Deathstalker (1983)

"The warrior Deathstalker is tasked by an old witch lady to obtain and unite the three powers of creation - a chalice, an amulet, and a sword - lest the evil magician Munkar get them and use them for nefarious purposes."

Filled with a plethora of monsters, boobs, blood, decapitations, and no acting ability whatsoever, "Deathstalker" marks the beginning of my new "Fantasy Friday" series in a way that no other '80s sword and sorcery adventure ever could.

There's certainly no other which co-stars Richard Brooker, the third actor to play Jason Voorhees in the "Friday the 13th" series, and the first Jason actor to wear the hockey mask. Did you really think that I would choose a movie which had no association with horror on my blog? Shame on you. Richard Brooker is also very British so that's another good reason to mention him although it's Rick Hill who plays the lead role of Deathstalker.

I was never a huge fan of the "fantasy" genre, but there were some titles which had to be watched back in the day simply because they came from the same Roger Corman stable as a lot of horror flicks. The awesome "Deathstalker" poster was also so proudly displayed by my local video store that I just had to rent the VHS tape to see if anything on it remotely resembled what the artwork suggested. It didn't really, but I was too young to understand why. God help me, I even looked forward to the sequels as they came out over the years.

Obviously, "Deathstalker" is an even lower-budget clone of "Conan the Barbarian" with lots of manly posturing, surprisingly well-choreographed swordplay, and hardly enough plot to keep it going for an hour and a quarter, but what more do you expect from any B-movie apart from cheap entertainment? If you want gratuitous nudity, hot chicks, or just some weirdly homoerotic costumes and a bizarre, magical sex-change, "Deathstalker" has it all. There are some nice gory bits dotted around too.

I'm not going to go into any great detail about the story because it won't stand up to any serious critique. Instead, I've embedded the full movie at the top of this post for you to enjoy.

Let me know what you think of "Deathstalker" in the comments section below.