Weirdhouse Cinema: Beastmaster 2

I've ever even seen it all the way through. But the first beast Master I think I've seen like half of it. Oh, it's it's really good. I feel like I can say without any doubt that the original beast Master from Don Coscarelli is just a solid um leather diaper movie. It's a solid um uh you know, Barbarian wasteland conan ask motion picture with some awesome monsters in it, uh, some fun performances and a great villain played by ripped

torn Well, fair enough. If beast Master one is your idea of solid would say beast Master two is riven with holes. It's like Swiss cheese maybe about to crumble apart. But I had a good time revisiting this because I remember this movie, uh in that it used to play on TV when I was a kid. I think this is one of those ones that come on T and T late at night or maybe in the middle of

the afternoon on a weekend. And um, so the reason we picked this movie is that Rob we were talking about examples of this bizarre sub genre that existed from roughly the mid eighties to the early nineties, and the sub genre was this, You take your leather diaper barbarian or some other greased up fantasy muscleman who uh you know, exists in a world of swords and magic, and then you have him travel from his strife torn home world

to the smog filled alleyways of modern day Los Angeles. Surprisingly, there was more than one movie with this premise, so I would say it's a variant on the standard fish out of Water plot, coming pretty close to the format that we talked about in our episode on the Nicholas Meyer movie Time after Time, the format we were calling fish out of Time, except in the case of these movies in particular, the beef warrior is typically said to be traveling from some other dimension filled with wizards and

demons rather than just from a point in Earth's real past. And I don't know, I mean, can you can You can make an argument though that it's it's science fiction is our imagined future, fantasy is our imagined past. So uh, you know, it basically washes out there. Well, it's debatable what's what actually happens in this movie itself because the title is through the portal of time. But the characters in the movie describe l A as being an alternate dimension.

And I don't know. You can check your history books for anything resembling our Lawn and le Rona and the Beast Master, and I don't think it really shows up. Well, you know, maybe it's a it's a it's a time lost to history, right. Plenty of people today also describe l A as an alternate dimension as well, So I

don't guess. So, so we're talking. I don't know exactly where the sub genre comes from, but it might all be traceable back to the the nineteen eighties seven he Man movie Masters of the Universe, in which Dolph Lundgren plays he Man. He ends up transported to modern day l A for some reason in his quest to defeat the evil Skeletor played by Franklin Ngela. Yeah, that that was a fun flick. I remember seeing that in the theater.

Some older kids took me, some like friends of the family, and it felt it felt very grown up in many ways. It was an interesting an interesting crazy like it was, you know, a lot of this kind of dark stuff

in there. They really took the the world of the of of the these action figures in the cartoon, and they played it downright serious at times, especially towards the beginning and towards the end, because you have all this like cool stuff where Skeletor looks amazing and he has this just I would say, the sweetest band of underlings and hinch creatures this side of Empire strikes back. It's got Meg Foster is some kind of evil sorceress. I think it's got Billy Bartie. Yea Billy Barti's in there.

You've been playing a magical creature. You've got a lizard man, You've got you've got a beast man. You've got some sort of a big haired, gnarly dwarf. You have a sword guy, and then of course you have the sword guy, Dolph Longern playing he Man in a costume designed by Mobius. I mean, what more do you need? But I do remember the of course, the thing about Master of the Universe. You have that whole central section where they're dumped into

our world. And even at the time, I was like, oh man, I kind of wish we could have stayed an attorney, you like I, that's where these characters should be. Why are they Why are they invading my world? Um? But I know you roll with it because eventually you get back to it, turning it. You gotta make it relevant.

But but these weren't the only two movies. Amazingly, you dug up at least one other movie where there's like a where there's like a sword swinging meatman who ends up transported to modern day l A. Was that Time Barbarians from n Yes, I have not seen Time Barbarians, uh, And I suspect a lot of people have not seen Time Barbarians. But it is a film that that definitely exists, and um does not feature anyone I'm really familiar with.

But but it's it's time. It's it's basically the same plot, is what we're talking about here, some sort of barbarian dude, Chase is a bad guy to modern day l A. Uh, it's very much in keeping what we're talking about here. So you know, a funny thing is that I just realized the third Live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie is basically the inverse of this plot. So it takes like rad pizza eating modern l A heroes in internal

form and transports them back to like feudal Japan. Yeah, the reverse of this, you see with There's there's some military applications of this, right, there's there's at least one note where the American film and and a Japanese film where you have like modern day combat units traveling back in time and then potentially changing world events. Um. Speaking of of of such, there's um, there's a Hong Kong film and I think who this one is a very

vague memory. It took me a lot to find this film, but I believe the Iceman cometh from this is about Ming dynasty warriors who get frozen and then wake up in modern times and have to battle each other with swords. This is often compared to Highlander and seems to have maybe been inspired by Highlander, And I guess we we have to consider the possibility that the Highlander DNA is

on all of this as well. Even though those the characters in Highlander, the immortals are are traveling through time the slow way, and they're they're still uh some, there's still a little bit of fish out of water stuff like the Kurgan never really adapts. Uh he's in. One of the characters in our film today is very much in Kurgan mode. Oh yeah. Our Klon played by Wingshauser in in Beastmester two has strong notes of Kirgan. Yeah, I would say, I guess I'm not giving Kurgan a

fair shake. Kurgan does adapt to modern times, but he only adapts to like the violent subcultures of modern times. He becomes like a punk, body modification biker. But I think it's also interesting how many parallels you would find in in movies of this kind, because I feel like they've all got to have some similar elements. Like your Meat Beast discoverers, rock and roll or some of the pop music genre. They get into a dance club, or they learn about rap music or something and it's like, wow,

this this music is like nothing I've ever heard. It frightens me. Um and then you have a scene where the meat beast discovers pizza or chocolate or some other food of the gods. You have the meat beast marveling at the magic box that shows pictures. You have the meat beast terrified by traffic, cars, freeways. And then finally, I think you've always got to have a scene where your meat beast has an encounter with the local police and they're all like, oh, it's another one of these weirdos.

If there are any amateur film historians out there though, that that know where all of this subgenre traces back to, is it is it masters or is it is it something else? I don't know. At any rate, it is a It is a winning formula, even if it doesn't always make for great movies, it does make movies that win. I wonder what it does say about the sort of nature of the muscly hero. And this might be something that is explored in some of the serious literature out there.

You know is reading some of this regarding Hercules. But uh, you know the first beast Master film, your your lead character, the beating the beast Master himself is uh, you know, it's played he seriously in this movie he's mostly a dufus, So I wonder there's probably something deeper going on there about our our relationship to to these like hyper masculine images. Oh, I just a thought of another variation. This is not exactly the same formula, but it's kind of close. Arnold

Schwarzenegger's first movie, Hercules in New York. Oh yeah, And to a limited degree, you can compare this determinator as well. Um. I mean he's coming from the future, he's and he's maybe more finely tuned to fit in. He knows exactly what he's gonna do. He's not gonna marvel at the rock and roll in the pizza too much. But occasionally he gets something wrong, like asking for a plasma rifle at the gun store. Oh yeah, phase plasma rifle only

what's you see pal let's stick miller. Yeah, that's right. Uh. Now here we would usually give the elevator pitch, but I think we've already given it. Right, it's beast Master. It's l A. What else do you need? Yeah, beast Master in l A. That's it. Beast Master learns valley speak. Beast Master learns how to party, you know. So I guess we should to hear some trailer audio. All right, let's do it. Come through the doorway to another dimension with the beast Master and the creatures he commands from

their world to ours. It's the wildest diadventure that time has ever known. Beast Master too, through the portal of time. Rock and Roll Baby rating pg. Thirteen, Coming August to a theater near you. All Right, so you're probably wondering, well, who are the fine people who brought this vision to the screen. Let's let's talk about the people of note here.

First of all, the director and uh, and also one of the mini writers credited on the screenplay is Silvio Tabbitt, Lebanese producer known for his involvement in such eighties films as Dead Ringers, The Cotton Club, Evil Speak, Fade to Black, and of course The beast Master, the first film. He was also associate producer on Alejandro Jodorowski's eight film Tusk. This is that possibly lost film about an elephant and Uh.

Of course he's noted for this movie as well. This is his only the only time he directed or did any screenwriting. He's again, he's mostly a producer, and from here he'd go on to produce Beast Master three and n and the sixty six episode cable TV show The

Beast Master from through two thousand. Now, I don't want to do uh too much surmising because I don't know what went on behind the scenes here, but I do wonder if this is one of those classic cases of somebody is involved in the film industry and to the extent of putting up the money for films, being the lead investor or the producer in that sense. Uh, and then they're like, Okay, I get I get how this business works. I can be the creative director behind the movie. Yeah.

I think there was something like that. Uh. Like, I'm going to go and skip to the two main screenplay credits on this because the first is Jim Winnarski, who has a story and screenplay credit. This is, of course, um uh Jim Warnarski from N six film the n S film Schopping Mall, which we've discussed on the show before, also notable for Swamp Thing Too and various other films.

And then uh, the other story screenplay credit goes to R. J. Robertson, who lived work in the animation department on Shopping Mall and did visual effects on Buckar, Ruban's Eye, Dreamscape, and Troll and also wrote Death Stalker two and a few other titles. But it seems to be the case where I believe Jim Winnarski was going to direct this thing and then lost control of the picture. And I didn't dig too deep into this, but I think there was

some bad blood here. I usually don't follow all the threads myself because I don't want to sour my appreciation of the film. You know, I wanted to be uh this fun experience, and I don't want to know too much about any kind of beef going on behind the scenes. Well, the claim I read, and this was only hearing when Norsky's side, so I can't vouch for this being true.

But what he claimed is that he like worked on the script with the understanding that he would get to direct it, and then at the last minute tab it was like, oh no, actually I'm going to direct it. And then so they got into some big legal bruhaha about that, and uh and uh when Orsky apparently was able to extract some major money or concessions or something out of them in order to in order to let

them proceed. So an in your right. If you're familiar with Jim Winnarski's filmography, I feel like you can you can identify some of the touches in the screenplay. I feel like a lot of this picture feels very much in keeping with some of the things I've seen from him, especially A Swamp Thing Too. I can easily compare this film to Swamp Thing Too well. I was going to say that the satirical elements of this script are way

below the mark of Chopping Mall. Like I feel like Chopping Mall is pretty sharp, pretty funny as written, and this one it has actors in it that can elevate it above the level of the script. But the script itself is pretty dreadful. It is a It's interesting because it is a It's kind of a self riffing movie. There are characters in place whose whose role is to riff on things, and uh, I think most of the

characters come off as dufus is throughout. It's hard to think of anyone who doesn't come off as a dufus in this movie. Um, but that's ultimately the thing I enjoyed the most about it. Yeah, I thought the exact same thing. There is at least one major character who I'd say multiple major characters who riff on the film as it goes. One of them really works and the other really doesn't. But we'll we'll come back to that.

But this actually so the script is not very close based on, but partially based on a novel by Andre Norton right right. Um. Andre Norton who lived through two thousand five, born Alice Mary Mary Norton Um. But she published under the pen name Andre Norton. I'm not super familiar with that. I don't know that I've I've read any of her work before, but she was a pulp era genre writer and was seemingly quite prolific. Uh. Fifty nine, she wrote a book called beast Master about a Navajo

former soldier with telepathic links to genetically altered animals. It ends up having adventures on other planets. Obviously, very little of that was adapted into the beast Master film from Don Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman. Uh. They wrote the screenplay for the original. But these are these are apparently they're like five different beast Master books from Norton. Again, I haven't read them. If anyone out there has read them, i'd be curious to hear you're taking all of this well.

You know, I also don't know a lot about Andre Norton, but I know that some of her works, like I think her Witch World series involved blending science fiction and and like magic, fantasy, sword and sorcery kind of stuff together in the same universe. And I would say beast Master two does that. Yeah, And in that sense, I guess beast Master two is more in keeping with the

sort of of of fiction that she created. And I'll I'll briefly point out that there's also someone named Doug Miles who has a screenplay credit on this, but I couldn't find out anything about them. I think this is their only credit on anything. But just for the sake of having another human being involved in the creation of this strange film, All right, let's move on to the cast. We gotta star. Start at the top. Who do we have playing the beast Master A man named dar It

is Mark Singer. What do I think of this Corman's I would say that Mark Singer shifts pretty effortlessly between the characters two modes in this movie, and they are very different modes. One of them is standard Barbarian fantasy action hero and the other is befuddled weirdo wandering around

mostly naked on the sidewalk. Yeah. Yeah, I don't remember enough about his performance and Beastmaster, though I've again, I've seen it so many times um to to really comment too much on this, Like, I wonder how much of the weirdness is just taking that character out of a fantasy setting and placing him in New York, because yeah, he often just comes off as this kind of like weird dude with ferrets, weird uh you know, lean muscular, forty year old with oiled skin who had It's kind

of an interesting balancing act because they'll have these scenes where he is at once very awkward and that he is, you know, a fish out of water he's in downtown l A. But on the other hand, he is also perfectly at ease. He's standing there on the street mostly naked. Again, we're just wearing this uh this this leather uh loincloth thing. So like somebody turns on the stereo and it plays hair metal at him and he's like be fuddled and freaked out, what is this? It frightens and confuses me.

But then in other scenes, you know, he's wandering through this now house of the nineteen nineties, and and he like easily begins conversing and comforting someone about the death of a parent, and it's just like this. I don't know. Sometimes he's, uh, he's incredibly socially competent. In other times he's he's out of his depth. Yeah, so it's yeah, it's a it's a weird performance to watch. He mostly comes off as a dufus in this when he's not actually like fighting, And even then, I don't know an

argument can be made. Now. Mark Singer is probably best remembered for beast Master one and yes, beast Master two, along with the eighties V movie and the TV show that followed. Uh that we shouldn't forget that there also is a beast Master three, uh, and Mark Singer is in that alongside Tony Todd, Castor Van Dean and David Warner. What yeah, two great actors and A and A Casper. Yeah. So Mark Singer has worked a lot over the years, and I believe he's still active. Um. Stuff that stands

out to me. And his filmography includes of voicing the man bat On Batman the animated series Oh Wow, and he was oh yeah, yeah, I enjoyed those, uh those episodes. There's also the film Lancelot Guarding a Guardian of Time. Uh. He was O he's the hero opposite John Saxon, and that listeners, like hardcore listeners to the show might remember that we heard from another listener who worked on this film and was almost killed by John Saxon during one

of the stunts. Maybe it might be a slight exaggeration, but yes, the like a sword came in their direction, right, Yes, but everybody was okay, Yeah, So anyway, Mark is in he's in great shape in this Uh, We've got to give him that, and he's Uh. I feel like he does everything that is asked of him in this of this film. I feel like that's something I can say for most of the cast. Uh did they did they

perform what they could with what they were given? Did they even excel in their roles given what they were given? I I would say, yes, Okay, I guess from here we should move on to talking about I would argue are two characters in the movie who both functions simultaneously as actors within the plot and sort of characters on the satellite of love, riffing the movie as it goes except they're in it. Uh, and those would be Carrie Were playing Jackie Trent and Sarah Douglas playing Lurana. Which

do you want to talk about first? Let's talk about Carrie Were okay again? Plays Jackie Trent, who is our party girl who ends up sucked into the plot of this movie. So we'rer was born in nineteen sixty seven. This was only her third film role, following Fire with Fire and the Adventures of Ford fair Lane, but she went on to be in a whole string of interesting things. She played Abigail Arcane on The Swamp Thing TV show

for ten episodes in the early nineties. She went on to act in nineteen six Is Thinner And she was in Anaconda. Oh, boys, she is in anticonda. I think she gets eaten by an antaconda. I would hope. So. I mean, if you're if you're in anaconda and you don't get by a snake, Um, you know, what are you doing? No? Wait a minute, now that I think about it, Actually she maybe maybe she maybe gets murdered by John Voyd. Well that that's good enough. Yeah, that's

similar fate. Uh. So she worked regularly after that with runs on sliders in General Hospital. But she was also in hell Raiser Debtor from two thousand five, and she was in two not one, but two Prophecy films the same year, Uprising and Forsaken. I'm sad to say neither of those had Christopher Walking in them at all. And she's mostly done a lot of voice over work and and for animated projects recently, so I gotta be honest and evaluate the performance. I don't think it's entirely carry

Were's fault. I think a lot of it is in the lines given to her and how she was clearly instructed to perform this character. But I would say her character Jackie Trent, is intensely annoying in this movie. There were groans of plenty in our house as as the movie was being screened. Yeah, um there. I certainly groaned

some watching them by myself. But on the other hand, I don't know if i'd want a real strong performance here, you know, like like there are scenes where she's threatened by our main villain, but you never really buy that she's in danger. Like those scenes don't feel very terrifying in part because of her performance. And I don't know

that I would want that scene to be terrifying. No, she's scored a sort of flippantly uh riffing and reviewing the movie as it goes on, So she's not She doesn't ever feel very in the plot, which is good. I mean that works for how silly this movie is. But I would say there's another character who sort of does that, but does it so well that this character

kind of fades back. So the other one is Sarah Douglas playing the character le Urana, a sorceress, and I would say this is the breakout character of the movie. Sarah Douglas is by far the best actor in the film, and she makes her character a lot of fun despite the dreadfully cringe e writing. I would say this is a classic example of a great actor really elevating their role above what it would be just on paper. Oh yeah,

she's she's really good. Um, so she was. Sarah Douglas was born two probably best known for playing General's odds underlying Ursa in Superman one and two, but she was also in Conan the Destroyer she played the evil Queen and that. She's still active today, mostly in voice work, but she's been a ton of weird stuff over the years. She played Dracula's wife opposite Jack Palance in Dracula. I want to see that now. Yeah, I'm I haven't seen that,

but I don't remember Dracula's wife from the book. I mean, of course I love her in the Superman movies, but I guess there's so much going on, and those she stood out less in a bad movie like this. She really just like beams like the sun. Uh So, now I want to see all of Sarah Douglas movies. I've got to see her as Dracula's wife. She is, of course, also in Jim Warnarski's uh the Return of the Swamp

Thing from nine. She pops up in puppet Master three, Meatballs four, Return to the Living Dead three, and also nineteen three Quest of the Delta Nights, which of course famously stars David Warner in two different roles. So I would say her legacy as a shirt we're not worthy, all right, we are just she's She's an interesting there because she's also not a pure villain. She's kind of a wiener, right, She's a she's in it for herself. She's having to work twice as hard as these other

characters to to achieve what she needs to get. Our main like just pure villain that's played very straight, also comes off as a dufe as plenty of times, but this character is never quite winking at the camera. This is the character Arclon, played by wings Houser. I'd say this is another standout performance in the film. Our Our, Our villain duo or are clearly the highlight for me, Sarah Douglas is that ray of sunshine and Arclon is just the glowing pits of hell. Yes. Oh, wings Houser,

there's so much wings Houser in this film. Um, and it's it's probably not surprising that he has a screenwriting credit as well. Um, so maybe those two are connected, um, because he's probably like, I like this, but I think this film needs needs more arc lin, I'll have some pages for you. Well, yeah, you know, this movie does something very well and despite all of our criticisms and being honest and having to say, you know, a lot

of things about the script are not so good. Um. It has villains in a silly movie where the actors fully commit to going over the top like they're not trying to be cool. They're you know, they're they're not trying to say, oh, I don't want to look too silly. They're they're just going for it and that that works. Yeah, and and uh yeah, Wings Houser goes for it in this um So this is the son of Hollywood Disney

director Dwight Houser, the father of actor Kohle Houser. If anyone's seen a Cole Houser movie, I think he shows up in in the Fast and the Furious movies at some point. Maybe that's right. Wings, if you're wondering, was a nickname he earned in high school sports. Uh. This apparently is referring to the wing back position in football. I'm not sure what that means, but that's where it

comes from. And he was also a musician for a spell under the name Wings Living Right, putting out the nine album Your Love keeps Me Off the Streets as a wonderfully dorky album cover and uh, yeah, I don't know your Love keeps Me off the Street? That doesn't sound like a healthy relationship. I feel like there's some imbalance going on here. You could make a poster for be Smester two. That's like, that's Mark Singer saying that to his ferrets. Yeah. So wings Houser is notable for it.

He's been in a lot of things over the years. He played the violent pimp Ramrod and Gary Sherman's vice squad, from a film that he also sang the theme song for Neon Slime. Um. He's had notable roles in such films as Tough Guys Don't Dance. He pops up in The Insider, I think playing a big tobacco lawyer. Uh. He's also in Tales from the Hood, Watchers, three Mutant,

and a movie called The Wind. Mutant has been featured on Riff tracks before, and The Wind has been on my radar for a while that this one looks kind of interesting. Wings Houser has a distinctive screen presence that I was I was working hard trying to figure out how to describe, because wait a minute, you didn't. It seems like you nailed it in your very first comment to me. You texted me just the phrase tooth the egg. It's like, yeah, yeah, to tooth the egg. I think

that does encapsulate it. But um, he's like, it's easy to think. Okay, there's a little bit of Gary Busey to him, you know, like maybe he's like a a discount Gary Busey, But it's it's more than that. He's he's great at portraying this kind of unhinged turbo jock. You know, he has that kind of physicality, but he also has he had this largish head and a smile that's just a full upper dental exam. Like with the smiles, you can see all of his upper teeth, and it

makes for just a wonderfully sadistic smile. I think if he had ever actually shaved his head, first of all, he would have looked like a tooth the egg, but he would have looked a lot like drawings I've seen interpretations of the character Judge Holden from Blood Meridian. He's also he's also a big guy, which helps tall. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's I think he's I looked up his height. I was like, how big is this guy? And then I

think he's only six too. But but in movies, you know a lot of times you're working at opposite actors that are are really not that tall in stature, so you can still tower over somebody. Um seemed bigger to me, Yeah, not like what Vince Vaughn is really tall, Like like it probably and like they have to use special effects to I think I've just read that he's like six six something like that. I don't know. I think he's

still growing. He's like a reptile. Vince Vaughn's as tall as Michael Jordan's or One more thing about about wings Houser here is yes, he has a screenwriting credit on Best Master two. Um. And he also this wasn't his only the only time he had contributed to a screenplay. He also contributed to the screenplays of Uncommon Valor, No Safe Haven and Skins, from which he also directed. I've

never seen any of the wings Houser movies. UH think you're fine skipping him, but he's pretty tremendous in this all right. We have some a few other players in smaller roles that I think are worth mentioning. We have a we have a couple of cops that show up because you gotta have cops on the scene to sort of be bewildered by all this barbarian magic that's going on in modern day l A. And they're both pretty fun. But the main cop character is Lieutenant Cobberly played by uh,

they always fun, James Avery from Fresh Prince. Yeah, Yeah, he played uh the the patriarch of the family, Philip Banks. But but more than that, he also voiced Shredder on the original Teenage Mustan Ninja Turtles animated series. Yeah, he did a lot of voice acting. I was looking into credits and I was like, wow, Yeah, especially some of the shows from back in the day. He popped up on a lot of those. Um, he he got to

play a cling on on Star Trek Enterprise. But it's did a tremendous amount of TV where going back to nineteen eighty I believe he lived ninety five through two thousand thirteen. In this movie, he lays a a weary, exasperated police commander who it's like, he's so tired of dealing with like barbarians who show up through dimensional rifts. You know, this is like the eighth one this week, and it's just really wearing on him. Yeah, alright, um now this is we get into a couple of very

small roles here, but they're worth mentioning. Because Robert Zadar shows up in this. I don't think he has any lines, but he's you notice him in the background there. Yeah, yeah, he may yell something. I'm not sure but that's the extent of it. He plays. His character has a name, Zavic Robert Zadar live Uh blow budget b movie legend. Uh this man Uh, He's the man with a million dollar chin. It's kind of shocking that it took this long force to cover a film that has Roberts Zadar

in it. He's probably best known to horror fans as the original maniac Cop MST. Three K fans will know him best from Soul Taker in Future War, and mainstream fans might remember him from playing u of I think he plays like a criminal or some sort of a heavy and tango in Cash, but he was in all sorts of low budget movies, including the excellent Samurai Cop. He's the main antagonist in that. He also has a role in A Cherry Too thousand, which is a lot

of fun. A memorable character actor h in part due to his uh cherubism, which was a medical condition that resulted in that in a large jaw line that he has sometimes more pronounced in certain roles and certain times in his life than others. But he was certainly one of a kind. When Sadar shows up on screen, you know what you're dealing. With Yeah, if he's in the fight, you know, the hero will not win unless it's in

the last five minutes of the movie. Now another UM character actor with a very distinctive look that pops up towards the end in a role that will describe later on. Michael Berryman appears in the film Michael Berriman was born. He was born with hypo hydraulic ectodermal dysplasia, a rare condition characterized by the absence of sweat, glands, hair, and fingernails.

He has over a hundred screen credits, including memorable roles of course and Wes Craven's The Hills and Eyes from seven at very another memorable role in Weird Science from five. He's in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. He pops up in Star Trek, The Voyage Home, the Barbarians from seven, and so much more. Uh. He has a really fun role in an episode of Tales from the Crypt, playing a creepy vampire hunter opposite of the very likable vampire

played by Malcolm McDowell. Oh, I haven't seen that one. Maybe I'll have to check it out. Yeah, the reluctant vampire that's the name of it. It's it's pretty fun. Well, it's interesting that Barryman barely has a role in this movie. It's just a cameo. So it almost seems like they were just trying to pull in recognizable people from other genre movev is just you know, for a day or something,

to say, hey, will you be in the scene. Yeah, yeah, I mean, because someone like Barryman is certainly legendary now and and even at the time. I think when they were putting this together, it's like, oh, should get Barryman. Let's let's bring him in and and really with our our next cast member to mention again, this is a bit part playing scientists. Number one is Dick Warlock. I didn't even notice him. Yeah, I I noticed him only

because I knew to look for him. But this is of course the stuntman and actor best known for his work on various John Carpenter projects, including turns as Michael Myers and of course The Killer Android and Halloween three season of The Witch. Tom Atkins like punches him in the stomach and a bunch of orange juice comes out. Yeah, I think Dick Warlock does have a line in this. I think he's the scientist who yells something when our

villains steals something from him. H And then finally, Frank Welker, the legendary voice actor, is credited with several roles. I believe these are all animals, So anytime you hear an animal screeching or growling or whatever in this film, it's probably Frank Welker in a sound booth somewhere, and that's exactly what you should think about when those sounds occur. Wow. Well, I gotta say one of the most hilarious recurring things in this movie is when Mark Singer himself would screech

like an eagle to get his eagles attention. Every time it happened, it was a fresh delight. Finally, I'll say that the music for this film, while nothing that really stands out to me, but also something. The weird thing is this was a soundtrack that was released on CD. So many we've touched on far more interesting scores that never had any kind of release, but this one was released.

It's from Robert folk Borne TV and film composer who worked on ace Ventura Too, The Never Ending Story to Van Wilder, Two Boys Life Too, lawnmower Man two, and Police Academy too. To be fair, he did like seven Police getting a movie, so um. He also scored the night teen eight two j S. Cardone movie The Slayer, which I've mentioned on the show before because it takes place on George's own Tybee Island. It seems like that

comes up every episode. Now I know I'm gonna have to break down and watch it again, Okay, but only I know I should only watch it if I go back to Tybee Island. It's really it's it's best. It's best experienced if you have some connection to the place where it's films. So I guess if it's time to talk about the plot, Rob, I'm gonna say before we get to anything else. I don't know if you notice the same thing, but for most of the runtime of this movie, it does not have enough colors in it.

There are long stretches where basically everything on screen is some shade of orange, and then finally they go to l A and then there are a bunch of colors and it's great. But like the scenes that take place in the fantasy realm are just like orange on orange on orange, and it really starts aware on the eyes. Yeah, I mean, it is a desert Wasteland World. So I guess some of that makes sense, but okay, So to address the beginning, the film opens on a setting sun

on a horizon of sand dunes. Everything's orange, uh, and we see a text crawl in orange text saying, in the days following the death of King z A darkness has fallen over the land of Iraq. Oh I forgot the land had a name. I've just been calling it like desert World or beast Master World. Okay, it's raqu it says the evil warlord r Clan, using unholy magic, has enslaved the people. Their only hope rests with the rebel forces marshaling in the east under the leadership of

Dar the Beast Master. I have to say that this movie, hilariously at times, puts in a little extra work to connect itself to the story of Beast Master one, when really it's it was totally unnecessary. I mean, this is a movie in which, at one point in l A, the Beast Master drives is riding past a movie theater. In the movie theater on the marquee, it says Beast Master two through the portal of time. Um, and hey, any comments on it like that's this is the level

of movie this is. You really don't have to work too hard to stitch it into the plot of the previous installment. Also, doesn't it rhet like, doesn't it take characters that were killed in the first Beast Master movie and just they're alive again? Um like maybe some of the animals. Yeah, yes, yeah, at least that's what I read. Yeah. So it's weird that at times they they're throwing in extra lines to to sort of connect things, and like, does it really matter that the villain and the beast

Master are brothers. I don't know. It just gives them something to talk about while swinging swords. I guess. Did you notice that the title when it pops up, it says beast Master two Through the Portal of Time. It looks like a title that would be printed on the side of an arcade cabinet. Like it looks like I should say, insert Waite's below it. Yeah, yeah, you're right.

I didn't think about that when I saw it, but now uh yeah, absolutely, like he just washed out on Golden Axe or on the Neo Geo machine, and you're like, oh, let's give beast Master two through the Portal of time a try, all right, But the opening is you have a bunch of evil, faceless warriors in leather armor and they're bringing a captive into some underground layer. So we have a cave's very orange lit by firelight orange rocks, and the the guards take the hood off of the

captive and it is our hero Dar. You remember him from the previous beast Master movie, and uh, how to describe Dar the beast Master? I would say he is a baby oiled muscle guy in a loincloth wearing a leather strap around his forehead so it's under the hair, just going around the head and a cascade of blonde hair flowing over each year. Yeah, surfer dude, physique, surfer dude hair. And so the soldiers are bringing Dar before

some kind of counsel of creep. So I didn't know who these dudes were, but they're these like guys in Hood's kind of looks like he has to face the judgment of three brain guys from Mystery Science Theater. And they sit there and they scowl at him, and we get our Arklon reveal because wings Houser walks out and sneers mightily. Oh and also we get a brief glimpse of Roberts that are here. He's one of the soldiers in the background, and he's wearing a hat that looks

like an upside down boat. Yes. Oh, and I forgot how quickly they introduced all the characters here, because the lead creep of the Council of Brain Guys pushes Dar's sword and satchel off the table and disgust and immediately we get a ferret reveal because the bag falls to the ground and then two ferrets squeak and crawl out of the bag. These are Kodo and Poto, are loyal Faret friends for the rest of the film. Yes, they don't necessarily do a lot in this film versus the

first film, but but still they're cute when they're on screen. Uh. And it makes for some some weird scenes with the brandishing of yes, uh no, no, no no, they're good. I like the ferrets. They yeah, you're right, they don't do much. They do a bit at the beginning, though. Um so, the brain guy renders the verdict. He says the man named Dar has been found guilty of complicity with the rebels to overthrow the Holy power of Lord Arklon. So oh,

anti ark laon activities. That sounds very serious, and he says the accused has also demonstrated a knowledge of witchcraft in his ability to control the beasts of the field. So sintences death. What hypocrisy, I know. But so Arclon, by the way, won't just take the win and have his enemy beheaded. He has to gloat for a while. And he does a gesture at the at dar is he doing the fig gesture? It kind of looks like it, but or maybe he's just making a weird fist. Yeah,

I'm not sure. I couldn't really make it out. I feel like it would be a strange choice to have the villain of the movie just do the fig into the camera. I mean, he may it might have just been gesticulating just so hard, you know, because again Wing's house or just pours it all into this role, just instantly snarling and seething or gloating. Um, there's there's no

subtlety to this character. And oh and he tries to I think tie it into the events of the first movie because Wingshouser is like, so, this is the beast master who killed our priest may Ox and now challenges my authority but was that ripped Horn in the first movie. I believe that was Ripped Horn's character. I could be wrong on that, but yeah, Ripped Horn played a marvel also, you know, totally overacting and chewing up the scene, but in a suitably ripped Horn way. He was like he

had a high priest, loved to sacrifice children. Well, anyway, so one of the brain guys says, in the name of Lord r Klan, I hereby condemn you to eternal damn nation. And I was like, what he can do that? That? Wow, I I can say it anyway. So Dar just stares at everybody in the scene. He doesn't talk, and they take him up to some kind of altar where they're gonna decapitate him, you know. They bring up the jack catch of our colonia, and just before the axe falls,

dares rest you by his loyal beast buddies. So his tiger rue attacks the guards, and then he's got two ferrets, Kodo and Poto. They're the ones that crawled out of the bag earlier. They gnaw the ropes off of his wrists. And he's got a pet eagle named Shirok who flies around squawking at things and there's a big fight scene. Eventually it comes down to Dar and Arklon, and Arklon has a secret weapon that he uses throughout the entire movie. So maybe we should know the name of it. Is

this rob Is this the Key of Magog? I think they only say the name of it once. Yes, this is the Key of Macogue. Um. And it's pretty cool. It's like, uh, it's not not your typical wand it has like a laser emitter on both ends and then they shoot lasers together which can join into a single being. He seems to have. There's the different settings, like sometimes he seems to have it set to stun, other times he has it set to open giant flaming crack in the earth. Um. So I'm not sure exactly how the

interface works here. He can someone wins out of it, some not ms. He shoots a laser, but it's not a laser. It like creates a storm. But when faced with this laser weapon, Dar pulls out his secret weapon, which is going squawking like a bird at his eagle. Uh. This hilarious activity that he repeats many times in the film. And then the eagle flies in and and just gashes up our Klon's face really good, just claws out, destroying

Arklan's beautiful visage. And every scene after this, our Klan wears a Fantom of the Opera mask, but darn is his animal buddies escape. They get out of the stone fortress right off into the desert, pursued by Arklon's guards. And in the next scene we meet the rebels that Arklon is so worried about. And once you see them, I don't know, I don't know if it seems like he should be all that concerned. These guys do not

appear to have it together. They are like a gaggle of confused men wandering around in the desert, awkwardly holding plastic swords. But they do have one ace in the hole, which is custody of quote the wind Witch, who is the sorceress le Rona. And this is our introduction to to Sarah Douglas again, I think the best actor in the movie by a mile. When we were watching this, Rachel said, Wow, she really puts the wit in which

and I think that sums it up pretty well. She is, as we were saying, operating on a plane of reality above. The rest of the movie is like she is riffing the movie, but also a character within it. So she's all weird jokes, saucy innu window and Austin Powers level one liners. Like seconds after her introduction, a rebel leader is skewered through the neck with an arrow and she's like, I guess he got the point. Uh. Yeah, the first

of many great one liners from her. Uh. And she has something she keeps busting out just because he's so good. She keeps she she keeps punching up her material. Yeah, she's like Roger Moore as James Bond as a sorceress. And I guess the idea. At first, I wasn't sure if she was from our world, if she was from l A Uh, But it seems like that's not the case.

She's just she's either visited it before or she's watched it through the time gate enough that she's she's hipped to a little bit of what this other world is about, and she's picked up some of the lingo. Yeah, I think that's right. I think she is a sorceress from the fantasy world. She's from a rock or wherever this is. And but she has been to l A many times, I believe, or at least watched it because she already

knows how to do Valley speak. But anyway, Lerona tricks the rebels into being ambushed by Arklan because that's her ultimate game plan. She wants to join forces with Arklon anyway, and we find out later that her plan all along was to kill him and then take over the kingdom for herself. But but at this point, she's just sort of like going along with him, I think, to to make use of his army, right, and uh, to manipulate

him as best she can. Like one thing Wingshauser decides to do with the Arklon character is he starts cackling every time he shoots his magic laser, like it's real funny to him. Yes, yeah, there's never a dull moment with arc Lan. He's just he's just always letting loose. The battle scene here has some really funny fake boulders, like he uses the laser to make the boulders roll and they're almost perfectly spherical. Yea, there's some boulders following.

It's it's pretty great. Yeah, But ark Laan wins and then Lerona the which she makes her appeal. She says, well, yes, you have the power of the key of Megog, that's his laser Wand but you can't win this conflict without my help. Uh. And this is the scene where she not only makes the strategic appeal to Arklan, she starts using this excruciating valley speaks. At one point, she says, chill out, lord, dude, I love it. Perhaps perhaps the greatest line in the whole picture. And and he's all like,

what is this strange tongue in which you speak? Yeah, And he keeps h like sh Like at first he he tells his guards it's like have her drawn and quartered, and then he like kind of tries to fake her and he's like burn her alive. And I kind of felt bad for the guards here. It's like, oh my goodness. Like both of those things take a lot of work. Like this guy is such a fuss. He can't just order somebody murdered on the spot. No, it's got to be a huge production that's gonna just take up time

and resources. It's a wonder he gets anything done. Yeah. But anyway, her pitch is that, well, he may be the most powerful man in the world, but only she can provide him with the power to make himself a god. And I think she knows how to appeal to Arclon. He is intrigued, so he, you know, he lets her live for the moment, and and they're going to set

up an alliance. And meanwhile we go back to Dar and this is onto the swamp sequence, a very weird scene that feels visually at least out of place with the rest of the movie. But here's the basic rundown. Okay, So Arklan's guards still chasing Dar. They chase him into the swamp. Then they are mauled by some kind of horrible bog critter with glowing eyes that looks sort of like a cross between swamp thing and Augura from the

Dark Crystal. Then swamp critter attacks Dar, but then tops and then it starts to talk, and it gives him a whole speech, the gist of which is, I am your aunt. I was turned into a swamp critter because I did unholy rituals Our Clawn is your brother, and you have to defeat him or it will be the

end of the world. I believe that Jim Narsky has has commented that the original script or somebody I've read somewhere that the original script was more based in the fantasy world in less than hours, if not exclusively in the fantasy world, I'm not sure, but like, this is definitely a scene where that feels like an artifact of an earlier draft that maybe was more connected with things in uh, an earlier draft of the script. I love

that it's his aunt though, what a choice. Yeah, and he's totally surprised that he's like, I didn't even know I had an aunt, much less that she was a swamp critter. Yeah. Anyway, next scene, we finally get the Portal of time reveal. Uh so, uh, Rob, can you describe the scene? This is the scene where le Rona shows off the portal to l A uh to Arklon, and Arklon, as he does many times in the movie, can't pronounce the words she's telling him from our world correctly.

So she's like the natives call it l A and he's like a l A yeah. And and in first season not sure that this is an actual portal. He thinks it's an illusion, but he's he's very impressed, and she quickly impresses upon him that, like, this is the place where you can really make your future because it's l A right. Uh, this is this is the place that that that draws many people who who are dreaming of reaching that next level of success. You know, some

people want to get into the movie. Some people want to you know, rule the world. And uh and that's where where Lan comes in here. Well, yeah, she gets him all riled up about something called a neutron detonator, which is some kind of device that, if detonated, will destroy the entire world and uh so, and she's like, they have it in this world, but you can steal it and bring it back to our old and then

you will rule with no challenge. I mean, luckily she is just manipulating him here, so we can sort of, you know, dismiss a lot of the ridiculousness of this. She's just saying, there's something so powerful can to destroy a world here? Don't you want that? And he's like, yes, of course that sounds awesome. Um though, of course, in reality, like I was thinking about this a little bit, it's like, Okay,

let's assume this is essentially a nuclear weapon. If our Klon brings a nuclear weapon back to his barbarian fantasy world, like the applications they are pretty limited. Uh, Like, you've got to have a very specific use of said weapon in order to really do anything in the world that that benefits yourself. Like I was, I was trying to think, well, what what could he do? Like, yeah, I guess you could smuggle it into like a rival kingdom and set

it off. Um. I think at one point in the in our Scott Baker's um Uh fantasy series, there's a use of an atomic weapon in a fantasy the setting that that ultimately makes sense. I think, okay, that that seems like the kind of thing you could do if you could, you know, position it in a place where an advancing army might run into it. But but otherwise, yeah,

what's this going to do for him? Uh? And he doesn't really understand it either, though it is neat that when he first sees a car, he's like, oh, these these would really help us, And that ultimately makes more sense, Like you can imagine if he just had a fleet of trucks, that is something that can make a strategic difference in the world that he comes from. Yeah, that is what he should want his cars. And in fact, yeah,

he does see it. He goes, what an incredible machine with this, I could rule the world and uh, and Sarah Douglas is like, it's called a car and he says, a dor no, a car, A car. Oh. But also at the time they're looking at this portal, we get a peek at the other side and we meet our main character from the real world, played by Carrie we Were. This is Jackie Trent, daughter of a certain Senator Trent, which I think is also the name of bad guy from one of those other bad eighties action movies that

Hard to Kill or something. Um. Anyway, Jackie is a twentysomething Californian who likes to party and likes who enjoys reckless driving. And in the first scene, she is driving recklessly while speaking to her father on a mobile telephone. The police are in hot pursuit She's trying to outrun them while she is listening to knock off Kinney Loggins. It is uh, it felt very on the nose from it was like, you know, it's like, I'm all good,

nobody be concerned about me. Yeah. I don't think they licensed I could be wrong in this, but I don't think they licensed any music for this. I think all the rock songs and hit songs that we hear in this are composed by Robert Folk. Okay, that would make sense. They're they're original for the movie. I mean, this just felt like somebody was like, can you create a track that sounds like Kenny? I mean, missed opportunity to not get wings Houser to sing any of them. But yeah,

they're enough. But as the portal opens up, she and the police that are in pursuit of her all end up accidentally driving through the dimensional portal, which on the l A side is just the dead end of an alleyway. It's just a wall. So she and the cops were planning on just driving straight into a wall, except for going through it, and of course they're immediately confronted with Arklan.

Jackie drives away into the desert, but Arclon scares the cops into jumping back through the portal and leaving their police interceptors behind. And this is where we get the scene where where Lerona has to explain to him that it's pronounced car, not dar. But so Jackie drives miles and miles out into the flat, roadless desert in the dark, her car runs out of gas and then she just gets out and walks okay and out here she ends

up meeting up with Dar, the Beastmaster. I think she is woken up because the tiger is licking her hand, and uh, it's it's one of those weird things. I feel like there are dynamics like this in other sort of world's colliding movies where the character just doesn't seem to realize they are in an alternate world full of magic, even though it should be obvious. She keeps saying things like does Triple A have service out here? And then she meets Dar. She's like, are you a biker or something? Oh?

Another one was you know, she's like, my daddy will pay you to get me back to l A or even it, just get me to A seven eleven and he's like seven eleven. But then he says, okay, you may join me on my journey westward. Perhaps there you will find the land you seek. So of course they're going to become fast friends, because this is it's not exactly a buddy cop movie because it's not cops, but

it's like a buddy Barbarian movie. It's time buddies. Oh and another thing I thought was funny here is so she gets acquainted to Dar and his animals and she's like all impressed by by the relationship he has with all the animals. So she's freaked out by the tiger, and she's grossed out by the ferrets, calling them rats. But I was confused by this because ferrets are not a mythical animal. There are ferrets back on Earth. I

guess you just never seen them before. Yeah. So I like how some people grow up thinking unicorns are real and then you know, they're disappointed to find out it's not the case. Some people find out that ferrets are real and it's I guess in a magical time. Oh yeah, yeah. So they end up scampering around all over the desert. Dar shows her how to eat roots to survive and she says, no thanks, I'll stick with the salad bar and uh. And then there's a very weird and funny

scene where Dar lets Jackie hold his ferrets. Yeah, this is one of those great creepy animal guy sequences. Um well. One thing that is kind of neat about their relationship is, unless I'm forgetting something, they never set up any kind of like romantic connection between these two. Um not really. I think there is a there is a brief and very chaste kiss at the end, she just kind of like pecks him on the face. But yeah, otherwise it's just portrayed as a friendship. But anyway, so you know,

they wander around making friends. But eventually Beastmaster and Jackie are attacked by Arclon's goons and they disabled darr with some kind of neon yellow little like gas bomb thing, and then they kidnap her, basically so that Lurana and Arklon can use her as a guide to the world of l A to show them where the supposed neutron detonator is. And in this scene, she's still doing her like riffing. She's like, what am I in the Twilight Zone?

And she keeps calling Arclon leather Face, which I thought was pretty good. Yeah, there's another point where I think, like a random punk on the street calls him Darth Vader and uh, and he's a quote he's again wing's house or just playing the character very straight, and it's just you know, confused or bewildered or you know, slightly angered by all of this, but never really gets the jokes. Yeah, at one point he's like, leather Face, what do you mean?

But of course they go through the portal of time, which deposits them in a dead end alleyway, and then Dar chases them, and arc Lawn ends up trapping Dar in the alley way by blowing up a gas pipe that sends a jet of fire screaming across the width of the alley. And I was like, Oh, that's funny, because I feel like that is a common method used to prevent your progress in a certain direction in a video game. You need to go some before. Oh sorry,

there's a jettifier here. You gotta go find a way to turn it off, get the get the key card access, and you always have to shut it off yourself. You can't just like call the gas company, which would be the thing to do, all right. Well, but so eventually the police show up in this uh in in the alley way, and so here's Dar with his animals, and we meet Lieutenant Cobraly again played by James Avery of

Fresh Prince of bel Air and uh. He again plays this weary, no nonsense police commander who has this creepy little underling in a bow tie. And they in a very sad but they tranquilize Rude the tiger. They shoot him with a tranquilizer dart and he passes out. And I'm sure that's very traumatic for Dar because Dar doesn't know about tranquilizer darts. He probably thinks his loyal tiger friend has been killed but never feared Ru will be back.

Later in the movie, Uh Darr himself gets tazed and taken to the police station, and then next up is I would say a real stand out one of the most memorable sequences of the film, the clothes shopping scene. So, thinking back on it, I know it's not really this way if you measure it, but my general impression in retrospect was that the makeover clothes shopping scene where our clan le Rona and uh and and carry we we're go into the fashion store, takes up approximately the middle

third of the movie. Yeah, it goes on for quite a while. We keep jumping back to it. Um it's there's a lot of shopping to be done here. Yeah, and so they go into a store. I think learn is like, we need we need clothes so we can fit into the modern world. And our clan is of course just being violent and menacing in the men's section, but Lerona is clearly interested in srying some things on and then it finds it's like a smashing blue dress

that she try. Yeah, yeah, she's clue, she's all about fashion, and you know, she looks great. But also it's funny because Jackie escapes while Arklon is literally trying on clothes. He like gets into the fitting room and she's just like okay out of here and runs out the door. And then when Arklon comes out and discovers she has left, he gets so mad and he destroys the store with his key of mcgogue. Um. Meanwhile, Lerona runs out on her own in a fabulous new outfit which I don't

think she paid for. Oh yeah, I don't think so either. And I guess Arklon makes it out when this green jacket or overcoat that he tries on, like he he only tries on the one thing, but he he does seem taken with it. There's this great scene with him kind of uh you know, posing in front of the mirror and uh, it's uh, it's a nice moment where one of the many moments I guess we're our clan comes off of this as a dufus despite Wing's house or playing the role very straight. I like that moment.

This looks wonderful on me. I look so terrifying in this green coat. But he's this color. I've never seen it in my That's true. In my world, we only have orange clothes. Uh No, he he is wearing this green jacket and to be honest, doesn't look that great on him. It's it's kind of a baggy fit. It just doesn't look right. He did he did no fashion

He does no fashion job. There's also an interrogation scene, so you got back to Dar in the police station and uh, Lieutenant co really is asking him all these questions. But uh, in a true mob movie fashion, Dar keeps

his mouth shut. He says nothing. It's like one of those other scenes where like a real hard and criminals like, yeah, I don't snitch, I don't talk to cops, but I don't understand like where he gets this attitude, Like what what Like he's just it's it's like we're in that movie, but there's no reason for for the beast Master to be that kind of hard and like what what interactions with the police is he having back in his home dimension? Yeah?

And also I mean he's lucky enough that they went to another dimension where people also speak English, so every everybody understands each other. Why not just explain things to them? Try your luck. It would have been funny if he's just like lawyer, I want the demand right of counsel. Yeah, and they bring a lawyer from the fantasy world. It's like a guy in a druid robe, like David Warner. Oh, it's one of the brain guys from the first scene.

But he ends up escaping the police station. He gets into Jackie's car because she just happens to pull up outside right when he's leaving. And then here for a while, we get a big stretch of the movie where it just turns into Jackie and Dar doing fish out of time gags. So we get Dar discovers rock and roll. He says it's like an earthquake. He's kind of afraid of it at first, but then I think he kind of likes it. Yeah, that's how it goes. Yeah, and

then Dar discovers fancy food. Jackie takes him back to her mansion where they meet where they meet her her snooty butler, and the butler gives them a fancy food and Door is like, oh, it is delicious, but is it to eat or to look upon. Uh. Then you also get Dar discovers daytime TV. Dar learns about cussing. It's it's good stuff. You know. This does remind me

briefly another almost literal fish out of Water film. There was a lot of fun I haven't seen it and forever, but I remember enjoying romantic comedy Splash, in which Darryl Hannah plays a mermaid opposite um Tom Hanks. I've never seen it. Oh, it's just like fun stuff where like she's literally a mermaid who's lost your legs, you know, very much lost her her fin her fish parts, rather than you know, has now his legs. But there's a scene where he takes her to a fancy restaurant. She

orders like a lobster and she starts eating at whole. Great. Great, it's pretty good. Oh. I like how Door invites you know, he's got his ferrets and he invites the eagle in, and there there's a great eagle versus Butler scene. But eventually they end up watching TV and they're watching the news and there I think there's something on the news about like somebody's trying to steal a neutron detonator. And they're like, oh, it's Arklan, we gotta go get him.

So the major scenes remaining are there's there's a big heist scene with the neutron detonator with Arklon dressing up as a military guy to get into a secret base, and nobody makes note of the fact that he's got a Phantom of the Opera mask on under his general's hat. Right. Oh, and this was also when he steals the clothing for the from the general. He also does some sort of telepathic mind meld where he steals all of his memories so that he can better move around in this world.

And it's one of these um like third act magic powers, where like where was his magic power earlier when you first arrived in l A And we're acting like a total du FEUs the whole time, like maybe you should have used that then. And then also I was overthinking and partially because I'm watching h excellent television show Severed right now. It made me think, well, if you absorb every this guy's memories, Like, how does that work? Are

those memories consolidated with your memories? Are you a different person? Down? Are now? Arc line? You know, it doesn't seem to be the case. It seems like these new memories are compartmentalized somewhere, downloaded and kept in a different file folder. Yeah, that seems to be how it works. Oh and I so Wingshauser and Sarah Douglas meet back up in the in the military base because she's there also in disguise.

I guess to help him, But then there's a rift because he uses his new power again on her, Like when they're about to escape with the thing, he like grabs her head and he's like, oh, you were gonna kill me and and take over after after we got back, So uh, I to to heck with you, and he throws her out of the jeep and drives off by himself. And here's her sort of hero turn, and she turns from the nominal villain into a nominal ally. She she sort of hooks up with dar and Jackie and his

like we've got to stop him. So, because the neutron detonator has been taken, the police end up recruiting this guy who I was just calling the bluey guy. What was the steel He's like a retired general or something, but he knows how this device works, a device which which is now taking down because you know, our clan doesn't know how this works. It is going to explode in like an hour and then then in half an hour, and then it's going to apparently destroy the entire world.

And this guy is our our only hope at actually, because you know, beast Master can stop ar clon, but still somebody needs to turn this device off. But so it's this guy who just sits around saying like blue but hey, if you're going to guess they go to l A and the beast Master has to have a final showdown with the villain of the film. Is gonna be somewhere in l A. Where would you guess it

would be in l A? Oh? Yeah, you know, there's so many great places that it could have been that they probably couldn't have gotten the film rights, uh you know, location rights too, but they decided to go, like, I don't know, the tar pits would have been nice, okay, But um, I feel like the choice they went with this kind of obvious because they go to the zoo, right, I thought it would be maybe the Scientology Celebrity Center that instead it is it is the zoo, and they

really they really played for laughs though, Oh my god, this zoo showdown. H Like you made me think back to Masters of the Universe, where we have all of our mid movie fish shout of time shenanigans, like oh what are what is? What is this food on these sticks? You know that that wonderful scene. But then at the end of it we get this like traumatics, not traumatic dramatic. It's not really traumatic, I guess unless you're a big

Skeletor fan. Um. This is this this wonderful showdown between he Man and Skeletor where Skeletor becomes like a golden god. And it's really splendid and like ultimately kind of like high fantasy and epic and and played mostly seriously. Here the it is a battle between beast Master and arclon Um whilst the animals watch on and hoot, whilst an audio track is playing describing a a spiny ant eater or something or hedgehog and uh and a lion. It's

just all played for for goofiness, and it's very goofy. Yeah, they have a sword fight. It's like the ground is cracking and full of fire, like there's a you know, volcanic earthquake underneath them. Cut to a chimpanzee clapping and laughing. Yes.

But then finally and the oh, there's so many moments where like, you know, you've got to have the thing where the hero gets the better of the villain or disarms them or something, and then they're like, you can still live, and the villain is like, no, I must do evil and die, and so that happens, I think, I think literally, Wingshauser says, I hate peace. Yeah, yeah, there's a there's a nut clutch in there. Oh yeah, yeah,

that's good. And then finally Dar ends up throwing Wingshauser into the crack in the earth, and as he's plunging down into the fire, he just yells, the world is mine. Yeah. He's like, I am winning so hard as he falls to his flaming death, which I believe is the same way Ripped Horns villain died in the first film, falling

into a sacrificial fire. So you know, the they defeat that, they get the kablue and the guy in there to disarm the neutron detonator, and then uh, and then we get to say our emotional goodbyes between Darr and Jackie, because of course, you know, she must stay in her world and he must return to his But Dar decides, you know what, Jackie and my ferrets, they have become such good friends. I'm gonna let the ferrets stay. So

Kodo and Podo the ferrets are West Coast ferrets now. Oh, and then there's a great stinger at the end, which is when when Dar goes back to his own universe, Jackie trance red sports car, her Porsche is sitting in the desert still and now it does an object of pilgrimage the people of the beast Master world. Yeah, and this is this is where Berryman shows up. Is one of the like the lead pilgrim that's talking. It's like, come see this wondrous device that was left by the

gods in the desert. We all want to know how it works. Oh and then the desert Pilgrims they learn how to dance after they activate the stereo system and it starts playing hair metal and you see them kind of like swaying. Yeah. Open, Wait, one last question I have about the plot. Do we ever find out what happens to Lurana at the end. I don't remember now that that I guess the man. I don't know if the scene was cut or what. But I don't think

she died or anything. Sometimes you see that where the villain or the you know, a villainous character has a hero turn, but they still have to pay the price for their their misdeeds. But I think she just vanishes. We don't see what happens to her. She's just living on in l a. Yeah, and in more power to her. She'll fit right in. But the final moment is also

a lot of fun. I don't know if you've caught all the details of this, but the Eagle cries and Dar must now run off into the sun set uh in a wonderful sunset in the in the background here with his tiger beside him, you know, to fight another day and carry on adventures and so forth. But it quickly becomes clear even his credits are beginning to roll that this, uh, this sunset is of course Matt painting, and and the tiger moves up a little bit, but then stops and kind of looks around and then walks

off screen. Meanwhile, um Mark Singer in The Beast master Guard has run up as close as he can and is basically just running in place for I guess the duration of the credits there, um, you know, kind of moving back and forth, but there's nowhere else for him to run. He's just running in place. Wow, I did

not catch That's it's worth going back and watching. Okay, So I'd say in the end about beast Smester two, not a great film overall, but but wings Houser is fun, Sarah Douglas is transcendent, the ferrets are very cute, and uh and this was a really fun episode of Weird House. Yeah. Yeah, this one was a lot of fun. I'll you know, it's a it's a love letter to l A this film.

But but also I will say that, Hey, if anyone out there is a beast Master one purist and you're like, I don't want any part of this film traveling to l A, No, well I want to just I want to advise you give beast Master two a chance, because, um, you know, it's not beast Master one. It's its own thing. It's goofy, it's it's it's dumb, but it is it's it's tremendous fun. Now, unfortunately they're not a great there are there aren't a lot of great ways to watch

this film in decent quality right now. Uh, For instance, Vinegar Syndrome put out an absolutely beautiful blu ray of the Beast Master a few years back, Like one of these was just beautiful packaging and original art work and so forth. Uh, they did not give the same treatment to Beast Master two. I believe there is a DVD edition from Cargo Records out there that you can you can easily buy a very affordable price. Uh, but so far, that's it. There's no blu ray release of this film

as of this recording. But hey, hopefully, hopefully the future will will prove me wrong. All right, If you want to check out other episodes of Weird House Cinema, you'll find it every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed were generally, you know, a science podcast. We're more concerned with, say like the consolidation of memory, or the or or even the speculative time travel and

the limitations uh involved there. But on Friday's we put most of those serious matters aside and we consider a film such as Beastmaster two, which you know, a film that may raise some of these questions, but you know that does not require uh intensive research to answer. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.