The Beastmaster (1982)

The Beastmaster is another entry in the flood of post-Conan the Barbarian sword-and-sorcery flicks that inundated theaters during the early 1980s, albeit one of the better ones. It actually follows the plot of Conan fairly closely: the death of the hero's fairly at the hands of an evil cult leader, episodic early adventures wherein the hero meets his companions, etc. Not especially creative, but if you're going to ape rip off another movie then you might as well rip off a good one. The end result is nothing more than brainless entertainment, but stuff like that is good sometimes. One thing I've always wondered is why they spray painted a tiger black instead of just finding a trained panther to play the main character's animal companion. It's kind of ridiculous. Amusing, but still ridiculous.

Anchor Bay has put out several different DVDs of the film. I own this one. Not bad in the way of special features; the best one being a lengthy presentation of rare behind-the-scenes footage and deleted scenes narrated by director Don Coscarelli. My personal favorite, however, is the included 16-page booklet that contains a lot of badass pre-production art.

Trivia:

1) Demi Moore was originally cast as the female lead, but the part went to Tanya Roberts instead.

2) The movie was once parodied on Adult Swim's Robot Chicken.

Link(s) of interest:

1) Click here to read a plot outline of the movie, but beware of spoilers.

2) Click here to visit the movie's fanlisting.