Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This
Speaker 1: is Rob Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And today's
Speaker 1: movie on Weird House Cinema is the nine fantasy epic
Speaker 1: beast Master two through the Portal of Time. Continuing a tradition. Well,
Speaker 1: we've started on the show of covering the second movie
Speaker 1: in a series without covering the first. We we have
Speaker 1: never discussed beast Master. In fact, I don't know if
Speaker 1: I've ever even seen it all the way through. But
Speaker 1: the first beast Master I think I've seen like half
Speaker 1: of it. Oh, it's it's really good. I feel like
Speaker 1: I can say without any doubt that the original beast
Speaker 1: Master from Don Coscarelli is just a solid um leather
Speaker 1: diaper movie. It's a solid um uh you know, Barbarian
Speaker 1: wasteland conan ask motion picture with some awesome monsters in it, uh,
Speaker 1: some fun performances and a great villain played by ripped
Speaker 1: torn Well, fair enough. If beast Master one is your
Speaker 1: idea of solid would say beast Master two is riven
Speaker 1: with holes. It's like Swiss cheese maybe about to crumble apart.
Speaker 1: But I had a good time revisiting this because I
Speaker 1: remember this movie, uh in that it used to play
Speaker 1: on TV when I was a kid. I think this
Speaker 1: is one of those ones that come on T and
Speaker 1: T late at night or maybe in the middle of
Speaker 1: the afternoon on a weekend. And um, so the reason
Speaker 1: we picked this movie is that Rob we were talking
Speaker 1: about examples of this bizarre sub genre that existed from
Speaker 1: roughly the mid eighties to the early nineties, and the
Speaker 1: sub genre was this, You take your leather diaper barbarian
Speaker 1: or some other greased up fantasy muscleman who uh you know,
Speaker 1: exists in a world of swords and magic, and then
Speaker 1: you have him travel from his strife torn home world
Speaker 1: to the smog filled alleyways of modern day Los Angeles. Surprisingly,
Speaker 1: there was more than one movie with this premise, so
Speaker 1: I would say it's a variant on the standard fish
Speaker 1: out of Water plot, coming pretty close to the format
Speaker 1: that we talked about in our episode on the Nicholas
Speaker 1: Meyer movie Time after Time, the format we were calling
Speaker 1: fish out of Time, except in the case of these
Speaker 1: movies in particular, the beef warrior is typically said to
Speaker 1: be traveling from some other dimension filled with wizards and
Speaker 1: demons rather than just from a point in Earth's real past.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I mean, can you can You
Speaker 1: can make an argument though that it's it's science fiction
Speaker 1: is our imagined future, fantasy is our imagined past. So uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it basically washes out there. Well, it's debatable
Speaker 1: what's what actually happens in this movie itself because the
Speaker 1: title is through the portal of time. But the characters
Speaker 1: in the movie describe l A as being an alternate dimension.
Speaker 1: And I don't know. You can check your history books
Speaker 1: for anything resembling our Lawn and le Rona and the
Speaker 1: Beast Master, and I don't think it really shows up. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe it's a it's a it's a time
Speaker 1: lost to history, right. Plenty of people today also describe
Speaker 1: l A as an alternate dimension as well, So I
Speaker 1: don't guess. So, so we're talking. I don't know exactly
Speaker 1: where the sub genre comes from, but it might all
Speaker 1: be traceable back to the the nineteen eighties seven he
Speaker 1: Man movie Masters of the Universe, in which Dolph Lundgren
Speaker 1: plays he Man. He ends up transported to modern day
Speaker 1: l A for some reason in his quest to defeat
Speaker 1: the evil Skeletor played by Franklin Ngela. Yeah, that that
Speaker 1: was a fun flick. I remember seeing that in the theater.
Speaker 1: Some older kids took me, some like friends of the family,
Speaker 1: and it felt it felt very grown up in many ways.
Speaker 1: It was an interesting an interesting crazy like it was,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of this kind of dark stuff
Speaker 1: in there. They really took the the world of the
Speaker 1: of of the these action figures in the cartoon, and
Speaker 1: they played it downright serious at times, especially towards the
Speaker 1: beginning and towards the end, because you have all this
Speaker 1: like cool stuff where Skeletor looks amazing and he has
Speaker 1: this just I would say, the sweetest band of underlings
Speaker 1: and hinch creatures this side of Empire strikes back. It's
Speaker 1: got Meg Foster is some kind of evil sorceress. I
Speaker 1: think it's got Billy Bartie. Yea Billy Barti's in there.
Speaker 1: You've been playing a magical creature. You've got a lizard man,
Speaker 1: You've got you've got a beast man. You've got some
Speaker 1: sort of a big haired, gnarly dwarf. You have a
Speaker 1: sword guy, and then of course you have the sword guy,
Speaker 1: Dolph Longern playing he Man in a costume designed by Mobius.
Speaker 1: I mean, what more do you need? But I do
Speaker 1: remember the of course, the thing about Master of the Universe.
Speaker 1: You have that whole central section where they're dumped into
Speaker 1: our world. And even at the time, I was like,
Speaker 1: oh man, I kind of wish we could have stayed
Speaker 1: an attorney, you like I, that's where these characters should be.
Speaker 1: Why are they Why are they invading my world? Um?
Speaker 1: But I know you roll with it because eventually you
Speaker 1: get back to it, turning it. You gotta make it relevant.
Speaker 1: But but these weren't the only two movies. Amazingly, you
Speaker 1: dug up at least one other movie where there's like
Speaker 1: a where there's like a sword swinging meatman who ends
Speaker 1: up transported to modern day l A. Was that Time
Speaker 1: Barbarians from n Yes, I have not seen Time Barbarians, uh,
Speaker 1: And I suspect a lot of people have not seen
Speaker 1: Time Barbarians. But it is a film that that definitely exists,
Speaker 1: and um does not feature anyone I'm really familiar with.
Speaker 1: But but it's it's time. It's it's basically the same plot,
Speaker 1: is what we're talking about here, some sort of barbarian dude,
Speaker 1: Chase is a bad guy to modern day l A. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's very much in keeping what we're talking about here.
Speaker 1: So you know, a funny thing is that I just
Speaker 1: realized the third Live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie
Speaker 1: is basically the inverse of this plot. So it takes
Speaker 1: like rad pizza eating modern l A heroes in internal
Speaker 1: form and transports them back to like feudal Japan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the reverse of this, you see with There's there's some
Speaker 1: military applications of this, right, there's there's at least one
Speaker 1: note where the American film and and a Japanese film
Speaker 1: where you have like modern day combat units traveling back
Speaker 1: in time and then potentially changing world events. Um. Speaking
Speaker 1: of of of such, there's um, there's a Hong Kong
Speaker 1: film and I think who this one is a very
Speaker 1: vague memory. It took me a lot to find this film,
Speaker 1: but I believe the Iceman cometh from this is about
Speaker 1: Ming dynasty warriors who get frozen and then wake up
Speaker 1: in modern times and have to battle each other with swords.
Speaker 1: This is often compared to Highlander and seems to have
Speaker 1: maybe been inspired by Highlander, And I guess we we
Speaker 1: have to consider the possibility that the Highlander DNA is
Speaker 1: on all of this as well. Even though those the
Speaker 1: characters in Highlander, the immortals are are traveling through time
Speaker 1: the slow way, and they're they're still uh some, there's
Speaker 1: still a little bit of fish out of water stuff
Speaker 1: like the Kurgan never really adapts. Uh he's in. One
Speaker 1: of the characters in our film today is very much
Speaker 1: in Kurgan mode. Oh yeah. Our Klon played by Wingshauser
Speaker 1: in in Beastmester two has strong notes of Kirgan. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say, I guess I'm not giving Kurgan a
Speaker 1: fair shake. Kurgan does adapt to modern times, but he
Speaker 1: only adapts to like the violent subcultures of modern times.
Speaker 1: He becomes like a punk, body modification biker. But I
Speaker 1: think it's also interesting how many parallels you would find
Speaker 1: in in movies of this kind, because I feel like
Speaker 1: they've all got to have some similar elements. Like your
Speaker 1: Meat Beast discoverers, rock and roll or some of the
Speaker 1: pop music genre. They get into a dance club, or
Speaker 1: they learn about rap music or something and it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: this this music is like nothing I've ever heard. It
Speaker 1: frightens me. Um and then you have a scene where
Speaker 1: the meat beast discovers pizza or chocolate or some other
Speaker 1: food of the gods. You have the meat beast marveling
Speaker 1: at the magic box that shows pictures. You have the
Speaker 1: meat beast terrified by traffic, cars, freeways. And then finally,
Speaker 1: I think you've always got to have a scene where
Speaker 1: your meat beast has an encounter with the local police
Speaker 1: and they're all like, oh, it's another one of these weirdos.
Speaker 1: If there are any amateur film historians out there though,
Speaker 1: that that know where all of this subgenre traces back to,
Speaker 1: is it is it masters or is it is it
Speaker 1: something else? I don't know. At any rate, it is
Speaker 1: a It is a winning formula, even if it doesn't
Speaker 1: always make for great movies, it does make movies that win.
Speaker 1: I wonder what it does say about the sort of
Speaker 1: nature of the muscly hero. And this might be something
Speaker 1: that is explored in some of the serious literature out there.
Speaker 1: You know is reading some of this regarding Hercules. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know the first beast Master film, your your lead character,
Speaker 1: the beating the beast Master himself is uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's played he seriously in this movie he's mostly a dufus,
Speaker 1: So I wonder there's probably something deeper going on there
Speaker 1: about our our relationship to to these like hyper masculine images. Oh,
Speaker 1: I just a thought of another variation. This is not
Speaker 1: exactly the same formula, but it's kind of close. Arnold
Speaker 1: Schwarzenegger's first movie, Hercules in New York. Oh yeah, And
Speaker 1: to a limited degree, you can compare this determinator as well. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean he's coming from the future, he's and he's
Speaker 1: maybe more finely tuned to fit in. He knows exactly
Speaker 1: what he's gonna do. He's not gonna marvel at the
Speaker 1: rock and roll in the pizza too much. But occasionally
Speaker 1: he gets something wrong, like asking for a plasma rifle
Speaker 1: at the gun store. Oh yeah, phase plasma rifle only
Speaker 1: what's you see pal let's stick miller. Yeah, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now here we would usually give the elevator pitch, but
Speaker 1: I think we've already given it. Right, it's beast Master.
Speaker 1: It's l A. What else do you need? Yeah, beast
Speaker 1: Master in l A. That's it. Beast Master learns valley speak.
Speaker 1: Beast Master learns how to party, you know. So I
Speaker 1: guess we should to hear some trailer audio. All right,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Come through the doorway to another dimension
Speaker 1: with the beast Master and the creatures he commands from
Speaker 1: their world to ours. It's the wildest diadventure that time
Speaker 1: has ever known. Beast Master too, through the portal of time.
Speaker 1: Rock and Roll Baby rating pg. Thirteen, Coming August to
Speaker 1: a theater near you. All Right, so you're probably wondering, well,
Speaker 1: who are the fine people who brought this vision to
Speaker 1: the screen. Let's let's talk about the people of note here.
Speaker 1: First of all, the director and uh, and also one
Speaker 1: of the mini writers credited on the screenplay is Silvio Tabbitt,
Speaker 1: Lebanese producer known for his involvement in such eighties films
Speaker 1: as Dead Ringers, The Cotton Club, Evil Speak, Fade to Black,
Speaker 1: and of course The beast Master, the first film. He
Speaker 1: was also associate producer on Alejandro Jodorowski's eight film Tusk.
Speaker 1: This is that possibly lost film about an elephant and Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course he's noted for this movie as well. This
Speaker 1: is his only the only time he directed or did
Speaker 1: any screenwriting. He's again, he's mostly a producer, and from
Speaker 1: here he'd go on to produce Beast Master three and
Speaker 1: n and the sixty six episode cable TV show The
Speaker 1: Beast Master from through two thousand. Now, I don't want
Speaker 1: to do uh too much surmising because I don't know
Speaker 1: what went on behind the scenes here, but I do
Speaker 1: wonder if this is one of those classic cases of
Speaker 1: somebody is involved in the film industry and to the
Speaker 1: extent of putting up the money for films, being the
Speaker 1: lead investor or the producer in that sense. Uh, and
Speaker 1: then they're like, Okay, I get I get how this
Speaker 1: business works. I can be the creative director behind the movie. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think there was something like that. Uh. Like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to go and skip to the two main screenplay
Speaker 1: credits on this because the first is Jim Winnarski, who
Speaker 1: has a story and screenplay credit. This is, of course,
Speaker 1: um uh Jim Warnarski from N six film the n
Speaker 1: S film Schopping Mall, which we've discussed on the show before,
Speaker 1: also notable for Swamp Thing Too and various other films.
Speaker 1: And then uh, the other story screenplay credit goes to R. J. Robertson,
Speaker 1: who lived work in the animation department on Shopping Mall
Speaker 1: and did visual effects on Buckar, Ruban's Eye, Dreamscape, and
Speaker 1: Troll and also wrote Death Stalker two and a few
Speaker 1: other titles. But it seems to be the case where
Speaker 1: I believe Jim Winnarski was going to direct this thing
Speaker 1: and then lost control of the picture. And I didn't
Speaker 1: dig too deep into this, but I think there was
Speaker 1: some bad blood here. I usually don't follow all the
Speaker 1: threads myself because I don't want to sour my appreciation
Speaker 1: of the film. You know, I wanted to be uh
Speaker 1: this fun experience, and I don't want to know too
Speaker 1: much about any kind of beef going on behind the scenes. Well,
Speaker 1: the claim I read, and this was only hearing when
Speaker 1: Norsky's side, so I can't vouch for this being true.
Speaker 1: But what he claimed is that he like worked on
Speaker 1: the script with the understanding that he would get to
Speaker 1: direct it, and then at the last minute tab it
Speaker 1: was like, oh no, actually I'm going to direct it.
Speaker 1: And then so they got into some big legal bruhaha
Speaker 1: about that, and uh and uh when Orsky apparently was
Speaker 1: able to extract some major money or concessions or something
Speaker 1: out of them in order to in order to let
Speaker 1: them proceed. So an in your right. If you're familiar
Speaker 1: with Jim Winnarski's filmography, I feel like you can you
Speaker 1: can identify some of the touches in the screenplay. I
Speaker 1: feel like a lot of this picture feels very much
Speaker 1: in keeping with some of the things I've seen from him,
Speaker 1: especially A Swamp Thing Too. I can easily compare this
Speaker 1: film to Swamp Thing Too well. I was going to
Speaker 1: say that the satirical elements of this script are way
Speaker 1: below the mark of Chopping Mall. Like I feel like
Speaker 1: Chopping Mall is pretty sharp, pretty funny as written, and
Speaker 1: this one it has actors in it that can elevate
Speaker 1: it above the level of the script. But the script
Speaker 1: itself is pretty dreadful. It is a It's interesting because
Speaker 1: it is a It's kind of a self riffing movie.
Speaker 1: There are characters in place whose whose role is to
Speaker 1: riff on things, and uh, I think most of the
Speaker 1: characters come off as dufus is throughout. It's hard to
Speaker 1: think of anyone who doesn't come off as a dufus
Speaker 1: in this movie. Um, but that's ultimately the thing I
Speaker 1: enjoyed the most about it. Yeah, I thought the exact
Speaker 1: same thing. There is at least one major character who
Speaker 1: I'd say multiple major characters who riff on the film
Speaker 1: as it goes. One of them really works and the
Speaker 1: other really doesn't. But we'll we'll come back to that.
Speaker 1: But this actually so the script is not very close
Speaker 1: based on, but partially based on a novel by Andre
Speaker 1: Norton right right. Um. Andre Norton who lived through two
Speaker 1: thousand five, born Alice Mary Mary Norton Um. But she
Speaker 1: published under the pen name Andre Norton. I'm not super
Speaker 1: familiar with that. I don't know that I've I've read
Speaker 1: any of her work before, but she was a pulp
Speaker 1: era genre writer and was seemingly quite prolific. Uh. Fifty nine,
Speaker 1: she wrote a book called beast Master about a Navajo
Speaker 1: former soldier with telepathic links to genetically altered animals. It
Speaker 1: ends up having adventures on other planets. Obviously, very little
Speaker 1: of that was adapted into the beast Master film from
Speaker 1: Don Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman. Uh. They wrote the screenplay
Speaker 1: for the original. But these are these are apparently they're
Speaker 1: like five different beast Master books from Norton. Again, I
Speaker 1: haven't read them. If anyone out there has read them,
Speaker 1: i'd be curious to hear you're taking all of this well.
Speaker 1: You know, I also don't know a lot about Andre Norton,
Speaker 1: but I know that some of her works, like I
Speaker 1: think her Witch World series involved blending science fiction and
Speaker 1: and like magic, fantasy, sword and sorcery kind of stuff
Speaker 1: together in the same universe. And I would say beast
Speaker 1: Master two does that. Yeah, And in that sense, I
Speaker 1: guess beast Master two is more in keeping with the
Speaker 1: sort of of of fiction that she created. And I'll
Speaker 1: I'll briefly point out that there's also someone named Doug
Speaker 1: Miles who has a screenplay credit on this, but I
Speaker 1: couldn't find out anything about them. I think this is
Speaker 1: their only credit on anything. But just for the sake
Speaker 1: of having another human being involved in the creation of
Speaker 1: this strange film, All right, let's move on to the cast.
Speaker 1: We gotta star. Start at the top. Who do we
Speaker 1: have playing the beast Master A man named dar It
Speaker 1: is Mark Singer. What do I think of this Corman's
Speaker 1: I would say that Mark Singer shifts pretty effortlessly between
Speaker 1: the characters two modes in this movie, and they are
Speaker 1: very different modes. One of them is standard Barbarian fantasy
Speaker 1: action hero and the other is befuddled weirdo wandering around
Speaker 1: mostly naked on the sidewalk. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember
Speaker 1: enough about his performance and Beastmaster, though I've again, I've
Speaker 1: seen it so many times um to to really comment
Speaker 1: too much on this, Like, I wonder how much of
Speaker 1: the weirdness is just taking that character out of a
Speaker 1: fantasy setting and placing him in New York, because yeah,
Speaker 1: he often just comes off as this kind of like
Speaker 1: weird dude with ferrets, weird uh you know, lean muscular,
Speaker 1: forty year old with oiled skin who had It's kind
Speaker 1: of an interesting balancing act because they'll have these scenes
Speaker 1: where he is at once very awkward and that he is,
Speaker 1: you know, a fish out of water he's in downtown
Speaker 1: l A. But on the other hand, he is also
Speaker 1: perfectly at ease. He's standing there on the street mostly naked. Again,
Speaker 1: we're just wearing this uh this this leather uh loincloth thing.
Speaker 1: So like somebody turns on the stereo and it plays
Speaker 1: hair metal at him and he's like be fuddled and
Speaker 1: freaked out, what is this? It frightens and confuses me.
Speaker 1: But then in other scenes, you know, he's wandering through
Speaker 1: this now house of the nineteen nineties, and and he
Speaker 1: like easily begins conversing and comforting someone about the death
Speaker 1: of a parent, and it's just like this. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he's, uh, he's incredibly socially competent. In other times
Speaker 1: he's he's out of his depth. Yeah, so it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a weird performance to watch. He mostly
Speaker 1: comes off as a dufus in this when he's not
Speaker 1: actually like fighting, And even then, I don't know an
Speaker 1: argument can be made. Now. Mark Singer is probably best
Speaker 1: remembered for beast Master one and yes, beast Master two,
Speaker 1: along with the eighties V movie and the TV show
Speaker 1: that followed. Uh that we shouldn't forget that there also
Speaker 1: is a beast Master three, uh, and Mark Singer is
Speaker 1: in that alongside Tony Todd, Castor Van Dean and David Warner.
Speaker 1: What yeah, two great actors and A and A Casper. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So Mark Singer has worked a lot over the years,
Speaker 1: and I believe he's still active. Um. Stuff that stands
Speaker 1: out to me. And his filmography includes of voicing the
Speaker 1: man bat On Batman the animated series Oh Wow, and
Speaker 1: he was oh yeah, yeah, I enjoyed those, uh those episodes.
Speaker 1: There's also the film Lancelot Guarding a Guardian of Time. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was O he's the hero opposite John Saxon, and
Speaker 1: that listeners, like hardcore listeners to the show might remember
Speaker 1: that we heard from another listener who worked on this
Speaker 1: film and was almost killed by John Saxon during one
Speaker 1: of the stunts. Maybe it might be a slight exaggeration,
Speaker 1: but yes, the like a sword came in their direction, right, Yes,
Speaker 1: but everybody was okay, Yeah, So anyway, Mark is in
Speaker 1: he's in great shape in this Uh, We've got to
Speaker 1: give him that, and he's Uh. I feel like he
Speaker 1: does everything that is asked of him in this of
Speaker 1: this film. I feel like that's something I can say
Speaker 1: for most of the cast. Uh did they did they
Speaker 1: perform what they could with what they were given? Did
Speaker 1: they even excel in their roles given what they were given?
Speaker 1: I I would say, yes, Okay, I guess from here
Speaker 1: we should move on to talking about I would argue
Speaker 1: are two characters in the movie who both functions simultaneously
Speaker 1: as actors within the plot and sort of characters on
Speaker 1: the satellite of love, riffing the movie as it goes
Speaker 1: except they're in it. Uh, and those would be Carrie
Speaker 1: Were playing Jackie Trent and Sarah Douglas playing Lurana. Which
Speaker 1: do you want to talk about first? Let's talk about
Speaker 1: Carrie Were okay again? Plays Jackie Trent, who is our
Speaker 1: party girl who ends up sucked into the plot of
Speaker 1: this movie. So we'rer was born in nineteen sixty seven.
Speaker 1: This was only her third film role, following Fire with
Speaker 1: Fire and the Adventures of Ford fair Lane, but she
Speaker 1: went on to be in a whole string of interesting things.
Speaker 1: She played Abigail Arcane on The Swamp Thing TV show
Speaker 1: for ten episodes in the early nineties. She went on
Speaker 1: to act in nineteen six Is Thinner And she was
Speaker 1: in Anaconda. Oh, boys, she is in anticonda. I think
Speaker 1: she gets eaten by an antaconda. I would hope. So.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're if you're in anaconda and you
Speaker 1: don't get by a snake, Um, you know, what are
Speaker 1: you doing? No? Wait a minute, now that I think
Speaker 1: about it, Actually she maybe maybe she maybe gets murdered
Speaker 1: by John Voyd. Well that that's good enough. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: similar fate. Uh. So she worked regularly after that with
Speaker 1: runs on sliders in General Hospital. But she was also
Speaker 1: in hell Raiser Debtor from two thousand five, and she
Speaker 1: was in two not one, but two Prophecy films the
Speaker 1: same year, Uprising and Forsaken. I'm sad to say neither
Speaker 1: of those had Christopher Walking in them at all. And
Speaker 1: she's mostly done a lot of voice over work and
Speaker 1: and for animated projects recently, so I gotta be honest
Speaker 1: and evaluate the performance. I don't think it's entirely carry
Speaker 1: Were's fault. I think a lot of it is in
Speaker 1: the lines given to her and how she was clearly
Speaker 1: instructed to perform this character. But I would say her
Speaker 1: character Jackie Trent, is intensely annoying in this movie. There
Speaker 1: were groans of plenty in our house as as the
Speaker 1: movie was being screened. Yeah, um there. I certainly groaned
Speaker 1: some watching them by myself. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I don't know if i'd want a real strong performance here,
Speaker 1: you know, like like there are scenes where she's threatened
Speaker 1: by our main villain, but you never really buy that
Speaker 1: she's in danger. Like those scenes don't feel very terrifying
Speaker 1: in part because of her performance. And I don't know
Speaker 1: that I would want that scene to be terrifying. No,
Speaker 1: she's scored a sort of flippantly uh riffing and reviewing
Speaker 1: the movie as it goes on, So she's not She
Speaker 1: doesn't ever feel very in the plot, which is good.
Speaker 1: I mean that works for how silly this movie is.
Speaker 1: But I would say there's another character who sort of
Speaker 1: does that, but does it so well that this character
Speaker 1: kind of fades back. So the other one is Sarah
Speaker 1: Douglas playing the character le Urana, a sorceress, and I
Speaker 1: would say this is the breakout character of the movie.
Speaker 1: Sarah Douglas is by far the best actor in the film,
Speaker 1: and she makes her character a lot of fun despite
Speaker 1: the dreadfully cringe e writing. I would say this is
Speaker 1: a classic example of a great actor really elevating their
Speaker 1: role above what it would be just on paper. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: she's she's really good. Um, so she was. Sarah Douglas
Speaker 1: was born two probably best known for playing General's odds
Speaker 1: underlying Ursa in Superman one and two, but she was
Speaker 1: also in Conan the Destroyer she played the evil Queen
Speaker 1: and that. She's still active today, mostly in voice work,
Speaker 1: but she's been a ton of weird stuff over the years.
Speaker 1: She played Dracula's wife opposite Jack Palance in Dracula. I
Speaker 1: want to see that now. Yeah, I'm I haven't seen that,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember Dracula's wife from the book. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course I love her in the Superman movies, but
Speaker 1: I guess there's so much going on, and those she
Speaker 1: stood out less in a bad movie like this. She
Speaker 1: really just like beams like the sun. Uh So, now
Speaker 1: I want to see all of Sarah Douglas movies. I've
Speaker 1: got to see her as Dracula's wife. She is, of course,
Speaker 1: also in Jim Warnarski's uh the Return of the Swamp
Speaker 1: Thing from nine. She pops up in puppet Master three,
Speaker 1: Meatballs four, Return to the Living Dead three, and also
Speaker 1: nineteen three Quest of the Delta Nights, which of course
Speaker 1: famously stars David Warner in two different roles. So I
Speaker 1: would say her legacy as a shirt we're not worthy,
Speaker 1: all right, we are just she's She's an interesting there
Speaker 1: because she's also not a pure villain. She's kind of
Speaker 1: a wiener, right, She's a she's in it for herself.
Speaker 1: She's having to work twice as hard as these other
Speaker 1: characters to to achieve what she needs to get. Our
Speaker 1: main like just pure villain that's played very straight, also
Speaker 1: comes off as a dufe as plenty of times, but
Speaker 1: this character is never quite winking at the camera. This
Speaker 1: is the character Arclon, played by wings Houser. I'd say
Speaker 1: this is another standout performance in the film. Our Our,
Speaker 1: Our villain duo or are clearly the highlight for me,
Speaker 1: Sarah Douglas is that ray of sunshine and Arclon is
Speaker 1: just the glowing pits of hell. Yes. Oh, wings Houser,
Speaker 1: there's so much wings Houser in this film. Um, and
Speaker 1: it's it's probably not surprising that he has a screenwriting
Speaker 1: credit as well. Um, so maybe those two are connected, um,
Speaker 1: because he's probably like, I like this, but I think
Speaker 1: this film needs needs more arc lin, I'll have some
Speaker 1: pages for you. Well, yeah, you know, this movie does
Speaker 1: something very well and despite all of our criticisms and
Speaker 1: being honest and having to say, you know, a lot
Speaker 1: of things about the script are not so good. Um.
Speaker 1: It has villains in a silly movie where the actors
Speaker 1: fully commit to going over the top like they're not
Speaker 1: trying to be cool. They're you know, they're they're not
Speaker 1: trying to say, oh, I don't want to look too silly.
Speaker 1: They're they're just going for it and that that works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and uh yeah, Wings Houser goes for it in
Speaker 1: this um So this is the son of Hollywood Disney
Speaker 1: director Dwight Houser, the father of actor Kohle Houser. If
Speaker 1: anyone's seen a Cole Houser movie, I think he shows
Speaker 1: up in in the Fast and the Furious movies at
Speaker 1: some point. Maybe that's right. Wings, if you're wondering, was
Speaker 1: a nickname he earned in high school sports. Uh. This
Speaker 1: apparently is referring to the wing back position in football.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what that means, but that's where it
Speaker 1: comes from. And he was also a musician for a
Speaker 1: spell under the name Wings Living Right, putting out the
Speaker 1: nine album Your Love keeps Me Off the Streets as
Speaker 1: a wonderfully dorky album cover and uh, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know your Love keeps Me off the Street? That doesn't
Speaker 1: sound like a healthy relationship. I feel like there's some
Speaker 1: imbalance going on here. You could make a poster for
Speaker 1: be Smester two. That's like, that's Mark Singer saying that
Speaker 1: to his ferrets. Yeah. So wings Houser is notable for it.
Speaker 1: He's been in a lot of things over the years.
Speaker 1: He played the violent pimp Ramrod and Gary Sherman's vice squad,
Speaker 1: from a film that he also sang the theme song
Speaker 1: for Neon Slime. Um. He's had notable roles in such
Speaker 1: films as Tough Guys Don't Dance. He pops up in
Speaker 1: The Insider, I think playing a big tobacco lawyer. Uh.
Speaker 1: He's also in Tales from the Hood, Watchers, three Mutant,
Speaker 1: and a movie called The Wind. Mutant has been featured
Speaker 1: on Riff tracks before, and The Wind has been on
Speaker 1: my radar for a while that this one looks kind
Speaker 1: of interesting. Wings Houser has a distinctive screen presence that
Speaker 1: I was I was working hard trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to describe, because wait a minute, you didn't. It
Speaker 1: seems like you nailed it in your very first comment
Speaker 1: to me. You texted me just the phrase tooth the egg.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, yeah, to tooth the egg. I think
Speaker 1: that does encapsulate it. But um, he's like, it's easy
Speaker 1: to think. Okay, there's a little bit of Gary Busey
Speaker 1: to him, you know, like maybe he's like a a
Speaker 1: discount Gary Busey, But it's it's more than that. He's
Speaker 1: he's great at portraying this kind of unhinged turbo jock.
Speaker 1: You know, he has that kind of physicality, but he
Speaker 1: also has he had this largish head and a smile
Speaker 1: that's just a full upper dental exam. Like with the smiles,
Speaker 1: you can see all of his upper teeth, and it
Speaker 1: makes for just a wonderfully sadistic smile. I think if
Speaker 1: he had ever actually shaved his head, first of all,
Speaker 1: he would have looked like a tooth the egg, but
Speaker 1: he would have looked a lot like drawings I've seen
Speaker 1: interpretations of the character Judge Holden from Blood Meridian. He's
Speaker 1: also he's also a big guy, which helps tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I think he's I looked up his height. I
Speaker 1: was like, how big is this guy? And then I
Speaker 1: think he's only six too. But but in movies, you
Speaker 1: know a lot of times you're working at opposite actors
Speaker 1: that are are really not that tall in stature, so
Speaker 1: you can still tower over somebody. Um seemed bigger to me, Yeah,
Speaker 1: not like what Vince Vaughn is really tall, Like like
Speaker 1: it probably and like they have to use special effects
Speaker 1: to I think I've just read that he's like six
Speaker 1: six something like that. I don't know. I think he's
Speaker 1: still growing. He's like a reptile. Vince Vaughn's as tall
Speaker 1: as Michael Jordan's or One more thing about about wings
Speaker 1: Houser here is yes, he has a screenwriting credit on
Speaker 1: Best Master two. Um. And he also this wasn't his
Speaker 1: only the only time he had contributed to a screenplay.
Speaker 1: He also contributed to the screenplays of Uncommon Valor, No
Speaker 1: Safe Haven and Skins, from which he also directed. I've
Speaker 1: never seen any of the wings Houser movies. UH think
Speaker 1: you're fine skipping him, but he's pretty tremendous in this
Speaker 1: all right. We have some a few other players in
Speaker 1: smaller roles that I think are worth mentioning. We have
Speaker 1: a we have a couple of cops that show up
Speaker 1: because you gotta have cops on the scene to sort
Speaker 1: of be bewildered by all this barbarian magic that's going
Speaker 1: on in modern day l A. And they're both pretty fun.
Speaker 1: But the main cop character is Lieutenant Cobberly played by uh,
Speaker 1: they always fun, James Avery from Fresh Prince. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he played uh the the patriarch of the family, Philip Banks.
Speaker 1: But but more than that, he also voiced Shredder on
Speaker 1: the original Teenage Mustan Ninja Turtles animated series. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: did a lot of voice acting. I was looking into
Speaker 1: credits and I was like, wow, Yeah, especially some of
Speaker 1: the shows from back in the day. He popped up
Speaker 1: on a lot of those. Um, he he got to
Speaker 1: play a cling on on Star Trek Enterprise. But it's
Speaker 1: did a tremendous amount of TV where going back to
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty I believe he lived ninety five through two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen. In this movie, he lays a a weary,
Speaker 1: exasperated police commander who it's like, he's so tired of
Speaker 1: dealing with like barbarians who show up through dimensional rifts.
Speaker 1: You know, this is like the eighth one this week,
Speaker 1: and it's just really wearing on him. Yeah, alright, um
Speaker 1: now this is we get into a couple of very
Speaker 1: small roles here, but they're worth mentioning. Because Robert Zadar
Speaker 1: shows up in this. I don't think he has any lines,
Speaker 1: but he's you notice him in the background there. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: he may yell something. I'm not sure but that's the
Speaker 1: extent of it. He plays. His character has a name,
Speaker 1: Zavic Robert Zadar live Uh blow budget b movie legend.
Speaker 1: Uh this man Uh, He's the man with a million
Speaker 1: dollar chin. It's kind of shocking that it took this
Speaker 1: long force to cover a film that has Roberts Zadar
Speaker 1: in it. He's probably best known to horror fans as
Speaker 1: the original maniac Cop MST. Three K fans will know
Speaker 1: him best from Soul Taker in Future War, and mainstream
Speaker 1: fans might remember him from playing u of I think
Speaker 1: he plays like a criminal or some sort of a
Speaker 1: heavy and tango in Cash, but he was in all
Speaker 1: sorts of low budget movies, including the excellent Samurai Cop.
Speaker 1: He's the main antagonist in that. He also has a
Speaker 1: role in A Cherry Too thousand, which is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. A memorable character actor h in part due
Speaker 1: to his uh cherubism, which was a medical condition that
Speaker 1: resulted in that in a large jaw line that he
Speaker 1: has sometimes more pronounced in certain roles and certain times
Speaker 1: in his life than others. But he was certainly one
Speaker 1: of a kind. When Sadar shows up on screen, you
Speaker 1: know what you're dealing. With Yeah, if he's in the fight,
Speaker 1: you know, the hero will not win unless it's in
Speaker 1: the last five minutes of the movie. Now another UM
Speaker 1: character actor with a very distinctive look that pops up
Speaker 1: towards the end in a role that will describe later on.
Speaker 1: Michael Berryman appears in the film Michael Berriman was born.
Speaker 1: He was born with hypo hydraulic ectodermal dysplasia, a rare
Speaker 1: condition characterized by the absence of sweat, glands, hair, and fingernails.
Speaker 1: He has over a hundred screen credits, including memorable roles
Speaker 1: of course and Wes Craven's The Hills and Eyes from
Speaker 1: seven at very another memorable role in Weird Science from five.
Speaker 1: He's in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He pops
Speaker 1: up in Star Trek, The Voyage Home, the Barbarians from seven,
Speaker 1: and so much more. Uh. He has a really fun
Speaker 1: role in an episode of Tales from the Crypt, playing
Speaker 1: a creepy vampire hunter opposite of the very likable vampire
Speaker 1: played by Malcolm McDowell. Oh, I haven't seen that one.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll have to check it out. Yeah, the reluctant
Speaker 1: vampire that's the name of it. It's it's pretty fun. Well,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that Barryman barely has a role in this movie.
Speaker 1: It's just a cameo. So it almost seems like they
Speaker 1: were just trying to pull in recognizable people from other
Speaker 1: genre movev is just you know, for a day or something,
Speaker 1: to say, hey, will you be in the scene. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, because someone like Barryman is certainly legendary now
Speaker 1: and and even at the time. I think when they
Speaker 1: were putting this together, it's like, oh, should get Barryman.
Speaker 1: Let's let's bring him in and and really with our
Speaker 1: our next cast member to mention again, this is a
Speaker 1: bit part playing scientists. Number one is Dick Warlock. I
Speaker 1: didn't even notice him. Yeah, I I noticed him only
Speaker 1: because I knew to look for him. But this is
Speaker 1: of course the stuntman and actor best known for his
Speaker 1: work on various John Carpenter projects, including turns as Michael
Speaker 1: Myers and of course The Killer Android and Halloween three
Speaker 1: season of The Witch. Tom Atkins like punches him in
Speaker 1: the stomach and a bunch of orange juice comes out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Dick Warlock does have a line in this.
Speaker 1: I think he's the scientist who yells something when our
Speaker 1: villains steals something from him. H And then finally, Frank Welker,
Speaker 1: the legendary voice actor, is credited with several roles. I
Speaker 1: believe these are all animals, So anytime you hear an
Speaker 1: animal screeching or growling or whatever in this film, it's
Speaker 1: probably Frank Welker in a sound booth somewhere, and that's
Speaker 1: exactly what you should think about when those sounds occur. Wow. Well,
Speaker 1: I gotta say one of the most hilarious recurring things
Speaker 1: in this movie is when Mark Singer himself would screech
Speaker 1: like an eagle to get his eagles attention. Every time
Speaker 1: it happened, it was a fresh delight. Finally, I'll say
Speaker 1: that the music for this film, while nothing that really
Speaker 1: stands out to me, but also something. The weird thing
Speaker 1: is this was a soundtrack that was released on CD.
Speaker 1: So many we've touched on far more interesting scores that
Speaker 1: never had any kind of release, but this one was released.
Speaker 1: It's from Robert folk Borne TV and film composer who
Speaker 1: worked on ace Ventura Too, The Never Ending Story to
Speaker 1: Van Wilder, Two Boys Life Too, lawnmower Man two, and
Speaker 1: Police Academy too. To be fair, he did like seven
Speaker 1: Police getting a movie, so um. He also scored the
Speaker 1: night teen eight two j S. Cardone movie The Slayer,
Speaker 1: which I've mentioned on the show before because it takes
Speaker 1: place on George's own Tybee Island. It seems like that
Speaker 1: comes up every episode. Now I know I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: to break down and watch it again, Okay, but only
Speaker 1: I know I should only watch it if I go
Speaker 1: back to Tybee Island. It's really it's it's best. It's
Speaker 1: best experienced if you have some connection to the place
Speaker 1: where it's films. So I guess if it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about the plot, Rob, I'm gonna say before we
Speaker 1: get to anything else. I don't know if you notice
Speaker 1: the same thing, but for most of the runtime of
Speaker 1: this movie, it does not have enough colors in it.
Speaker 1: There are long stretches where basically everything on screen is
Speaker 1: some shade of orange, and then finally they go to
Speaker 1: l A and then there are a bunch of colors
Speaker 1: and it's great. But like the scenes that take place
Speaker 1: in the fantasy realm are just like orange on orange
Speaker 1: on orange, and it really starts aware on the eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a desert Wasteland World. So I
Speaker 1: guess some of that makes sense, but okay, So to
Speaker 1: address the beginning, the film opens on a setting sun
Speaker 1: on a horizon of sand dunes. Everything's orange, uh, and
Speaker 1: we see a text crawl in orange text saying, in
Speaker 1: the days following the death of King z A darkness
Speaker 1: has fallen over the land of Iraq. Oh I forgot
Speaker 1: the land had a name. I've just been calling it
Speaker 1: like desert World or beast Master World. Okay, it's raqu
Speaker 1: it says the evil warlord r Clan, using unholy magic,
Speaker 1: has enslaved the people. Their only hope rests with the
Speaker 1: rebel forces marshaling in the east under the leadership of
Speaker 1: Dar the Beast Master. I have to say that this movie,
Speaker 1: hilariously at times, puts in a little extra work to
Speaker 1: connect itself to the story of Beast Master one, when
Speaker 1: really it's it was totally unnecessary. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: a movie in which, at one point in l A,
Speaker 1: the Beast Master drives is riding past a movie theater.
Speaker 1: In the movie theater on the marquee, it says Beast
Speaker 1: Master two through the portal of time. Um, and hey,
Speaker 1: any comments on it like that's this is the level
Speaker 1: of movie this is. You really don't have to work
Speaker 1: too hard to stitch it into the plot of the
Speaker 1: previous installment. Also, doesn't it rhet like, doesn't it take
Speaker 1: characters that were killed in the first Beast Master movie
Speaker 1: and just they're alive again? Um like maybe some of
Speaker 1: the animals. Yeah, yes, yeah, at least that's what I read. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's weird that at times they they're throwing in
Speaker 1: extra lines to to sort of connect things, and like,
Speaker 1: does it really matter that the villain and the beast
Speaker 1: Master are brothers. I don't know. It just gives them
Speaker 1: something to talk about while swinging swords. I guess. Did
Speaker 1: you notice that the title when it pops up, it
Speaker 1: says beast Master two Through the Portal of Time. It
Speaker 1: looks like a title that would be printed on the
Speaker 1: side of an arcade cabinet. Like it looks like I
Speaker 1: should say, insert Waite's below it. Yeah, yeah, you're right.
Speaker 1: I didn't think about that when I saw it, but
Speaker 1: now uh yeah, absolutely, like he just washed out on
Speaker 1: Golden Axe or on the Neo Geo machine, and you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's give beast Master two through the Portal of time
Speaker 1: a try, all right, But the opening is you have
Speaker 1: a bunch of evil, faceless warriors in leather armor and
Speaker 1: they're bringing a captive into some underground layer. So we
Speaker 1: have a cave's very orange lit by firelight orange rocks,
Speaker 1: and the the guards take the hood off of the
Speaker 1: captive and it is our hero Dar. You remember him
Speaker 1: from the previous beast Master movie, and uh, how to
Speaker 1: describe Dar the beast Master? I would say he is
Speaker 1: a baby oiled muscle guy in a loincloth wearing a
Speaker 1: leather strap around his forehead so it's under the hair,
Speaker 1: just going around the head and a cascade of blonde
Speaker 1: hair flowing over each year. Yeah, surfer dude, physique, surfer
Speaker 1: dude hair. And so the soldiers are bringing Dar before
Speaker 1: some kind of counsel of creep. So I didn't know
Speaker 1: who these dudes were, but they're these like guys in
Speaker 1: Hood's kind of looks like he has to face the
Speaker 1: judgment of three brain guys from Mystery Science Theater. And
Speaker 1: they sit there and they scowl at him, and we
Speaker 1: get our Arklon reveal because wings Houser walks out and
Speaker 1: sneers mightily. Oh and also we get a brief glimpse
Speaker 1: of Roberts that are here. He's one of the soldiers
Speaker 1: in the background, and he's wearing a hat that looks
Speaker 1: like an upside down boat. Yes. Oh, and I forgot
Speaker 1: how quickly they introduced all the characters here, because the
Speaker 1: lead creep of the Council of Brain Guys pushes Dar's
Speaker 1: sword and satchel off the table and disgust and immediately
Speaker 1: we get a ferret reveal because the bag falls to
Speaker 1: the ground and then two ferrets squeak and crawl out
Speaker 1: of the bag. These are Kodo and Poto, are loyal
Speaker 1: Faret friends for the rest of the film. Yes, they
Speaker 1: don't necessarily do a lot in this film versus the
Speaker 1: first film, but but still they're cute when they're on screen. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it makes for some some weird scenes with the
Speaker 1: brandishing of yes, uh no, no, no no, they're good. I
Speaker 1: like the ferrets. They yeah, you're right, they don't do much.
Speaker 1: They do a bit at the beginning, though. Um so,
Speaker 1: the brain guy renders the verdict. He says the man
Speaker 1: named Dar has been found guilty of complicity with the
Speaker 1: rebels to overthrow the Holy power of Lord Arklon. So oh,
Speaker 1: anti ark laon activities. That sounds very serious, and he
Speaker 1: says the accused has also demonstrated a knowledge of witchcraft
Speaker 1: in his ability to control the beasts of the field.
Speaker 1: So sintences death. What hypocrisy, I know. But so Arclon,
Speaker 1: by the way, won't just take the win and have
Speaker 1: his enemy beheaded. He has to gloat for a while.
Speaker 1: And he does a gesture at the at dar is
Speaker 1: he doing the fig gesture? It kind of looks like it,
Speaker 1: but or maybe he's just making a weird fist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. I couldn't really make it out. I
Speaker 1: feel like it would be a strange choice to have
Speaker 1: the villain of the movie just do the fig into
Speaker 1: the camera. I mean, he may it might have just
Speaker 1: been gesticulating just so hard, you know, because again Wing's
Speaker 1: house or just pours it all into this role, just
Speaker 1: instantly snarling and seething or gloating. Um, there's there's no
Speaker 1: subtlety to this character. And oh and he tries to
Speaker 1: I think tie it into the events of the first
Speaker 1: movie because Wingshouser is like, so, this is the beast
Speaker 1: master who killed our priest may Ox and now challenges
Speaker 1: my authority but was that ripped Horn in the first movie.
Speaker 1: I believe that was Ripped Horn's character. I could be
Speaker 1: wrong on that, but yeah, Ripped Horn played a marvel also,
Speaker 1: you know, totally overacting and chewing up the scene, but
Speaker 1: in a suitably ripped Horn way. He was like he
Speaker 1: had a high priest, loved to sacrifice children. Well, anyway,
Speaker 1: so one of the brain guys says, in the name
Speaker 1: of Lord r Klan, I hereby condemn you to eternal
Speaker 1: damn nation. And I was like, what he can do that? That? Wow,
Speaker 1: I I can say it anyway. So Dar just stares
Speaker 1: at everybody in the scene. He doesn't talk, and they
Speaker 1: take him up to some kind of altar where they're
Speaker 1: gonna decapitate him, you know. They bring up the jack
Speaker 1: catch of our colonia, and just before the axe falls,
Speaker 1: dares rest you by his loyal beast buddies. So his
Speaker 1: tiger rue attacks the guards, and then he's got two ferrets,
Speaker 1: Kodo and Poto. They're the ones that crawled out of
Speaker 1: the bag earlier. They gnaw the ropes off of his wrists.
Speaker 1: And he's got a pet eagle named Shirok who flies
Speaker 1: around squawking at things and there's a big fight scene.
Speaker 1: Eventually it comes down to Dar and Arklon, and Arklon
Speaker 1: has a secret weapon that he uses throughout the entire movie.
Speaker 1: So maybe we should know the name of it. Is
Speaker 1: this rob Is this the Key of Magog? I think
Speaker 1: they only say the name of it once. Yes, this
Speaker 1: is the Key of Macogue. Um. And it's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, it's not not your typical wand it
Speaker 1: has like a laser emitter on both ends and then
Speaker 1: they shoot lasers together which can join into a single being.
Speaker 1: He seems to have. There's the different settings, like sometimes
Speaker 1: he seems to have it set to stun, other times
Speaker 1: he has it set to open giant flaming crack in
Speaker 1: the earth. Um. So I'm not sure exactly how the
Speaker 1: interface works here. He can someone wins out of it,
Speaker 1: some not ms. He shoots a laser, but it's not
Speaker 1: a laser. It like creates a storm. But when faced
Speaker 1: with this laser weapon, Dar pulls out his secret weapon,
Speaker 1: which is going squawking like a bird at his eagle. Uh.
Speaker 1: This hilarious activity that he repeats many times in the film.
Speaker 1: And then the eagle flies in and and just gashes
Speaker 1: up our Klon's face really good, just claws out, destroying
Speaker 1: Arklan's beautiful visage. And every scene after this, our Klan
Speaker 1: wears a Fantom of the Opera mask, but darn is
Speaker 1: his animal buddies escape. They get out of the stone
Speaker 1: fortress right off into the desert, pursued by Arklon's guards.
Speaker 1: And in the next scene we meet the rebels that
Speaker 1: Arklon is so worried about. And once you see them,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't know if it seems like
Speaker 1: he should be all that concerned. These guys do not
Speaker 1: appear to have it together. They are like a gaggle
Speaker 1: of confused men wandering around in the desert, awkwardly holding
Speaker 1: plastic swords. But they do have one ace in the hole,
Speaker 1: which is custody of quote the wind Witch, who is
Speaker 1: the sorceress le Rona. And this is our introduction to
Speaker 1: to Sarah Douglas again, I think the best actor in
Speaker 1: the movie by a mile. When we were watching this,
Speaker 1: Rachel said, Wow, she really puts the wit in which
Speaker 1: and I think that sums it up pretty well. She is,
Speaker 1: as we were saying, operating on a plane of reality above.
Speaker 1: The rest of the movie is like she is riffing
Speaker 1: the movie, but also a character within it. So she's
Speaker 1: all weird jokes, saucy innu window and Austin Powers level
Speaker 1: one liners. Like seconds after her introduction, a rebel leader
Speaker 1: is skewered through the neck with an arrow and she's like,
Speaker 1: I guess he got the point. Uh. Yeah, the first
Speaker 1: of many great one liners from her. Uh. And she
Speaker 1: has something she keeps busting out just because he's so good.
Speaker 1: She keeps she she keeps punching up her material. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's like Roger Moore as James Bond as a sorceress.
Speaker 1: And I guess the idea. At first, I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if she was from our world, if she was from
Speaker 1: l A Uh, But it seems like that's not the case.
Speaker 1: She's just she's either visited it before or she's watched
Speaker 1: it through the time gate enough that she's she's hipped
Speaker 1: to a little bit of what this other world is about,
Speaker 1: and she's picked up some of the lingo. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's right. I think she is a sorceress from
Speaker 1: the fantasy world. She's from a rock or wherever this is.
Speaker 1: And but she has been to l A many times,
Speaker 1: I believe, or at least watched it because she already
Speaker 1: knows how to do Valley speak. But anyway, Lerona tricks
Speaker 1: the rebels into being ambushed by Arklan because that's her
Speaker 1: ultimate game plan. She wants to join forces with Arklon anyway,
Speaker 1: and we find out later that her plan all along
Speaker 1: was to kill him and then take over the kingdom
Speaker 1: for herself. But but at this point, she's just sort
Speaker 1: of like going along with him, I think, to to
Speaker 1: make use of his army, right, and uh, to manipulate
Speaker 1: him as best she can. Like one thing Wingshauser decides
Speaker 1: to do with the Arklon character is he starts cackling
Speaker 1: every time he shoots his magic laser, like it's real
Speaker 1: funny to him. Yes, yeah, there's never a dull moment
Speaker 1: with arc Lan. He's just he's just always letting loose.
Speaker 1: The battle scene here has some really funny fake boulders,
Speaker 1: like he uses the laser to make the boulders roll
Speaker 1: and they're almost perfectly spherical. Yea, there's some boulders following.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty great. Yeah, But ark Laan wins and
Speaker 1: then Lerona the which she makes her appeal. She says, well, yes,
Speaker 1: you have the power of the key of Megog, that's
Speaker 1: his laser Wand but you can't win this conflict without
Speaker 1: my help. Uh. And this is the scene where she
Speaker 1: not only makes the strategic appeal to Arklan, she starts
Speaker 1: using this excruciating valley speaks. At one point, she says,
Speaker 1: chill out, lord, dude, I love it. Perhaps perhaps the
Speaker 1: greatest line in the whole picture. And and he's all like,
Speaker 1: what is this strange tongue in which you speak? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And he keeps h like sh Like at first he
Speaker 1: he tells his guards it's like have her drawn and quartered,
Speaker 1: and then he like kind of tries to fake her
Speaker 1: and he's like burn her alive. And I kind of
Speaker 1: felt bad for the guards here. It's like, oh my goodness.
Speaker 1: Like both of those things take a lot of work.
Speaker 1: Like this guy is such a fuss. He can't just
Speaker 1: order somebody murdered on the spot. No, it's got to
Speaker 1: be a huge production that's gonna just take up time
Speaker 1: and resources. It's a wonder he gets anything done. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, her pitch is that, well, he may be
Speaker 1: the most powerful man in the world, but only she
Speaker 1: can provide him with the power to make himself a god.
Speaker 1: And I think she knows how to appeal to Arclon.
Speaker 1: He is intrigued, so he, you know, he lets her
Speaker 1: live for the moment, and and they're going to set
Speaker 1: up an alliance. And meanwhile we go back to Dar
Speaker 1: and this is onto the swamp sequence, a very weird
Speaker 1: scene that feels visually at least out of place with
Speaker 1: the rest of the movie. But here's the basic rundown. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Arklan's guards still chasing Dar. They chase him into
Speaker 1: the swamp. Then they are mauled by some kind of
Speaker 1: horrible bog critter with glowing eyes that looks sort of
Speaker 1: like a cross between swamp thing and Augura from the
Speaker 1: Dark Crystal. Then swamp critter attacks Dar, but then tops
Speaker 1: and then it starts to talk, and it gives him
Speaker 1: a whole speech, the gist of which is, I am
Speaker 1: your aunt. I was turned into a swamp critter because
Speaker 1: I did unholy rituals Our Clawn is your brother, and
Speaker 1: you have to defeat him or it will be the
Speaker 1: end of the world. I believe that Jim Narsky has
Speaker 1: has commented that the original script or somebody I've read
Speaker 1: somewhere that the original script was more based in the
Speaker 1: fantasy world in less than hours, if not exclusively in
Speaker 1: the fantasy world, I'm not sure, but like, this is
Speaker 1: definitely a scene where that feels like an artifact of
Speaker 1: an earlier draft that maybe was more connected with things
Speaker 1: in uh, an earlier draft of the script. I love
Speaker 1: that it's his aunt though, what a choice. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he's totally surprised that he's like, I didn't even know
Speaker 1: I had an aunt, much less that she was a
Speaker 1: swamp critter. Yeah. Anyway, next scene, we finally get the
Speaker 1: Portal of time reveal. Uh so, uh, Rob, can you
Speaker 1: describe the scene? This is the scene where le Rona
Speaker 1: shows off the portal to l A uh to Arklon,
Speaker 1: and Arklon, as he does many times in the movie,
Speaker 1: can't pronounce the words she's telling him from our world correctly.
Speaker 1: So she's like the natives call it l A and
Speaker 1: he's like a l A yeah. And and in first
Speaker 1: season not sure that this is an actual portal. He
Speaker 1: thinks it's an illusion, but he's he's very impressed, and
Speaker 1: she quickly impresses upon him that, like, this is the
Speaker 1: place where you can really make your future because it's
Speaker 1: l A right. Uh, this is this is the place
Speaker 1: that that that draws many people who who are dreaming
Speaker 1: of reaching that next level of success. You know, some
Speaker 1: people want to get into the movie. Some people want
Speaker 1: to you know, rule the world. And uh and that's
Speaker 1: where where Lan comes in here. Well, yeah, she gets
Speaker 1: him all riled up about something called a neutron detonator,
Speaker 1: which is some kind of device that, if detonated, will
Speaker 1: destroy the entire world and uh so, and she's like,
Speaker 1: they have it in this world, but you can steal
Speaker 1: it and bring it back to our old and then
Speaker 1: you will rule with no challenge. I mean, luckily she
Speaker 1: is just manipulating him here, so we can sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, dismiss a lot of the ridiculousness of this.
Speaker 1: She's just saying, there's something so powerful can to destroy
Speaker 1: a world here? Don't you want that? And he's like, yes,
Speaker 1: of course that sounds awesome. Um though, of course, in reality,
Speaker 1: like I was thinking about this a little bit, it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's assume this is essentially a nuclear weapon. If our
Speaker 1: Klon brings a nuclear weapon back to his barbarian fantasy world,
Speaker 1: like the applications they are pretty limited. Uh, Like, you've
Speaker 1: got to have a very specific use of said weapon
Speaker 1: in order to really do anything in the world that
Speaker 1: that benefits yourself. Like I was, I was trying to think, well,
Speaker 1: what what could he do? Like, yeah, I guess you
Speaker 1: could smuggle it into like a rival kingdom and set
Speaker 1: it off. Um. I think at one point in the
Speaker 1: in our Scott Baker's um Uh fantasy series, there's a
Speaker 1: use of an atomic weapon in a fantasy the setting
Speaker 1: that that ultimately makes sense. I think, okay, that that
Speaker 1: seems like the kind of thing you could do if
Speaker 1: you could, you know, position it in a place where
Speaker 1: an advancing army might run into it. But but otherwise, yeah,
Speaker 1: what's this going to do for him? Uh? And he
Speaker 1: doesn't really understand it either, though it is neat that
Speaker 1: when he first sees a car, he's like, oh, these
Speaker 1: these would really help us, And that ultimately makes more sense,
Speaker 1: Like you can imagine if he just had a fleet
Speaker 1: of trucks, that is something that can make a strategic
Speaker 1: difference in the world that he comes from. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: is what he should want his cars. And in fact, yeah,
Speaker 1: he does see it. He goes, what an incredible machine
Speaker 1: with this, I could rule the world and uh, and
Speaker 1: Sarah Douglas is like, it's called a car and he says,
Speaker 1: a dor no, a car, A car. Oh. But also
Speaker 1: at the time they're looking at this portal, we get
Speaker 1: a peek at the other side and we meet our
Speaker 1: main character from the real world, played by Carrie we Were.
Speaker 1: This is Jackie Trent, daughter of a certain Senator Trent,
Speaker 1: which I think is also the name of bad guy
Speaker 1: from one of those other bad eighties action movies that
Speaker 1: Hard to Kill or something. Um. Anyway, Jackie is a
Speaker 1: twentysomething Californian who likes to party and likes who enjoys
Speaker 1: reckless driving. And in the first scene, she is driving
Speaker 1: recklessly while speaking to her father on a mobile telephone.
Speaker 1: The police are in hot pursuit She's trying to outrun
Speaker 1: them while she is listening to knock off Kinney Loggins.
Speaker 1: It is uh, it felt very on the nose from
Speaker 1: it was like, you know, it's like, I'm all good,
Speaker 1: nobody be concerned about me. Yeah. I don't think they
Speaker 1: licensed I could be wrong in this, but I don't
Speaker 1: think they licensed any music for this. I think all
Speaker 1: the rock songs and hit songs that we hear in
Speaker 1: this are composed by Robert Folk. Okay, that would make sense.
Speaker 1: They're they're original for the movie. I mean, this just
Speaker 1: felt like somebody was like, can you create a track
Speaker 1: that sounds like Kenny? I mean, missed opportunity to not
Speaker 1: get wings Houser to sing any of them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: they're enough. But as the portal opens up, she and
Speaker 1: the police that are in pursuit of her all end
Speaker 1: up accidentally driving through the dimensional portal, which on the
Speaker 1: l A side is just the dead end of an alleyway.
Speaker 1: It's just a wall. So she and the cops were
Speaker 1: planning on just driving straight into a wall, except for
Speaker 1: going through it, and of course they're immediately confronted with Arklan.
Speaker 1: Jackie drives away into the desert, but Arclon scares the
Speaker 1: cops into jumping back through the portal and leaving their
Speaker 1: police interceptors behind. And this is where we get the
Speaker 1: scene where where Lerona has to explain to him that
Speaker 1: it's pronounced car, not dar. But so Jackie drives miles
Speaker 1: and miles out into the flat, roadless desert in the dark,
Speaker 1: her car runs out of gas and then she just
Speaker 1: gets out and walks okay and out here she ends
Speaker 1: up meeting up with Dar, the Beastmaster. I think she
Speaker 1: is woken up because the tiger is licking her hand,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's it's one of those weird things. I
Speaker 1: feel like there are dynamics like this in other sort
Speaker 1: of world's colliding movies where the character just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to realize they are in an alternate world full of magic,
Speaker 1: even though it should be obvious. She keeps saying things
Speaker 1: like does Triple A have service out here? And then
Speaker 1: she meets Dar. She's like, are you a biker or something? Oh?
Speaker 1: Another one was you know, she's like, my daddy will
Speaker 1: pay you to get me back to l A or
Speaker 1: even it, just get me to A seven eleven and
Speaker 1: he's like seven eleven. But then he says, okay, you
Speaker 1: may join me on my journey westward. Perhaps there you
Speaker 1: will find the land you seek. So of course they're
Speaker 1: going to become fast friends, because this is it's not
Speaker 1: exactly a buddy cop movie because it's not cops, but
Speaker 1: it's like a buddy Barbarian movie. It's time buddies. Oh
Speaker 1: and another thing I thought was funny here is so
Speaker 1: she gets acquainted to Dar and his animals and she's
Speaker 1: like all impressed by by the relationship he has with
Speaker 1: all the animals. So she's freaked out by the tiger,
Speaker 1: and she's grossed out by the ferrets, calling them rats.
Speaker 1: But I was confused by this because ferrets are not
Speaker 1: a mythical animal. There are ferrets back on Earth. I
Speaker 1: guess you just never seen them before. Yeah. So I
Speaker 1: like how some people grow up thinking unicorns are real
Speaker 1: and then you know, they're disappointed to find out it's
Speaker 1: not the case. Some people find out that ferrets are
Speaker 1: real and it's I guess in a magical time. Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So they end up scampering around all over the desert.
Speaker 1: Dar shows her how to eat roots to survive and
Speaker 1: she says, no thanks, I'll stick with the salad bar
Speaker 1: and uh. And then there's a very weird and funny
Speaker 1: scene where Dar lets Jackie hold his ferrets. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is one of those great creepy animal guy sequences. Um well.
Speaker 1: One thing that is kind of neat about their relationship is,
Speaker 1: unless I'm forgetting something, they never set up any kind
Speaker 1: of like romantic connection between these two. Um not really.
Speaker 1: I think there is a there is a brief and
Speaker 1: very chaste kiss at the end, she just kind of
Speaker 1: like pecks him on the face. But yeah, otherwise it's
Speaker 1: just portrayed as a friendship. But anyway, so you know,
Speaker 1: they wander around making friends. But eventually Beastmaster and Jackie
Speaker 1: are attacked by Arclon's goons and they disabled darr with
Speaker 1: some kind of neon yellow little like gas bomb thing,
Speaker 1: and then they kidnap her, basically so that Lurana and
Speaker 1: Arklon can use her as a guide to the world
Speaker 1: of l A to show them where the supposed neutron
Speaker 1: detonator is. And in this scene, she's still doing her
Speaker 1: like riffing. She's like, what am I in the Twilight Zone?
Speaker 1: And she keeps calling Arclon leather Face, which I thought
Speaker 1: was pretty good. Yeah, there's another point where I think,
Speaker 1: like a random punk on the street calls him Darth
Speaker 1: Vader and uh, and he's a quote he's again wing's
Speaker 1: house or just playing the character very straight, and it's
Speaker 1: just you know, confused or bewildered or you know, slightly
Speaker 1: angered by all of this, but never really gets the jokes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at one point he's like, leather Face, what do you mean?
Speaker 1: But of course they go through the portal of time,
Speaker 1: which deposits them in a dead end alleyway, and then
Speaker 1: Dar chases them, and arc Lawn ends up trapping Dar
Speaker 1: in the alley way by blowing up a gas pipe
Speaker 1: that sends a jet of fire screaming across the width
Speaker 1: of the alley. And I was like, Oh, that's funny,
Speaker 1: because I feel like that is a common method used
Speaker 1: to prevent your progress in a certain direction in a
Speaker 1: video game. You need to go some before. Oh sorry,
Speaker 1: there's a jettifier here. You gotta go find a way
Speaker 1: to turn it off, get the get the key card access,
Speaker 1: and you always have to shut it off yourself. You
Speaker 1: can't just like call the gas company, which would be
Speaker 1: the thing to do, all right. Well, but so eventually
Speaker 1: the police show up in this uh in in the
Speaker 1: alley way, and so here's Dar with his animals, and
Speaker 1: we meet Lieutenant Cobraly again played by James Avery of
Speaker 1: Fresh Prince of bel Air and uh. He again plays
Speaker 1: this weary, no nonsense police commander who has this creepy
Speaker 1: little underling in a bow tie. And they in a
Speaker 1: very sad but they tranquilize Rude the tiger. They shoot
Speaker 1: him with a tranquilizer dart and he passes out. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's very traumatic for Dar because Dar doesn't
Speaker 1: know about tranquilizer darts. He probably thinks his loyal tiger
Speaker 1: friend has been killed but never feared Ru will be back.
Speaker 1: Later in the movie, Uh Darr himself gets tazed and
Speaker 1: taken to the police station, and then next up is
Speaker 1: I would say a real stand out one of the
Speaker 1: most memorable sequences of the film, the clothes shopping scene. So,
Speaker 1: thinking back on it, I know it's not really this
Speaker 1: way if you measure it, but my general impression in
Speaker 1: retrospect was that the makeover clothes shopping scene where our
Speaker 1: clan le Rona and uh and and carry we we're
Speaker 1: go into the fashion store, takes up approximately the middle
Speaker 1: third of the movie. Yeah, it goes on for quite
Speaker 1: a while. We keep jumping back to it. Um it's
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shopping to be done here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so they go into a store. I think learn
Speaker 1: is like, we need we need clothes so we can
Speaker 1: fit into the modern world. And our clan is of
Speaker 1: course just being violent and menacing in the men's section,
Speaker 1: but Lerona is clearly interested in srying some things on
Speaker 1: and then it finds it's like a smashing blue dress
Speaker 1: that she try. Yeah, yeah, she's clue, she's all about fashion,
Speaker 1: and you know, she looks great. But also it's funny
Speaker 1: because Jackie escapes while Arklon is literally trying on clothes.
Speaker 1: He like gets into the fitting room and she's just
Speaker 1: like okay out of here and runs out the door.
Speaker 1: And then when Arklon comes out and discovers she has left,
Speaker 1: he gets so mad and he destroys the store with
Speaker 1: his key of mcgogue. Um. Meanwhile, Lerona runs out on
Speaker 1: her own in a fabulous new outfit which I don't
Speaker 1: think she paid for. Oh yeah, I don't think so either.
Speaker 1: And I guess Arklon makes it out when this green
Speaker 1: jacket or overcoat that he tries on, like he he
Speaker 1: only tries on the one thing, but he he does
Speaker 1: seem taken with it. There's this great scene with him
Speaker 1: kind of uh you know, posing in front of the
Speaker 1: mirror and uh, it's uh, it's a nice moment where
Speaker 1: one of the many moments I guess we're our clan
Speaker 1: comes off of this as a dufus despite Wing's house
Speaker 1: or playing the role very straight. I like that moment.
Speaker 1: This looks wonderful on me. I look so terrifying in
Speaker 1: this green coat. But he's this color. I've never seen
Speaker 1: it in my That's true. In my world, we only
Speaker 1: have orange clothes. Uh No, he he is wearing this
Speaker 1: green jacket and to be honest, doesn't look that great
Speaker 1: on him. It's it's kind of a baggy fit. It
Speaker 1: just doesn't look right. He did he did no fashion
Speaker 1: He does no fashion job. There's also an interrogation scene,
Speaker 1: so you got back to Dar in the police station
Speaker 1: and uh, Lieutenant co really is asking him all these questions.
Speaker 1: But uh, in a true mob movie fashion, Dar keeps
Speaker 1: his mouth shut. He says nothing. It's like one of
Speaker 1: those other scenes where like a real hard and criminals like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't snitch, I don't talk to cops, but I
Speaker 1: don't understand like where he gets this attitude, Like what
Speaker 1: what Like he's just it's it's like we're in that movie,
Speaker 1: but there's no reason for for the beast Master to
Speaker 1: be that kind of hard and like what what interactions
Speaker 1: with the police is he having back in his home dimension? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And also I mean he's lucky enough that they went
Speaker 1: to another dimension where people also speak English, so every
Speaker 1: everybody understands each other. Why not just explain things to them?
Speaker 1: Try your luck. It would have been funny if he's
Speaker 1: just like lawyer, I want the demand right of counsel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they bring a lawyer from the fantasy world. It's
Speaker 1: like a guy in a druid robe, like David Warner. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's one of the brain guys from the first scene.
Speaker 1: But he ends up escaping the police station. He gets
Speaker 1: into Jackie's car because she just happens to pull up
Speaker 1: outside right when he's leaving. And then here for a while,
Speaker 1: we get a big stretch of the movie where it
Speaker 1: just turns into Jackie and Dar doing fish out of
Speaker 1: time gags. So we get Dar discovers rock and roll.
Speaker 1: He says it's like an earthquake. He's kind of afraid
Speaker 1: of it at first, but then I think he kind
Speaker 1: of likes it. Yeah, that's how it goes. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then Dar discovers fancy food. Jackie takes him back to
Speaker 1: her mansion where they meet where they meet her her
Speaker 1: snooty butler, and the butler gives them a fancy food
Speaker 1: and Door is like, oh, it is delicious, but is
Speaker 1: it to eat or to look upon. Uh. Then you
Speaker 1: also get Dar discovers daytime TV. Dar learns about cussing.
Speaker 1: It's it's good stuff. You know. This does remind me
Speaker 1: briefly another almost literal fish out of Water film. There
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun I haven't seen it and forever,
Speaker 1: but I remember enjoying romantic comedy Splash, in which Darryl
Speaker 1: Hannah plays a mermaid opposite um Tom Hanks. I've never
Speaker 1: seen it. Oh, it's just like fun stuff where like
Speaker 1: she's literally a mermaid who's lost your legs, you know,
Speaker 1: very much lost her her fin her fish parts, rather
Speaker 1: than you know, has now his legs. But there's a
Speaker 1: scene where he takes her to a fancy restaurant. She
Speaker 1: orders like a lobster and she starts eating at whole. Great. Great,
Speaker 1: it's pretty good. Oh. I like how Door invites you know,
Speaker 1: he's got his ferrets and he invites the eagle in,
Speaker 1: and there there's a great eagle versus Butler scene. But
Speaker 1: eventually they end up watching TV and they're watching the
Speaker 1: news and there I think there's something on the news
Speaker 1: about like somebody's trying to steal a neutron detonator. And
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's Arklan, we gotta go get him.
Speaker 1: So the major scenes remaining are there's there's a big
Speaker 1: heist scene with the neutron detonator with Arklon dressing up
Speaker 1: as a military guy to get into a secret base,
Speaker 1: and nobody makes note of the fact that he's got
Speaker 1: a Phantom of the Opera mask on under his general's hat. Right. Oh,
Speaker 1: and this was also when he steals the clothing for
Speaker 1: the from the general. He also does some sort of
Speaker 1: telepathic mind meld where he steals all of his memories
Speaker 1: so that he can better move around in this world.
Speaker 1: And it's one of these um like third act magic powers,
Speaker 1: where like where was his magic power earlier when you
Speaker 1: first arrived in l A And we're acting like a
Speaker 1: total du FEUs the whole time, like maybe you should
Speaker 1: have used that then. And then also I was overthinking
Speaker 1: and partially because I'm watching h excellent television show Severed
Speaker 1: right now. It made me think, well, if you absorb
Speaker 1: every this guy's memories, Like, how does that work? Are
Speaker 1: those memories consolidated with your memories? Are you a different person? Down?
Speaker 1: Are now? Arc line? You know, it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: be the case. It seems like these new memories are
Speaker 1: compartmentalized somewhere, downloaded and kept in a different file folder. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems to be how it works. Oh and I
Speaker 1: so Wingshauser and Sarah Douglas meet back up in the
Speaker 1: in the military base because she's there also in disguise.
Speaker 1: I guess to help him, But then there's a rift
Speaker 1: because he uses his new power again on her, Like
Speaker 1: when they're about to escape with the thing, he like
Speaker 1: grabs her head and he's like, oh, you were gonna
Speaker 1: kill me and and take over after after we got back,
Speaker 1: So uh, I to to heck with you, and he
Speaker 1: throws her out of the jeep and drives off by himself.
Speaker 1: And here's her sort of hero turn, and she turns
Speaker 1: from the nominal villain into a nominal ally. She she
Speaker 1: sort of hooks up with dar and Jackie and his
Speaker 1: like we've got to stop him. So, because the neutron
Speaker 1: detonator has been taken, the police end up recruiting this
Speaker 1: guy who I was just calling the bluey guy. What
Speaker 1: was the steel He's like a retired general or something,
Speaker 1: but he knows how this device works, a device which
Speaker 1: which is now taking down because you know, our clan
Speaker 1: doesn't know how this works. It is going to explode
Speaker 1: in like an hour and then then in half an hour,
Speaker 1: and then it's going to apparently destroy the entire world.
Speaker 1: And this guy is our our only hope at actually,
Speaker 1: because you know, beast Master can stop ar clon, but
Speaker 1: still somebody needs to turn this device off. But so
Speaker 1: it's this guy who just sits around saying like blue
Speaker 1: but hey, if you're going to guess they go to
Speaker 1: l A and the beast Master has to have a
Speaker 1: final showdown with the villain of the film. Is gonna
Speaker 1: be somewhere in l A. Where would you guess it
Speaker 1: would be in l A? Oh? Yeah, you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many great places that it could have been that
Speaker 1: they probably couldn't have gotten the film rights, uh you know,
Speaker 1: location rights too, but they decided to go, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, the tar pits would have been nice, okay,
Speaker 1: But um, I feel like the choice they went with
Speaker 1: this kind of obvious because they go to the zoo, right,
Speaker 1: I thought it would be maybe the Scientology Celebrity Center
Speaker 1: that instead it is it is the zoo, and they
Speaker 1: really they really played for laughs though, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: this zoo showdown. H Like you made me think back
Speaker 1: to Masters of the Universe, where we have all of
Speaker 1: our mid movie fish shout of time shenanigans, like oh
Speaker 1: what are what is? What is this food on these sticks?
Speaker 1: You know that that wonderful scene. But then at the
Speaker 1: end of it we get this like traumatics, not traumatic dramatic.
Speaker 1: It's not really traumatic, I guess unless you're a big
Speaker 1: Skeletor fan. Um. This is this this wonderful showdown between
Speaker 1: he Man and Skeletor where Skeletor becomes like a golden god.
Speaker 1: And it's really splendid and like ultimately kind of like
Speaker 1: high fantasy and epic and and played mostly seriously. Here
Speaker 1: the it is a battle between beast Master and arclon
Speaker 1: Um whilst the animals watch on and hoot, whilst an
Speaker 1: audio track is playing describing a a spiny ant eater
Speaker 1: or something or hedgehog and uh and a lion. It's
Speaker 1: just all played for for goofiness, and it's very goofy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a sword fight. It's like the ground is
Speaker 1: cracking and full of fire, like there's a you know,
Speaker 1: volcanic earthquake underneath them. Cut to a chimpanzee clapping and laughing. Yes.
Speaker 1: But then finally and the oh, there's so many moments
Speaker 1: where like, you know, you've got to have the thing
Speaker 1: where the hero gets the better of the villain or
Speaker 1: disarms them or something, and then they're like, you can
Speaker 1: still live, and the villain is like, no, I must
Speaker 1: do evil and die, and so that happens, I think,
Speaker 1: I think literally, Wingshauser says, I hate peace. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a nut clutch in there. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. And then finally Dar ends up throwing Wingshauser
Speaker 1: into the crack in the earth, and as he's plunging
Speaker 1: down into the fire, he just yells, the world is mine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's like, I am winning so hard as he falls
Speaker 1: to his flaming death, which I believe is the same
Speaker 1: way Ripped Horns villain died in the first film, falling
Speaker 1: into a sacrificial fire. So you know, the they defeat that,
Speaker 1: they get the kablue and the guy in there to
Speaker 1: disarm the neutron detonator, and then uh, and then we
Speaker 1: get to say our emotional goodbyes between Darr and Jackie,
Speaker 1: because of course, you know, she must stay in her
Speaker 1: world and he must return to his But Dar decides,
Speaker 1: you know what, Jackie and my ferrets, they have become
Speaker 1: such good friends. I'm gonna let the ferrets stay. So
Speaker 1: Kodo and Podo the ferrets are West Coast ferrets now. Oh,
Speaker 1: and then there's a great stinger at the end, which
Speaker 1: is when when Dar goes back to his own universe,
Speaker 1: Jackie trance red sports car, her Porsche is sitting in
Speaker 1: the desert still and now it does an object of
Speaker 1: pilgrimage the people of the beast Master world. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is this is where Berryman shows up. Is one
Speaker 1: of the like the lead pilgrim that's talking. It's like,
Speaker 1: come see this wondrous device that was left by the
Speaker 1: gods in the desert. We all want to know how
Speaker 1: it works. Oh and then the desert Pilgrims they learn
Speaker 1: how to dance after they activate the stereo system and
Speaker 1: it starts playing hair metal and you see them kind
Speaker 1: of like swaying. Yeah. Open, Wait, one last question I
Speaker 1: have about the plot. Do we ever find out what
Speaker 1: happens to Lurana at the end. I don't remember now
Speaker 1: that that I guess the man. I don't know if
Speaker 1: the scene was cut or what. But I don't think
Speaker 1: she died or anything. Sometimes you see that where the
Speaker 1: villain or the you know, a villainous character has a
Speaker 1: hero turn, but they still have to pay the price
Speaker 1: for their their misdeeds. But I think she just vanishes.
Speaker 1: We don't see what happens to her. She's just living
Speaker 1: on in l a. Yeah, and in more power to her.
Speaker 1: She'll fit right in. But the final moment is also
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. I don't know if you've caught
Speaker 1: all the details of this, but the Eagle cries and
Speaker 1: Dar must now run off into the sun set uh
Speaker 1: in a wonderful sunset in the in the background here
Speaker 1: with his tiger beside him, you know, to fight another
Speaker 1: day and carry on adventures and so forth. But it
Speaker 1: quickly becomes clear even his credits are beginning to roll
Speaker 1: that this, uh, this sunset is of course Matt painting,
Speaker 1: and and the tiger moves up a little bit, but
Speaker 1: then stops and kind of looks around and then walks
Speaker 1: off screen. Meanwhile, um Mark Singer in The Beast master
Speaker 1: Guard has run up as close as he can and
Speaker 1: is basically just running in place for I guess the
Speaker 1: duration of the credits there, um, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: moving back and forth, but there's nowhere else for him
Speaker 1: to run. He's just running in place. Wow, I did
Speaker 1: not catch That's it's worth going back and watching. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'd say in the end about beast Smester two,
Speaker 1: not a great film overall, but but wings Houser is fun,
Speaker 1: Sarah Douglas is transcendent, the ferrets are very cute, and
Speaker 1: uh and this was a really fun episode of Weird House. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one was a lot of fun. I'll you know,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a love letter to l A this film.
Speaker 1: But but also I will say that, Hey, if anyone
Speaker 1: out there is a beast Master one purist and you're like,
Speaker 1: I don't want any part of this film traveling to
Speaker 1: l A, No, well I want to just I want
Speaker 1: to advise you give beast Master two a chance, because, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not beast Master one. It's its own thing.
Speaker 1: It's goofy, it's it's it's dumb, but it is it's
Speaker 1: it's tremendous fun. Now, unfortunately they're not a great there
Speaker 1: are there aren't a lot of great ways to watch
Speaker 1: this film in decent quality right now. Uh, For instance,
Speaker 1: Vinegar Syndrome put out an absolutely beautiful blu ray of
Speaker 1: the Beast Master a few years back, Like one of
Speaker 1: these was just beautiful packaging and original art work and
Speaker 1: so forth. Uh, they did not give the same treatment
Speaker 1: to Beast Master two. I believe there is a DVD
Speaker 1: edition from Cargo Records out there that you can you
Speaker 1: can easily buy a very affordable price. Uh, but so far,
Speaker 1: that's it. There's no blu ray release of this film
Speaker 1: as of this recording. But hey, hopefully, hopefully the future
Speaker 1: will will prove me wrong. All right, If you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll
Speaker 1: find it every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed were generally, you know, a science podcast.
Speaker 1: We're more concerned with, say like the consolidation of memory,
Speaker 1: or the or or even the speculative time travel and
Speaker 1: the limitations uh involved there. But on Friday's we put
Speaker 1: most of those serious matters aside and we consider a
Speaker 1: film such as Beastmaster two, which you know, a film
Speaker 1: that may raise some of these questions, but you know
Speaker 1: that does not require uh intensive research to answer. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 1: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 1: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 1: production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.