The Beastmaster (1982, Don Coscarelli) (Patreon)

41/100

Amusingly terrible. (Now's a good time to remind folks that my ratings attempt to quantify how much I enjoy a film and aren't meant to be even remotely objective. This is by no means superior to, say, Renoir's The River, which I gave a 38. But I had a marginally better time watching it.) Peaks very early in terms of sheer nuttiness—within the first eight minutes, we've seen (a) two lackeys commit suicide via Batgrapple-style insta-nooses that they apparently tote around just in case their leader needs to prove a point, and (b) a gestating fetus magically transferred from its mother's womb to that of a cow. Not to mention Rip Torn hamming it up while wearing a ludicrous fake nose for some reason. (His choice, reportedly, which I have no trouble believing.) Sadly, there's relatively little demented invention once the title character grows to adulthood and establishes himself as a silly cross between Luke Skywalker and Dr. Doolittle (with Marc Singer looking hilariously like a super-ripped Nigel Tufnel), though I never stopped chortling at his tiny menagerie, which consists entirely of an eagle, a black tiger, and two ferrets. Indeed, the film could more accurately (and enticingly, to my mind) be called The Ferretmaster, as Kodo and Podo dominate the action to a remarkable degree—I'm pretty sure I even saw a ferret bite someone in the balls at one point. Narrative starts out as a Macbeth rip but doesn't follow through and lands nowhere very interesting; Torn's Big Bad gets dispatched way too early, leaving Dar to battle faceless hordes (who wind up succumbing to Avem-vir ex machina) in a climax made exciting only by virtue of taking place in a fiery landscape, see also Revenge of the Sith. (Love that our heroes are surrounded, then the Jun chieftain or whatever he's supposed to be rides up and challenges Dar to fight mano a mano, with Dar emerging victorious...following which he just joins the others and returns to being surrounded and helpless. Y'know, as Sun Tzu counsels.) Wooden acting, purely functional dialogue, cheesy effects, gratuitous boobs—it's classic low-budget schlock. But with ferrets. Ferrets! I can't stop laughing.