ON SEEING THE BEAST MASTER (1982) 42 YEARS LATER

Autographed photo of Marc Singer, aka Dar the Beastmaster. He was one of the nicest and mostpersonable of the many celebrities I met over the years. A solid dude.
 

Last night I watched THE BEAST MASTER (1982) for the first time since seeing it in the theater when it came out. Back in '82 I found it to be merely passable, with a hero who came across as a tad softer than testosterone-fueled beef slabs like Ah-nuld or Dolph Lundgren, and I found that a welcome change of pace. The story was a by-the-number sword 'n' sorcery yarn that offered little or nothing out of the ordinary, save for the protagonist's ability to communicate with and command animals, but it was a decent enough way to kill a needlessly overlong two hours. (The story could have been told more briskly if edited down to 90 minutes.)

 

Unlike most folks who know of this movie, I never watched it during its years of ubiquity on HBO — that cable network ran the film so often, its initials were snarkily referred to as "Hey, Beastmaster's On!" — and other platforms, but over the decades I discovered that it has a massive cult following among those who watched it over and over again starting from childhood. I was seventeen when it came out and I had already seen far superior sword 'n' sorcery flicks, plus a few really bad ones that I love for their hilarious cheapjack awfulness (I'm looking at you, SORCERESS), so for me experiencing that one time in the theater and not being all that impressed by it was all that I needed. Nonetheless, THE BEASTMASTER endured in the hearts and minds of its fans, and nine years later it spawned a sequel, BEASTMASTER 2: THROUGH THE PORTAL OF TIME, which I saw on opening night during the dying days of Times Square's plethora of grindhouse movie theaters, and I recall enjoying that followup considerably more than the original. A made-for-TV third film, BEASTMASTER III: THE EYE OF BRAXUS, followed, and after that a syndicated series. Such is the power of post-theatrical cable-driven cult afterlife.

 

And now, after sitting through it again over forty years later, I still think THE BEASTMASTER is middling at best, but this time around I also noted that save for a few shots of exposed tiddies and a couple of scary moments, It's pretty much a barbarian movie for kids, which goes a long way in explaining why it's held with such fondness by those who grew up with it in the same way that I cherish ULTRAMAN. It's not bad, but kids are famously forgiving of a film's shortcomings if it's giving them a genre or concepts that they'd never previously encountered, so there you go.