THE BEASTMASTER (1982)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

THE BEASTMASTER, appearing in theaters the same year as CONAN THE BARBARIAN, is one of the few films to equal the dramatic scope of the Schwarzenegger film. BEASTMASTER runs almost as long as its competitor, despite costing less than half of CONAN's budget. The BEASTMASTER script, authored by director Don Coscarelli and producer Paul Pepperman, took almost nothing from the source novel of Andre Norton but the title and some of the hero's attributes.

The opening setup for the film is much more mythic than the novel, and had that symbolic complexity been maintained BEASTMASTER would have been a match for the first CONAN. That said, the film is it's easily the superior of almost every other English-language sword-and-sorcery movie ever made. The villain follows the pattern of many a "bad father" in Greek myth, for Maax (Rip Torn) plans to destroy the hero before the latter is even born, due to a prophecy by three witches that the unborn son of the realm's king and queen will spell Maax's doom. (It's highly probable that the writers were channeling some of the prominent tropes of Shakespeare's play "MAAX-BETH" and combining them with the Greek stories of murderous father-figures.)

The king himself shows up to confront Maax about rumors that the priest plans to sacrifice an unborn child to his god Ar. Maax proves he has some rather large stones, telling the king to the monarch's face that he plans to sacrifice the queen's unborn son. But the ruler, instead of killing Maax on the spot, makes the mistake of exiling the priest to the land of the warlike Jun hordes.

Before he goes, Maax sends one of the witches to the sleep-chamber of the king and queen. The crones act as anti-midwives, cutting the unborn child from the queen's womb and then preserving the unborn's life in a sheep's womb. This extra step is needed so that the witch can consecrate the child's life to Ar-- which involves cutting a holy rune in the infant's hand-- as a prelude to stabbing the child to death. A passing villager, a "good father," uses a boomerang-blade to slay the witch, after which he adopts the infant and gives him the name Dar. 

Possibly the similarity of "Dar" to "Ar" is no coincidence, for as Dar lives in the village, unaware of his legacy, he displays the ability to commune with animals and make them serve him-- and since no explanation is advanced, I'm led to assume that the talent comes from the hero's brush with the sacrificial deity. By the time Dar's a young man, though, the error of his father Zed comes to fruition. Maax persuades the Juns to follow him in a war upon Zed's city, which they succeed in conquering. Though Maax does not know that the son of Zed is alive, Jun soldiers ravage Dar's village. Dar alone survives to swear vengeance on the Juns. 

While traveling in the wilderness, Dar befriends four animals who parallel the beast-allies of Norton's protagonist: an eagle, a pair of ferrets, and a black tiger. Dar's desire for vengeance doesn't squelch all other interests, for he meets-- and tries to make love to-- a young woman in the wilderness, Kiri, who claims to serve Maax's temple in the conquered city. Later Dar will learn not only that Kiri is working with a resistance movement aimed at overthrowing Maax and liberating the captive Zed, she's also the daughter of Zed's brother, and thus Dar's first cousin. (This doesn't stop the two of them from having the only romantic relationship in the film.)

Dar's wanderings also bring him into contact with (1) a race of predatory bird-people, who let Dar go because of his bond with the eagle, (2) two travelers, one of whom is a younger son of Zed (and thus Dar's brother), and (3) Maax, whose sacrifice Dar spoils. With the help of young prince Tal and his bodyguard Seth (Josh Milrad, John Amos), Dar saves Kiri from sacrifice as well. Later the small group of freedom fighters liberate King Zed, and yet later Dar confronts the man responsible for his village's slaughter. Zed's forces rout the Juns in the royal city, but a new contingent of hostiles besieges the city. For once, the threat of being overcome by superior forces seems real, as it generally does not in many similar films. Coscarelli and Pepperman succor their heroes with a credible eleventh-hour rescue by the bird-people, so that in a sense the good guys are still indirectly saved by the power of the Beastmaster.

One thing that separates Coscarelli's film from later sword-and-sorcery is the elegant simplicity of his story. Very little time is wasted in exposition, with the result that the proceedings have a more poetic atmosphere than the average "blood and thunder" tale. Coscarelli also exploits primal fears in many scenes, particularly the one in which the bird-people take Dar's part against the Juns, which most adventure-films would play for bravura thrills.

Marc Singer does a sterling job as Dar, communicating a much stronger range of emotions than one sees in most other sword-and-sorcery movies. Tanya Roberts and John Amos provide only modest support, but that's the failing of the script, giving neither actor anything impressive to do. The same is broadly true of the villain. Rip Torn plays his dastard straight, but Maax, who starts out in such operatic style, becomes just another bad guy by the story's middle. Still, BEASTMASTER remains a rousing story of its kind, and though its two feature-film sequels were duds, they kept the franchise alive long enough to spawn the generally engaging BEASTMASTER teleseries.