The Beastmaster (1982)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Hello, and welcome to the All Eighties Movies podcast podcast,
where we talk about the blockbusters, love loves, and everything
in between from one of the precious decades from movies,
the nineteen eighties. Her host Bill Bant. Along with you
on this journey revisiting eighties movies is my co host
Jason Massek.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Hello, Jason, dar The gods have put that mark on you,
and someday you'll find out why. Till then, this mark
will be your guide. My sword and my copa will
be your trusted companions, protect a email, your home, and
if anything should happen to me, look for our enemies
at the gems, and you may search for your destiny

(00:53):
in the valley of a rook.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
That's right, listeners, we are discussing with spoilers. The Plenty
the nineteen two fantasy adventure The Beast Master. It was
produced by the Leisure Investment Company and distribed it by
mgm UA Entertainment Company. The movie stars Mart Singer, Tanya Roberts,
John Amos, and Rip Torn. Directed by Don Coscarelli, this

(01:19):
movie is rated at PG with the running time of
one hour and fifty eight minutes. Is loosely based on
the nineteen fifty nine novel The Beast Master by Alice Norton.
So what is this movie about? What's on the box?
If you grow up the nineteen eighties and what's your
local video store to rent this movie? You would find
this description on the back of the VHS box. It

(01:39):
is what's on the box? Take it away, Jason.

Speaker 2 (01:42):
Set in a wild and primitive world, The Beast Master
is the gripping tale of a mythical hero engaged in
a life and death struggle with overwhelming forces of evil.
Filmed by Academy Award winning cinematographer John Alcott, it boasts
spectacular sets, a topknot cast, and spine tingling action. Mark

(02:03):
Singer stars as Dar, the sole survivor of a barbarian massacre.
Determined to take his revenge. A golden warrior born with
the courage of an eagle and the strength of a
black panther, Dar must nevertheless face awesome enemies that threaten
his destruction. At his side is Tanya Roberts, a heroic
slave girl who battles the barbarians with a fervor equal

(02:24):
to Dar's own. New horrors await them at every turn,
a witch that crawls backwards across the ceiling. A race
of cannibalistic Batman and rip torn as may Ax, the
high priest of a fiendish cult, whom Dar must meet
and destroy if he is to survive. Though far outnumbered,
the forces of good are abetted by a supernatural secrets

(02:45):
revealed to you in the heart pounding climax of the
beast Master.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
Beast Master. So that was What's on the Box. Let's
move on to our eighty snapshot as we highlight some
of the creative forces from this movie. Jason, who do
you have?

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I will tell you in just a moment. Bill Bant.
First of all, it's just a pleasure to be doing
this with you today. I'm really looking forward to this one.
At the end of the What's on the Box segment,
there is this supernatural secret revealed that is mentioned. What
are they talking about? I have to ask you this
because I keep reading this and I'm like, what is
there something that I missed at the end of this movie?

(03:23):
Was there a huge reveal?

Speaker 1 (03:24):
There is not. I have no idea, Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
So I'm just What's on the Box segment just threw
me for a moment there, and I love that What's
on the box synopsis up to that point through me
for a loop. All right, all right, enough of that,
Let's get into The beast Master a little bit. Starting
with our eighties snapshot. I chose Mark Singer, of course,
in the titular role of the beast Master aka Dar.

(03:52):
Mark Singer's career goes back to the seventies when he
did a lot of TV appearances, but getting right to
his eighties. He did do five episodes of a show
called The Contender nineteen eighty. He does a bunch of
TV movies, a film called If You Could See What
I Hear? That's in nineteen eighty two. He does this
The beast Master in eighty two, then the other thing.
He's most known for playing the role of Mike Donovan

(04:13):
in a couple episodes of V in nineteen eighty three,
then three more episodes as Mike Donovan in the series
V The Final Battle in eighty four. He does three
episodes of The Love Boat in eighty four, and of
course the nineteen episodes of the actual TV series V
from eighty four to eighty five. He does twelve episodes
of Dallas in eighty six, then more episodic TV ranging

(04:34):
from the Twilight Zone to murder She wrote in The
Hitchhiker from eighty eight to eighty nine. He does reprise
his role as Dar in bast Master two Through the
Portal of Time in ninety one, and again in the
ninety six TV movie sequel beast Master three The Eye
of Braxis. He does the voice of man Bat in

(04:55):
Batman the Animated Series for three episodes in nineteen ninety two,
which I thought was interesting because it's kind of a
callback to The Beast Master where we have some man
bats he does, you know. Just after that a bunch
of TV B movies. He shows up twenty two episodes
of The Youngerman The Restless in ninety nine, and then
reprises his role again as Dar or should I say
Dartanis in six episodes of The beast Master TV show

(05:17):
from two thousand and one to two thousand and two.
He shows up in a TV reboot a V for
an episode, just one episode in twenty eleven, but not
as Mike Donovan, instead a new character named Lars Tremont.
And that's all you really need to know, just a
little bit of trivia. Mark Singer is the brother of
actress Lori Singer. We know her from Footloose, of course,
which we covered on this very pod. He's got a

(05:39):
couple other siblings, brothers Claude Singer and Gregory Singer, and
he is the cousin of director Brian Singer. Mark Singer
is also black belt and kung fu, and along with
a Jane Badler, he is one of only two actors
to appear in both V from eighty four and VV
in two thousand and nine. That's Mark Singer for you.
Who do you Got for your eighties? And Snapshot?

Speaker 1 (06:00):
I have co writer and director Don Coscarelli Junior, who
was born in North Africa but was raised in southern California.
At just nineteen years old, Coscarelli became the youngest director
to have a feature film distributed by a major studio
when The Jim, the World's Greatest and independently British Drama,

(06:20):
was picked up by Universal Pictures. Don is best known
for creating the cult horror classic Phantasm from nineteen seventy
nine and its sequels, the series that earned him a
lasting reputation in the genre. Phantasm was a highly imaginative
and surreal freight thriller that marked Coscarelli's breakthrough in the
horror world. In two thousand two, he directed the offbeat

(06:42):
cult hit Boba Hoopetet, starring horror icon Bruce Campbell. The
film features a bizarre yet memorable premise. Elvis Presley and
a man claiming to be John F. Kennedy reside in
a Texas rest home, where they must battle a three
thousand year old cowboy mummy feeding on the souls of
the elderly costco. Corelli's other works from the eighties include

(07:02):
phantasand two from nineteen eighty eight and the adventure thriller
Survival Quest from nineteen eighty nine, which starred Lance Hendrickson, Dermot,
Marooney and Catherine Kinnear. That's writer director Don Cascarelli junior stuff.
So this leads us to earliest memories. We're the earliest
memories of beast Master. Now, Jason, I was super surprised

(07:26):
to find out this is the first time you've seen
beast Master, which I don't know how the hell that happened.
That movie was on every day from eighty three to
eighty nine on some sort of cable channel. How did
you miss this movie? Please explain?

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, I don't think super Surprised even covers it. It's
absolutely one thousand percent extreme and wild that I never
saw this, and that is a fact. I was searching
my memory to try at least to remember some of
the like snippets that I may have caught a clip
here and there, and I must have come across it

(08:04):
at some point and saw a scene or something, but
I just never sat down and watched it in its
entirety for some reason. So it really is one of
those crazy, how the hell have I never seen this
movie scenarios? But it's true. I mean, despite its incredible
run on cable television and HBO, it got past me.
It's all I can say. I was well aware of it.
I knew what it was, I knew about the story

(08:27):
somewhat loosely. I mean, it's pretty obvious, so I think
I'd seen trailers for it, and I remember seeing images
of Mark Singer looking totally ripped. I knew there was
a hot lady in it. And speaking of which, it's
one of those things. If I had recorded this way
back when in the eighties on VHS, I would have
worn the tape out, rewinding it and playing any scene

(08:48):
featuring Tanya Roberts. But probably after seeing this movie today,
I would have just rewounded and watched it a trillion times.
I can see how watching this as a kid would
have been an absolute blast. But honest, I never saw it.
That's all I can say. I have no excuse Bill.

Speaker 1 (09:03):
Band Oh good, I guess.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Bill bad is left speechless. It's insane.

Speaker 1 (09:09):
But hey, we finally got you to watch it, so
that's all that.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
Matters, right. It only took forty years for me.

Speaker 1 (09:15):
My dad introduced me to this on cable on HBO,
and I fell in love with it for the first time.
And yeah, it was one I did record on BHS
and I don't know why I needed to, because it
was on so frequently. I mean, I would watch this
movie over and over and over again. If I look

(09:37):
back on the movies I watched in the eighties, the
Beast Master would have to be in the top ten.
And is it a quality movie like some of the
others I watched. No, But it just had a lot
of fun elements to it, and if it was on,
I stopped what I was doing and would watch it.
So thanks Dad. Darr for me was up there with

(09:57):
Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalker's how much I love that character,
and it just had everything for me.

Speaker 2 (10:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
It was a cable watch in between HBO and TBS.
It was on all the time and there was no
stopping me from watching it.

Speaker 2 (10:11):
Yeah, that's great stuff, man, I totally see it. It
makes complete sense. This is the kind of movie that
just captures a boy's imagination, any young kids, teenager's imagination.
It's just Taylor made for that. And also I love
the idea of trying to figure out what eighties movie
you watched the most on VHS as a kid. It's

(10:32):
just great because for me, I believe probably the film
I watched the most outside of Star Wars of course,
would be Aliens. I think that's the one I watched
the most. There was a summer I think I watched
Aliens probably fifty times. Like it was something stupid, it
was ridiculous. But I wished I had seen this now
as a kid. But are we ready to get in
some initial thoughts of the beast Master.

Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yes, let's get into it. What do you got?

Speaker 2 (10:56):
Well, you know, I just said this is Taylor made
for like a boy's imagination because it's fantasy adventure, and
I As I've said many times, love mythology and lore.
Just in this movie is Conan the Barbarian meets Templa
Doom meets Clash of Titans meets Doctor Toolittle and maybe
a touch of manimal. But Bill bent this thing. I'm

(11:17):
watching it for the first time. I'm like, this is
just loaded. It's got an evil high priest, crazy f
and witches, death Guard, the jun Horde, and cool animals
and sword and sandal adventures, hot ladies, a ripped dude,
a fun mythos origin story, a prophecy, and this background
lore of far away lands. It's the chosen one who

(11:39):
has the marketing or the special brand. It's the hero's
journey to rescue the princess or in this case a
slave girl or slash trove warrior. As we find out,
it's got all the archetypes. So they really throw everything
in this along with the Kitchen Sink. Is there any
other film you want to throw in there that you
can compare it to, either that it steals from or
borrows from.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
So many movies Likeme Out in the early eighties with
scantly clad women and warriors running around with their swords.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly right. We could just that's
we should rename the genre instead of sword and sandal
or sword and sorcery, it should just be buff dudes
running around swords. So you know what else is really
featured in this that we love, Bill Bant? Butt cheeks?

Speaker 1 (12:22):
Yes, tons, tons and tons of butt cheeks.

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Or more like side butt cheeks we get. We get
a lot of loin cloth in this and you just
get a lot of a lot of skin in this film.
So the movie starts and I'm like, we got some
strong music here right from the beginning from composer Lee Holdridge.
Felt a little similar to the Battle Star galactic theme
for me, but that's just me. It's still solid. Love
it some good music to start with, and I'm like, okay,

(12:50):
we're off to a good start. And you know what,
Bill Bant, it's always good to see John Amos's name
in the credits, like with John Amos is in this,
I love that guy, all right. Really off to a
good start here. When the movie begins, we get some
naked witches standing around a cauldron and I'm like, wait
a minute, what are we watching here? We got some
hot ladies right, you know, right off the bat until

(13:11):
you see their faces, of course, and then they're these
like horrifically gross witches. But I was like, I'm in. Basically,
it had me sold right from the start. And I
have to say, it's really funny because there's an appearance
by the King in the beginning of this movie and
his name is King Zed, and every time I heard
the name Zed, I was like, I all think it
was pulp fiction. And Bruce Willis sang Zed's dead baby,

(13:33):
pretty f and creepy. Start with the witch cutting the
unborn from the queen, but not really cutting it at all.
It's actually a transference. It's transportation of top I'm going
to get into detail with that, but I was just like,
oh my god, where what is this movie all about?
And it's the beast Master's origin story for the first
ten minutes of the movie, and then we have our
grown up dar played by Mark Singer for the following

(13:56):
ten minutes, and I gotta say, Bill, I was in.
I'm like, Mark Singer is a specimen. I mean, Jesus
CHRISTE look at those thighs. He's tall, he's toned, is
a sexy guy, less than zero body fat. I mean,
it's inescapable. What do you think, Bill Bant, I mean,
the guy's a stud.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, he looks amazing in this. I didn't realize how
ripped he was. Why wasn't he doing more actions movies
in the eighties. He looked great.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
One thousand percent, And I thought he was fine in
this as an actor. You know, we're going to talk
about the cosmetics of this because you got a bunch
of hot people running around on loincloths. You don't want
to be too superficial here. But I think he was serviceable.
I think he was. Okay, he's not you know, Lawrence Olivier,
but the park doesn't call for that kind of performance,
nor does this story or movie. So anyway, he's really

(14:45):
really good at doing the hero shots, and there are
plenty of those in this movie. He's just walking around
swinging that big sword, if you know what I mean
the whole time, just kind of showing off his abs
and his pecks and just standing basically not even fighting.
He's just swinging the sword around like, oh, okay, I
got it, we got it, you're good with the sword.
We get a great yeah, self training montage while he's

(15:08):
swinging that a lot, and by the way we get
a lot of eagle screams in the beginning, and I
was hoping to be able to do an eagle scream
for this pod, but I still have to rehearse that.
And yeah, I was talking about the fact that we
just cover this right now, a lot of naked people
running around or half naked people running around. I think
this movie is pretty horny, but it could have been

(15:29):
a lot hornier. And that's just a commentary I have
kind of running through this whole thing. This movie is
actually very violent as well. It's actually barbaric at points.
We have a child sacrifice in this movie, Bill Bant.
We have a supposed panther, but we know it's a
tiger obviously, who mauls like a thousand people in this.

Speaker 1 (15:51):
Really he always just mauls the same person. It's technically
the tiger's trainer. He's just in different costumes.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
A so true. But we get several maulings in this,
but it could have been even more violent in the
way that for the gore factor, there actually isn't a
great deal of blood in this It's kind of a
weird thing about this film. I did enjoy the action
in this film, a lot. We get plenty of action sequences.

(16:21):
Now I do have a minor complaint. Choreography was a
little bit slow, wasn't paced quite correctly. You've got a
lot of bad guys extras just kind of standing around
waiting for their moment to attack. It's pretty obvious, and
it's pretty funny. Still good action, you know overall. And
yes I mentioned butt cheeks and here we go. We

(16:43):
do get our eighties boobs in this and we have
a nice waterfall scene when Tanya Roberts is introduced, and
we got to talk about her, of course, and what
can you say, Bill Bant, She's heavenly, She's an absolute
smoke show, gorgeous, it's undeniable, beautiful eyes. He's a gorgeous woman.
And again regarding her performance, fine, she doesn't have a

(17:05):
lot to do. She doesn't. She's not really in much
of the first hour of this film, which could be
a major complaint if you wanted it to be. But
she is in the latter half, and she's okay, doesn't
Actually I wonder how many lines she has in this actually,
now that I'm thinking about it. But fan Atanya Roberts,
clearly rip torn is in this film. As our main antagonist,

(17:26):
High Priest May acts. He's fun. Did you enjoy his performance.

Speaker 1 (17:31):
In this chewing up the scenery?

Speaker 2 (17:33):
Loved it, absolutely over the top, going for it. He
does a lot of fantastic sideways glances in this. He
gives a lot of side looks. He's never looking directly
at people and built was I mistaken or does he
have a giant nose prosthetic?

Speaker 1 (17:48):
Yeah, there's some scenes you can obviously tell he's got
something on the nose.

Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah, it's it's great.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
Sometimes it looks great, but other times you just go, yeah,
that's a prosthetic.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, they're clearly like, you're just not evil enough. We
got to make it look work, so we're gonna give
you this weird nose prosthetic the big bump on it. Anyway,
I mentioned John Amos at the start, his actual real
entrance in this film. I enjoyed a lot really giving
off Little John from robin Hood vibes kind of with
the quarter staff. And speaking of John Amos, the only

(18:22):
reason why I love John Amos is because of Coming
to America. I just love him so much in coming
to America. Then I see him in this and like, yeah,
great to see him a lot of cool weapons in
this This is you know again, I'm really kind of
looking at this film, you know, watching it for the
first time, almost with kind of very innocent point of view,
maybe a childlike point of view, because I came into

(18:44):
this with absolutely no expectations or maybe low expectations. So
when I see when I mentioned like the Lord and
the mythology, now I see these cool weapons, Like the
priests have a cool gadget type of weapon. Dar inherits
the Kappa. Is that what it's called Bill is a
cape or Kappa from his adopted dad.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's capa.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
So you see the Kappa and you're like, wait a minute,
isn't that the glove from Krull? But it's not. It's
really cool though, and it's actually a I thought it
was three blade. I think it's a four bladed weapon.
But it folds in on itself and then you can
unfold it. It's pretty cool boomerang type of weapon that's
used throughout the film. Love the animals. I do love

(19:24):
the animals. We get ru the black panther. We've got
our lovely I should say, lovable ferrets. What were their names?
Is it? Coto and Podo the thieving ferrets, and I
was like, after this, I gotta get ferret as a pet.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
No, you don't want ferrets as a pet. I had
a roommate that had a ferret as a pet. Those
things smell and bite.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Well, there goes that dream. Thanks a lot, build Band.
And the eagle is totally bad ass in this and
all the animals seem to get cool names, and I
was like, wait a minute, the eagle is the most
bad ass. Why doesn't he you have a name or she?
And then I see in the research the name is Sharrak.
Was that mentioned in the film. I didn't hear that
at all.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
I did the same thing when I saw the name.
I'm like, wait a second, when does he name the eagle?
And I go back and watch it. No, that didn't happen.
I think it was named in the sequel, So it's retrove.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
Okay, that totally makes sense. All right. I'm an hour
into this movie and I couldn't believe it, Bill Band,
I was still really digging it. I pretty much dug
this film through the whole way. And now we do
have to talk about the overall total running time, which
is close to two hours and I was like, that's
way too long for this. It's just too long for
this movie. This film should have never been two hours.

(20:42):
I mean, I still enjoyed it. I'll say this, it
was about twenty minutes too long for me. And this
is a spoiler alert for those who haven't seen the film.
But once our antagonist is oft Mayax the High Priest dies,
You're like, oh, well, this is it. Time to roll
the credits, and it goes on for another twenty minutes.
You're like, what is happened? But as aforementioned, this movie

(21:02):
just has a blend of great genres that appeal to me,
to my sensibilities. It steals from a lot of other
good eighties B movies and maybe other eighties movies to
come after this stole from this. I don't know, but
I was along for the ride. I'm not going to
give my official rating our All Eighties Movies podcast official
rating here, but I'm just gonna say I thought this

(21:23):
was a great B movie and I was really pleasantly surprised.
I'd even maybe give it an as It's not perfect
by far. We'll get into it, but I'll just say
it really worked for me. I had a lot of fun.
What are your initial thoughts.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
Yeah, for me, eleven year old is given this five stars.
I mean it has everything. We have sword fights, We
have strange creatures that turn people to go bat people
or bird people whatever they are. I still don't know
what they're called, but they're cool. Yeah, quicksand eighties quicksand
I love eighties quicksand gotta have it. That's awesome, of course,

(21:58):
topless Tanya Roberts and you are that age Holy Molly.
And then the glow in the dark SETI eels making
people in the desk guards ere the death guards themselves,
just crazy people running around with helmets and those spike gloves.
We have our witches, which is with the bodies of
a ten and faces of a negative seventeen. Those things

(22:19):
are freaky get hot. At the same time, we have
a ring with an eye in it, a real eye.
Oh yeah, and that thing always freaked me out. Of course,
the cool animal companions. I don't think I ever knew
what ferrets were until I saw them in this movie.
And then we have an eagle, and then I'll be honest,

(22:40):
I didn't realize it was a tiger at first. I
thought it was a panther until probably my relatives mentioned
it during a holiday gathering that they couldn't believe they
painted the tiger black. What are you talking about? And
now watching this, it's so damn odious? How did I
miss that as a kid? But I still enjoyed it.
But I agree with you it's a little long. There

(23:00):
are way too many close up shots and like you said,
the hero shots, you could probably cut those in half. Sure,
And yes, the double ending is strange, and I think
what doesn't work is we don't really know who the
true baddie is. Nice because you really start with Mayax

(23:21):
and then we're introduced to the Guns and then you
find out the two of them were working together, so
it's who was really in charge? Was it Mayax or
the Jones? And then one gets taken out and you go, okay,
movie over, But no, the genes are still coming. You
got to defend ourselves against that. So there's a lot

(23:43):
going on. But I do like the fact, and especially
as a kid, because you're getting introduced to so many
characters with names that are simple enough.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
Couldn't agree more for you.

Speaker 1 (23:53):
To remember dar Kirie, Mayax, Seth Tall, so they're easy
to remember. You can keep track of everything. I still
really enjoyed it. It's the length that it's kind of
an issue. But I wouldn't go back and go all right,
do I need to take out scenes?

Speaker 2 (24:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (24:11):
I just think you need to take out shots. It
just runs a little too long.

Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You're spot on. That's the
problem is you're confused a little bit as to which
bad guy you're supposed to be invested in. And when
we're introduced to the gun Horde that kills or wipes
out and decimates Dars village in the beginning, you're like, oh, well,
here's the clear villain. We'll probably be introduced to the
leader or the chieftain of the gun Horde, but we're not. Instead,

(24:40):
we're more exposed to or shown the evil high priest
in Mayo's played but may Ax played by rip Torn.
But then at the end, after Mayax's death, I understand
why the film is extended to include the gen Horde
battle because this then wraps up dars revenge, right. We

(25:01):
need to see him overcome the gung Horde because they're
the ones that killed, you know, his adopted father and
wiped out his village. So I understand why they did that,
but they didn't show us enough of the GHN Hoard
characters or that chieftain throughout the film to care about
him at all or know him at all. So then
when he is introduced, because we have a major one

(25:23):
on one battle between Darr and the GHN Horde chieftain,
we're like, oh, I'm supposed to know this guy or
think he's a total badass or a really bad bad dude,
and now root for Dar to overcome and for this
chieftain to get his come up, and but I'm just
not invested, so I didn't care.

Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yeah, it's almost you're introduced to our initial battie, which
we think is Mayax, and then we're deduced to the
Juns and they wipe out the village. So now Dar
the beast Master, is on a quest for revenge. Then
we pivot back to Mayx. It was almost like a
side quest on his initial quest because he doesn't even

(25:59):
know what Mayx had done to him. Correct and there
is a scene where Mayax and the Genes seem like
they're working together, but it's not explicit enough. They couldn't
explain that a little bit better.

Speaker 2 (26:12):
It's confusing. It's confusing because you're led to believe that
Mayax is maybe the leader of the Jones at this
point or is working alongside them, but then they're separate
entities and it's I don't know, I don't know. So yeah, anyway,
we can move on.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yes, but credit to the movie for being fun enough
that it isn't deterring the enjoyment of the movie.

Speaker 2 (26:34):
Correct. It didn't ruin it by any stretch of the imagination.
It didn't ruin it for me. It didn't take me
out completely. I still thoroughly enjoyed this, So let's move on.

Speaker 1 (26:42):
Correct. Okay, let's move on to our favorite scenes or moments. Jason,
what do you got four favorite scenes or moments from
the Beast Master?

Speaker 2 (26:51):
All right, let's do it. I always like to start
from the beginning, so I'm going to start with my
first scene being the weird baby trance for Slash Transportation.
At the very beginning of this film, we're like in
the basement chamber of I believe it's supposed to be
like the Temple of r in the city of Aruk.
So yeah, we're like in the basement of this temple.

(27:12):
We're introduced to our antagonist may Ax, who's this evil
high priest, and we get these witches surrounding a cauldron.
They look into the cauldron and we get our prophecy,
and the prophecy is that the unborn child of the
King and Queen will one day grow up to be
the end of Mayox. The unborn son will grow up
to end up killing Mayax. I keep saying, Mayox, it's Mayax,

(27:35):
and so of course evil high priests. Mayax says, well,
can't have that, So we got to go cut out
the unborn son from the queen's belly. Well that sounds
pretty freaking brutal. And of course King Zed walks in
and he's like, well, nope, I'm not going to stand
for that. You're banished. You're going to go to the
outlands and live with the Horde the juns. So on

(27:57):
his way out, we know that Mayax one of the
witches off to the side and kind of gives one
of his sideway glances, and the witch takes this to
know that the mission is to get the unborn son.
So cut to later that night, I believe, the witch
goes into the Queen and King's tent and starts this
really strange ritual pours some neon liquid over the necks

(28:18):
of both the king and the Queen. They awaken, but
they can't say anything. They're screaming, but that you can't
hear them. They're not audible, so that we know obviously
this liquid had some sort of magical power to silence them.
And then the Witch does some weird circling with her
hand over the queen's belly, and there's some cool makeup
slash special effects here where you see the child within
her belly kind of pushing outward and pressing the skin outward,

(28:40):
which is really creepy. But here's the weirdest thing is
the witch isn't alone. The Witch brought a giant white bull.
So there's a bull standing off to the side while
this is going on, and the film cuts back and
forth between her swirling her hand over the queen's belly
and the child pressing outward to the belly of this bull,
and it's kind of glowing, and then all of a sudden,

(29:01):
the child is gone from the belly and we are
to assume it has now been transported into the belly
of this bull. And I was like, what this movie
is not just going to be this typical sword and
sandle thing. This is you know, we're dealing with some
real fantasy and fantastical stuff here, but it's weird. So

(29:22):
I think we're led to believe here that the queen
dies in this moment in this process, and the King
is left screaming and torment but can't is paralyzed. So
cut to now clearing in the forest somewhere. The witch
has brought the bull to this area and slices the
bull's belly open and out comes the chosen one, the baby,

(29:44):
And now she is going to sacrifice this baby. She
specifically has to perform this step by step process where
she brands the baby, which is horrific. She burns a
marking into the baby's hand and then raises an knife
to slaughter the child. This is all being done in
front of a like a campfire, nice little camping, a

(30:05):
little fireside chat with this baby, and it's not looking
good for the child. Off to the side, a villager
happens to be walking by witnessing this evil, old haggard
witch about to slaughter this kid, and the villager becomes
the hero and pulls out this Kappa weapon, this glave
style weapon, throws it at the witch, stabbing her in

(30:27):
the back, and that doesn't stop her. They ensue in
a fight and the witch disappears, and it's really kind
of a strange fight where she uses a force push
at one point. Basically the villager, this gentle old fellow,
then has vanquished this witch and now is in possession
of the child and has become its adopted father. So

(30:49):
that's it. It's just really wild, Bill, because of the
way that the baby is transported. We watched this, it's
really I think it's actually quite well done, but it's
just really strange. But the idea is that we also
know now how dar gets his supernatural ability to be
able to communicate with the animals, to talk to animals,
to see through their eyes and vice versa, is because

(31:10):
he was born of an animal. He was born of
a bull. That's cool, this is his origin story, but
it gives you kind of a real ick feeling because
the way it's laid out. What are your thoughts on
this opening scene.

Speaker 1 (31:22):
I find the scene very disturbing. I remember watching as
a kid the first time and turning to my dad
and going what is happening, and my dad just kind
of has that. How am I going to explain this
to my son? Look, it gets me every time I
really feel for the queen when this is happening, it

(31:43):
gets very intense for me. I don't like watching the scene.
And then the fact that this witch was going to
sacrifice the baby, right, and here comes Dara's adopted father
and we see the kPa and throws it into her back.
And then the witch was kind of stupid because she

(32:04):
should have just killed Dar's adoptive father. No problem. She
plays with him where she just arms him, but lets
the sword drop right in front of him and he
just picks it up and stabs her in the chest.

Speaker 2 (32:17):
Right, Oh me, pow are scaling issues here.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
And then disperses her into the fire and then she
gives that creepy laugh like she was happy she got killed.
Oh okay, but it explains the origin the beast Master,
why the beast Master became what he was, what is important.
It's definitely a reason why they probably should have made

(32:40):
the movie PG thirteen, even though we didn't have PG
thirteen back then. But that would definitely be a scene
to justify that rating.

Speaker 2 (32:49):
Oh yeah, and yeah, so I chose as a favorite
scene because I think it's weird, cool, it is disturbing.
It was unexpected. I was surprised by it as like, yeah, yeah,
so I kind of liked that aspect of it. I
do think it's fun. I forgot that the witches do
that cackling when they pull an obi wan kenobi and
they're like they disappear and the falls to the ground

(33:09):
sort of thing. My complaint with this, and yeah, definitely
stepping on complaints here for myself, is that in the
opening sequence under the Temple, in the basement chamber with
the cauldron and the prophecy, Mayax literally walks up to
the king and says to his face that he's going
to cut out the unborn son of his wife love
the queen to stop this prophecy from being fulfilled, and

(33:30):
the king only banishes him. Why does the king not
just put him in chains right there or put him
to death right in that very moment? Right this guy
just threatened to cut a child out of your wife's belly,
and he's like, Okay, you have to leave the city.

Speaker 1 (33:46):
That's the punishment, And then they escort Mayax out and
leave the witches there. Hello, they're in on this too.
Shouldn't they be escorted out?

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Yeah, not a perfect scene, but it's fun. What do
you have? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (34:00):
For me, one of my favorite scenes is the John
attack on Emar, and this is where Dar ends up
growing up, and you know, he's adopted by Dar's father,
whose name we never learn. So Dar and the younger
villagers are out tilling the fields and all of a sudden,
this really bad composite of a dust ball is coming

(34:20):
over the hills and Dar knows it's the Juns. We
have no idea what the Jardans are. And they start
streating back to Humor to try to help with the fight,
and they get there too late. All the Juns show
up outside the village of Vmar, and the village is
a small circle with all the huts are suspended on stilts,

(34:41):
very high in the air. And the Juns show up
and we see Dar's father, You're still there in the
village and he knows right away the guns are here
that they meet business, and he gets a sword and
walks out to the front entrance, and I love he
makes the line the.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Dirt, literally drawing a line in the sand.

Speaker 1 (34:58):
Yeah, like, if you cross this line, we're going to
kick your butt and here come the juns and the
guns just truck them. There's no resistance whatsoever at that point.
But I have to get the villagers of Niemer some credit.
They did put up a good fight even though the
guns come in and basically slaughter everyone. The people Emar
were fighting back as best as they could with the

(35:19):
limited resources that they had. Then Dar and the younger
villagers come in and they joined the fight, but they're
still overmatched. And there's a great moment when Dar gets
knocked out and he's lying there and Dar has this
dog named Toto with a d not Toto, and Toto
grabs Dar and starts pulling him out of the village.

(35:40):
And at one point when the guns sees this and
shoots the dog, and the dog stops briefly and keeps
pulling Dar with an arrow in his side. So that
was impressive. I mean, granted, Dar was probably getting a
little additional help. You can tell if you watch the
foot as closely that he's just getting pulled by something
else besides the dog. But overall, watching the destruct in
the village, it was cool. I thought it was a

(36:02):
good battle scene. Then later on Dar wags up goes
to the village. Everybody's dead, a lot of them were
impelled on poles. And then Dar constructs a funeral pyre
where he takes all the villagers and puts them in
the shape of the village symbol, a circle with the
diagonal slash, takes his dog, puts it in the arms

(36:24):
of his adoptive father, and then sets it a flame
and then decides to go off to seek his revenge.
So good opening. Actually the scene for me.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
One thousand percent on that one. I totally agree. I
was saying it to myself while watching it. I'm like,
this is some pretty good action. It exceeded my expectations.
I had low expectations or no expectations, and I was like,
pleasantly please. I was like, this is some good action.
Some of the cinematography here a shout out again to
John Alcott, because when Darr and his fellow villagers while

(36:54):
they're all like working the fields in the distance and
they see the horde approaching and they have to run
back to the village, don't get there in time, there's
some great sweeping like landscape shots and you're like, oh,
they are not close to the village. At first, You're
like they should get there in time. They're like, oh no,
but so some really cool shots of them having to
run a really long distance across these fields to get

(37:14):
back to the village. But you're right, nice to see
the villagers fighting back. Get some real Vlad the Impaler
vibes afterward, with all these poor souls impaled on these posts.
But love the dog, Love the dog, yes, not happy
about his death, don't don't kill the dog right off
at the start here come on, really cool dog funny
moment dragging a Dar out of the burning You were right,

(37:38):
there's because there obviously there's some people off screen pushing
Dar to help, you know, to make it look like
the dog is dragging him across the sand or the dirt.
But there's one moment when the dog actually stops pulling Dar,
but Dar keeps moving along, sliding across the ground. You're like, oh, okay, whoops,
it's really kind of funny. But the other moment I

(38:00):
wanted to call out is a really cool idea where
Dar managed to get one of the shields away from
the John Horde. And there's somebody I think, on horseback,
a bad guy on horseback that shoots an arrow at
him and it goes through the shield. So he then
this is dar flips the shield around so the arrowhead

(38:21):
is facing outward when the jun attacks him and he
falls backwards and the gun leaps on top of him,
and then of course impales himself on the arrow sticking
out of the shield. I thought that was really cool. Yeah,
then he just drives it into his right, he thrusts
it through. I was like, that's a cool idea for
the fight choreography, and it's it's interesting now when we

(38:42):
are just so like spoiled with John Wick movies and
you think, man, how are they going to come up
with more original, fresh choreography. I mean, if you're a
fan of any kind of kung fu movies, you see
it all the time. You're like, how are you going
to show me something new? So I thought that was
a cool move I hadn't seen before in this type
of movie.

Speaker 1 (38:58):
All right, what do you have next? Four favorite scene
or moment?

Speaker 2 (39:01):
All right, I've got the weird side adventure with the
what I call Mimic creatures, because these weird bat slash
men or bird men reminded me of the creatures from
the film Mimic starring Mirisovina, which now I need to
see again. I kind of like that movie that's kind
of a cult never seen, a weird called classic for me.
You should check it out. It's not bad, gonna have

(39:22):
to no great. Yeah, they look very similar, very very creepy.
And that's why I actually thought the costume design here
was excellent. Why I'm mainly why I'm choosing the scene.
So during his travels, Darr has just met We have
our meat cute between Darr and a slave girl, Kiri
played by Tanya Roberts. They have a little bit of

(39:43):
a back and forth. Nothing much comes of it. She's
got to go back to the city of Arup because
she's a slave and she if she'd gone too long,
that's not gonna be good for her. Dar moves on
with his trusty sidekicks, his animals Shahrak, Koto, Poto, and Rue.
He decides to actually follow Kiri instead of going off
on some other path. As he's about to go after Kiri,

(40:05):
night falls and it's getting kind of foggy and creepy,
and he looks upward to see a top of a cliff.
There's a grouping of trees with these hanging orbs of light,
and he goes to do a little recon check it out,
and now it's night. It's super creepy. He comes upon
this clearing with these like circle of trees. There's a
giant tree at the center of it, and hanging from

(40:26):
one of the tree branches is this wooden cage and
there's a male prisoner inside of it. So this setting
is a little ominous. Let's just say that is little foreboding.
And there's also a cauldron here. As it turns out,
we get Dar walking over to the cauldron and Rue,
his trusty black panther, is with him. It's kind of
funny moment where he does a little taste test. He

(40:46):
dips the ladle into the cauldron and has Rue try
to taste it. I don't think Ru even takes the
taste of it, just smells it and backs off and
we look into the Yeah, not having this. Why would
you want me to drink from this cauldron? What are
you doing?

Speaker 3 (40:59):
Dark?

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Come on, love you, but I'm not tasting that. And
Dar looks back into the cauldron and a severed head
rises to the surface of the liquid within the cauldron.

Speaker 1 (41:08):
Not good.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Then Dar turns around and all of a sudden, these tall, leathery,
winged sort of creatures have appeared. They're just kind of
standing very still, very stoic, and there's several of them
in a few rows, and they're silent. It's hard to
describe these creatures. They're very tall, they're almost featureless outside

(41:32):
of these just kind of a leathery appearance. They don't
have any hair. You can just see their eyes really,
so it's very creepy. Dar Freeze the prisoner from the cage.
The prisoner tries to escape, running through the rows of
these creatures, and one of the creatures, this is a
really scary moment, whips its arms open and that's when
you realize that they're these sort of bat like winged

(41:53):
creatures and envelops this male prisoner, and you just see
the prisoner writhing within this the grasp the grip of
this creature, and you hear his screams, they're muffled screams.
And then all of a sudden, from beneath the wings
at the feet of the creature, you see this green
goo coming out, and you know, oh, that's not good,

(42:14):
not good for this prisoner. He's basically being dissolved within
the wings, and you can pretty much assume this bird
man creature is eating the first that's how they are feeding.
Then the winged creature opens up its wings, giant wings man,
and just the bones of this man fall to the ground.
Not good. So now it's time for Dar to face

(42:38):
these creatures. And he's got his giant sword and Rue
is standing at his side. There's several of these things.
How's Dar going to defeat these things? But guess who
shows up? Sharrak the eagle, which is awesome, and the
creatures look up to see this eagle fly in to
assist Dar, and the eagle lands on a statue which

(43:01):
is of a bird or eagle itself, And then you
realize the statue's been here this whole time, and that
these creatures, it seems, worship some kind of bird god.
So when they see Sharrak the Eagle appear on the
scene and land on this very structure, the statue, and
they can tell that Dar is friends with the eagle,

(43:24):
that they are connected. They now have a newfound respect
for Dar if he is aligned with this bird, the eagle.
That is, so they allow they're about to allow Dar
to pass. There's a really cool moment where he has
to get past one of these bird men creatures and
Dar has his sword upheld and there's this quick move

(43:46):
that scared the crap out of me, where the bird
creature extends its wings and then clasps the sword very quickly,
making a sharp noise, and down the blade slides a
chain with an amulet at the end of it with
that symbol of the bird statue. It has the symbol
of the eagle on it, and you're like, Okay, now

(44:07):
these bird creatures not only respect Dar for being one
with the animals and the birds, but also gifted him
this and it's going to protect him some way, somehow,
which there is a callback to it later, which I
thought was cool. So I like that moment, that's it.
Then Dar manages to pass. And then initially when I
saw the scene, I was like, what was the purpose
of this scene? They just had these cool bird creatures

(44:29):
and just wanted to do this for shits and giggles,
and it was just kind of cool, great costume design,
makeup effects, things like that. But they come back into
the story near the end, which is really cool. I
thought it was really creepy. I was like, this is
new I haven't seen this before. Like that scene.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
Yeah, I do love those creatures, especially when they open
their arms and make that kind of whoop sound.

Speaker 2 (44:53):
I love that something.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
But with that scene, I still have no idea why
Dar rescues the prisoner. Was that going to do at
that moment? Was he expecting him to help?

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Doubt it?

Speaker 1 (45:04):
He basically just send him to his death. But those
creatures really cool, and I just love you have that
black ivory statue of the bird. It comes the eagle
and just happens to land right on the shoulder and
everyone's now bowing. It was the jump scare for me too,
when the bird back creature makes the path for Dar

(45:28):
and Dar's cautiously walking through and then that one appears
out of nowhere in front of him and drops the medallion.
And as a kid, I had no idea that was
coming into play later. I just thought that was it. It's
kind of funny looking at as an adult. This is
going to be important later on, And of course it is, right.

Speaker 2 (45:46):
I get you would call that the Checkof's medallion. I
guess right, right, I think I'm up next again. Yeah,
all right, yep, folks, you're gonna have to listen to
me a little bit longer, because my next favorite scene
is one it's a scene within a scene. The overall
scene is the escape from the Temple of r or
the Pyramid, or the city of Aruk. It's all of it.

(46:09):
I get confused, what's what in here? Some a little bit,
but it's escape from the Pyramid, and there's a scene
within this giant long, extended action sequence that I enjoyed,
so I'm going to cut right to it. The mission
here is for Dar and Kiri and Seth and Tall
to rescue King Zed. The audience here we knows that

(46:31):
King Zed is actually the true father of Dar, but
King Zed is also the father of young Tall. Now,
the king has been imprisoned within this temple and imprisoned
by the evil Mayax, and so they're going to rescue him.
And when they are inside, they have to run this
gauntlet basically where these evil death guards are reaching out

(46:53):
trying to kill them, and because they have they have
these sleeves with spikes on them and everything, and so
that's kind of a fun sequence and it's a little
too convenient when they get to the room where King
Zed is held because the door is open and they
go inside and they find King Zed. Is there great?
Not so great though for King Zed personally, because his
eyes have been removed or gouged out at some point,

(47:14):
so King Zed is very blind and he is a
lot older at this point and wasting away in this cell.
So they got to him, which is great. But here
come Mayax and his friend Witch, and they slam the
door behind them to lock them in this room and
now they'll all be prisoners. However, here comes Rue down

(47:37):
the gauntlet, and Mayex and the Witch freak out because
here comes this giant panther approaching them, and so they
actually have to go inside the cell room as well.
They close the door behind them and Ru is stuck
out in the hallway. Now we've got a little battle
sequence within this prison room. So we get a great shot.
It reminded me of Evil Dead, Yeah, very much. So
I think with the Witch comes right at Dar if

(48:00):
it's like a depth of veal field sort of zoomed.
Do you know what I'm talking about? Bill Ban That shot? Yeah,
it's kind of a cool shot with the where it's
like the Witch is floating towards Dar and so we
get a little one on one fight between the Witch
and Dar, but it's actually short lived at first because
the Witch, while Dars swinging his sword, does this little
kind of explosive dust move and throws this dust in,

(48:22):
this magical explosive dust into Dar's eyes. And I love
this moment because it's a real blood sport moment for me.
It's because you got Dar temporarily blinded, and he's like,
ahh very John Claude Vonda. And now Dar is just
swinging wildly at the witch, but the witch because he's blinded,
and the Witch is just backing off and off to

(48:44):
the side. We've got Mayax versus Kiri. Kiri goes at Mayax,
but Mayax takes tall hostage here with a blade, so
Kiri has to back off. Then back to this one
on one between Dar and the witch, and the witch
has the upper hand because Dar is blinded, and there's
this cool effect where she backs up against the wall
and she starts slithering up the wall, but backwards. She's

(49:07):
still facing forward, so she's sliding up the wall and
above Dar. And now Dark has no idea where the
witch is, and the Witch is literally getting the higher
ground on him. Is up now attached to the ceiling
and can just jump right down directly onto him while
he's still swinging his sword. But finally Dar just calms down.
He relaxes because he knows his sidekick Panther is outside

(49:32):
in the hall. And Ru gets up on his hind
legs and looks through the small window through the door,
and we know that Dar has the ability to see
through Ru's eyes, and Ru is looking into the room
and sees the witch on the ceiling. And now Dar
can see the witch on the ceiling directly above him,
and he thrusts his blade, his sword upward into the

(49:54):
belly of the witch, and the witch falls to her death.
And does she disappear and have a cackle here too?
I'm sure something like that happens, but I just enjoyed
this sequence. I thought that was some cool action there.
Kirie managed to pull out a cool weapon from her risk,
because we know at this point she's not just a
slave girl. She wants a trove warrior. She has this
cool little weapon that she's armed herself with. She throws

(50:16):
I don't even know how to describe it, but she
disarms Mayex and so Tall can get away from him.
Max just kind of runs off, and now you've got
Tall and King Zed and Dar. And where's Seth in
the scene? Actually, now that I'm recalling it in my head,
was he with them for this or was he doing
something else?

Speaker 1 (50:34):
No, he was never there because he was gathering other warriors.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Oh right, Okay.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
There's a lot of stuff going on in the Temple
rescue and I was like, I can't touch this. Yeah,
there's just way too much going on. But I like
that you picked that scene because it does show how
Dar's abilities as a beast master consistently help him get
through his trials and tribulations throughout the film. Here is Dar,

(51:02):
he's blind, and Rue's right outside the door trying to
get in, and Rue can see that the witch is
above him, and then he just thrusts up his sword
and kills the witch. I thought that was cool.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
Right.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
There's a lot that goes on in the Temple rescue scene.
I think it's almost a twenty minute segment and you
touched on a two minute piece of it. There's just
so much going on.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
Yeah, you get the death Guards in this whole scene,
which are wild.

Speaker 1 (51:30):
Right, who are chasing Poto and Coto. For some reason,
I don't know why.

Speaker 2 (51:35):
That's why I didn't hold this hole do the whole
scene because that part was really cheesy to me. You
got these crazy, huge death guard like chasing these little
ferrets and I'm like, this is now, We're into silly
territory here.

Speaker 1 (51:48):
I guess they just go after anything that moves. But
there are former villagers who get these steady eel like
things stuck in their ear and then they.

Speaker 2 (51:59):
Just become Yeah another real, really barbaric sequence, so that
I touched upon in the early of the pod. We're
talking about this is awful. They're being tortured and transformed.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Yeah, because they're not just putting them in their ear.
They're putting them in their ear and then all this
foam starts coming out and the priests are sticking tubes
in their ear and sucking out blood. This is not PG.

Speaker 2 (52:23):
They're putting masks on them and they got it. Yeah,
it's it's gross all right. Time for you to go, man,
go with your scenes.

Speaker 1 (52:30):
Okay, So again this involves the guns and it's the
final battle. So Dar has taken out Mayax. You think
the movie's over, but nope, they still have to fight
the guns and we know Dar's original mission was to
get revenge on the guns. Well, the Gens are now
coming to a rook and the villagers have to defend

(52:50):
or flee, and they decide that they're going to defend.
So Luckily, around the village it's a mode of tar.
So I thought this was smart. There's one bridge that
leads over the bat and then you can go into
the main gate. They move the bridge back the length
of the tar and then cover the tar with dirts.
You cannot see it. So they figure when the Jungs approach,

(53:11):
they'll go into the tar and they'll set them on fire.
Boom done. So here we are the Gungs approach and
the raid of battle. The Jungs do exactly what the
villagers are hoping they do, and they step into the tar.
The problem is the villagers are having trouble lightning the tar,
so Tal takes a torch and he runs through the

(53:32):
gate to set the tar on fire himself, and he
gets shot by one of the Juns with an arrow.
Now Kiri comes to the rescue, and then Dar comes
to the rescue. I think even Seth comes to the rescue.
It's basically the four of them taking on the juns.
They're able to set the tar on fire. The Gengs
are on fire, but some of them are still crawling

(53:52):
out of the tar on fire and they're still fighting.
This is when Dar then takes on the leader of
the guns and they have a big fight and Darr
is able to take out the leader, but still he's
out numbered and we think all is lost. But all
of a sudden, we see the Eagle show up and
Dar knows they're okay. Before the battle had started, Darr

(54:15):
took them in jallion he got from the bat Bird
Wing people and had the eagle go reach out to
them for help. Yeah, the Eagle has brought them to
the battle. So now all the bat bird Wing people
are attacking the gun and dropping them into piles of bones.
Wo whoosh, whoosh. This is a good battle, but in
the end the villagers win, even though they really did

(54:37):
nothing except cover the moat. I thought it was a
good access sequence. The fight between Darr and the leader
wasn't too bad. I like that the leader accidentally pales
himself with his own weapon and then Darr just whips
them into the tar.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
H bill bant with the sound effects perfect. That is hilarious.
In You're spot on. Yeah, so this is what makes
the ending tolerable. We talked about it earlier where the
last twenty minutes seem it just feels long at this point,
but when the Birdmen show up, it is very cool
and there is still some great action. It just right.

(55:09):
You're like, oh, the problem was you felt like the
movie was over and it's just not. Yes, but this
actually is a cool sequence. Yes, So I'm totally in
agreement with you. The moment before this happens, when Dar
gives the Amulet Slash medallion to Sharak the Eagle, I
was like, what was the significance of that? I completely

(55:32):
spaced on it, like I was like, what what does
that mean? What is happening? And then we see that
Sharak went back to the Birdmen village to recruit them
to come help in this final battle, is like, oh,
that's cool, and it is a little bit of a
trope that you do see in other films and you
forget about it, and it works on me every time.

(55:52):
It's really smart because, as I mentioned, I love that
scene with when the Birdmen are introduced and you're like,
why why is this scene here? It's got to be here.
For reason, but then an hour goes by and you
forget about them. Very smart. Those bird creatures are freaking cool.

Speaker 1 (56:10):
Okay, time to move on to Swiss cheese and complaint
department and what do we call it Swiss cheese?

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Because although this movie is delicious, it does have sword holes.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
And it doesn't have any of those sword holes. We
just spile a complaint with the complaint department. So, Jason,
what do you have for Swiss cheese or complaints? I
think we kind of touched on the Swiss cheese with
the double ending.

Speaker 2 (56:31):
Yeah, that definitely. I'm actually looking at my first two
complaints here and I'm like, yeah, we cover that. Cover that.
Getting back to some of the fight choreography, it's pretty tough.
This one I'm going to call out is when the
priest underlings, because we have, yes, the evil high Priest
in may Axe, but he's got like a group of
kind of monk like priest underlings that serve under him,

(56:54):
and they're all have shaved heads and wear these red
robes and such. Well, they have gone out into the
world blderness to track down dar and they find him
and they corner him. Actually, one of them gets the
upper hand on Dar, slipping a noose over his head
and on his neck and is choking him. And one
of the reasons they found him too or they've identified
him as Dar the chosen one, is that this particular

(57:17):
priest has that ring you spoke of earlier that has
a eye appears and then the witches back at the
homestead with Mayax can see through the eye and they
can see it's Dar, and they're like, yes, that is him.
You need to kill him now. And that's why the
priest puts the noose over is that And the whole
time there's another priest on horseback with a crossbow. If

(57:37):
I'm not mistaken, that could have just shot Dar in
that moment and does nothing. He does never, He's just
standing sitting there.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
I know even I was screaming, shoot sh shoot shoe.

Speaker 2 (57:48):
Why don't you just shoot Dar right there? You got
him like dead to rights. Just he just sits on
his horse and is like, no, I'm just gonna wait
for my other, my buddy to choke him to death.
And of course Dar gets out of it, and Rue,
I think mauls everybody are something, you know, and it
just it's it's crazy, and I think then Seth makes
his entrance also afterward, which I loved and a shout out.

(58:11):
I wanted to mention this real quick too. John Amos
is pretty great in this. I thought he was pretty
physical and his staff work taken out batties with his
kind of like his quarter staff pole or whatever. It
was great just slipping that in here, which is a compliment,
not a complaint. But the choreography is so slow at times,
like these bad guys are idiots.

Speaker 1 (58:31):
Yeah, I think my favorite ones is the Junes and
Dar is trying to free Ru and the Juns lift
the sword over his head and just holds it there
for Darr to turn around see him and slice him
across his chest. Hello, was your sword too heavy for
you to swing it? He's holding that sword way too long.

Speaker 2 (58:48):
It's always a complaint in any action movie for me
when you have a group of bad guys with all
the villains the Horde if you will, in the film,
attacking a single hero and they each wait individually to
attack instead of just all jumping on him at once.
They're like, Nope, I've got to wait my turn. This
guy's going to attack first, then I'll attack, and then

(59:10):
Joe over there he's going to attack. No, you just
mobbed the guy and you've got him, no problem. But
they just wait, you know, wait their turn, and it
just doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
Yeah, complain for me, the black tiger. Just leave the tiger.
Why do we have to paint that thing? I heard
Don Cascarelli wanted it black, and it's impossible to train
an actual panther. But I think someone should have just
stepped up and said leave it alone. And I'll get
into a little bit in the facts in trivia that
they should have just left the tiger. A tiger tiger

(59:41):
says to school in my book.

Speaker 2 (59:43):
Absolutely, Why did it have to be a panther? No
idea I was that in the book. I don't know
that it was a panther. Maybe trying to stay true
to the original text. Right, it's not a huge difference.
It was still the tiger is totally badass. But it
was interesting you bring that U because when immediately I
was like, have I ever seen it? I've never seen.
I was like, that's a tiger. That's definitely a tiger,

(01:00:05):
And have I ever seen a black tiger? Is there
are there black tigers out there? I was also thrown
off by it. I was questioning my own knowledge of tigers.
So moving on with complaints. One thing we didn't get into.
It is kind of a cool scene, especially for Shark
the Eagle. Well it's a barbaric scene because there's a

(01:00:26):
child sacrifice and then there's a young girl that's about
to be sacrificed and Shark the Eagle saves her and
flies away with those complaints too, okay, and it's weird.
This girl weighs sixty pounds. There's no way she's getting
carried off. Max has a nice comeback after that. Yeah,

(01:00:46):
that's a great point. Did you have more complaints?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah, the villagers of a rook. Why are they still
staying in the village. It doesn't look like it's very
well guarded. You can come and go as you please.

Speaker 2 (01:00:58):
It's a great point to leave. It's a great point
go somewhere else.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Yeah, maybe just pack up, go or just leave your things,
no big deal, get out of there. The only time
we saw guards is when they were escaping from the temple,
and there was one and that was it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Right, It doesn't make any sense that they could leave
it any time. Yeah, there's only one way in one
way out. You got to cross the bridge over the moat,
but still who cares there's no guards. That's the whole point.
And it's wild because then I think even doesn't Dar
make a comment when they are going in to rescue
king Zed something like when they come upon the death guards,
he says something like, oh, that's why there were no

(01:01:34):
guards posted outside. But that's dumb. Why are there no
guards posted outside? You've got a million death guards put
the death guards out there? Why are they not out there?
Makes no sense.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
It's not a very well fortified village. It's a cool model, though.

Speaker 2 (01:01:48):
We did like them. Malley, Yeah, for sure. There's a
great part here when Dar and his gang Seth tell
everybody are going to rescue Kiri and the other slave
girls from being executed because the I guess it's the
juns or the priests. It's the priests that are taking
them to be to be executed. And they take them
to like a remote area that's off like at a

(01:02:08):
beach head, like on a lake. And you have Dar
in a boat with the rest of his gang and
they pull up to the pier and the dock or whatever,
and then a fight ensues because they have to rescue
these slave girls, including Kirie, of course. And my complaint
here is that they rescue Kiri and the other five
of the slave girls disappear.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Yes, what happened to them?

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
They literally disappear. You see him in one shot and
then I'm like, wait a minute, you're just gonna rescue Kiri.
What about the slave girls? But they're all gone? What?

Speaker 1 (01:02:39):
Totally agree? Speaking of Kirie, yeah, definitely not pc when
Dar forces himself on her with the stealing of the
clothes and Rue shows up. But then later on you
figure out Dar was probably making out with his cousin.
What's going on there? Kind of like it's a little yucky.
Oh yeah, good point, right, because the queen died of

(01:03:02):
the opening.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
Scene incestuous, Maybe so some semi at least semi incestuous,
I don't know. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, it
gets a little convolute with the family tree here is
to I think a complainer question I had for additional
questions was like, did they need to explain it a
little more or at least point out the fact make
it clear that Dar is technically Tall's half brother, right.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
Yeah, because if the queen died in the opening scene
King Zed. Then the king probably remarried, right, and that
was where Tal came from.

Speaker 2 (01:03:38):
Right, because Tall's like almost twenty to thirty years younger
than Dar. But they're still half brothers because the king Zaid, yeah,
is the father of both.

Speaker 1 (01:03:47):
I think Dar's only twenty one, twenty two, He's still
a kid.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Oh, okay, fair enough. When they do they rescue King Zed.
This is crazy to me, because you're right, Seth had
gone off with Sako. We haven't discussed the character of Soako,
which is one of the villagers who happens to be
the father of the girl that Shark the Eagle had rescued,
and they split up during this whole pyramid escape from

(01:04:12):
Aruk and the city of rou and before they this
is part of this extended action sequence before they can leave.
When they get to the gate, it's down and there's
a whole sequence where they have to use the ferrets
to chew through the counterweight to open the gate and
there's a fight and this whole thing, so they can't
leave the city without raising the gate. Well, then, how
did Soako and set how did they get out or

(01:04:34):
with King z because I think they had I don't
know that it didn't make any sense because half of
the crew managed to get out of the city. But
then Dar and Kiri and Soko. I think they're trying
to escape. I'm getting confused. I'm sorry, confusing characters. But
they they get to the gate is lowered, but some
of the other characters got out, and I'm like, how
did they get out if the gate was down? But

(01:04:55):
we just were like, they must escape some other way.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
Okay, yeah, that's a good one, and think about that.
You can kind of get out some way.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
Yeah, I got it. Here's animal deaths. They're brutal. Let's
just complain of mine. Toto the dog. Yeah, tough, it's tough.
But then Codo dies one of the ferrets self sacrifice.
I mean, it's a very heroic moment. But I was like, no,
you're not going to kill one of the ferrets, one

(01:05:22):
of the little cuddly ferrets. Oh, it's worse than old Yeller.
It's my opinion. I'm just saying right now, it's my
hot take.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
There you go, anything else.

Speaker 2 (01:05:32):
I had just had an issue a little bit with
our hero's motivation. It seems like through the first half
of the movie, after well at least a quarter of
the way through. Whenever Dar meets Kirie, the gorgeous Tanya Roberts,
seems like his only, like singular goal is to find her.
A little lustful. Understandable on a certain level, but you know,
when he returns the little girl to Aruk and to

(01:05:54):
her parents there in the city, it's like, that's a
heroic moment, and they're like, yeah, but we're still under
the control of the John Horden, the evil priest may Ax,
And he's like, yeah, that's that's I know, that's that's
tough for you, But I need to go find Kiri.
Do you not care about these villagers? So I was
just a little bit questioning Dar's motivations at first. He
wasn't being altruistic or very heroic in his He's just

(01:06:17):
he just wanted to get with Kirie. It seemed like,
I don't blame them. Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean,
and I have no problem with that. I understand. Yes,
all right, that's it for bad complaints.

Speaker 1 (01:06:28):
Okay, let's move on to Hey, it's that actor, all right,
So this segment we spotlight a character actor you have
seen in many other films, an actor making their big
screen debut or an actor that makes an uncredited cameo.
Let's say it's that actor. Who do we choose this week?

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
Well, this week we've chosen someone who, at least from
my perspective, would be the obvious choice. It's got to
be Billy Jane, who plays the role of young Dar
in the beginning of this film. And yes, of course
he is very young, but I recognize that face right away,
that jaw, that smile, and we'll get into it. Billy

(01:07:06):
is an actor and director, and his career does go
back to the late seventies, but here's his eighties where
he's taken on the stage name of Billy Jacoby. Billy
Jane is actually Billy Jacoby here in the early eighties,
and he does some episodic TV in nineteen eighty shows
like Lou Grant Galactica nineteen eighty Trapper John MD, you
remember that one. He does some TV movies and series

(01:07:27):
such as twenty six episodes as The Bad News Bears
that was actually from seventy nine through eighty does a
bunch of TV movies and series, then Beastmaster of course
in eighty two. He's in Kujo. In nineteen eighty three,
does eleven episodes of a show called It's Not Easy
from eighty two to eighty three more TV episodes. Finally,
he has his most iconic and memorable role as Buddy

(01:07:48):
in Just One of the Guys in nineteen eighty five,
which we did cover. Of course. He is the younger
brother to the character Terry played by Joyce Heiser, and
he is awesome. Continues to do eight of episodic TV
for the rest of the eighties. He changes his name
to what I'm assuming is his birth name, Billy Jane.
In the early nineties, he did seventy three episodes of

(01:08:09):
Parker Lewis Can't Lose, playing the character Mikey Randall, and
continued to do mainly TV all the way up to present.
His last credit was in twenty twenty three. He was
in a short film called Run Baby Rome as in
the City of Rome Little Trivia. According to his mother,
Billy and his siblings took the name Jacoby because they
felt Jane was too feminine. There you go, So Jane

(01:08:31):
slash Jacoby is our Hayitsta actor this week.

Speaker 1 (01:08:34):
It's so funny how many times I've seen this movie
and never made that connection until this time.

Speaker 2 (01:08:40):
Oh really. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
As soon as I saw him right away, I was like,
oh my god, just one of the guys. But now
I didn't even know before and to watching it for
this podcast, I never put that together, but this time
super obvious. Okay, now it's time to move on to
facts and trivia. What do we have for facts and trivia?

Speaker 2 (01:09:00):
We touched on it a little bit, or at least
you did, Bill in the very beginning here, but I'll
say it again. Beast Master began with a screenplay in
the early eighties written by Paul Pepperman and Don Coscarelli director.
The two writers based their film on Andre Norton's nineteen
fifty nine novel The Beast Master. The writers changed the
story dramatically, as the original novel had the hero named
Hosting Storm, who was a veteran soldier of Navajo descent

(01:09:23):
in a futuristic science fiction setting. Norton was unhappy with
the liberties taken with the film's script and asked for
her name to be removed from the credits.

Speaker 1 (01:09:33):
Yes, and the author was the pen name of Alice Horton.
Just FYI, because I said in the beginning the book
was based on Alice Horton, So that was Alice's pen name. Ah,
thanks for clarifying there. So I thought this was cool.
Love those old eighties special effects. So we have that
first shot of coming upon the village of a rook

(01:09:53):
and looking at it, I'm like, wait, is that a model?
So it is a model, and they use four perspective.
So what happens in the shot is so it looks
like Dars off in the distance looking down upon the village,
and the village is far off in the distance. Well,
when they shoot it, the model is closer to the

(01:10:15):
camera and Mark Singer as Dar is actually off in
the distance staring at nothing. So the model is actually
closer to the camera than Dar is. But as an
audience member, when you're watching it, it looks like Dars
looking off into the distance at the village when it's
the opposite. Love that kind of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
That's cool. I love hearing that. Director Coscarelli was frustrated
while making the film, during which he feuded with the
film's executive producer, predominantly over the film's editing and casting.
Coscarelli originally wanted Demi Moore for the role of Kiri,
but the executive producer over wrote his choice and had
Tanya Roberts cast. Good call in my opinion. I'm just
saying the role of Mayex was originally written for Klaus Kinski. Yes,

(01:11:00):
agree with that one, but he was not cast over
a salary dispute.

Speaker 1 (01:11:03):
Yeah. So the scene after Emar is destroyed and we
have Dar laying out the bodies, and then we have
a couple of close ups of him picking up a sword,
covering the scar with the glove and holding the Kappa.
That was not Mark Singer's hands in any of those shots.
That was actually producer Paul Peppermint, who came in because

(01:11:24):
they had sent Mark home for the day and forgot
to do the pickup shots, so Paul stepped in to
film those shots for us.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Thanks Paul, nice job, nice nice handwork. Got to give
credit where credits due. I appreciate that. Well. I think
it's only appropriate that I mentioned this next piece of trivia,
because then you'll be like, Jason, what's wrong with you?
How did you not watch this movie when you were
a kid? How could you? How is it even possible? Yes,
so it is clear or obvious that this film, after

(01:11:53):
being in the theaters, subsequently received significant local TV and
cable airplay, notably on HBO, TBS, and T and T.
The film was shown so often on HBO that comedian
Dennis Miller joked that HBO stood for Hey Beast Masters
on it certainly was. It was also shown so often
on TBS that it popularly gained a similar joke that

(01:12:15):
TBS stood for the Beastmaster Station. True. In nineteen ninety three,
year programming director for TNT claimed that it was second
only to Gone with the Wind as the most popular
movie to air on the network and attributed its success
to its mythological appeal, while a programming director for Cinemax
stated that you can come into any part of it

(01:12:35):
and not feel you've missed much. So, yeah, it was
on all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:12:39):
So The film originally started shooting with anamorphic lenses, but
the French distributors who were funding the film assisted on
spherical lenses because they anticipated showing the movie on TV,
which they certainly did, and felt that the anamorphic footage
would be considerably in the standard definition of four x three,

(01:13:03):
So the Young dar encounter with the Bear was later
cropped to match the one point eighty five to one
aspect ratio on spherical footage. So if you do want
that scene, it does seem a little bit off. That's
because the scene was actually shot with different cameras compared
to the rest of the movie, So if you really
pay close attention to it, it seems a little bit

(01:13:25):
more stretched. But that's why. So that was different cameras,
and I always thought there was something a little weird
about that scene until I read about that, and now
it makes perfect sense.

Speaker 2 (01:13:38):
Got it. Speaking of our Hey, it's that actor Billy Jane.
On Mark Singer's first day of filming Billy Jane at
the time, Billy Jacoby. He was filming the scene where
young dar first learns that he could control animals, and
the bear in the sequence happened to be a Russian bear.
It was the only bear working in Hollywood at the time.
As soon as he came out, the bear broke loose

(01:13:59):
and attacked his handler, sending the rest of the crew
fleeing into nearby vehicles for safety. As soon as the
bear was recaptured and the handler was carried off for
medical attention, the crew turned and told Mark that they
were ready to film his scene.

Speaker 1 (01:14:13):
Hey got to keep moving on schedule and got to
keep on that budget.

Speaker 2 (01:14:16):
I was money, folks.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Yeah, I think I heard Mark Singer's first scene was
the quicksand stuff. So you may have noticed this movie
doesn't carry a disclaimer about no animals being harmed in
the making of it. That's because the tiger that played
the panther died after licking the black paint it was
covered with, which you do see it doing throughout most.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Of the movie. Wow, that sucks exactly. I did not
read that. I read all the bits about it being
painted black and that it would lick the paint and
you can see the paint was fading across his face.
You could see it because it was a striped tiger,
But I didn't know he died. That sucks. Wow. Can't

(01:15:01):
put that disclaimer on them, No bueno. Well, two years
later after this film came out, Tanya Roberts woodstar as
Shina in Shina nineteen eighty four and which her character
can communicate with animals.

Speaker 1 (01:15:15):
Coincidence, another amazing film with Tanya roberts That's all I'm
gonna say.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Maybe we should cover that on this podcast. I think
we will. All right, Well, that's it.

Speaker 1 (01:15:27):
For me for facts and trivia, all right, Jason, I
got one last one, go for it. I know it's
one of your favorites. Alternate titles, Alternate titles of the
Beast Master, So here we go. Let me know which
one you like the most. So in Brazil it was
known as the Warrior Prince in Finland, the Invincible Avenger

(01:15:47):
in France, dar the Invincible in Greece, Barbaric Fighter in Hungary,
Lord of the wilds Italy, Khan Warrior Prince Portugal, the
Sacred Warrior, Invincible Warrior Japan, Miracle Master, Seven Great Adventures,
and then Germany beast Master, the Liberator. Any of those

(01:16:10):
stand out.

Speaker 2 (01:16:11):
I like the simplicity of Barbaric Fighter, it's just so basic,
So I'm gonna go with that one. Also, Miracle Master.
What was that one? That's like the Japanese one, it's
the longer.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
Yes, seven Great Adventures.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Right, you got to put that on there, right, So
that's a fun one. And just the fact that Invincible
was used in so many titles, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:16:31):
What's wrong with Beast Master. I don't get that.

Speaker 2 (01:16:35):
Just like why not like call out the actual his
connection to the animals, that's the whole of course, his
whole thing right, keep it simple.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Moving on to box office, so, The Beast Master was
released on August twentieth, nineteen eighty two, and oney thirteen theaters.
An estimated budget of nine million dollars, it would gross
ten point eight million domestically. The movie would debut number
four at the box office, behind a little movie called
et than Front of the Thirteenth Part three, which we've covered,
and An Officer and a Gentleman. It would only stay

(01:17:04):
in the top ten for another two weeks. The beast
Master would be the sixtieth highest grossing movie released in
nineteen eighty two, between Amneyville, Horror II, The Possession, and
Silent Rage. Moving onto reviews. When growing up in the eighties,
we would watch Steak previews of Genie Cisco and Roger
Eber to hear their reviews and watch clips of upcoming movies. Unfortunately,

(01:17:26):
they did not cover The Beast Master on their show. However,
gene Cisco gave it two stars out of four and
wrote that it isn't as bad as much as it
is over long. After one of the film's major bad
guys has been bumped off, the film goes on for
another twenty minutes. In this sort of brainless adventure film.
One climax is enough, okay, kind of what we were saying.

(01:17:48):
Laern Moulton also gave it two out of four stars
in his twenty fifteen movie guide. Rotten Tomatoes gives it
a Tomatometer score of fifty percent, with a popcorn Meter
score of fifty four percent. It also has an IMDb
rating of six point two. It's kind of surprised by
the popcorn Meter score. I thought that would be higher.

Speaker 2 (01:18:08):
Yeah, for sure, at me too, definitely, I if I
may add, of course, another review that I absolutely love
this is a review from Variety. Variety wrote, when The
Beast Master begins, it is very hard to tell what
it is all about. An hour later, it is very
hard to care what it is all about. Another hour later,

(01:18:30):
it is very hard to remember what is all about.
That's it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
Maybe agree with the first part, Yeah, like what is
this movie about?

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
For sure? I cared about Dar and Kirie Tall all right.

Speaker 1 (01:18:42):
Time to move on to additional thoughts and questions. What
are some additional thoughts and questions we have about The
Beast Master?

Speaker 2 (01:18:49):
Bill Bant, Did you ever see any of the sequels?

Speaker 1 (01:18:51):
Yes, I have seen both two and three. They're not
very memorable at all. The second one I hate because
it's a time jump into Los Angeles at the present
day and it's just awful. And they replaced Tinder Roberts
read Harry warr which isn't too bad. She's another very
cute redhead.

Speaker 2 (01:19:09):
Oh boy, I was a big fan of hers. I
wanted her to be in everything. She's Here's wild to
carry warr Man. She has a small supporting role in
the film and a conda. So the only reason why
I go back to watch that movie, which is Wild.
I'm just a big fan of hers. That's funny, Gotcha.

Speaker 1 (01:19:29):
If I was to watch the third one, it would
probably be like watching it for the first time. I
don't remember anything about that one, but I think that
was a TV movie or a straight to video, gotcha. Okay,
so I just pretend the second and third one don't exist,
and I've never bothered with the show.

Speaker 2 (01:19:46):
There you go. Yeah, Well, I've seen all of the sequels.
I'm just kidding. Can you wouldn't that be hilarious if
I'd seen I've never seen the original, which was shown
the most would.

Speaker 1 (01:19:55):
Be kind of odd, all right, Jason? If you were
the beast Master. What animal would you want to have
as your companion?

Speaker 3 (01:20:04):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:20:04):
Great question.

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):
Who's going with you on your adventure? What types of
animals are you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:09):
Going to use? I think the easy answer for me
would be a wolf.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
Oh that's a good one. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
A big fan of the wolves. I think they're amazing creatures.
They're very impressive and very dangerous. But did I ever
tell you that I actually went to a wolf sanctuary.
I've been to two wolf sanctuaries in fact, and you're
able to get very close to these wolves. Yeah, very cool.
I happened the first time I went. I had taken

(01:20:35):
a girlfriend on Valentine's Day because I knew she was
in love with wolves. So I found a sanctuary out
in the desert and we went into this caged thing
and we fed the wolf, and it was very tame.
I don't believe it was one hundred percent wolf, but
this thing was giant. And I happened to be wearing
a particular type of colone that it was attracted to.
And this wolf rubbed its head and its jaw all

(01:21:00):
over my neck and was totally in love with me.
It was amazing and intimidating as hell, but amazing. And
I have a great photo where you can see him
doing this because he just was he was putting his
scent on me and you can see his jaw as
wide open while he's doing it because he was in
the kind of infatuated with me in that moment, just

(01:21:20):
rubbing his face on me. It was awesome and very impressive.
But that's a total tangent. So yeah, I'll go with wolf.
I can't think of what would you choose, Bill Bant.

Speaker 1 (01:21:29):
I think I would either go elephant or gorilla.

Speaker 2 (01:21:33):
Oh god, yeah, well, I mean gorilla is a great call.
Like elephant that would do some damage if you needed
some help in a battle, that's for sure. But a
gorilla that would be cool. That would be really cool
thinking about your connection to the animal, to be able
to see through their eyes and to be able to
communicate with them too and be buds. Gorillas are cool. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:53):
I don't think I could beat the eagle. Maybe an
owl just because of its status, but I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:22:02):
Flying, I don't think so.

Speaker 3 (01:22:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Being able to see like through an eagle's eyes too
and get that bird's eye view if you will, great stuff.
That's a great question. I think it's some other animals.
So this was kind of a question complaint I think
we touched on earlier. Did we want the Juhn Horde
chieftain to have been more of a character? Should he
have been more of a character?

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Yeah? I think so. He reminded me of Lord Humongous
from The Road Warrior, and we just see him. He
never speaks, which is kind of a bummer, right completely,
you'd be great. They both talk the same way. And
only because he has like the antler thing on the
side of his helmet do we even really know he's
in charge? But yeah, I just wish there was something

(01:22:44):
more that stood out about him. I need it more
from him. But what because I don't want to disrupt
the flow of the movie. Is it good that he's
the silent type? But then I feel like they should
have defeated the Jungs first and then gone after may Ax.

Speaker 2 (01:23:00):
All good questions and thoughts. I think maybe he didn't
necessarily need to speak or have a great deal of lines,
because Lord Humongous is great and Road Warrior, you know,
he's not like particularly verbal in that film. I mean,
he had some great moments, but but we just needed
to see him a little bit he just needed to
be more established, that's all.

Speaker 1 (01:23:18):
Yeah, I'm just not one dreder. Sure how I would
do it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:21):
Yeah, and along these same lines, I'll just continue, then,
is that you did we need more of Tanya Roberts
in this film? And I'm not just saying that because
she's an attractive woman, but her character. Do we need
more of this trove warrior or slave girl in the
because she's barely in the first hour.

Speaker 1 (01:23:39):
I guess I think I would have liked to see
more of her trove warrior abilities, maybe if we knew
earlier that she was a warrior that became a slave
or in the temple trying to rescue the king. And
then she goes off and changes from a skimpy slave
girl outfit to a skimpy trove warrior outfit.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
All right, Yeah, now that I say it out loud,
I don't know if we really needed more of her
character necessarily. Does it add or detract from film? Maybe?
I don't know, But this will be my last thought
regarding Kiri is that And this is actually I think
a compliment because to get back to a little trivia,
they actually did shoot or were attempting to shoot a

(01:24:20):
sex scene between Dar and Kirie, and the question would
be would have that been necessary for the film? Would
that have added anything? And I think it's good that
they didn't. I mean, as a young boy, you know,
you want to see more of a beautiful woman whatever
in a film and things these scenarios, but I don't
think it would have added to the movie. So I'm
glad that the sex scene is not in the film.

(01:24:42):
And I think in the trivia to I don't think
they it was too cold or something happened where they
had difficulty filming the scene regardless. So it's funny because
you have two hot actors in this film and it's there.
You know, they're very dars obviously, very lustful toward her
and things like that, but they never hook up. Really,
they make out a couple times, but you're expecting this
full on scene and it never happens. So I'm glad

(01:25:05):
they didn't didn't do it.

Speaker 1 (01:25:06):
Actually, well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because on
the DVD I have, there's a hidden menu, so basically
you have to scroll on the ring oh with the
green eye, so it's off the menu and when you
hit it, it's behind the scenes footage.

Speaker 2 (01:25:21):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:21):
Cool, except most of the behind the scene footage is
naked shots of China Roberts, and one of the shots
of her is coming on to Mark Singer and dropping
her robes, so I guess they're about to have their
sex scene. So they did shoot something, and I wonder
if Tinyer Roberts knew that was on the DVD. It's

(01:25:42):
basically all shots of her being naked. I'm surprised I
got away with that.

Speaker 2 (01:25:46):
I got to give it a no, it exists, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:25:50):
And I also got to give a shout out to
Josh Morad who played Tall. I thought he was pretty
good as a kid actor. I don't think he really
did anything else, but I thought he was good in this.

Speaker 2 (01:26:01):
He worked.

Speaker 1 (01:26:01):
Good call, good call. All right, let's move on to
a rating. So on a scale of one, two five,
death Guards, what would you give the Beast Master.

Speaker 2 (01:26:09):
I give it a really strong three and a half
death Guards Bill Band Again, I think this is a
great B movie. It's more of a B plus, almost
ANUS movie. It is just loaded with everything, really playing
to my sensibilities I mentioned earlier, just the different genres,

(01:26:31):
the different mix of genres, but it is kind of
that wish fulfillment for a boy where you're just like, oh,
how cool would it be to hang out with these
animals and be able to have that type of camaraderie
and connection, and then to you to be able to
work together in order to overcome obstacles and beat the
bad guys and all that stuff. I mean, it's super

(01:26:52):
fun from an adventure aspect. The movie looks great. It's
shot really well, really fun action, beautiful people. So the
acting was serviceable. It was fine. It didn't distract me
too much, and good to see you know, rip torn
chewing it up as you mentioned. So I went into

(01:27:13):
this not knowing anything and came out really happy that
I've seen it, and I would be happy to revisit
it again down the line. I was really surprised, and
it's just fun. It's entertaining. You don't have to think
about it too hard. Shout out to the Birdman creatures.
Those were cool. That's it. I had fun, man, I

(01:27:34):
had a lot of fun. It's good.

Speaker 1 (01:27:36):
Yeah, it's weird. It's a bad movie. That's good.

Speaker 2 (01:27:38):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:27:39):
I still find it very entertaining. As I said from
the get go, younger me would give this five stars,
but almost you. It's three and a half. I think
it still holds up. I think there's a lot of
cool elements in it. The hero's journey does follow that,
and it's cool to see all those elements of the
hero's journey in this movie. There's a ton of creatures
and characters meet throughout the film and trying to keep

(01:28:03):
all that straight of who goes where and what goes
with what. I think, for the most part, you can
keep with it. I really do like the soundtrack for this.
I thought that was pretty memorable and I might need
to get this one in my collection. I think it's
pretty good.

Speaker 2 (01:28:17):
There you go. Yeah, I should have mentioned that as well.

Speaker 1 (01:28:20):
And Mark Singer between this and V Yeah, he was
an eighty's icon for me, especially in the early eighties.
He doesn't seem to get mentioned much, but I enjoyed
him in this. So if you're one of the few
people that have not seen this movie no longer, Jason,
I would give it a shot. Just remember it's nineteen
eighty two, right, It's not going to hold up with
today's standards, but I think there's a lot of good

(01:28:40):
elements to it. It's fun.

Speaker 2 (01:28:42):
Yeah, you're right, it is dated, but you make a
good point. This movie has its place, like a really
solid place in the eighties because it was played so
much on television. And yes, credit to Mark Singer. I
mean he's a known entity for us that grew up
during that decade. Right you hear his name, it's immediately
identifiable and associated with the Beast Master. You just know it.

(01:29:05):
Like I said, I didn't even watch the movie in
the eighties, and I knew who Mark Singer was because
of that movie. He's in fantastic shape, he looks fantastic
and he's good in the movie. So credit to him,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:29:17):
Okay, So that about wraps it up for this week's episode.
As always, we appreciate you tuning in. Don't forget to
follow us on your favorite streaming platform, leave a rating,
and drop us a review, hopefully a positive one. Want
to know more about our show, of course you do.
Head over to All Eightiesmovies podcast dot com for all
the rat details. I hope you join us next time
as we dive into another classic from the gravest movie

(01:29:41):
decade ever, the nineteen eighties. Until then, stay cool and
have an excellent day.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Everyone face the Animal on his own terms. You will
find you are not so very strong. Thanks for staying
up with us.

Speaker 3 (01:29:53):
Goodnight world

Speaker 2 (01:30:26):
S.

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