Wow! Such a good movie.

To me, this movie is perfection.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

For airing on MST3K the nudity scenes were edited out ( explaining why the original movie was rated R ). Let's be realistic; this is a B-movie that one would watch more for entertainment than for consideration for an Academy Award. For some reason this is the only one not yet available on DVD ( except what looks like bootlegs sometimes available on eBay ). DS I ( with Barbi Benton ) is pretty original; DS II ( with Monique Gabrielle - a personal favorite of mine ) is just a little better; certainly funnier. DS IV is ( I believe ) pretty much a remake of DS I ( and the only one to have a previous DS star, Rick Hill ). Are the plots realistic? No, that's why the genre is generally referred to as Fantasy/Science Fiction. Of course, I AM biased - the Deathstalker series ( all of them ) are among my favorites. Just good, fun, and sometimes funny. Enjoy.

This wouldn't have been as bad if they had a tighter script, better actors, a good director, ANY kind of lighting, a plot, etc... But for me, by far the worst offense is that a large group of the supporting actors stay in character "Who dares trespass the halls of mine castle!" then there are a few of the main characters who felt they had a good handle on how to portray their character, Deathstalkers reply to the above inquiry: "Hey, I'm lost, I'm just trying to grab some grub." This is mildly paraphrased, but you get the idea. Later, when speaking to a group of warriors that are supposed to be zombified and commanded to kill Deathstalker they suddenly start a conversation. When DS asks them to switch sides and fight for him (since their master is an evil jerk) one warrior from hell says "We cannot turn uponst our master, he controls our very souls!" Not a bad reply, then the next zombie ads "yeah, he's got 'em in a jar back at the castle" in much the manner of a bored co-worker telling you about their weekend. This stinking movie is all over the place. It's pretty fun with MST3K, otherwise, get plastered before you attempt this.

I've never seen the first two films in this series, and I can't say that i'm sorry about that. This egregiously bad 80's sword swinger ranks up there with the Ator the Fighting Eagle series as the worst of all time.The main character is a smug, sleazy idiot with a bad 80's hair-do and an accent that fluctuates more than the stock market did on Black Tuesday. No woman in her right mind would touch him, which explains why his love interest in the film is four barrels short of a load. His enemy is a guy who wears more furs and turbans than Liza, and gasps out his lines like he's trying to act during an asthma attack. Rounding out this cast is a really annoying princess, a stupid wizard who's the lost member of ZZ Top, and a sorceress with a grating voice who tries to roast our hero's nuts(my favorite part of the film, by the way).The movie starts out in a village(Renn Fest) where Deathstalker is being his usual smug, oily self. He impresses the local yokels by fighting a guy while standing on a log, then goes to a fortune teller/wizard to get his fortune told. I pretty much know what the guy would have told him, that his film career was over and he should take that job at the car dealership, but he never got that far because the bushy bearded wiz was in conference with a princess carrying a giant faux crystal door handle. The wizard was toting one of these hideous kitsch baubles around as well, and apparently when you put them together it is a key that unlocks a fabulous city full of wealth(yeah, right). Some men wearing metal bats on their heads attack, and the wizard disappears by spinning rapidly. He leaves his shoes behind, making you wonder(most horribly), why he didn't leave his clothes behind as well. The princess takes off with our hero, and promptly gets killed before she can slap him to head off his sleazy sexual advances. She gives him the Airwick air freshener, so that he can go find the other one himself. It would cut his body odor wonderfully.Cut to a later time,where the bad guy Truxartis? is doing his best Broadway musical singer imitation while going on about how he means to find the other stone and use its magical power for his own thing. He brings some guys back from the dead, using the powers of deepest, blackest Hell, so that they could lounge around his castle pretty much doing nothing. There was a waste of magic. Deathstalker, meanwhile, has met the dead princess's twin? sister, who is on her way to marry ol feather and furs Truxartis. He also meets his love interest, a fairly slow and rather strange girl with amazingly big hair and a problem with bathing. Her and he get along well together, not a big surprise.The movie devolves into a quagmire at this point, with plot points trailing off into nothing one after the other. The dead guys catch up with Deathstalker, but instead of killing him as they should, they pretty much do what they've done throughout the movie-which is nothing. The princess arrives at the castle, dresses in a silly looking faux harem costume, and spends the rest of the movie whining. The sorceress tortures idiot boy, the only detraction from the pleasure of this scene being the fact that he's wearing only the tightest of tights while she does this. Arrgh! The scrubby bearded wizard shows up again, nobody knows why, is captured and tortured by the femme fatale Truxartis, and is rescued by Deathstalker in a really lame fighting scene. Deathstalker frees the souls of the dead guys by giving them a mason jar, which was no loss to anyone since they were neither scary nor effective, and terminally lazy to boot. Truxartis comes to his stupid end, the princess and the wizard move into the fabulous city(didn't look that fabulous to me, but since the whole budget for the entire movie seems to have been about five dollars and some bags of peanuts, that's not really surprising), and Deathstalker rides off into the sunset, where we hope he gets a severe sunburn.

Ah.....did my ears deceive me or was that the same score from 'Battle Beyond The Stars' AND 'Wizards Of The Lost Kingdom'? Oh yes it was! - which told me right from the start that this movies budget was presumably marginally smaller than a dead dogs IQ.Still....there is the saying 'cheap and cheerful' so I sat and watched the film with low (but quietly hopeful) expectations.Now I should point out here that having seen all of the Deathstalker movies, I've only really liked number 2 which took the refreshing step of introducing a highly comedic element into what is intrinsically a very stoic and humourless genre.However, it was evident within a few minutes, and I was pleased to find that this sequel too, continued the tongue in cheek trend, although it is far more subtle here.John Allen Nelson assumes the role of the eponymous hero this time around and he does an amiable job, delivering some witty one liners to help the action along.So far not too bad then.....so why the relatively low rating I have awarded this film? Well you see, nothing of any interest actually happens! Sure there is some glorious overacting (especially from Thom Christopher), some atrociously choreographed sword fights, enough daft scenes to sink a Frigate and some exceptionally stupid dialogue....all the things in fact that any self respecting B-Movie should boast, however, it all feels strangely flat here.Even the usual nudity quotient is ominously low in this instalment! (Shock, Horror!!!!) To summarise then, whilst this is certainly not a particularly unwatchable movie, it certainly fails to enthral and will probably only be of any real interest to people wishing to view the whole Deathstalker series.