Deathstalker (1983)

“Heroes and fools are the same thing...”

This is one of many sword and sorcery films that sprang up in the wake of Conan the Barbarian. A fair few of them were quite good. This one isn’t, but it’s one of the better known ones which are utter pants.

There are no real stars in it. It’s cheap as chips. But it seems to have amassed enough of a cult following that we’re here talking about it 36 years later. I’m not entirely sure why. It’s a fairly perfunctory plot about a cynical anti-hero whom we first meet saving a damsel in distress from some lecherous men who are disfigures and therefore bad, and then proceeding to, er, undress and grope her, giving us the first of many glimpses of boobies. Well then. No feminism here, clearly.

Deathstalker (what sort of a name is that?) then proceeds to deny he’s a hero and that he just steals and kills to stay alive. It may be sword and sorcery, but this is definitely the ‘80s. And not just because of the bean bags that are visible in several scenes...

It soon morphs into a plot which makes no sense but isn’t hard to follow, involving a witch, a few perfunctory MacGuffins and a kind of gladiatorial contest which an evil wizard is setting up for reasons which are not quite clear. But there’s a nasty pig man, lots of naked woman who, er, seem to exist for the pleasure of all those charming men, and a lot of fighting. And, er, that’s it. It’s a short, simple film which, to be fair, shows a quite well-designed lived-in, dirty, sword and sorcery world. But, really, there are plenty of other sword and sorcery films from this sort of era.

Friday the 13th, Part III (1982)

“How come you never scream when we have sex?"

"Give me something to scream about..."

 I've said it before, and I'll say it again because it's still very relevant; watching the Friday the 13th films after the Scream films is probably not for the best. Once you've seen all those slasher tropes deconstructed time and time again it's a little bizarre to see them played with a straight bat, as they are here. As it happens the film is well made (the hilariously unconvincing popping eyeball aside...), and probably the best so far, but still...

We get a bunch of teens headed to a cabin by the lake in the woods. We get a weird old man warning them off. People do genre unwise things like having sex, smoking dope and carrying out practical jokes about being gruesomely murdered. There's no subversion of the cliches at all, just constant leaning into them. But, you know what? It works. Well, mostly.

This is the third film in the series and the first to feature (with no explanation) the hockey mask, which is a good idea and rather effective. As, on the whole, are the set pieces. I like the dart in the eye. The characters are a bit generic and blend into each other, but you expect that. But some of them are likeable and, like poor doomed virgin Shelly, some even have pathos. There's sex in a hammock, and a shower scene which probably counts as misdirection. It's an entertaining 90 minutes that holds the attention. But, well, surely in 1982 this had been done a million times or more? Three films in (after a bit of a hiatus) and I'm still concluding that the films are, yes, perfectly decent, but it's hard to understand what makes them so iconic.