Deathstalker
Also known as El Cazador de la Muerte.
In order to save the realm, a warrior known as Deathstalker is on a quest to find a magical sword, a magical chalice, and a magical amulet. Unfortunately, two of those items are already in the possession of a wicked king and sorcerer, a guy who probably turned evil because his mom named him Munkar.
Here we have yet another in the seemingly endless line of low budget sword and sorcery films that I have seen sitting on video store shelves my entire life, but haven’t actually watched. Deathstalker is a 1983 Argentinian-American production, directed by James Sbardellati (credited as John Watson), and it’s the first in the Deathstalker franchise, which includes Deathstalker, Deathstalker II, Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell, and Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans.
Deathstalker is also the first of ten films produced in Argentina in the 1980s by Roger Corman—the recently deceased “King of the Bs” who gave many of Hollywood’s most famous folks their first breaks, such as directors Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, Joe Dante, James Cameron, and Martin Scorsese, producer Gale Ann Hurd, composer James Horner, and actors like Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro, Sandra Bullock, Bruce Dern, Dennis Hopper, Barbara Hershey, David Carradine, Charles Bronson, Ellen Burstyn, and Sylvester Stallone, amongst many others.
R.I.P. to a god damn legend.
Deathstalker is not as cool. In the film, Deathstalker is basically a big, stupid, swaggering asshole. He is also a guy who is just as likely to steal from the people who need his help as he is to actually help them. Early on in the film, he is told by a witch that reuniting the Amulet of Life and the Chalice of Magic with the Sword of Justice will unlock the fabled Powers of Creation. This becomes his quest, for seemingly no other reason then he’s there, but after watching him rob, murder, and sexually assault his way across this fantasy world, I have to question whether or not this Deathstalker guy is really the best choice to wield the “Powers of Creation.”
It’s not unusual to see a whole lotta nudity in these kinds of Duran Duran-looking fantasy films from the early 80s. In fact, I think it’s fair to say that, next to maybe the monsters and special effects, the fur bikini-clad vixens and their nudity is pretty much the entire point of making these films, but even with that in mind, Deathstalker really takes the naked lady cake.
Even as a fan of these kinds of films, Deathstalker is like a particularly noteworthy for being all about the boobs. Nothing but a surprisingly toxic strain of softcore late night cable porn, the film takes every opportunity it can to show off the incredible amount of young actresses who apparently believed that their big break would be found by being butt-naked in Argentina in a low rent sword and sorcery film.
And I’m not just saying this because American cinema is largely sexless now either, Deathstalker really goes all in with the nakedness. Much like the movie Showgirls did years later, Deathstalker is one of those films that proves that, yeah, you really can get tired of nudity. There’s entire scenes in this film that are nothing but a slow pan over a bevy of bare butts and boobs, and they’re supposed to be Establishing Shots! Every new city, every new forest, every new bar, it’s just… butts. A buncha butts. Nothing but butts. Piles of butts. And a whole bunch of boobs too. So many boobs. Boob city.
BUT…
To be fair, there’s also a really awesome pig-faced guy.
Points for understanding the assignment, I guess.
The craziest thing about this movie, especially when you consider just how much nudity and sexual assault there is in it, basically all the stuff you couldn’t really even show on basic cable, let alone network TV, is the obvious cuts for commercial breaks that are built into the film.
This is a movie that knew from the very start that it was going to end up playing late nights on cable channels like USA or TBS, so it cuts its scenes so they’re ready to be interrupted by McDonald’s and Burger King sniping at each, or by old ladies who’ve fallen and can’t get up, by encouragements to be all that you can be, by reassurances that yes, it is in fact Grey Poupon, by Nair for short-shorts, by your brain on drugs, by complaints about peanut butter in the chocolate, or maybe it was chocolate in peanut butter, I forget, and of course, by Mennen. It’s a particularly odd experience being a child of this era, with a kind of mental muscle memory that automatically remembers watching these kinds of films on TV, and to then see these obvious cuts, these fades-to-black for commercial break, only for there to be no commercials…
It’s commercial interruptus.
But for a low budget film like this, especially one that is obviously pretty much only interested in naked ladies, the monsters and makeup and special effects are actually pretty good. Plus, the film understands the benefits of shadows whenever showcasing their low budget monsters and special effects. It does not, however, understand the benefits of having a fight choreographer…
Or a writer.
“I will reunite the three powers, and then I will be the power!” shouts Deathstalker, after finding the Sword of Justice, one of the three powers, just before he is briefly and inexplicably turned into a 12 year old boy, and then just as quickly back into a man, as he holds his magic sword aloft.
The whole sequence of finding the Sword of Justice, and thus, Deathstalker’s quest, naturally leads us to a single question of… which came first? He-man and the Masters of the Universe, or Deathstalker? And the crazy part about it is, I honestly think the obvious similarities are a coincidence, as both of them were released in September of 1983, one from Los Angeles and one from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I mean, there’s a chance that some kind of casual discussion could have happened at some point, sure. Both of these properties have some L.A. people behind them, right? People do lunch. Also, some of the people behind the creation of these two properties might overlap, but still, I really doubt there was any specific conversations. I think it’s more likely that they were just both a product of the time. Simply put, it was a post-Schwarzenegger Conan the Barbarian, post-Hanna Barbera’s Thundarr the Barbarian, post Herculoids, post Heavy Metal Magazine kinda world back then.
What a time to be alive.
So, back to the movie, Deathstalker is joined on his quest by Salmaron, a thief freed from a curse, and also by Oghris, a midriff top wearing warrior on his way to a great tournament, a character who isn’t played by Leif Garrett. Deathstalker and Oghris are soon the best of friends, as they share a love of murder and sexual assault, and from judging by their outfits, jazzercise.
These two well-armed catalog models cross paths with a mysterious cloaked swordsman, someone who is easily their equal in combat. Both men are shocked to discover that this mysterious swordsman is in fact a woman, something they realize when her cloak twirls open during the fight to reveal her naked boobs, as she is wearing nothing but thigh-high boots and a g-string.
Now, some folks out there might point out how unbelievable it is that this woman would be a sword fighting warrior without any armor at all, not even the classic Red Sonja chainmail bikini, to which I can only say… yeah, that IS the most unbelievable part of this movie.
Anyway, this impressive swordswoman goes by the name Kaira, and she is played by a true queen of the low budget movies, Lana Clarkson. Sadly, she was murdered by Phil Spector in 2003, a crime for which he was eventually convicted of, and as a result, deservedly died in prison in 2021.
A quick look at Lana Clarkson’s IMDB page is like a tour of TV history.
She appeared in an episode of several well-known tv shows, including Three's Company (1976), The Jeffersons (1975), The New Mike Hammer (1984), Riptide (1984), Knight Rider (1982), Who's the Boss? (1984), The A-Team (1983), Night Court (1984), Wings (1990) and Silk Stalkings (1991), among many others, with her big-screen debut happening in that classic of classics, Amy Heckerling’s seminal teen film, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), and she then went on to make a ton of these barbarians and boobs movies.
Lana Clarkson is like the 80s incarnate.
R.I.P. to a true queen of the scene.
So, now there’s a whole team with Deathstalker, enough that you can fairly say that there is a crowd all sitting around the campfire and quietly watching as Deathstalker and Kaira have sex, which is… I mean, like I said, this is apparently the entire point of the movie.
One quick toweling off later, and our gathered heroes make it to the tournament, which is being held in Munkar’s castle. This is a place where the most naked ladies in the whole movie can be found, which is saying a lot. Munkar is the evil sorcerer who has the other two objects of power that Deathstalker needs to unlock the Powers of Creations, the Amulet of Life and the Chalice of Magic.
Munklar also looks like the kind of guy who would take his role as King of the local Renn Faire a little too seriously.
Munkar wants Deathstalker dead, I assume because he’s jealous of how the ladies all find Deathstalker to be really attractive, and yet they only ever seem to think of him as “more of a brother.”
To accomplish this goal, Munkar magically changes Kang, his lieutenant, into a woman in a kind of “sex werewolf” transformation scene. Specifically, Munkar turns Kang into a doppelgänger of Munkar’s captive, the princess Codile, and sends him to Deathstalker’s boudoir. Deathstalker almost falls for the trick, but instead threatens to sexually assault girl-Kang, and then kicks girl-Kang out of his room.
In the hallway, Keira happens upon Kang, and the two die fighting each other. This obviously only happens to make way for Deathstalker’s new girlfriend, the Princess Codile, a true hero who isn’t afraid to forcibly take food from the mouths of hungry slave girls, and to then aggressively eat it in front of them.
Somehow moving at a glacial pace, despite only being an hour and twenty minutes long, Deathstalker is terrible film. Just terrible. An obvious bastard child of Conan the Barbarian and He-Man, it’s a film chock full of moments where the heroes blatantly and repeatedly sexually assault other characters.
The very first scene has Deathstalker rescue a peasant woman from rape at the hands of a brigand, and/or some weird troll-guys, and then he tells her, as he restrains her hands and removes her clothes, that her payment for him having rescued her is sex, and it’s not portrayed as something that is incredibly terrible, but as the act of a virile dude just taking what he deserves, boys being boys.
This is the whole film.
I can’t help but think that this film set was probably not a very fun place for a lot of the women who appear in this movie. Also, the climax features a villain getting drawn and quartered, and the horses in that scene seem legitimately frightened.
So, yeah… generally ugly with it’s obvious low budget showing, despite having some good monsters and effects, but overall way to rapey to be enjoyed, this whole film is very… off-putting.
Same, Oghris. Same.
I also used to see this on the video store shelves, and think I finally saw it in my 20s. I've erased large portions of it from my mind, but I believe you're 100% right that this is one of the worst early 80s sword-and-sorcery flicks. Hawk the Slayer has the earnest dork energy of some dude getting his D&D group together to LARP their characters in the woodlot behind his uncle's farm. Fulci's Conquest is generally bad but has the hazy, dreamlike surreal tone of the more interesting spaghetti Westerns. Even The Sword and the Sorceress has Albert Pyun's (RIP) weird wild energy behind it. Deathstalker is just every worst impulse of the genre rolled into one with no redeeming qualities.