LET’S GET PHYSICAL: THE BEASTMASTER (1982) ***

FORMAT:  4K UHD

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on July 17th, 2007)

This has been on TBS a zillion times, so everybody’s probably seen it at least once.  Marc Singer stars as Dar, a warrior who can control tigers, falcons and ferrets with his mind.  He and Seth (Good Times’ John Amos) try to rescue a slave girl (A View to a Kill’s Tanya Roberts), help a young prince, and defeat the evil Maax (Larry Sander’s Rip Torn), who sacrifices kids.  Of course, Dar has to fight a guy who rides on horseback and wears a bat wing helmet, because every sword and sorcery movie made in the 80’s has a villain who rides on horseback and wears a bat wing helmet.  It’s rated PG, but it still has enough action, gore (severed heads in soup), and nudity (Roberts goes for a topless swim, which you don’t get to see on TBS) to keep everybody happy.  The bat-like creatures that wrap their wings around their victims and eat them till they’re nothing but slime and bones are the best part.  (They gave me nightmares as a kid.)  Singer later appeared on the V mini-series and director Don Coscarelli also directed Phantasm and Bubba Ho-Tep.

QUICK THOUGHTS:  

Having watched The Beastmaster for the first time in a long while, I have to say the movie is still great fun.  It’s definitely one of the best Sword and Sorcery flicks of the era.  Marc Singer, who kind of resembles Mark Hamill on steroids, makes for a likable hero, and Dar is a great character who has a cool gimmick of communicating with animals (it’s kind of like Dr. Doolittle Meets Conan the Barbarian) and uses a boomerang blade.  (Those ferrets are as cute as ever.)  Director Don Coscarelli delivers not only one of the best sword-slinging epics of ’82, but also gave us one of the all-time greatest quicksand scenes in cinematic history. 

4K UHD NOTES:

Before the movie begins, we get an on-screen apology from Vinegar Syndrome stating that the 4K restoration comes from the best surviving print and that sequences featuring optical effects will suffer from some grain and damage and yada, yada, yada…  But I’ll be damned if The Beastmaster doesn’t look and sound much bigger and badder than it ever did in 4K.  After years of watching it on TBS (back when it was affectionately known as “The Beastmaster Station”) in its censored and pan and scan form, seeing it now in 4K is something of a revelation.  The nighttime scenes are incredible, with the burning torches and rolling dust looking terrific against the black sky.  The scenes of Rip Torn cavorting with his hags (who have “10” bodies and “1” faces) are particularly outstanding, and the pulsating sacs of God knows what hanging from the bat people’s trees looks as cool as it ever did.  The cinematography by the great John (The Shining) Alcott really comes alive in 4K, and makes you really appreciate his work. 

But of course, the best-looking thing in 4K is Tanya Roberts.  As the Beastmaster’s pet panther would say… “GROWL!”