Quick Movie Reviews: Deathstalker (1983), Deathstalker II (1987), The Warrior and the Sorceress (1984), Barbarian Queen (1985)

In my ongoing quest to watch every single sword and sorcery movie from the ’80s, no matter how irredeemably sleazy, I present this quadruple-feature from the Roger Corman’s Cult Classics series.

In the opening scene of Deathstalker, our hero rescues a maiden from a gang of lusty cutthroats and then proceeds to get it on with said maiden. Before they can finish (don’t you hate when this happens?), an old man drags “Stalker” to a witch who needs his urgent assistance to unite a magic sword with some other magic doodads to stop the evil wizard and save the princess. The awesome looking ogre-thing in the poster isn’t in the movie, so don’t get excited. I’ve already said too much. Just watch this clip so we can move on.

Deathstalker II is fun. I don’t really remember what happens (more of the same), but everything is so poorly done, everyone knows it, and everyone seems to be having fun with it—and that’s really what makes a bad B movie good: it has what I call a “recess” flavor. In other words, it gleefully creates the kinds of spontaneous, silly action-dramas we made up during our recess/lunch periods at school. Here’s a taste of the awesome soundtrack and the terrible acting.

The best thing I can say about The Warrior and the Sorceress is that David Carradine is pretty slick as the hooded bad-ass, but it’s nothing he hadn’t already done, and done much better, by that point. The story revolves around two warring factions fighting over the only water source on a planet with two suns. In better hands, it might have been fun. No clip for you. Next.

Barbarian Queen (a.k.a. Queen of the Naked Steel) is a cult classic and my favorite in this lot. Lana Clarkson, who Phil Spector was convicted of murdering in 2009, is so tall and hot and charismatic that she pulls off a quasi-feminist barbarian hero despite the shoddy production and all the cheap, predictable rape scenes. The Queen’s man is taken prisoner by the evil Romans, and she and her band of women warriors are damn well going to get him back! The trailer is fantastic.