Deathstalkers

Deathstalker

Argentina/USA - 1983

Director - John Watson

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 20 min.

The first is always the best, if not the weirdest. The box features a great tagline and art that seems distinctly He-Man-ish to me. The film features Rick Hill as the titular character, as well as the late Lana Clarkson who went on to become the Barbarian Queen. Hill appeared again in the unbelievably terrible Warrior Queen with Sybil Danning and again in the fourth Deathstalker.

Deathstalker II

Argentina/USA - 1987

Director - Jim Wynorski

Vestron Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Probably the goofiest and perhaps dumbest of the series Deathstalker II stars Wynorski (whom I've talked about more elsewhere) regular John Terlesky (Naked Cage) as Stalker, and the series only appearance of zombies and goofy cartoon sound effects for almost everything. Monique Gabrielle is the love interest, she went on to do film a slew of B-movies and adult movies. Although I'm pretty sure the Deathstalkers were all backed by Roger Corman during his brief Argentina/Mexico phase, this is the first that bears evidence on the video sleeve in the form of his production company New Horizons.

Deathstalker III: The Warriors From Hell

Mexico/US - 1988

Director - Alfonso Corona

Vestron Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

It's been years since I watched this one. It was the most difficult to get on VHS. I tried four times to order it online and only got it on the last try about 6 months ago. I don't remember much of what happens, but the cover art is what first drew me to all of these films. 10 years ago my good friend Regis and I decided we were going to rent all the films with rippling sweaty-dude paintings on the cover, so we did, it was awesome, end of story. All of these paintings and many more 80's Dungeons and Dragons fantasy art featuring epic mullets and impractical clothing were done by Boris Valejo.

Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans

US - 1990

Director - Howard R. Cohen

New Horizons Home Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Finally the man who wrote the entire series gets to sit in the directors chair and let me tell you, does it ever pay off. Many of the sequels have used recycled footage, particularly in the setup, but as I recall this one uses a lot of it. However, my recollection is that many of the names in the credits sounded eastern European, and I definitely remember copious breasts (exceeding the high bar set by the first three films) so I've always held that it was filmed in a former Soviet satellite state where people would do almost anything for American dollars, including bathe each other for the camera. Oh yeah, Rick Hill is back as Stalker and Corman workhorse Maria Ford appears as the love interest. She drew her bread and butter from her chest and Corman's payroll for years.

So, thanks for sticking with me on this brief quest through Deathstalker.In any case it fits with my effort to preserve lost VHS (the Deathstalker/Deathstalker 2 DVD is way out of print last I checked) and the role VHS box art played in drawing me into the exploitation fold. In that sense for me Deathstalker was a case in point. I was inspired by my friend at The Scandy Factory to post some of my old VHS boxes since this is probably all the "review" these films will ever get from me. Check out his blog for loads of great VHS scans, and here for some vintage pics of several of the lady stars.

Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction

Body Chemistry 3: Point of Seduction
US – 1994
Director – Jim Wynorski
New Horizons Home Video, 1994, DVD
Run time - 1 hour 30 min.

When I rewatched Naked Cage several months ago to write about it, I took a shine to Shari Shattuck. I tracked down a couple of her other films including Tainted and this, only to discover that she never went beyond B-list TV and exploitation with a few saucy photos thrown in.

Forster's gettin' ready for another night in the ring.

This films thin plot-like gruel in which the tits will swim begins in a fancy hotel or brothel. A drunken Robert Forster beats-up two hookers and his buddy Alan is called in to diffuse the situation. The hooker abuse is quickly forgotten because Forster is under a lot of pressure man, and that's what dudes do. And hey, business calls, Alan has a hot lead on a great TV movie that he wants to pitch to Forster. Speaking of calling, Shari Shattuck is Claire, a TV sex-psychologist with a live video-call-in show. Her recently deceased lovers are the subject of Alan’s script

Alan’s source is an old buddy and alcoholic radio personality cum-script writer. He claims that his story is great but the idea has to be okayed by Claire herself, and that just might take some doing. After getting an eyeful of Claire, Alan is prepared to do some doing, but she is appalled by the idea of a TV bio-pic, unless she has total control over the whole process. To this end she later calls on Alan in his hotel room where she proposes a special deal in which he provides, the “doing” and she will let him make the movie, with the aforementioned stipulations.

What's that? I can't hear you over the sound of my wife's makeup.

Things get stupidly complicated as Alan’s actress wife, Morgan Fairchild -basically playing herself- gets the notion that she should play Claire in the movie. The writer meanwhile does some investigation and finds out that Claire’s priors include extreme S&M that caused her lovers deaths. The mystery here is apparently supposed to be who Claire’s lovers were and why. Ostensibly she had some ulterior motive for fucking them to death, but this seems pointless to the overall plot and added after the fact to add screen time between Shari’s disrobings. To keep the writer from revealing her motives to Alan, she repeatedly uses her vaginal mind control device to reduce Alan to a speechless idiot with a stiffy. Despite this, each time he’s being “coerced” by Claire (or his wife), he wears a look of uncomfortable revulsion on his taut and pallid visage.

Whatever. The overarching theme is that Claire is downright predatory which seems pointless because she doesn’t have to be, she is an attractive and successful doctor, author and TV personality after all. Rather, the real point is that sexually aggressive/confident women are so intimidating that there has to be some evil intent working behind the scenes, right? Men aren’t just so stupid that they’ll do anything for poontang are they? Absolutely not, from the evidence presented it’s clear, any woman who likes sex is obviously trying to bring about the downfall of modern civilization.

Fangoria 8 - Zombie

You've gotta love this toothy fellow, one of the greatest horror film images of all time in my humble opinion, flopped left to right from the original for this cover, published October 1980.


You can tell who the Italian darling of the Fangoria staff was because they screwed up Lucio Fulci's name on the table of contents. I'll bet they never accidentally called the other guy Lucio Argento, I guess they kindof have a decent excuse though, before Zombi 2, Fulci had mostly been doing westerns and White Fang adventure films and hadn't shown up on American genre radar yet.





The article was written by Jim Wynorski who went on to direct Chopping Mall (1986) and Deathstalker II (1987) and more recently a plethora of soft-core skinflicks like The Bare Wench Project series.

The Naked Cage

Naked Cage

United States - 1986

Director – Paul Nicholas

Media Home Entertainment, 1987, VHS

You might think the movie hasn’t started yet and you’re watching a trailer for a Disney picture about animal husbandry when you spot the first scene coming over the horizon like a gilded unicorn. Buxom blonde Michelle (Shari Shattuck of Arena and later, director Jim Wynorski's Body Chemistry 3) lives the life of a perfect adorable princess well into her twenties, all soft focus, Slisbury Steak dinners, cooing mothers and underthings that smell like sunlight and Jesus. This is the kindof girl that prays every night for god to bless her horsies, c’mon, she actually enjoys her job as a bank teller. Like director Nicholas’ earlier women-in-prison film, Chained Heat, Naked Cage also centers around an innocent baby-fatted princess thrown into the grinder of prison only to come out all tits and gristle on the other side.

Alright!
That’s the first exclamation of enthusiasm coming from the jutting rugged jaw of Willy (John Terlesky of the title role in Deathstalker 2 also directed by Jim Wynorski). Willy picks up a fashion-punk chick named Rita from the side of a lonely desert highway. Over lunch at a roadside diner, a cop takes an interest in Willy’s stolen Corvette, and Rita exposes her inner ex-con by airing out the cop’s brain. Later, after Willy snorts some victory cocaine off her titties, Rita convinces him to rob a bank, but he makes one last drug addled reconciliation plea to with his wife (? This is never clarified) the angelic untainted Michelle. Rebuffed, (and probably a few grams later) it turns out that they’re robbing the same bank that doe-eyed Michelle works at. (big surprise) Michelle tries to intervene in the whole blundering operation, to make Willy stop, to turn him back into the sunshine, but when she jumps in the getaway car to staunch the flow when he is shot, she is taken as an accomplice and is prison bound for all the usual visual vice and expected sin.

Inside she is forced to wear a demeaning little rag of a miniskirt and befriends the stringy-haired waifish drug addict inmate Amy who she counsels in positivity with sparkly sigh-heavy bragging about her pony. The Warden, with a rat’s nest of blond curls piled and sprayed to a rigid finish, gives Michelle the lesbian warden speech. Please me, and your life here will be easy etc. Hmmm, in case you were wondering just what that means, or maybe just wanted the warden to be a little more specific, hold on a sec…

In the Warden’s boudoir, bedecked with every tacky 80’s aesthetic convention short of a Lamborghini poster, she spanks and is spanked by a pillowy chested inmate in low-grade bondage gear and competing spray-hardened rats nest. If you aren’t too distracted, you’ll notice that the inmate is pocketing, er, pantying something, go back to being distracted it never gets explained. But do pay attention to the pug-nosed creep in the closet, he’ll be back in just a … WAIT There he is, raping one of the black inmates before hanging her.
Brought to task by the leader of the black prisoners, Brenda, the Warden upbraids “Smiley” the rapist, but as we know, in detail, she has her own prisonerette vice and there is an uneasy a live and let live, racist-rapist-homicide policy.

Suddenly Rita shows up in the mess hall and you know she’s pure poison because she’s already sporting a custom modified punk prison issue miniskirt and single dangling feather earring. That’s concentrated anarchy waiting to happen.
Good timing too, I was just starting to think Michelle wasn’t going to have a shower scene. But as if to punish me for being such a shallow slob, Rita emerges from the roiling steam to slash Michelle up with a knife, waking her up from her nightmare. This is where things start to get a little bit complicated and overly serious, blame it on director Nicholas who’s Chained Heat (1983) was equally brimming with bloodletting and boobs. He’d rather bite the tongue off than stick it in the cheek.

Here Michelle incurs the wrath of the Warden and her pal Smiley by refusing to rat on the other inmates, and by sticking up for Amy when her pimp comes around. Sent to solitary so Smiley can have his perverse revenge, Michelle shows him how quick a country girl can learn that testicles are sensitive to kicking.
Also like Heat, Cage follows an uplifting arc of revenge and renewal with the inmates rebelling and Michelle chucking Rita onto a giant open fusebox festooned with dangling wires where she fries ever so believably in a shower of sparks like a horsefly on a bug zapper. I don’t think anybody has died like that since 1988.
Having kicked down the rotting house from the inside, Michelle can return to innocence and her 70’s ranch-house all American lifestyle to make out with her stupid pony.