In news that no one expected Slash of Guns N’ Roses ( and formerly Velvet Revolver, Slash’sSnakepit) is getting a comicbook label by Vault Comics – and his first project is something right in our wheelhouse.
It’s none other thanDeathstalker, a series that has of course been a mainstay out our blog, especially the movies featuring the original actor Rick Hill ( althoughDeathstalker II has it’s moments). It originally began as a co- production between legendary B- movie producer Roger Corman and the Argentinian producer Hector Olivera. It ended up being such a success that they did full ten movies together- including another one of out favorites-Barbarian Queen featuring Deathstalker actress Lana Clarkson.
“I’m excited to be kicking off a new era of Deathstalker. From Tim Seeley, artist Jim Terry, writer-director-creature FX-wizard Steven Kostanski, and myself, our Deathstalker is a reimagining of that fine specimen of ’80s sword and sorcery. With fantasy, you get a little of everything: horror, magic, sex, thrills, blood, guts, swords, and weirdness. You know—all those things you can’t look away from. And that’s what we’re bringing. So—please—if you share my love of all things wicked, check it out!”- SLASH
Deathstalker and Slash have been admiring each other’s work since the 80s!
Cover by Jim Terry
Like the man said creative team on the book is lead by Steven Kostanski (Psycho Goreman), writer Tim Seeley (Hack/ Slash, Masters of the Multiverse) and the artist Jim Terry (The Crow: Skinning of the Wolfs, West on Sundown).
You can see more art exclusively on Fangoria and you can find a pre-save for the deluxe edition Kickstarter campaign here and you’ll be notified when it starts on the 10. 10. 2023.
Don’t let the title fools you… Apart of Lana Clarkson this movie has almost nothing to do with the first part. Sure it has some “borrowed” scenes, feminism, clear “all men are pigs” message but that’s where any similarity with the original movie ends.
The movie starts with Athelia (Lana Clarkson) receiving news about her father’s death on battlefield. But her father is not an ordinary man. He is the king of the realm. Her evil brother Ankaris (played by Alejandro Bracho) takes this opportunity to become the new king. Not a surprise since he looks like an evil version of king Arthur with large stick in his ass. Ankaris demands from Athelia to give him scepter which contains The Power and gives immortality. Purpose of the scepter is to guard king’s life (didn’t help him much as it turns out). Still, the body (or corpse if you will) of her father has not been found yet so Athelia refuses demands of new king. Ankaris throws her into dungeon in order to change her mind. “Why don’t he just takes scepter?”, you might ask. He can’t because it is protected with powerful spell (or so they say) which ensures that no man can touch it and use it without Athelia having previously removed protection from it. So, Ankaris sends his daughter Tamisa (played by Cecilia Twerina) to gain Athelia’s rust and trick her into releasing scepter. Tamisa is a little spoiled monster who is even more degenerate than her father. And she manages to fulfill her task. At least for a while. Being tired of chasing power, Ankaris decides to perform good old tirany instead of gaining immortality from the scepter. That means he doesn’t need Athelia anymore and sentences her to death. But, as it always happens in such situations, she somehow manages to escape while they were taking her to execution. While on the run she gets help from Ziela (played by Rebecca Wood) who is one of the nearby rebellious women tribe. Athelia joins her and couple of minutes after arriving at camp she had shown her intention to take over the tribe. You see, when provoked by tribe leader Erigena (played Orietta Aguilar) Athelis decides to show that she won’t put up with anybody’s shit. And which method she used? The only one that bunch women who aren’t getting enough (if you know what I mean) could think about – good old chick wrestling in a mud. No further talk needed. Enjoy the view.
While girls are getting dirty, men rape. It was always like that and always will be. So no surprise that soldiers wanted to have some fun in woods with daughter of peasant they intercepted. But not this time. Athelia and her tribe saved the poor girl, surrounded and killed soldiers (firstly I thought that they are going to rape them for a change) who are led by Ankaris’ right hand Hofrax (played by Roger Cudney). During that fight Erigena lost her life so Athelia can now officially become the tribe leader. Oh, and Hofrax got away (never kill one of the main vilains in first hour of movie).
In order to fight against evil king, Athelia will need to get more people on her side. Once again she ambushes Hofrax with a plan to free captured peasants who stood up against tyranny. Great battle commences with a lot of unconvincing, awfully choreographed fight scenes. This time Hofrax ends captured and tied to the tree. Athelia also captured her old friend from court Aurion (played by Greg Wangler) but she gives him much more hospitality than Hofrax. Unexpected sex scene between two of them is the best proof for level of hospitality. Yeah, all men are pigs but when itch between a legs begins, even an evil slave-driver will suffice. That’s what I call a hypocrisy. And just to make sure her hypocrisy stays unrevealed Athelia sends back to Ankaris both Hofrax and Aurion tied to horses and without pants.
It is Ankaris’ turn to move. Well, it should be his at least but all he does is getting insane and talking about how much he hates peasants. And during his hate speeches he sounds like the dentist from “Troll 2” movie. Anyway, Hofrax came up with the plan which will lure Athelia into trap. He is going to fake execution of her nanny Nabis (played by Carolina Valero), among with several real executions of PEASANTS! Of course, being a blonde as she is, Athelia falls into trap, gets captured and once again ends up on rape machine (remember that thingy?). Tho, it is not exactly the same one. It is moderated version for higher class perverts. And all of that with little Tamisa watching and enjoying.
Proved interrogation method
After struggle with his emotions Aurion finally decides to free Athelia from the dungeon. Just like that. There weren’t even guards to kill. So he frees her, she goes to scepter room (no guards there as well) and it looks like everything is going to be just fine. But no, Athelia went back just to be recaptured. And there we go again. She is back to rape machine. I really don’t know what was the point of this. Possibly they needed to chuck in something so the movie wouldn’t be too short. Anyway, this time Athelia got even more sadistic torturer than Hofrax. Who? Little Tamisa, of course. Tamisa puts her tarantula pet onto poor tied-up Athelia. With Aurion who took a role of voyeur this time. It is never-ending fun down there.
She got really hooked up onto this
Meanwhile, things are not seem to be all well on Ankaris’ side. They have received a message which informs them that the real king is alive and returning to his castle. So the real king is not dead! Long live the king! Aurion takes this opportunity to
offers himself to attempt to convince Athelia to give away her secret to them. Of course, nobody is suspecting him of anything, not even after he demanded to go alone. Naive bunch or master of delusions? Either way, we are watching Aurion release Athelia once again, tho now he had help of Ziela and Noki (clumsy daughter of peasant they have saved; played by Elizabeth Jaeger) who got infiltrated into dungeon (no guards outside either). Aurion goes back with them to their camp thus breaking the heart of Tamisa. Hm what do you know? She is got a heart after all.
Master spies
But Athelia is not the only one whose parents got The Power. Tamisa’s late mother also possessed it. It is not a scepter this time. It is amulet which Tamisa used to turn herself into hot chick and then infiltrate the rebel camp. Ha I bet you didn’t see that coming! It is OK, metamorphosis from little repulsive girl to full grown woman wasn’t the thing I wanted to see either, especially with special effects this movie offers. Anyway, Tamisa uses her new-found powers to control spider’s venom in Athelia to find out secret words for controlling scepter. She also kills Nabis (yeah, old bat joined rebels too) and sneaks into Aurion’s tent with intention of killing him. He wakes up in last moment and knocks her down.
If this movie was better this could have been a threesome
It is time for full scale attack on castle. Athelia leads a rebels and intends to use Tamisa as a living shield. But during the fight Tamisa escapes and goes to her father to tell him a secret words. Of course, since she had morphed, Ankaris doesn’t recognize her and stabbed her with his sword (BTW, that’s the only scene where we can see a blood on a sword). A couple of moments later he realized what mistake he made. Too late! And that’s when he completely descents into madness. Meanwhile, on the other side of castle, Athelia didn’t have much problems in defeating Hofrax in yet another terrible sword fight. Only one obstacle remains – her evil brother. But Ankaris didn’t give Athelia the pleasure of killing him. No, he did that himself by sticking sword into his chest all the way to it’s handle. I really doubt that anyone can commit suicide in such way. Unless he had impaled his chest just a bit and then used a hammer to nail the sword. Or falling on his sword repeatedly instead of hammering it. Since he was found laying on his back with no hammer to be seen around I afraid that ship has to sail off from this explanation. Anyway, battle is over, half-naked rebels have, Athelia gives another hearty speech and becomes a queen. Prosperity with simple peasants running country is guarantied.
Conclusion: This movie is so poor on acting and budget that it makes me wonder how it ever got made. The props look like they came from a local theater (and not a very good one for that matter). Weapons have been obviously made of plastic. Tho, it would be a real waste using a proper weapons on those awful and unconvincing fight scenes (unconvincing to “even 5 years old mentally challenged kid wouldn’t believe in this” level). And for nominally being a ‘fantasy’ movie, no actual magic was ever really seen. Director Joe Finley tried to improve overall impression by inserting nudity but even that wouldn’t help. There are soft-core porn with much better production values.
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.
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 