Apparently Reena used to be the princess of
whatever land this is, before the completely evil, albeit
slightly effeminate Jarek the Sorcerer (John La Zar) cloned
her, with the plan to perfect this clone before killing her
but fortunately she escaped. Now she needs the
Deathstalker to go with her to her castle, do battle and take
back her kingdom.
Adventure is now afoot. More or less. I mean
there's no shortage of adventures for Reena and Deathstalker…
I don't even feel right calling my man Deathstalker…
considering they encounter zombies, assassins, amazons, and
pig soldiers but the focus is more on the witty repartee
between Reena and the man with the devilish grin going by the
name of Deathstalker.
Will Deathstalker be able to help storm the castle and get her
kingdom back? You probably haven't seen Jarek the
sorcerer have you, because if you had you wouldn't be asking
this question. Just one look at this guy and I can't see
him offering up too much resistance. And it has nothing
to do with Jarek being gay. In fact Jarek's apparent
lack of intimidation as a villain is an embarrassment to gay
dudes everywhere.
So if you saw the first 'Deathstalker' and you enjoyed
'Deathstalker' and after seeing 'Deathstalker' way back in
1983, in whatever venue it was presented at, after the four
year wait for Corman enterprises to finally come up off of
'Deathstalker II'… man you must've been disappointed. I
mean this movie is so far removed from the first
'Deathstalker' I don't even know why they called it
'Deathstalker'. This collection of swashbuckling
buffoonery can best be described as sword and sorcery that
just had a head-on collision with 'Mr. Bean'. That's not
a good thing. Oh, it could've been a good thing, I
guess, it's just not a good thing here is all.
But here's the rub. While this comical farce has nothing
to do with the first movie, it's not like the original
'Deathstalker' was all that good to begin with, so it is
unlikely that anyone who did see that movie was holding it all
that close to their heart, which makes this complete nonsense
a little easier to deal with.
No, 'Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans' is not a good movie
by any stretch of anybody's imagination but since nary a
single frame of this movie doesn't take itself all that
serious, it's difficult to be all that serious in crapping on
it. John Terlesky looked like he was having the time of
his life grinning, winking and clowning his way through this
movie, to be honest with you the sword fighting and such was
much better in this far less serious movie than the first
overly serious 'Deathstalker', and then there's the force
known as Monique Gabrielle. You will be hard pressed to
find a worse actress, we get that, but she has such an amazing
collection of other marketable skills that we are stunned that
80's filmmakers before Wynorski didn't try to take greater
advantage of these marketable skills.
If you are searching for some bad comedy mixed with suspect
sword and sorcery, look no further than the mini-epic that is
'Deathstalker II'. Next question would be who in the
world would be looking for bad comedy mixed with suspect Sword
and Sorcery? Uh…us. That's who.
