Guilty Pleasures: The Beastmaster

It’s one of the most shown movies on cable TV in the last 25 years or so and it’s about a man in a loincloth and boots with a murse and a tiara who speaks to animals. Oh yeah, you know it, you love it (but maybe won’t admit it)…it’s The Beastmaster!

The Beastmaster is the story of Dar (Marc Singer) prophesied before birth to grow up and kill the evil priest-lord Maax (Rip Torn). And if that weren’t enough, he’s also the king’s son and therefore destined to be king, too. Maax, trying to defy the prophecy, sends his witches (obviously Leatherface’s sisters, but with hot bodies) to rip the babe from his mother’s womb and sacrifice him. Through magic, the baby is removed from his mother and teleported (O_o) into a cow which is then led away to be slaughtered to retrieve Baby Dar. Just before the baby is to be sacrificed, he is branded with the symbol of the god Ar on his left palm. But before the witch can strike the fatal blow, a farmer, wandering alone in the woods after dark, hears the baby crying and kills the witch, who dies Jedi-style. He then takes the baby back to his village to raise as his own son.

Cut to 20 or so years later. Dar has grown into a well-muscled, half-naked man who still lives with his dad and farms in the fields which, rather handily for a plot point coming up in about 5 minutes’ time, are about 3 hills away from the village. From that vantage point, he and the other young men of the village see a badly-rendered cloud of dust, which signifies that the Jun hordes are bearing down on the settlement. They arrive just in time to get slaughtered to a man. Luckily, Dar is dragged to safety by his dog Kodo, who is himself mortally wounded and dies after getting Dar far enough away to remain unseen. Dar comes to, sees his dead dog, carries him back to the village, gathers up the bodies (he’s the sole survivor), sets them on fire and leaves the village.

Except for the bit with the cow, sounds like it could be the start of an awesome sword and sorcery epic, right? Sword and sorcery, yes. Epic? Not so much. But who cares? It is awesomesauce with added cheese!

There are a lot of things about The Beastmaster that should make me feel guilty for loving it. Dar, while ostensibly on a mission to avenge his village, takes the time to watch topless slave girls swimming in a pool, then uses his bond with animals to hit on Tanya Roberts. “Sorry Dad, revenge can wait. There are babes to be had!” And big, bad Dar also has a man-purse for carrying around his ferrets, Kodo and Podo (yes, he named one of the ferrets after his dead dog). And while the tiger, Ruh, and the ferrets can understand commands in English, the eagle can only understand bad raptor impressions?

So we have slave girls cavorting topless, but it’s really the men who are flashing the most skin. Even John Amos buffed up and stripped down to play Seth, the guardian of Tal, the young prince in exile. I’ve never really thought of him as hot, but he sure does look good in that bondage get-up of his! (Okay, I generally don’t feel embarrassed about my guilty pleasures, but now I feel kinda dirty. :P ) So, um…yeah. Another reason to feel guilty is the level of creatures in the film. I mentioned the witches with their melted-wax faces and model bodies, but there’s also the Death Guards, men encased in bondage gear (I can’t believe I’m mentioning bondage gear twice in this piece!) with spikes who have a “mysterious green liquid” and some sort of luminescent worm inserted into their ear which makes them into mad, raving things without fear or pity, shock troops for Maax’s evil army.

And then there’s those things that worship the eagle. I’ve seen them called Birdmen, but they look more like humanoid bats to me. And the less said about their eating habits, the better. Ew.

If I had to pick one thing in the whole movie that makes it an over the top guilty pleasure though, it wouldn’t be the pulling-women-with-animals schtick or the Death Guards or the Birdmen…things. It wouldn’t even be the ferret bag or John Amos in bondage gear (I did it again! That’s THREE!) No, it would be that, despite Dar and Seth and all the heroes in the film, who ultimately takes down Maax? It’s not the golden boy of prophesy, it’s a ferret. That’s right, Kodo the ferret is the one who finally managed to bring Maax’s evil to an end. A bite to the neck and Maax topples into the sacrificial fire. Mustelids FTW!

So if you haven’t seen The Beastmaster yet, where have you been for the last 28 years? If you have seen it, you owe it to yourself to see it again. If not for the manflesh or Tanya Roberts’ boobs, then do it for Kodo, the unsung hero.