The Greatest Bad Movie Ever: Deathstalker

The terrible, the borderline unwatchable, the one and only: Deathstalker.  This movie opened up an entire genre for me—hilariously cheesy movies, otherwise known as so-bad-it’s-good.  These are movies that you laugh at because of how terrible the acting is, how outdated and aged the themes and settings are, and how poorly written the overall plot is.  This genre of mostly bad knock-offs and overall unoriginality peaked in early 80’s, or what I like to call, the Era of Deathstalker.

While looking through IMDB’s ‘Top 250 Movies’ list for something to watch with a friend, I noticed a link on the left of the screen for the ‘Bottom 100‘–a list of the lowest-rated movies on the site. I started searching for trailers for some of the titles like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and The Blade Master (which judging by the trailer is an even crumbier hero-with-a-sword movie).  Eventually I discovered the trailer for Deathstalker, a turdiful masterpiece (of shit), the quintessence of so-bad-it’s-good.

We immediately searched for it and found a site that was streaming it.  Right from the start it delivered the goods.  In the first scene, a sleazy, greased-up buff guy (Deathstalker himself) effortlessly slaughters a band of medieval thugs that was chasing and trying to capture a beautiful girl.  The director had the balls to make use of the classic sword-underneath-the-arm trick to make it look like the sword had gone through the goons’ chests, the same technique I used as a kid while playing outside with my friends.

The fight choreography is the worst I’ve ever seen (After Deathstalker I went on to see dozens of other “films” with average ratings of one star or less.  Deathstalker still takes the cake).  As D’stalker hacks at one enemy, the rest seem to stand in a circle around him, waiting for their turn to fly through the air screaming in pain from the fury of Deathstalker’s blade (which visibly misses them by at least a foot). The scene ends with the damsel that Deathstalker saved saying, “Thank you” in a seductive voice. He says nothing, puts his hand on her shoulder and brushes one of the straps of her top off, causing her entire dress to fall to the ground.  Then they start kissing and touching until they are interrupted by a wizard in a shabby outfit.

There are one-liners and gratuitous nudity all throughout the film (without these two things, I wouldn’t have made it past the first act).  For example, when the wizard interrupts them, the girl runs off and then Deathstalker says, “This isn’t my day either,” causing me to sigh and say, “Oh my god this is bad.”

Deathstalker slaughters at least a hundred people, decapitating several. In one scene you can hear the swoosh of Deathstalker’s blade and then see a shot of a plastic head like the ones you see at a hair salon flying through the air.

This movie is a huge rip-off of Conan the Barbarian, a Schwarzenegger classic that came out in 1982 (the year before Deathstalker), which also had lots of violence, nudity, and one-liners, but was actually regular-good instead of so-bad-it’s-good.

By far the most memorable scene in Deathstalker is the banquet for the gladiators in Lord Mukar’s castle which turns into a brawl featuring dozens of randomly naked woman, sword fighting, and a giant pig monster (a huge guy wearing a rubber pig-head mask). It’s one of the most ludicrous things I’ve ever seen.  Thanks to Youtube, you can indulge in this fight scene here.

After we finished watching, my friend and I liked it so much that we tried to find Deathstalker part II to watch immediately, but we couldn’t find it anywhere. Luckily we did find part III, Deathstalker and thhe Warriors From Hell and started streaming.  The third one was significantly less watchable, which explains why the original has a 3.9 out of 10 rating on IMDB and part III has a 2.0.  It was partly made up of scenes that were cut directly out of the original, and shown as if no one would notice.

After Deathstalker, I went on to watch such classics as Starcrash (a Star Wars rip off, go figure), which was one of David Hasselhoff’s first acting gigs and Dark Universe, a rip-off of Ridley Scott’s Alien, and many other painfully bad flicks. So-bad-it’s-good is now one of my favorite genres. Sometimes the worst of the worst can actually be the best of…well, the options you have for stuff to watch with your friends.