On the rampage (11/20/01)
____________
Deathstalker Two. [Jim Wynorski, 1987.]
The second episode in the adventures of the B-movie Conan: sweet innocent [but severely stacked] princess Monique Gabrielle loses her kingdom to a wicked sorcerer who replaces her on the throne with her Evil Twin; after a truckload of swordfights, stalwart squarejawed hero John Terlesky wins it all back. — The MST3K deconstruction of this opus is provided with the DVD release in the form of a commentary track by the director and the male lead, who explain: that the film [as per the instructions of its famously-penurious executive producer Roger Corman] was shot in Argentina for next to nothing; that the crew spoke little or no English, and that most of the cast didn’t realize they were making a comedy; that the original script was [in Wynorski’s words] “leaden”, and that the rewrite proceeded from the premise that it might be more interesting if Bugs Bunny were playing Deathstalker; that the swords were all wooden; that Monique’s outfit was deliberately modeled on Wilma Flintstone’s; that when they discovered that a lot of the film was fogged and they couldn’t afford to reshoot they simply put a lot of thunder in the soundtrack to make it seem like it was raining; that the same three heavies [Argentinian wrestling stars] got killed in every scene, and that the masks they wore not only served to disguise this fact but made it easier to dub their dialogue in post without lipsynch problems; that besides the obvious debt of the scenario to
It Happened One Night there were systematic borrowings from
Hawaii Five-O,
Rambo, the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello,
Night of the Living Dead, professional wrestling [Terlesky dukes it out before an audience of Amazons with Queen Kong],
Rocky,
The Pit and the Pendulum, and
Laugh-In. [I forget where they stole the exploding midget who leaves behind a pair of smoking shoes.] — And, of course, that it was all a lot of fun and they’d do it again like a shot. — If they did, you can bet that I’d watch it.
____________Dangerous eleisons (9/28/01)
