Arguably the Best Deathstalker Yet
Summary
If you grew up watching movies like Deathstalker and have been waiting for a return of the sword and sorcery genre, it’s finally here and better than ever. Daniel Bernhardt shines in the lead role and there are regular fight scenes, ridiculous gore and wonderful practical effects. You can tell this film was made with love and I can’t wait to see it again.
Plot: A powerful swordsman known as Deathstalker recovers a cursed amulet from a corpse-strewn battlefield. Marked by dark magic and hunted by monstrous assassins, he must face the rising evil and break the curse.
Review: I’ve been looking forward to Daniel Bernhardt’s Deathstalker since it was first announced; this isn’t a reboot but really more Deathstalker 5 and works as its own entity.
Director Steven Kostanski clearly knows the genre and has crafted a film that feels like a love letter to the classic sword and sorcery movies of the 80s. He mentioned that Deathstalker 2 was the biggest inspiration for this one but you don’t have to have seen the other movies to understand what’s going on.
The tone is pitch perfect with plenty of humour but on the right side of parody and some fantastic practical effects. The creatures are incredibly imaginative and there is some hilarious gore, but it’s a fantasy world so you’re just laughing along with it.
Bernhardt is perfectly cast as the best Deathstalker yet; his character is a likeable rogue who has some surprisingly funny moments. It’s great to see him in a lead role again after playing a henchman so much over the past few years. He still has the moves in the plentiful fight scenes and is awesome with a sword too.
The story is your typical fantasy story about a magic amulet with great power that if it gets into the wrong hands it will bring back a supremely evil being. It’s up to Deathstalker to stop this from happening and along the way he teams up with Doodad (Patton Oswalt) and Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo). Doodad is similar to Gwildor from Masters of the Universe (but better) and Brisbayne is a thief with a heart of gold.
There is no nudity whatsoever but that’s the way of things these days, sadly and that’s literally my biggest criticism; everything is so sexless nowadays and it’s sad to see.
The main highlight is of course the music which updates the iconic theme to sound better than ever; we were all humming it after the film ended which doesn’t happen much any more.
There was a Q and A afterwards (below) with the director and cast (but no Daniel Bernhardt for some reason). It was also odd that the interviewer had never seen any of the Deathstalker films before. Literally hire me next time. I spoke with the director Steven briefly and complimented his fantastic RoboCop jacket which was just another point in his favour.
Overall, Deathstalker is a welcome return of the sword and sorcery genre with plenty of action and violence, an awesome theme tune and Daniel Bernhardt at his best. If you get the chance to see this on the big screen it’s worth it as this is incredibly imaginative and just plain fun.