Deathstalker

And so begins a wondrous journey of self-discovery, friendship, and mountains of leather thongs, but mainly rape. Seriously, Deathstalker rapes so many people that even the Norwegians* would lock him up and throw away the key (assuming they could find restraints that his oiled-up muscles wouldn't slip out of.) In fact, Deathstalker's insatiable thirst for rape seems to be one of his most heroic qualities, as far as this movie is concerned. There is a major plot point which revolves around Deathstalker saving some sort of princess from a planned rape, apparently so he could rape her himself, but then the evil guy stops him and says to leave her alone, so he can have her sent to his bedchamber to be raped later on.

In case you haven't put the pieces together yourself yet, this movie isn't exactly a shining beacon for women's rights, unless maybe it's some sort of double-reverse ultra-ironic social commentary, which come to think of it, this movie is basically what men's rights activists and/or third-wave feminists actually think the world looks like. This is a world called Gor *wtsch* given horrible, shambling life; this is a movie which 'cribs' (steals) liberally from John Norman's Guidebook to Literally Clubbing Women, Picking Them Up, and Carrying Them Back to Your Pungent, Wallscroll-Festooned Man-Cave. If you're not convinced by the wall-to-wall rapes (which the women universally enjoy as long as they're sensual rapes committed by our hunky Aryan hero), how about Munkar's subservient menagerie of thong-clad babes? Or the Lady Tits Akimbo, swordfighting woman of virtue, who wears even less clothing than the harem girls and summarily gets stabbed to death for daring to leave the kitchen?

But let's not condemn Munkar before getting to know the man behind the reign of terror and suffering. Etymologically, Munkar is the weird gross canned-cheezy smelling goop kids who don't listen to their mothers telling them to wash behind their ears accumulate, which after a while begins to transform into a sentient being and drills into their brains to enslave them. He is the incarnation of all evil and suffering, specifically the kind of suffering where you have a big, veiny schlong tattooed on the side of your face. Munkar's amazing dark powers include being utterly invincible, turning into a bird, and shooting alternate universes out of his hands like Spiderman's webs. Oh, and instant, uncomfortable sex-change operations, which the producer was probably lovingly editing one-handed:

(By the way, is it just us, or does it look like Munkar has a tame Feeder named Howard in that box?) Somehow Bronan, Rapemaster of the Universe, manages to resist the feminine wiles of that guy who's been a really uncomfortable woman for 5 minutes, and retaliates with the same tactic he uses to solve every other problem: giving her the world's most involuntary mammogram. And for the prestige? MC Munkadunk tries to have one of Deathstalker's traveling companions, who we know only as Mark Hamill fused with Scott Baio in some horrible teleporter accident, bump him off. Markott Hammio decides the best course of action is to show up in Deathstalker's room and say basically "Hey bro, I'm here to kill you, quit being such a dick and just let me murder you, okay?" You can guess how well that works for him.

We could go on and on about how the old hag calls up Deathstalker again on the brainwave just to make sure he's not slacking off on his quest to conquer the universe, or about how he finally gains a level and with it the mystical power to reach slightly further up by using a sword to obtain the holy amulet of something-or-other. But why bother? If there's one thing we've learned after doing this for awhile, it's that you can spot a truly awful movie by a few simple patterns. Things like: a) abnormally high content of midgets, giants, thongs, gypsy hags, creepy overacting fuck-wizards, greased up beefcakes running around in leather undies waving plastic swords, anthropomorphic kung fu masters, wise-cracking robots; b) tasteless nonsensical blasts of extreme nipple and/or areola closeups in the first 5 minutes; c) titles dramatically juxtaposing 2 words that don't really make any sense, e.g. Robo Jury, Murder Killers, Revenge Justice, Blood Fishing, Alien Hazard, etc. So we've reached a Zen-like level of acceptance regarding this movie already. All hail Deathstalker the Rapethirsty, King of all creation, long may he reign. And God protect us from his three horrible, horrible sequels, amen.

*Norway sucks.

– Garrett "Hydrogen" Neil and Sean "Trillaphon" Neil (@trillaphon)