Paul Magne Haakonsen I remember watching "Deathstalker" back in my early teenage years and that I was more than entertained and impressed with it, especially since I had just taken up playing Dungeons & Dragons back in that time. So having a movie like this in the sword & sorcery genre was just great.And now having sat down to watch it yet again in 2016, I must say that the movie was not fully as great as I remembered it to be. Sure it is entertaining enough for what it is, but it is a rather simplistic movie. And it is a movie that makes too much usage of nudity. Actually if they had opted to leave that aspect out of the movie, it would be so much more easy to actually take the movie more seriously.The story is about Deathstalker (played by Rick Hill) who is given possession of a powerful sword. With the lands being ruled by a vile sorcerer who also seeks the sword, Deathstalker is in for a grand adventure as he sets out to free the realm of the looming evil.Right, well the story was adequate, especially for a sword & sorcery movie, right? I mean, you have a hero, you have a villain, you have an overwhelming evil threat to the realm, you have women in distress, overwhelming odds stacking against the hero, and you have triumph in times of darkness. Everything a recipe for a good tale needs.However, the movie is suffering from having really bad props, especially the "stones" that are supposed to make up the caves, the pillars, walls, etc. It is just awful to look at. And it doesn't really help that the sword fights are prompted and poorly executed, and who can't help but laugh when a sword misses a man widely yet the man still topples over and dies?As I mentioned earlier on, there is an excessive amount of nudity in the movie, and most of it just makes no sense, and seems nothing more than a chance for director James Sbardellati to showcase nude women. I mean, why would a woman wear a cloak and then nothing underneath? Especially if she was supposed to be a trained warrior? It just made no sense.But removing the critiques goggles, then I will say that "Deathstalker" is still an adequate sword & sorcery movie, especially taking into consideration that it is from 1983. Fans of fantasy role-playing games and the sword & sorcery genre will definitely find some enjoyment in this movie.

dworldeater Deathstalker is Roger Corman's effort to cash in on the success of Conan The Barbarian and The Sword And The Sorcerer. Deathstalker is not close to the same quality or class of film as the aforementioned classics. However, being a cheap imitation of the movies previously mentioned, I still enjoy it. Deathstalker is also the name of our shirtless, muscle bound hero(played by Richard Hill)who enters a tournament to liberate the kingdom from evil wizard Munkar(who looks a lot like Church Of Satan founder Anton Lavey). This awesomely bad, ultra cheesy and uber macho adventure film is action packed with lots of blood and titties. However, if you play for the other team (and you know what I mean) Roger Corman has you covered with lots of homoerotic action with oiled up, shirtless musclemen wrestling each other. While I am sure Deathstalker has a few female fans, it wasn't made with them in mind. The film itself, looks pretty good with good photography, f/x and action. The acting for the most part is pretty bad and is very poorly edited. It seems some scenes are lost that would have made the film make more sense. However, this film is a low budget production shot quickly and cheaply. Out of the four Deathstalker films, this one is taken the most seriously and has the largest budget. I love the film and is great, over the top entertainment. The film does deliver on brutality and gore plus Playboy centerfold models Lana Clarkson and Barbi Benton appear displaying their big and beautiful bazookas. The other films in this series get cheaper and campier as they go and Richard Hill only appears as Deathstalker in the first and last film. If you are real into D+D and/or power metal, you will probably think this movie is the best thing since sliced bread.

brendanfoy I like a lot of 80s B movie Fantasies and decided to check out the Deathstalker films after I watched The Barbarians on youtube, which I LOVED.I picked up the Roger Corman Sword and Sorcery Collection and watched the first film last night and was not impressed. To me what makes a Sword and Sorcery B film so great is when the cast and crew are aware that they are making a sub par film and are in on the joke, but with Deathstalker I felt like they were trying to make a decent movie and just gave up when it became clear they were too incompetent to do so. The Barbarians was hilarious because the tongue in cheek tone was present throughout the film, but I didn't get that vibe with Deathstalker. I like seeing boobs and ass as much as the next guy, but this film was gratuitous in the way they showed it and often not in a funny or sexy way. I like blood and gore but when the sorcerer was feeding that boy's eye and fingers to his pet creature, that was just a little too far for me when it comes to a movie I want to laugh at (or with).The biggest surprise I had while watching Deathstalker is that some scenes actually look very good when trying to replicate Boris Vallejo's imagery, they were held back only by the anemic production budget, but the rest of the movie is plain old bad film making. I just found very little charm to the movie which I find essential to enjoy trash cinema. The last 20 or so minutes are genuinely funny with some hilarious moments in the sorcerer's castle, and the end is pretty satisfying, but getting to that last half hour was a long hard slog.Maybe this can be enjoyed as a bad movie you can laugh at with friends over a few beers, but most of the people I know would rather I just shut it off.UPDATE:OK so I guess I have to eat my words about improving the first one because they did everything I suggested they do for the first to make the sequel better, place tongue in cheek and just have fun, but still failed miserably. It just wasn't funny yet they tried so hard. Army of Darkness is funny, Flesh + Blood is funny, The Barbarians is funny, but Deathstalker 2 was full of cringe inducing puns. I think I might prefer the first over the second, but the sequel does do a better job at portraying the Deathstalker character by turning him into a swashbuckling scoundrel instead of a thuggish brute like in the first. Aside from a fun sword fight at the end, the sequel just didn't do it for me. I like how the first had imagery which tried to capture the magic of Boris Vallejo's art style, the sequel attempted none of this. The bloopers for Deathstalker 2 should have been kept in the final cut because they were genuinely funny, and the acting was better when they didn't think the cameras were rolling. If you're going for comedy, you need some genuinely talented or charismatic people in your film, but Deathstalker 2 failed at this. I actually have the urge to watch the first again, at least certain scenes, so maybe that one might grow on me.

lost-in-limbo "Deathstalker" is just one of many ultra-cheap, b-grade sword and sorcery features that found themselves on the market after the success that was "Conan the Barbarian" and rarely does this cut-and-dried sleazy fable set itself apart from the ilk. The poster-artwork is what sells it (and again many of these sword and sorcery fares had eye-catching artwork), but unfortunately it doesn't quite live up to it. For most part it's rather primitively ramshackle, slight in story structure and goes about providing an overabundance of females in skimpy outfits or in little to nothing at all. It's exploitative trash and unimaginative schlock too, but it however manages to hold a hypnotic spell over you. Cut-rate sets, props and costumes show it up, but even its action is no frills. At times it could be gruesome, but the sloppy direction made those moments feel tacky like its bloody final climatic curtain. A fitting Rick Hill as the title character, suit's the dashing physic giving a straight-laced performance with sardonic shades as he goes about his business. Sometimes he even likes to sit back, but eventually he finds himself caught in whatever transpires. Richard Brooker as the evil wizard tyrant hams it up and looks the part, but he's far from a potent villain and I guess that's just part of the illusion. Also there was a memorable part for Lana Clarkson (watch it for her role alone) and Barbi Benton as the damsel in stress that Deathstalker must rescue. Writer Howard Cohen would go on to pen the third film, while also write and direct the fourth entry. Brainless, but choppy and shoddily amusing low-grade sword and sorcery."This isn't my day either".