Great cheesy sword and sorcerer fun in "Beastmaster", January 22, 2005

There's something to be said for the "do-it-yourself" approach to making movies. Director Don Coscarelli followed up his smash horror film "Phantasm" with a fantasy adventure inspired by Andre Norton's fantasy novel The Beastmaster. Unfortunately, this project couldn't be entirely self funded so Coscarelli had to go to outside sources. That's where the trouble began. Although he finished the film and was overall quite satisfied, what followed was a battle of wills where the film was taken away from him, he was locked out of the editing room initially but finally the story does, indeed, have a happy ending of sorts. Dar (Marc Singer) the son of a King stolen from his mother's womb and transported into an animal, seeks revenge against the evil Overlord Maax (Rip Torn) a fanatic who has stolen Dar's kingdom, murdered his parents and tried to sacrifice him when he was an infant. With the assistance of his father's former bodyguard Seth (John Amos) and a freed slave girl Kiri...