Deathstalker: Match of The Titans

THE STORY: Who gave this movie the green light? It was so remarkably bad it boggles the mind. I think it had some of the slowest and badly choreographed swordfights I have ever seen....and I've watched a lot Doctor Who. They certainly paid the editor way too much. Some of that money could have been used to hire a Foley artist. I mean, a metallic "clang", no matter how silly, would have helped some of the fight scenes when swords clashed. This is only the second Deathstalker movie I've seen and if the others are like it, its bodes ill.

Just we'll all know that Deathstalker is the hero he rescues a girl from some guys with lion heads at the very beginning. Now this Deathstalker isn't the same Deathstalker from the other movie I saw...meaning he's a different actor. At least this Deathstalker looks like a tough guy. The other dude looked more like a smartass DJ from a morning radio show. Anyway, this rescue has little to do with anything else, so our hero trudges on...he's looking for a friend of his. In a previous adventure of some sort they got their swords mixed up. Deathstalker wants his sword back because its magic.

On his journey, Deathstalker runs into a warrior named Vaniat and his trainer. Vaniat is going to the castle to fight in a tournament and Deathstalker goes along with them. As they travel they come across bandits that are fighting two women. One of the women is killed before Deathstalker can save her, but the other one...the "hot" one lives. One of the bandits seals them in a cave, but they escape. I don't know how because they didn't even show it! Which makes it kind of stupid to have the entire 'seal them in a cave" scene. Dionara, the woman, tells Deathstalker that she and her sister were going to the castle to fight in a tournament. Well, the sister was, but now she's dead so Dionara has to fight instead. She takes the clothes off of her dead sister and puts them on. (This is while they're still in the cave...so I assume her nakedness somehow got them out)

Once our characters make it to the castle it gets kind of confusing. There's some really weak fights and stuff, we meet a few expendable characters and there's Kana, the ruler of the castle. Deathstalker is hoping to find his friend at the tournament and recover his magic sword but he discovers that something strange is going on. Some of the warriors present seem to be vanishing as the days go by. He resolves to get to the bottom of this with Dionara's help. Eventually they deduce that the wine is poisoned. Kana has invited all of the warriors to this tournament so she can kill them all or get them out of the way. That way she can be sure that no heroes will be in the way when she expands her dominion. Well, the poison is slow acting, it looks like and since Kana has been drinking the wine Deathstalker deduces that she must have an antidote. To find out what it is he concocts a really lame plan. He gets Vaniat to seduce Kana hoping he'll figure out what the antidote is. Vaniat doesn't drink and when he's offered wine always does the typical movie thing heroes do when given poisoned drinks. He dumps it out when the bad guys aren't watching and pretends to drink it. All of this would be a little interesting if any of the actors could act or well, if the friggin' movie was more exciting. It wasn't so don't get your hopes up.

Dioanara tells Deathstalker a secret. She's really the princess! Kana and her family usurped power from the rightful rulers of this land and she has come to get it back. I don't see how fighting in the tournament was supposed to do that. I really don't see why she didn't [unwrite]ing tell Deathstalker that in the first place! She even tells Deathstalker where the secret passages are in the castles so he can find the missing warriors! DAYS after they arrive and DS has been skulking about looking for them. Dionara could have just freakin' told him! Deathstalker finds out that Kana has been turning the warrior to stone with the poisoned wine and using magic to animate them as her own private army. He gets captured and Kana force feeds him some wine to turn him to stone. Luckily for him, Vaniat's mission worked and he steals the little tablets that are the antidote. I could explain how totally full of pitfalls and how unlikely Vaniat's mission's success was, but why bother. This movie doesn't warrant so much attention to detail.

Vaniat gives some of the antidote to Dionara who finds Deathstalker unguarded but turning to stone in the dungeon. She gives him the pill and he recovers. But its the last day of the tournament. Vaniat gives the remaining warriors the antidote so they can't be turned to stone, but Kana uses her stone warriors to attack them. Just then Deathstalker reappears, fully recovered and chases Kana to her chamber while the warriors fight in the courtyard. There he sees his magic sword hanging over the mantel and retrieves it. Kana is still not afraid of him, but Deathstalker tells her she'll soon turn to stone. She's been drinking the wine but Vaniat stole the antidote. Yep, she didn't notice that the most important thing in her plans is missing! For more than a day! Oh, please, lord, make it stop.

Kana uses her magic to conjure flames, but Deathstalker just waves his magic sword around and Kana screams, turns to stone and its the end. Really. That's it. I'm not kidding. I wish the makers of this film were, but I have a horrible feeling that they were serious.

What made this movie super weak was the poorly done fight scenes, the complete lack of blood and the really dumb plot. Why doesn't kana just drug the wine with something that will kill the warriors? How come Dionara doesn't tell Deathstalker the stuff he needs to know right away? She was going to sleep with him after first meeting him! Where did Deathstalker's friend go and how did Kana get the magic sword? Oh, who freaking cares!? At least its over.

I never knew who the actor was that played Deathstalker in Deathstalker and the Warriors From Hell, but this guy in this movie is Rick Hill. Whoever that is. Dionara was...wait for it....wait for it....Maria Ford! It took me five or so minutes to realize it was her! Somehow she's able to temporarily cloak her presence from me, but I always find her in bad movies and in almost every one she has to be topless or completely nude! what is it with this chick? With the exception of her part in The Wasp Woman she always makes my stomach upset.

Best Lines: "A hog's head of milk everyday!!"-Vaniat flexes his muscles and boasts of his strength just before Deathstalker knocks his block off.

"So you're a princess? I should have known. I'm always getting mixed up with princesses."- Deathstalker when Dionara belatedly tells him her story.

1.) I don't care what I'm doing, whether it was taking a piss in the woods or raping and pillaging I think I'd notice a guy shooting arrows at me if one hit a tree a few inches from my freaking head! The lion-head dudes don't seem to notice that Deathstalker is firing at them until he actually puts an arrow between one of the idiots eyes!

2.) Oh, for the luvva Pete! Just like in Deathstalker & the Warriors From Hell, a village has no buildings! Its just a bunch...no scratch that...a FEW people sitting around a fire! Considering the fact that the flashback scenes when Deathstalker tells about some battle he was in are lifted from DS&TWFH, couldn't they have found a few seconds of stock footage showing us an actual village? Note that not all the scenes in the flashback are from DS&TWFH, but from what I assume is another Deathstalker movie I haven't seen. How do I know this? Well, Deathstalker was played by a different actor in that movie...fight scenes shown from DS&TWFH don't have Deathstalker in them, but they're from the beginning of that movie when Makut and his black knights ransack the village.

3.) There's some freaky ass scene of a party going on inside Kana's castle. One warrior rips the arm off of a guy and beats another guy with it! I'd laugh at that but at this point in the flick my sense are numbed.

4.) Wait a second...if Kana's family stole the castle and usurped power from Dionara's family how come Kana doesn't recognize her? Why does she wait until the movie is half over before she tells Deathstalker she knows where Kana keeps her prisoners in the castle? If I was Deathstalker I'd punch her in the mouth yelling "You stupid cow! Why didn't you tell me that from jump street? We could have defeated Kana by now!"

NUDITY AND SEX: Dammitt! I knew it! I KNEW IT! She's good at looking a little different in almost every film, good enough that sometimes I don't recognize her right away, but as soon as I saw those giant [unwrite]ing nipples I knew those boobs had to belong to my nemesis, Maria Ford! There's a small amount of other boobs in this movie.

HUH?: How the heck did they get out of the cave? Deathstalker and Dionara are trapped in a cave in, Dionara gets naked and next thing I know they're at the castle? Did Vaniat and his friend dig them out? Did the rocks just move out of the way, in awe of the size of the Dionara's enormous nipples?

I don't see how Dionara can just be installed as ruler once Kana is defeated. How can anyone tell if she just made up a story about being a princess? She has no proof that ever was a princess! Its not like they can go to City Hall or anything. Does she have a Royal Seal or at least a photo ID? I think not.

It would be nice if someone explained exactly what Deathstalker's magic sword does or how he got it....when he recovers it at the end he quickly defeats Kana's magic just by waving it around. I guess its kind of like Thor's Hammer! (Comic fans know what I mean) Is it Excalibur or something? Talk about a duex ex machina!

THE TALLY: This movie is only good for a time waster if you go into the video store and there is NOTHING else there. My mind reels at the thought that I could have taken a nap in the space of time this movie stole from me. Well, its not going into the pit but it is going to video purgatory. I have a feeling that Deathstalker is one of the reasons the entire Sword and Sorcery genre never amounted to a whole lot.