Marc Singer is back looking more leathery than before and sporting some rather obvious hair extensions to his blonde locks. Is it me or does he look less buff than before also?
So the Beastmaster is in trouble again as we find out he has a half brother who just happens to be conveniently evil. At his side is the somewhat evil sorcerer Sarah Douglas, looking gorgeous as ever, together they find a portal that lead them to Earth in the early 90's and decide they want to pinch a neutron bomb (yep that's right). Its up to Dar to follow them through and errmm...stop this catastrophe!
Firstly the portal they go through apparently leads them to another dimension, a parallel universe, not through time at all, but that is merely one huge plot hole of many. The entire film is a complete pile of dingo doo doo, it has nothing to do with the first film and doesn't follow on from that in any way. The only continuity plus points are the character of Dar looking as he did and his creature companions.
The main issue I'm sure most fans had was the simple fact this isn't a fantasy film. Its starts off as one but descends into utter gimmicky cheesy nonsense when the characters end up in LA. We then get this horrific trashy B-movie that is filled with pop culture of the 90's instantly dating it horrendously. Its all virtually exactly the same as the live action film of 'He-Man' with Lundgren accept it doesn't have any decent visuals, sound, characters, effects etc...Hell they even parody the film by having a film in film moment when Dar and his new badly acted yet admittedly hot bratty rich teen girl friend drive past a cinema and it has 'Beastmaster 2' showing! That's the type of stuff saved for comedies not fantasy action flicks, the pinnacle of lampoonery right there and out of place.
I dunno what the writers were doing but for some reason they decided going down the hammy parody route would work for this franchise. All the action is pantomime stuff with no blood or gore, not that the original had much of that but there were some nice icky bits of darkness. The villains are farcical, even though I love and adore Sarah Douglas her constant silly quips and one liners were awful, whilst the main bad guy was like a low rent Jake Busey...with a Phantom of the Opera mask on that didn't quite fit.
I think the term tongue-in-cheek is too kind for this disaster, its...a disaster! There is audio dubbed on badly everywhere, the direction is poor and its all looks like a homemade video. The only one thing that is quite good is seeing the late great James Avery as the strung out police chief. Hearing him bellow out 'Bendowski!' in that deep voice of his is the highlight.
3.5/10
So the Beastmaster is in trouble again as we find out he has a half brother who just happens to be conveniently evil. At his side is the somewhat evil sorcerer Sarah Douglas, looking gorgeous as ever, together they find a portal that lead them to Earth in the early 90's and decide they want to pinch a neutron bomb (yep that's right). Its up to Dar to follow them through and errmm...stop this catastrophe!
Firstly the portal they go through apparently leads them to another dimension, a parallel universe, not through time at all, but that is merely one huge plot hole of many. The entire film is a complete pile of dingo doo doo, it has nothing to do with the first film and doesn't follow on from that in any way. The only continuity plus points are the character of Dar looking as he did and his creature companions.
The main issue I'm sure most fans had was the simple fact this isn't a fantasy film. Its starts off as one but descends into utter gimmicky cheesy nonsense when the characters end up in LA. We then get this horrific trashy B-movie that is filled with pop culture of the 90's instantly dating it horrendously. Its all virtually exactly the same as the live action film of 'He-Man' with Lundgren accept it doesn't have any decent visuals, sound, characters, effects etc...Hell they even parody the film by having a film in film moment when Dar and his new badly acted yet admittedly hot bratty rich teen girl friend drive past a cinema and it has 'Beastmaster 2' showing! That's the type of stuff saved for comedies not fantasy action flicks, the pinnacle of lampoonery right there and out of place.
I dunno what the writers were doing but for some reason they decided going down the hammy parody route would work for this franchise. All the action is pantomime stuff with no blood or gore, not that the original had much of that but there were some nice icky bits of darkness. The villains are farcical, even though I love and adore Sarah Douglas her constant silly quips and one liners were awful, whilst the main bad guy was like a low rent Jake Busey...with a Phantom of the Opera mask on that didn't quite fit.
I think the term tongue-in-cheek is too kind for this disaster, its...a disaster! There is audio dubbed on badly everywhere, the direction is poor and its all looks like a homemade video. The only one thing that is quite good is seeing the late great James Avery as the strung out police chief. Hearing him bellow out 'Bendowski!' in that deep voice of his is the highlight.
3.5/10