FILM REVIEW OF ''KING ARTHUR: LEGEND OF THE SWORD" (2017)

Hollywood must constantly reinvent old yarns to make them relevant for contemporary audiences.  “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” director Guy Ritchie embraces this strategy with his spectacular, $175-million, sword & sorcery saga “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” (**** OUT OF ****), starring “Sons of Anarchy’s” Charlie Hunnam as the title character.  Unmistakably inspired by the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones,” Ritchie and scenarists Joby Harold of “Awake” and Lionel Wigram of “Sherlock Holmes,” adapting a story by Harold and “Jack the Giant Slayer’s” David Dobkin, have appropriated the venerable legend and accentuated its far-fetched fantasy elements.  If you’re expecting either a rehash of John Boorman’s splendid “Excalibur” (1981) or Antoine Fuqua’s “King Arthur” (2004) with Clive Owen and Keira Knightley, the provocative departures Ritchie and company have taken may alienate you.  Anybody expecting Ritchie’s “King Arthur” will stick to the legends may feel disgruntled by this two-hour plus, PG-13 swashbuckler.  Since its release, “King Arthur” has proven not what most audiences either sought or expected, and the Warner Brothers release has been branded a disaster considering its miserable $15-million opening.  Nevertheless, “King Arthur: The Legend of the Sword” qualifies as a terrific tale with stupendous CGI and ranks as the best version of the myth to grace screens since “Excalibur.” Mind you, “King Arthur” concerns itself more with the eponymous hero’s revenge against his repellent uncle than a romantic escapade like the Sean Connery & Richard Gere version “First Knight” (1995) where the two fought over Guinevere.  At the same time, “King Arthur” utilizes the familiar tropes of most Arthurian epics, but deploys them in ways both unusual and refreshing.

 

“King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” opens with a prologue which states that mage (magicians) and man no longer live in harmony.  The wicked warlock Mordred (Rob Knighton of “All Things to Men”) storms Uther Pendragon’s (Eric Bana of “Hulk”) kingdom with three gargantuan pachyderms—bigger than any you’ve seen--to destroy it.  These pachyderms have wrecking balls attached to their trunks, and they shatter the stone masonry as if it were made from papier mâché.  These rampaging beasts smash Camelot’s walls until Uther clambers aboard Mordred’s elephant and apparently decapitates the malevolent mage. Temporarily, order appears restored, until Uther’s deceitful brother, Vortigern (Jude Law of “Gattaca”), forfeits his wife Elsa (Katie McGrath) to three evil sea-witches equipped with the tentacles of an octopus.  He sacrifices Elsa so he can conjure up the Demon Knight to kill not only Uther, but also his wife in a larger-than-life clash.  The Demon Knight resembles those armor-clad behemoths that artist Frank Frazetta once created for the classic Molly Hatchet album covers in the 1970s.  Uther wields Excalibur against the enormous Demon Knight, but this monstrous fiend overwhelms him.  Before he dies, Uther orders young Arthur to flee.  Afterward, Uther hurls Excalibur aloft so that the sword turns somersaults in the air.  As he falls to his knees, Uther turns into a stone, and Excalibur impales itself to the hilt between Uther’s shoulder blades.  Vortigern sloughs off the Demon Knight form he took on in the fight and watches as his elder brother—now a huge rock--plunges into the bay with Excalibur sticking out of the rock.  Meantime, Uther’s infant son Arthur is swept down river in a boat like the infant Moses and compassionate prostitutes take him in and raise the lad as if he belonged to them. 

 

At this point, Vortigern has practiced enough black magic to make himself invincible until he learns that Excalibur has reappeared.  One day, the waters of the bay where Uther vanished with the sword in his back recede. Vortigern assembles young Englishman by the hundreds and ships them to the bay to see who can extract the sword from the stone.  Eventually, Vortigern’s dastardly henchmen capture Arthur (Charlie Hunnam) and he finds himself in front of Excalibur with no hope of pulling it out. Incredibly, Arthur draws the sword from the stone, but the sword delivers such a jolt to his system that our legendary hero drops it and collapses into an unconscious heap.  Later, Vortigern converses privately with Arthur, and Arthur assures him he has no wish to wear a crown.  Nevertheless, Vortigern plans to execute him in public.  Happily, a miracle appears in the form of an anonymous Mage (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey of “Julliette”) dispatched by Merlin.  She visits one of Uther’s former knights, Bedivere (Djimon Hounsou of “Amistad”), and explains that his men and he must intervene before Vortigern can behead Arthur.  The next time we see Arthur, he is kneeling at an altar awaiting the executioner’s pleasure.  The Mage conjures up supernatural elements that paralyze Vortigern, sends his knights scrambling to save him, while Bedivere’s men rescue Arthur.  Afterward, “King Arthur” depicts our hero’s reluctance not only to take up Excalibur, but also to wield it to avenge the cold-blooded murder of his mother and father.

 

Charlie Hunnam makes a charismatic Arthur.  Indeed, compared with previous Arthurs, Hunnam could be hailed as ‘the man who didn’t want to be king,’ such is his reluctance to brandish Excalibur and solidify England against its adversaries both within and without the kingdom.  Director Guy Ritchie surrounds Hunnam with a thoroughly convincing cast, among them “Game of Thrones’” own Aidan Gillen.  If you’ve seen either of Ritchie’s “Sherlock Holmes” thrillers, you will savor his snappy editing style and the amusing way that he condenses expository dialogue sequences.  At one point, the Mage sends our hero into the Dark Lands to learn about his past.  Indeed, Arthur’s past haunts him.  Eventually, he musters enough nerve from the experience to confront his treacherous uncle.  As the diabolical Vortigern, Jude Law indulges himself with an evil gleam in his eye, and his ominous henchmen in black armor are just as unsavory.  Despite its two-hour plus running time, “King Arthur” maintains its momentum, and Ritchie orchestrates some truly impressive battle sequences with computer generated imagery that enhances the larger-than-life spectacle. 

FILM REVIEW OF ''THE LAST WITCH HUNTER" (2015)

“The Last Witch Hunter” (* OUT OF ****) casts spells that are far from inspired and mediocre at best.  “Dungeons & Dragons” aficionado Vin Diesel toplines this ponderous, PG-13 rated pabulum as an 800-year old protagonist who struggles with the help of the Catholic Church to preserve a precarious peace between witches and mankind.  Not only does Diesel appear incredibly miscast as an immortal “Highlander” type medieval warrior careening around contemporary New York City in a sports car, but also this witchy washy yarn doesn’t surpass superior witchcraft fantasies such as “Snow White and The Huntsman” (2012) and “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters” (2013).  The chief problem with this lavishly-produced, CGI-laden extravaganza is that it takes itself far too seriously.  Apart from its dire shortage of humor, this dreary potboiler suffers from a dearth of quotable dialogue, banal adversaries, and second-rate supporting characters.  Gifted thespians like Oscar-winner Michael Caine and Elijah Wood shrivel in lackluster roles as our hero’s sidekicks who are designated as ‘Dolans.’  “Sahara” director Breck Eisner and three scenarists, Cory Goodman of “Priest” along with Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless of “Dracula Untold,” have conjured up a synthetic storyline that generates neither charisma nor spectacle.  Actually, they appear to have imitated the sensational Wesley Snipes’ vampire saga “Blade” right down to its rebirth of an ancient blood demon.  Similarly, “The Last Witch Hunter” should have bristled with non-stop momentum, violently outlandish combat sequences, and a coherently contrived mythology.  Instead, it degenerates into a dreary mumbo-jumbo melodrama.  The most ambitious CGI scene pits our hero against a clumsy beast known as ‘the Sentinel,’ and he destroys behemoth with a sword as if he were a bullfighter straddling it.  This unruly creature resembles a huge tiger that appears as it if were assembled from wicker and features a jet engine afterburner for its gullet.  Our hero’s chief adversary is a hideous Witch Queen swarming with creepy crawlies who looks like she has spent too many centuries in a mud bath.  Moreover, she boasts none of the imaginative flamboyance of Charlize Theron’s enchantress in “Snow White and the Huntsman.” 

“The Last Witch Hunter” unfolds during the chilly Middle Ages.  A group of stalwart souls armed with swords trudge through snow-swept, mountainous terrain to storm an eerie cluster of haunted trees.  A despicable looking dame known as the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht of the TV mini-series “The Strain”) inhabits this stronghold raging with fire and brimstone.  Predictably, she isn’t glad to see these bearded gate-crashers with their religious iconography.  This homicidal hag with her hatred for mankind has already decimated humanity with a black plague and incurred our hero’s wrath.  The Witch Queen’s pestilence exterminated our hero’s wife and daughter, and his happier times with them are recounted in several flashbacks.  When Kaulder (Vin Diesel with dwarfish dreadlocks) and the Witch Queen tangle, our fearless witch hunter skewers her with his flaming sword and finishes her off.  Ironically, Kaulder survives this trial by combat, but his survival becomes a tribulation.  “I curse you,” howls the wounded witch.  “You’ll never know peace. You will never die.”

 

Afterward, “The Last Witch Hunter” shifts its setting from the 13^th century to the 21st century.  Our brawny, shaven-headed hero with neither dwarfish facial fuzz nor noggin fur prowls a passenger jet as it encounters foul weather.  Actually, an ignorant young witch has smuggled a dangerous collection of runes aboard the aircraft, and she is to blame for the increment weather.  Naturally, our erudite hero invokes his age-old wisdom and defuses these volatile artifacts.  Nothing about this scene creates either suspense or excitement.  As his own personal reward, Kaulder seduces a nubile stewardess before he sits down for the last time with his 36^th Dolan (Michael Caine of “The Dark Knight”), a revered Catholic cleric who has spent the last 50 years chronicling our protagonist’s escapades for posterity.  Incidentally, Dolans are members of a covert Axe and Cross society within the Catholic Church.  Like Kaulder, they have devoted themselves to maintaining an uneasy truce between humans and witches.  In “The Last Witch Hunter,” witches walk the earth with mankind, just as vampires did in “Blade,” but few people know about their phantasmagorical presence.  Kaulder and the clerics act as intermediaries who work alongside the crafty Witch Counsel to keep these necromancers in line.  Kaulder captures witches who illegally practice black magic, and the Witch Counsel entomb them in a maze of caves.

 

The 36^th Dolan is poised to retire, and the 37^th Dolan (Elijah Wood of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy) prepares to replace him.  Although he saved the 37^th Dolan from a coven of witches, Kaulder doesn’t immediately recognize this newcomer.  Meantime, dramatic complications occur when the 36^th Dolan appears to have been murdered under mysterious circumstances by a shape-shifting sorcerer.  Kaulder discovers black magic at the scene of the crime and suspects that his ancient adversary, the Witch Queen, may have been playing possum all those years.  Along the way, Kaulder recruits a ‘good’ witch Chloe (Rose Leslie from “Game of Thrones”) to help him sort out the mystery.  Chloe’s claim to fame is her ability to cavort in dreams.  Happily, she rescues Kaulder from one disastrous dream after another when the Witch Queen’s evil cronies attack him on several occasions.  Our hero believes the solution to his quandary lies within his “Matrix” like dreams.

Ultimately, “The Last Witch Hunter” is largely incomprehensible gobbledygook.  Eisner and his scribes have enormous problems mapping out their complex witchcraft mythology.  They sprinkle bread crumbs of information about these conjurers throughout the muddled melodramatics, but seldom does anything about them come across as palatable.  Two surprises occur during these sluggish shenanigans, but neither are genuine revelations if you have paid attention to the formulaic plot.  The villains don’t stand out from the background, and the Witch Queen is stuck in the mud from the start.  Eisner orchestrates several big-budget action scenes, but these emerge as sloppy exercises.  Altogether, “The Last Witch Hunter” qualifies as hex-rated rubbish.

FILM REVIEW OF ''47 RONIN" (2013)

Ethnocentrism occurs when one culture appropriates something from another culture and then attempts to enhance it.  The latest version of the legendary Genroku Akō incident, the tragic 18^th century Japanese account of samurai warriors avenging their fallen leader, displays all the vestiges of ethnocentrism.  Mind you, the Japanese produced six previous cinematic adaptations about their historic milestone before Hollywood tampered with it.  For the record, those movies were “The 47 Ronin” (1941), “Chûshingura” (1958), “Chushingura” (1962), “The Fall of Ako Castle” (1978), “47 Ronin” (1994) and “The Last Chushingura (2010).  Presumably, Hollywood must have felt that this constituted an ideal opportunity to produce its own spin on this venerable story.  Not surprisingly, Universal Studios has taken considerable liberties with the material.  Not only has the studio embroidered this renowned tale of honor with outlandish supernatural elements, specifically demons and witchcraft, but it also has added a half-breed European supporting character to the yarn.  Presumably, Universal must have felt that attracting an American audience to a $200-million plus film primarily about the Japanese would only recoup its costs if a major American actor got mixed up in it.  Keanu Reeves of “The Matrix” trilogy appears as the improbable white guy who sets the catastrophic events of the Akō vendetta into motion as well as dictates how the Japanese can resolve their dreadful predicament.  Freshman director Carl Rinsch and “Wanted” scenarist Chris Morgan with “Snow White and the Huntsman” scribe Hossein Amini have fashioned a conventional chronicle of samurai versus samurai, with a grim finale that precludes any thought of a sequel.  If you know nothing about the outrageous revisions that the filmmakers have imposed on the most celebrated instance of the samurai code of honor, you will probably enjoy this scenic saga about sword and sorcery a lot more.  Imagine what any important event in American history would emerge as if a Japanese individual interfered with it and you’ll have a good idea about “47 Ronin.”

 “47 Ronin” (** OUT OF ****) takes place in feudal Japan in the 1700s.  Lord Asano (Min Tanaka of “Black Dawn”) of the Ako province adopts a wandering teenager, Kai (Keanu Reeves), who is the son of a British sailor and a Japanese peasant.  The boy’s mother abandoned him, and demons raised him.  Eventually Kai ran away from them and Lord Asano took him in as one of his own.  Kai grew up with Asano’s daughter, Mika (Kô Shibasaki of “One Missed Call”), and the two become romantically attracted to each other.  Meanwhile, since Kai is a half-breed, he cannot serve Lord Asano as a samurai.  Instead, he functions as the equivalent of a scout.  The first major scene shows him slaying a massive beast that resembles an enormous buffalo with tree branches for antlers.  Naturally, another samurai warrior, Yasuno (Masayoshi Haneda of “Emperor”), claims credit for the kill, but Asano’s number one samurai, Ôishi (Hiroyuki Sanada of “The Wolverine”), knows the truth.  Later, Lord Asano welcomes his supreme leader, Shogun Tsunayoshi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa of “Mortal Combat”), to his palatial estate along with his chief rival, Lord Kira (Tadanobu Asano of “Thor: The Dark World”), from the nearby Nagato province.  The villainous Kira conspires with the aid of a demonic, shape-shifting witch, (Rinko Kikuchi of “Pacific Rim”), to drug Asano into attacking him.  The witch uses a bulbous spider to deliver a drug across Asano’s lips while he is asleep so that he awakens and imagines that Kira is raping his daughter.  Appalled by his own behavior, Asano follows the dictates of the Shogun in committing ritual suicide.  Ôishi blames himself for letting these events transpire, especially after Kai warned him about the witch.  Everybody but Asano and his daughter treats Kai with utter contempt.  After Asano slashes his belly open with a knife, Ôishi completes the ordeal by decapitating his master.  The heartless Shogun banishes all Asano’s samurai who are now designated as ronin.  At the same time, Kira sells Kai into slavery where Kai becomes a highly prized combatant in arena showdowns.  The Shogun commands Mika to marry Kira after mourning the death of her father for a year.  Kira has Ôishi thrown into a dungeon where he spends the next year.  Eventually, after he is released, the vengeance driven Ôishi assembles the remaining samurai and persuades Kai to join them as they set out to deal with the murderous Kira.

Compared with other samurai sages, “47 Ronin” is fairly routine stuff.  The battle sequences lack grandeur, and the sword play is pretty dull.  The massive ritual suicide at the end isn’t exactly what American audiences will enjoy.  Imagine “Star Wars” ending with everybody eviscerating themselves at fade-out and you have a good idea what to expect.  This big-budgeted spectacle also suffers from second-rate special effects.  Most of the sprawling mountain backdrops are clearly computer-generated, while the swirling witch’s dragon looks like something out of a Chinatown carnival.  Presumably, Rinsch and his writers decided to rely on sorcery because nobody knows for certain why Asano attacked his guest in real-life.  The way that Asano is poisoned is reminiscent of how the Japanese girl died at the hands of Ninjas in the James Bond movie “You Only Live Twice.”  In “You Only Live Twice,” a ninja hid in the rafters, dangled a thread above the heroine’s mouth, and dribbled poison down it.  The witch in “47 Ronin” behaves less spectacularly than the witch in “Snow White and the Huntsman” that co-scripter Hossein Amini penned.  The art direction, production design, and cinematography make “47 Ronin” look more impressive than its ersatz plot.  Interestingly enough, this film didn’t impress Japanese audiences, and Universal has already written it off as a financial disaster.  Ultimately, “47 Ronin” qualifies as a tolerable movie with guts but little gusto.

FILM REVIEW OF ''SUCKER PUNCH" (2011)

Watching “Sucker Punch” (**1/2 OUT OF ****) may feel like the equivalent of a frontal lobotomy. “Watchmen” director Zack Snyder’s bizarre, babes-in-bondage, fantasy epic imitates Terry Gilliam’s far darker, Orwellian, science-fiction satire “Brazil.” Like “Brazil” (1985), “Sucker Punch” taps into the fertile imagination--where anything goes--of an individual--a single, white, female here--before a doctor performs a lobotomy on her at a corrupt mental institution. This ensemble, female-empowerment, chick flick arms Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung to the teeth with samurai swords, sub-machine guns, automatic pistols, and attitude galore as they slash, shoot, and kick their way through a hellzapoppin' variety of “Heavy Metal” escapades with wizen Scott Glenn briefing them about each mission. Of course, their fetish costumes and make-up are as immaculate as the situations that they encounter. This PG-13 rated movie rarely grovels in blood, guts, and gore, and the crisply staged violence is nowhere as savage as “Saving Private Ryan.” Meanwhile, the adventures that Baby Doll and her accomplices embark on before her lobotomy will make you feel like you’ve been plunged into a swirling vortex of popular culture imagery. This imagery ranges from doll-faced manga-influenced comics to high-stepping musicals like “Moulin Rouge,” to strange sword & sorcery sagas with vengeful mother dragons, to actual events like World War I trench warfare with Zeppelins air ships that burst into high-octane orange explosions. The soldiers in the World War I sequence are thoroughly ominous-looking, steam-powered German zombie-cyborgs. Every time that either a bullet strikes them or a sword blade gashes them, steam erupts in pneumatic jets from their uniformed bodies.

“Sucker Punch” takes place in the 1960s. The prologue that establishes our heroine’s predicament blends the creepy look of E.C. Comics with gritty Hollywood B-movies about woman behind bars. Baby Doll (Australian actress Emily Browning of “Ghost Ship“) and her younger sister discover their mother dead in her bedroom. Later, Baby Doll’s wicked stepfather (Gerard Plunkett of “2012”) flies into a rage when he reads his wife’ will. He gets nothing, while the two daughters get everything. The furious stepfather decides to rape the younger daughter. First, he locks Baby Doll in her bedroom. Second, he kicks down the door to the younger girl’s room. After she breaks out of her room on the second floor during a storm, Baby Doll grabs a gun from downstairs to kill him. Accidentally, she misses the stepfather and tragically blasts her young sister. In no time at all, the stepfather has Baby Doll committed to the spooky Lennox House for the Mentally Insane in Vermont. Snyder films this entire opening gambit as if it were an extended MTV rock video. An asylum orderly, the slimy Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac of “The Nativity Story”), demands that the stepfather pay him $2,000 to forge the signature of asylum psychiatrist Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino of “Sin City“) on the form to authorize Baby Doll‘s lobotomy. Mind you, the stepfather neither wants for the authorities to discover what really happened at home nor does he want Baby Doll to receive her mom's fortune. Initially, Baby Doll learns that she has five days before the lobotomy is scheduled.

The first jarring thing about “Sucker Punch” is the abrupt change of settings. Once you have resigned yourself to watching a movie that takes place in a mental asylum like the one in “Shutter Island,” you find the setting shifted to a classy bordello where the girls perform exotic dances for the well-heeled customers. Each time that Baby Doll dances, she mesmerizes her audiences. She imagines that each dance is like completing a larger-than-life mission. During the first mission, she meets a sword master (Scott Glenn) who furnishes her with an arsenal of weapons to battle three gigantic samurai warriors who have piercing red eyes. Baby Doll behaves like an invulnerable heroine. She survives blows from these humongous samurai warriors that would kill ordinary people. Later, she makes friends with the first inmate/dancer when she saves Rocket from being raped by a porcine cook. Eventually, Baby Doll assembles a “Fox Force Five” unit of dames -- Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish of “Limitless”), Rocket (Jena Malone of “The Soloist” ), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens of “High School Musical”) and Amber (Jamie Chung of “Sorority Row”) -- to cavort in the strip-club fantasy costumes with a combination of S.W.A.T gear and samurai swords to obtain four crucial things. Sweet Pea is the hardest of them to convince because she is the most hopeless member of the quintet. Once they come together, they act like a team until the villains whittle down their numbers.

Three far-fetched, outlandish sequences with our glamorous ensemble carrying out a mission occur in the episodic “Sucker Punch.” Mind you, each mission yields rewards that will enable our heroines to escape from the dreadful insane asylum. According to Baby Doll, they need an asylum map to get past the guards. Furthermore, they need fire--in the form of a butane lighter, a knife, and a special key. Obviously, the special key is a master key that will open any asylum lock. Naturally, none of the imaginative, over-the-top missions that transpire on screen apart from those opening and closing moments aren’t remotely realistic. Compared with “300,” “Dawn of the Dead,” and “Watchmen,” “Sucker Punch” delivers lightweight blows, but deploys them out with greater sophistication. The characters are as stereotypical as the set-pieces are formulaic. Of course, our heroines are constantly out numbered. Ironically, our heroine surmounts her bigger-than-life obstacles, achieves her incredible goal, but she pays a dear price for it in the long run.

Director Zack Snyder immerses our ear drums with atmospheric chart-topping tunes for more than the sake of their rock’n roll cult status. This music propels Baby Doll into her different states of mind. Moreover, Snyder observed that the music thematically holds the film together. Listening to “Sucker Punch” is like grooving to golden oldies such as "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)," "White Rabbit," and two Queen songs “I Want It All,” and “We Will Rock You.” Despite its one-dimensional characters and formula-scripting, “Sucker Punch” qualifies as a suspenseful, above-average, metaphorical, but downbeat fantasy about gals with guns, guts, and get-up & go!

FILM REVIEW OF ''DEATHSTALKER III: DEATHSTALKER AND THE WARRIORS FROM HELL"

As sword & sorcery sagas go, “Deathstalker III: Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell” (**1/2 out of ****) surpasses “Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans.” John Terlesky and company in “Deathstalker II” might as well have been swatting at each other with tennis rackets for all the swashbuckling thrills and chills that the tame first sequel failed to deliver. John Allen Nelson of “Hunk” looks like he could be the eponymous character. Mind you, Nelson is no match for Rick Hill but he is a hundred times better than Terlesky, and Mexican director Alfonso Corona shuns the juvenile antics that Jim Wynorski emphasized in “Deathstalker II.” Moreover, nobody gives an embarrassing performance in “Deathstalker III” that compares with the truly abysmal performance of Monique Gabrielle. Although it isn’t as campy as its pathetic predecessor, “Deathstalker III” contains some humor. Director Corona prefers to play things along the lines of the straight and narrow. For example, a secondary character dies under tragic circumstances so this second sequel isn't as lightweight as the first sequel. The only flaw in the original “Deathstalker” was the death of our hero’s companion too early in the action. Conversely, the character of Marinda here is introduced early in the action and survives until the finale when she helps our unarmed protagonist defeat the villain.

“Deathstalker” scenarist Howard Cohen sticks to the tried-and-true formula of the strong man who rescues a comely princess from the clutches of an evil sorcerer. Occasionally, Corona and Cohen generate a modicum of suspense, particularly in Deathstalker’s torture scene and Cohen scores with one major surprise that enhances the action. Further, Cohen has an adolescent character that is good with a bow and arrow appear at opportune moments, but he foreshadows the child’s skill with the weapon. Basically, “Deathstalker III” revolves around two multi-faceted white stones that when combined will yield their power. These two stones will take the owner to Erendor, the city of lost treasure. The villainous tyrant of Southland, Troxartes (Thom Christopher of NBC-TV’s “Buck Rogers of the 25th Century”), possesses one stone, while Deathstalker winds up with the second stone. He obtained his stone from a princess running around incognito to find a wizard. Indeed, Carissa (Carla Herd of “Wild Zone” in a dual role) has spent the last three years searching for Nicias (veteran Mexican actor Aarón Hernán) who wanders from village to village prophesying about the villagers’ future. One cool looking villain, Inaros (Roger Cudney of “The Border”), rides around with batwings attached to either side of his helmet. This entry in the quartet of sword and sorcery sagas was lensed on location in Mexico, but it is still a low-rent Roger Corman spectacle. The orchestral music by Alejandro Rulfo and Israel Torres captures the atmosphere of this mock-heroic nonsense, and Troxartes makes good use of a falcon as his eyes in the skies.

The first scene in “Deathstalker III” resembles the opening scene in “Conan the Barbarian” when the evil warriors stormed a village, killed most of the inhabitants and captured young Conan. Deathstalker is enjoying himself at a village festival, swapping blows with an adversary on a felled tree as they battle with long sticks. At the same time, the long, gray-haired wizard Nicias tells those who can afford his prices what their future holds. Nicias wears a long fur robe. Carissa has been looking for Nicias and shows him her half of the stone, fully expecting the wizard to have the other half. Suddenly, warriors on horseback wearing ominous armory ride into the village and start slaying people. Deathstalker fights them long enough for Nicias to escape and vanish into thin air with only his smoking footwear to note his presence. Carissa flees, and she winds up in Deathstalker’s camp where she identifies herself as a princess. Deathstalker is amused by his luck. “Why is it I keep getting mixed up with princesses?” Carissa tells him about Erendor and its treasure. “Enough to make my people strong forever,” she assures him. Deathstalker isn’t impressed. “Here I go again, riding hundreds of miles, fighting whole armies, up against magic maybe. In the end all I will get is flowers on my heading telling me how wonderful I am.”

No sooner has Deathstalker seen his future than the same warriors who raided the village strike his camp and kill Carissa. She gives the stone to Deathstalker. Before she dies, Carissa tells Deathstalker about her sister Belizean. According to Carissa, “It was either me or my sister and she cannot put on her own shoes.” This description fits Elizena. Later, after Deathstalker eludes Troxartes, he stumbles into a valley looking for a horse. He tries to steal one from a mother and daughter who live in the valley and live on a diet of potatoes. Marinda (Claudia Inchaurregui of “The Bikini War”) is the daughter who hasn’t set foot outside the valley and has never made love to a man. Marinda lets Deathstalker deflower her and then leads him out of the valley. Mom believes that Deathstalker has abducted her daughter so she leads Troxartes’ army after them.
Once he is safely away, Deathstalker runs into Carissa’s sister, Elizena, and Elizena is every inch the stuck-up princess that we’re used to seeing.

Troxartes hungers from the second stone. His mistress Camisarde (Terri Treas of “All That Jazz”) asks him, “Aren’t you rich enough without one more jewel?” She goes on to add, “You own every inch of land and peasant between here and the sea and me if you ever noticed.” Troxartes points out, “That city is power. The magic of a thousand generations lives in the stones of its wall waiting to erupt by the one who puts these stone together. When this is complete the world is mine. With it I’ll live forever!” Troxartes keeps track of Deathstalker with a falcon. Elizena spends the night in Deathstalker’s camp, without sharing hi blankets. The next day she leaves early, only to be assaulted by wandering swordsman, but Troxartes comes to her rescue and takes her back to his castle. Deathstalker follows, clashes swords with Troxartes, releases the warriors in his power, and defeats the dastard.

“Deathstalker III” is a relief after the abomination of “Deathstalker II. Corona and Cohen bring more dignity and pathos to this installment and—aside from the excerpts of the castle from Corman’s “The Raven”—rely less of previous footage from “Deathstalker” than any of the other entries in the franchise, including the 2003 remake “Barbarian.”