like he approves that idea (I wonder why), but eventually he agrees to lead the gladiators into rebellion when the time comes (If he manages to take other men away from women and booze, that is). Main gladiator Strymon (Victor Bo) also agrees to help them. While her beloved fiancé enjoys the orgies, Amethea is being tied up to a rape machine. Yeah, that’s right! Fucking rape machine! As if there weren’t enough men to rape around, someone came to idea to hire mad scientist for making such machine. And all of that in the name of science!!! However, after brief period of forced sex, Amethea manages to get free and push the mad scientist into boiling acid! There, she reunites with Estrild and starts planning the final blow, which will happen during gladiators tournament.
Rape machine – only for persons with heavy sexual dysfunction!
Now we all know what happens. When all of them got finally reunited, the big, bloody rebellion took a place. Funny thing is that Argan needed to say only two words in order to convince gladiators into battle (I guess freedom is still more important than wine and women). After 15 minutes of complete chaos, Strymon’s betrayal after which Dariac killed him (no, really), Pope of Perversions (priest who owns boudoir), using a rubber dick as a weapon, it all comes to grand finale when Amethea fights Arrakur. He easily overpowered her, and it looked like that death was certain. But, no. While preparing to strike the final blow, Arragor took 5 minutes to swing a sword, which was enough time for Taramis to come behind and kill him with a dagger. Evil Arragor is dead, wedding from the beginning finally took a place, Amethea becomes the barbarian queen (so, I guess that makes Argan the barbarian king; I wonder if Conan would have something to say about this), everyone is happy and cheering. The end!
Conclusion: I don’t know if this cash-in attempt was successful, but I do know that this is far more feminist than Red Sonja. I really doubt that even in Dark Age men had such power over women. Also, casting for this movie (at least for female roles) couldn’t be worse. During the entire movie Amethea and rest of the chicks, are talking like hotline girls, often with inability to show any emotions. At the best, sometimes they show wrong emotions in a wrong time, for that matter. Choreography is a decent, but leaves the mark of Roger Corman production everywhere (filming at 2-3 remapped locations, over and over). I am just glad that he was sticking to male “Conan the Barbarian” rip-offs afterwards.
Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans is an example how sequels should not be made. This “masterpiece” of Roger Corman’s production (the guy should be given some sort of medal of shame) is considered to be the follow-up to 1983’s original low-budget Deathstalker (low budget = Roger Corman). But, apart from it’s title, this movie has nothing to do with it’s predecessor. And you will see why.
Deathstalker (John Terlesky) is now completely different person, which can be seen in introduction. He seemingly infiltrated the treasure room of some old castle, followed by an almost naked blond. It appears that they are looking for something. I don’t know what exactly is he doing that since he became the king at the end of previous installment (I guess the royal paycheck wasn’t enough to him). Anyway, they notice some sort of an altar, inside which he finds red crystal. Then, in the scene that recalls either Raiders of the Lost Ark or Conan the Barbarian, Deathstalker (which will be known as DS for the rest of this review), takes it from an altar and puts it into his pocket. That was the sign for an army of ninjas (no, really) to attack. After he killed a couple dozens of ninjas (NO, REALLY), a woman warrior named Sultana (Toni Naples) marches in with the escort of her elite guards. Seeing that, DS decides it’s time to hit the road, so he breaks through a shuttered window, drops to a stone bridge below, leaps onto the back of his horse, which was parked right under the bridge, and disappears into the night. Sultana, who watched entire show from the shuttered window, just turns to her guards and yells “I’ll have my revenge, and Deathstalker, too!”, at which point the title card “Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans” comes up with a fiery background and some really retarded music, which sounds like it has been taken from a really bad video game.
IT BEGINS!!!
After escape from old castle, our hero stumbles upon young woman who had been previously kicked out of the castle grounds. She was tossed out by 3 guards. After some really retarded insults from even more retarded actress, guards decided to teach her a lesson. But, before they even started to rape or beat her (or both), DS decided that it is time to act and kicked their asses. Grateful lady in distress introduced herself to DS as Reena the Seer. DS then takes Reena (played by Monique Gabrielle; former Penthouse Pet and later porn actress) to inn, when we see a lot of naked girl dancers, pig-man who again eats pig’s head, some of boiled pee, and more nudity. One guard bitch-slaps Reena in front of DS, and we got ourselves a good old bar brawl. Seeing the complete chaos at the inn, DS did something he does the best – escaping on the back of the horse into the night. But, this time he took Reena with himself. Eventually, they hid from the pursuers at her hut deep in the forest. There, she makes him another cauldron of boiled pee and tries to foresee his future.We notice that there wasn’t enough budget even for her visions, since the only thing she did was looking at crystal and speaking. But those visions were enough to convince DS to help her. She reveals to him that she is actually Princess Evie, but the evil sorcerer Jerak had her abducted and cloned, in order to take control over the kingdom. Well, she didn’t say so directly to him, but anyone with even half of brain would get a picture.
Bitch slap me, please!
Meanwhile, Sultana is at pirate den, where we can see chicks wrestling in the mud, bunch of the rough drunken guys and a lot of fluorescent barrels with “Beer” written on them using a marker (?!). She wants to hire some mercenaries to finish off Reena and DS. A lot of money is offered, so pirate leader introduces her with his the most roughness, and therefore, the most drunken boys. Shocking thing is that for one of them has been said that he was the member of Genghis khan strike force for 5 years and part-time consulter to Attila the Hun (Dafaq?). No one bothered to explain almost 800 years gap between those 2 “jobs”, but never mind that now (also, midget being dismissed by Ivan the Terrible is beyond any discussion). Ever more shocking thing is that they are drinking beer from glass mugs and glass bottles, and directors didn’t even try to hide it.
Pirates – advanced technology!
Selected pirates managed to ambush Reena and DS, while they were riding through some canyon at night, attacking them using explosive arrows. After finding a safe cover and securing the lady, DS starts assassinating each one of them with pocket knife. Each assassination is followed by out-of-place sinister synthesizer sounds. For the Coup de grâce, DS hits pirate midget with shuriken and the moment later, midget explodes, leaving the smoking pile of shits behind him!!! What a finale!!! But wait!!! There is more!!! Unhappy because of failure, Jerak (played by John La Zar) kills the pirate leader by stabbing him through cauldron with his sword!!! Even magic can’t do that!!!
Along the way, our heroes battled the army of undead zombies but, besides completely illogical DS escape from death trap (spikes wall), nothing was the worth of mentioning. Oh yes…And during entire event, we can hear in background the music from “Saturday night fever”. What was the purpose of it, remains mystery to me. However, back in the castle, the duplicate of Princess begins to fade so she has to eat little children in order to maintain her body. I fail to see the purpose of this quick fact too, since it wasn’t mentioned again until the end of the movie. Probably it was lame attempt of adding horror elements here.
Turn left at Cimmeria!
Following the instructions Reena’s crystal ball gave to them our couple ends up captured and tied up by Amazon women warriors. Now pay close attention. Be sure to spot FIAT 1300 parked in the upper-left corner of the Amazon village opening scene.Such an oversight is too much even for Roger Corman’s 100$ production!!! Anyway, DS reputation as womanizer is well known among the Amazon women. And that’s not a good thing for DS, since the Amazon women warriors are feminists too. And like every good feminist they hate men. So, for his crimes against womanhood, DS will be put on trial by combat to death! But, it isn’t going to be combat with weapons and shield. That would have some sense. No, fight is going to happen at wrestling ring, where DS will fight versus HUGE woman Gargo the Amazon. After exhausting, crippling 15 rounds of wrestling, DS wins the battle, showing mercy on the end by refusing to finish off already knocked down woman mountain. For that he has been rewarded with wild sex with Amazon queen (played by Maria Socas). Yeah, even feminist warriors need their oven heated occasionally. With the risk of losing our woman readers, I would say that they need it much more often. But that reward has it’s price. Amazon queen wants to be married with DS, so once again, he decides to escape. I really can’t blame him.
Royal carriage?
Being jealous on Amazon queen, Reena leaves the village on her own and gets captured by Sultana, after which evil woman warrior had Reena hanged above huge cauldron of boiling pee. Death seems to be imminent for real princess. But, DS arrives just in time (probably because he was running in fear from proposed wedding). DS battles Sultana and kills her, saving Reena in the last moment. Following 30 minutes are just fill-up , consisted of ninjas attacking Princess Evie (with sexual results), while DS impales her duplicate with his meat-sword, skeletal raising Sultana from dead (with sexual results), massive fight when even God himself helps DS (by sending bolt after bolt of lighting onto our hero’s enemies), Princess Evie showing the full potential of her brain damage, and so on…
All of above mentioned events led to final battle when DS confronts Jerak in, perhaps, the most ridiculous sword fighting scene since “The Sword and the Sorcerer“.Their battle looks like background sword fight of two extras in some other low-budget Conan the Barbarian rip-off, and I could swear that I heard the sound of of two wooden swords clashing!!!Also, we are now able to fully notice how gay Jerak actually is .Highlight of this combat is the moment when Deathstalker, after being cornered, brakes evil sorcerer’s sword with his fist (?!), killing him and thus ending this story. And oh yeah, he marries real princess and becomes the king (again).
Conclusion: This movie looks like as if fans of original Deathstalker (therefore, not the brightest people on Earth), got money by begging in front of church which they used to make a sequel, though it’s much more fun that it’s previous installment. But, not everything in this movie is as bad as it seems. For example, colored light gels and inspired location shooting are pretty decent, providing colorful ambiance for each new area. Also, most of the sword battles are very well choreographed. And for the end, don’t miss the outtakes over the end credits! It puts tombstone on this.
This movie presents us with the story of fierce warrior- The Deathstalker, the man on a quest to find three powers, the chalice, amulet and the sword and to by uniting them all become a power himself! With a foolproof set-up like that you just know that the movie will be all kinds of WIN.
Age of Awesome Magic? Oh, boy, oh, boy!
Films start abruptly with some kind of goblin-caveman prowling the forest. Quickly they catch their victims, a confused looking dude and a girl but naturally they seem more interested in the girl. Deathstalker runs into them and seeing healthy human female decides to intervene. Fallowed by spaghetti western music he disembowels the goblin cave man and then has a word or two with the confused dude. It turns out that he stole the girl even before she was stolen by the creatures. Bit scared of the blond barbarian he offers her to him. Deathstalker takes her… and then kills him anyway! My hero!
He jumps on the girl like she is the last female on the planet but gets interrupted by an old man. He fallows the old man, who turns out to be the adviser to the King. He takes him to the King- right here in the forest? It turns out the King was exiled by his former magician Mungar- now the new ruler of the land. He begs Deathstalker to be his hero and despite of the incredibly EPIC music ‘Stalkers says no!In his last plead he admits that his only daughter is taken by Munkar and promises Deathstalker anything he wants but he just shrugs it off and rides away.
No long after Munkar’s general Kang apears in the forest and tries to take a magic sword from the old Witch.That proves futile because of the two thing.First thing- Witch turns his sword into a giant snake that start strangling him and second Deathstalker appears- and when Deathstalker appears heads start flying. Faced with his epic fail Kang ends up despairing, indubitably aided by his evil Master. Thankful the Witch decides to teach Deathstalker about the three powers of creation. They turn out to be the amulet (key of the Munkar’s immortality), sword (instrument of justice) and the chalice (of magic- not really sure what exactly does it do). Also, if you join these three powers- and you become the power. Not sure what she means exactly but it sound neat. Deathstaler doesn’t seem interested at first but decides that he does want to BE the powers so he start on his quest. He takes a break to drink some water but the ugly Witch appears againnow as a reflection in the water and she points him to the cave nearby. Cranky because she won’t even let him drink water he heads into the cave and finds small gnomish/ devilish creature. Then a giant pops out of nowhere and after almost crushing his skull ‘Stalker gets some help from the little creature- he throws him the sword. Immediately the sword starts glowing as if to prove it’s magic powers and after a moment to admire the blade ‘Stalker scares the giant away. Then the creature explains that he was a human and that he can be freed only “by a boy who is not a boy”. Hmmm, that problem gets solved in about 30 seconds as the sword (of justice) turns Deathstalker into a small blond kid and he leads the little imp away from the cave. He does turn into a man but his general appearance doesn’t get that much prettier.
…sadly, his human form is really not that much better
Meanwhile a group of bandits tries to rape a girl tied to a tree. Metrosexual looking dude (he has an armor that reveals his chiseled abs) called Oghris surprises them but falls victim to their superior numbers yet in the last possible moment The Deathstalker appears.And we all know what happens- heads start flying again. Also the bloods starts pissing everywhere. Feeling generous that day he doesn’t touch the girl (the only time he does something like that) but is happy to join the young swordsman on his way to the tournament. It turns out the tournament is held in the castle to determine the Munkar’s hair to the Throne. That set-up seems dubious (’cause of Munkar’s immortality) but who knows. They are surprised that night by a hooded warrior and after a brief dueling it turns out the warrior is almost naked she- devil Kira played by the late great Lana Clarkson.Clarkson generally specialized in playing young, buxom beauties and truth be told she was never as young or as buxomy as right here in the Deathstalker.They naturally team up and Deathstalker teams up with her in some other way that same night*. Ex-imp surprisingly watches everything but is smart enough not to make a sound. You never know what could angry ‘Stalker do.
Team Up*
Then we’re in a grand hall of the Munkar’s castle. We are faced with one of the strangest bacchanalia ever. Girl mud- fighting, barbarians losing their mind, skinny dude with horns eating like an animal and weirdest of all Man- Pig mutant having a “Be or not to be” moment with a regular pig’s head. Munkar wishes them luck on the upcoming tournament and then presents them with a captive princess. He gives his blessing to a Man- Pig to (I guess) rape her but the bearded barbarian stop him- wanting the princess for himself.Crazy, all- out brawl then ensues and surprisingly Kaira shows some sympathy to the poor princess saving her ass (literally) from more than a couple thugs. In the end ‘Stalker frees the princess and tries to take her away but Munkar stops him- and promises he’ll send her to Stalkers room later that evening.
Munkar may be evil, but he sure knows to throw a party!
In an attempt to cleverly deceive the ‘Stalker Munkar transforms one of his incredibly ugly guards into the Princess with a mission to kill the ‘Stalker when he least expects it. The guard is not thrilled with a metamorphosis at first but seems overjoyed with the fact that he has boobs mere moments later.
Sex change in the middle ages. Much simpler!
Deathstalker stop the knife but proceeds to almost fuck a dude- only in the last seconds does he realizes something’s wrong. It seem that the transformation was starting to wear off. He throw her/him from his room just as Kira was walking down the hall. She initially seems worried about the princess and even gave her something to wear (Kira doesn’t seem to fancy clothes too much as we already now) but he turns back into a man.They engage in a duel and menage to severely wound one another.Deathstalker disturbed by the noise runs towards them but it’s already late, his love (kinda) dies in his arms.
Tournament finally begins and we are treated with many moronic fighters and number of 80s wrestling moves! That same night we see Oghris in a torture chamber with Mungar. It turns the whole point of Tournament was to bring Deathstalker out in the open and Oghris was Munkar’s inside man all this time. That doesn’t stop Munkar from torturing him a bit for good measure of course. Anyway, he volunteers to kill ‘Stalker and heads into his chambers. Then because he grow fond of him as a friend he asks him to run away so he can spare his life. ‘Stalker gets extremely mad at this. He lays down his sword (that makes him invincible and stuff) and starts a fist fight with a dude. He catches him with a rear-naked chokes and apparently Oghris dies.
Tournament continues and Munkar is shocked to find out ‘Stalker is still here. He tries to bring about his demise via Man-Pig but the creature fails miserably. Then people almost start a riot suporting the Deathstalker as the future ruler. We hear the witches voice” you can be the power” and we know what happens next. Munkar sets a trap for ‘Stalker using an amulet and then sends his strongest warrior to disarm him and behead him if possible. Well, it was not possible, ‘Stalker not only stabs the dude with his own weapon but uses the Force to get the sword back in his hands (a new power added in the last minuts of the movie, congratulations to screenwriter here ) and finishes him with it.
Deathstalker VS Pig-Man
Now possessing the both sword and the Amulet Deatstlaker seems invincible. Munkar transports him outside and then multiplies himself. Stalker seems confused by the sight of many Munkars (also the horror synth score) but decides to cut them one by one. The evil wizard even tries to make him sword impossible to hold (que in some poor neon red effects) but the Witch appears and proclaims “Don’t let the illusion become the fear” (will this woman ever shut up?) and that seems to be just the boost of confidence the ‘Stalker needed. He easily walks trough the wall of fire, takes the Chalice from the disappointed Munkar who then gets disembodied by his own people.
Deathstalker then proclaims “all the powers of creation and chaos I destroy you” and we get heroic music as the (cartoon) thunder goes from a chalice to the sword and back. The End.
He became- THE POWER!
Verdict: This movie has an incredibly stupid storyline (with unexpected bits here and there I admit), awful acting, laughably choreographed fight scenes, incredibly funny soundtrack and really poor special effect (even for that time period) but I would still recommend it. Why? Because it’s great freakin’ fun in equal measures filed with idiocy and nudity and most importantly it has a absolutely fantastic scene of Man-Pig hesitatingly eating a regular pig and that alone is worth the price of admission/VHS/DVD/BluRay.
“To eat or not to eat…”
One more observation- it’s interesting how even the mighty Conan seems like a monk who took a vow of chastity when compared to Deatstalker whose only occupation seem to be jumping onto the ladies whether they showed any interest for him or not. The only times when he is not indulging himself seem to be times when he’s indulging his other passion- brutally slaying people of course. You won’t find another hero like him even if you try!
Worsemovies 