aced with a prophecy that he will die by the hand of the king's unborn son, snarling high priest Maax (Torn) orders a witch to sacrifice the child.
Fortunately, a traveling peasant interrupts the ceremony--which involves
transferring the fetus from the queen's womb to a soon-to-be slaughtered
cow--before the deadly climax. He saves the infant and takes him home to
raise as his own.
As the infant Dar (Singer) grows into strapping manhood, he learns he can communicate
with animals and that he possesses the instincts of a warrior. Nonetheless, he can't
prevent his village from being destroyed by Jun marauders. Girded with his
dead foster-father's sword and stripped to the waist, he embarks on a quest
of revenge.
Along the way he assembles a coterie of animal friends: a black panther, two
ferrets skilled in burglary, and an eagle. He also meets Kiri (Roberts), a
slave of Maax's temple. Bent on rescuing her, Dar follows her back to the
city of Arak, where Maax is busy sacrificing toddlers. Enraged, Dar gets the
eagle to bear away one of the children, revealing his talent to Maax.
Escaping the city, Dar meets Seth (Amos) and his charge Tal, son of the
imprisoned king and the cousin of Kiri, who is now slated for sacrifice
herself. Seth and Dar rescue Kiri and then, braving the sorcery of the
temple, they save the blinded and embittered king as well.
The ungrateful king casts Dar out as a freak and foolishly orders an
immediate attack, which fails completely. Dar must now save everyone from
Maax's clutches in time to defend the city from the merciless Jun hordes.
The long, hard road to Arak
The Beastmaster is now something of a legend. It was overplayed on
cable for so long that it wore a place for itself in the cultural
consciousness. Watching the film, however, is like sinking into the
quicksand Dar tumbles into early on. Unlike Dar, who is rescued by the
ferrets (don't ask), unwary viewers may find there is no escape.
Singer does what's required of him, which is to look simultaneously earnest
and buff. Thanks to a river-bathing scene, there are also some in-the-buff
shots of Tanya Roberts, but there have to be far better roads to titillation than enduring her
performance (People magazine once called her perhaps
the sixth best actress ever to play one of Charlie's Angels). Rip Torn is the
acting standout, able to convey more with an arched eyebrow than Singer
communicates in this film, the two maligned sequels, and all of V
besides.
Nonetheless, The Beastmaster has a certain appeal. Yes, it's
interminable, thanks to an unfocused plot and four shots too many of ferret
derring-do. It's inconsistently edited and sluggishly directed, though
generally well photographed (by cinematographer John Alcott). The theme,
startlingly, seems ripped off from Battlestar: Galactica. The dialogue
is both hackneyed and awkward.
Yet for all of that, the central premise of a lone survivor living in the
wild, able to commune with beasts and hungry for revenge, is eerie and
compelling. (In fact, this is the only shred left of the novel The Beast Master
by Andre Norton, which the film was loosely based on. Norton
wisely disassociated herself from the motion picture project.) This
core concept, combined with occasionally evocative exteriors and a lively
appreciation of Torn, is just enough to sustain determined and patient
viewers through the 119 minutes of this film.
