703-Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell

Film Year:  1988
Genre:  Adventure, Fantasy
Director:  Alfonso Corona
Starring:  John Allen Nelson, Carla Herd, Thom Christopher
MST Season:  7

The Movie

At long last, the conclusion to Roger Corman’s Deathstalker trilogy has finally arrived!  Now we can wrap up the epic story in suitable fashion...until Corman decides he has enough pennies for a Deathstalker IV.

And yes, there is a Deathstalker IV.

I can’t think about that now, I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there is a Deathstalker II.

Deathstalker is the sword and sorcery series that makes Ator look like...well not Conan but pushes him into Scorpion King territory at the very least.  At one point during the MST episode Mike calls it “one of the most ambitiously bad movies we’ve ever seen,” which sums up the experience perfectly.  The movie is bad, knows it’s bad, but is so gosh darn earnest about it that it’s hard to not just shake your head and laugh with it.

The film features a not-so-intimidating villainous wizard Troxartas (say THAT three times fast) seeking two halves of a jewel that will give him power.  A dying princess hands off one jewel to “legendary warrior” (AKA main character of two other films that somehow made a profit) Deathstalker to keep it out of the Troxartas’ reach.

The movie is full-on play, not created in an artistic sense, but just wishing to be at least fun to the viewer.  That fun is subjective and the film is unmistakably bad, with poor writing and bland, often disgusting characters.  It makes the bold statement of “I exist.  Take it or leave it.”  It’s doubtful many people nowadays give a damn about Deathstalker, but it provided an afternoon killer in the 80’s.  That was enough for it.

The Episode

“It’s hard to look menacing when you’re dressed like Maude.”

It’s hard to take Deathstalker seriously, and luckily Mike and the Bots never do.  The film is audacious in its silliness and doesn’t give a rat’s ass what you think of it, so the correct tone of the riffing is of course “go with the flow!”  They enter the ring with this movie not intending to fight it but rather dance with it, letting it lead and following with stride.  This results in a lot of laughs at the movie’s expense, with it’s foul characters (“Go ahead, enjoy my area!”) and absurdly crude visuals (“GUESS WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING!!!!!”), but seemingly no ill-feelings toward it.  The experience of Deathstalker is one mostly comprised of joy.

The attitude of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em!” bleeds a bit into the host segments, as they spend not one but two segments ragging on Renaissance Fairs and having the Bots put on a meager one to bleed Mike’s wallet dry, which Mike takes in stride.  They also feel inspired to do a Lord of the Rings spoof in the final segment as Servo attempts to create the One Ring.  Meanwhile on Dr. Forrester’s end the host segments grow more notorious, as an ailing Pearl screams “CLAYTON!  CLAYTON!  CLAYTON!” over and over again.  These segments actually seem to amuse me more than they do most, especially when she persuades Crow to read to her from a romance novel (“A little golden man was reading to me from a dirty book…”).  The segments might grow grating in how loud and monotonous they are, so be forewarned.

In the end, Deathstalker might be the weakest episode of the seventh season.  That’s not really a knock against it because the seventh season was so abbreviated that it was never able to produce a below average episode.  For what it’s worth, Deathstalker maintains status as a fun episode that is among the better efforts in the series.

Good

The DVD

Deathstalker stalks death amongst other things on Shout Factory’s Volume XXXV collection.  The episode features great audio and video.

The only special feature is Midieval Boogaloo:  The Legend of Deathstalker III, which sounds like a making of documentary but is actually just an interview with Thom Christopher, who played Troxartas.  Christopher knows exactly what kind of film they made and argues they even knew on the set, while sharing fond memories of how much fun the movie was to make.  His warmth and fondness for the production is both infectious and allows one to look at Deathstalker in a different light.  Christopher also name-drops another Corman production he was involved in, Wizards of the Lost Kingdom, which went on to be a film riffed on MST’s eleventh season after this interview was recorded.