DEATHSTALKER WEEK: Deathstalker (2025)

Warrior and scavenger Deathstalker (Daniel Bernhardt) is pulled into the "machinations of the gods" when he steals a magical amulet from a dying prince on a battlefield.

Teaming up with goblin-dwarf wizard Doodad (Laurie Field, voiced by Patton Oswald) and thief Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo), this trio of rogues have to first undo the curse on Deathstalker that has bound the amulet to him.

Then they have to find an (impractical) four-bladed magical sword and thwart the apocalyptic plans of the evil sorcerer Nekromemnon (Nicholas Rice), his right-hand goon, the undead Jotak (Paul Lazenby) and their legions of monstrous Dreadite soldiers.

Written and directed by Psycho Goreman's Steven Kostanski (who was born three years after the original Deathstalker was released) Deathstalker (2025) is a loving tribute to vintage, low-budget, swords-and-sorcery flicks.

It is set in a land awash with Hawk The Slayer mist, and our heroes fight their way through a never-ending onslaught of Power Rangers (and Psycho Goreman) style rubber-suit monsters and Evil Dead-style stop-motion creations.

And, yes, the infamous porcine-faced humanoid makes a return appearance, although he's had a bit of a glow-up since the original movies. You may call him a pig-man, but to me he's a Gygaxian orc.

The ultimate weapon that Stalker is seeking - as I suspected the other day - is even an on-the-nose homage to Alert Pyun's The Sword and The Sorcerer.

In fact, the only thing that really differentiates this from the earlier Deathstalker movies is the total absence of sleaze. There's no nudity (gratuitous or otherwise), not even a hint of sexual tension between Stalker and Brisbayne. Instead, they are treated as <shudder> equals!

And, you know what, I didn't miss it. Deathstalker's linear plot is a blood-spattered, non-stop riot of over-the-top cartoonish violence, interspersed with some witty dialogue, subtle foreshadowing, and a cavalcade of rubbery monsters that could easily have just rolled out of an old school Dungeons & Dragons adventure.

You may recognise him as Kirill from John Wick or Agent Johnson from The Matrix Reloaded, but Daniel Bernhardt, who has a definite air of Jon Hamm in his mien, is superb as the titular antihero and the door is definitely left wide open at the end for sequels.

I, for one, would welcome further adventures with Bernhardt reprising the role.

The only nit I would pick with Kostanski's script - and this is as much personal taste as anything - is giving Deathstalker a backstory that necessitates him having a "pre-Deathstalker" name.

Honestly, this is completely unnecessary as the name could have been excised from the script and it would have read just as well if he was a "man with no name" type.

The film was part-funded by Kickstarter in 2024, but (for reasons) as there were no Blu-Rays (or even DVDs) on offer as incentives I just chipped in at the lowest level to get my name in the credits... because I'm easily pleased.

This did mean I had to import the Blu-Ray off my own back this week - thanks to eBay.

I know there are going to be those who moan about what's missing from the traditional Deathstalker formula (even though, surprisingly having now seen the film, it is front-and-centre in the comic book spin-off released by Vault Comics in the wake of the Kickstarter).

However, if anything, 2025's Deathstalker proves you can still make outrageous, trashy, dark fantasy sword-and-sorcery movies in this day and age that cater to audiences both old and new.

My "thank you" in the credits: best $10 I've ever invested in a Kickstarter 😉

A Tale of Two Tales of An Ancient Empire

TALE ONE: It took director Albert Pyun almost 30 years to bring us a sequel to the much-loved, pulpy magnificence of The Sword And The Sorcerer - but sadly 2010's Tales Of An Ancient Empire wasn't worth the wait.

I'll confess that I feel slightly guilty about this upcoming savaging of a movie I should have loved.

However, the first thing you should know about Tales Of An Ancient Empire is that it isn't even a complete movie - it only lasts about 65 minutes then there's a trailer for the sequel Red Moon (which, sadly, never saw the light of day as far as I am aware).

Rather bizarrely scenes from this trailer have been used in the artwork on the back of the DVD case... even though technically they don't occur in this movie!

The basic premise isn't actually too bad. Tanis (Melissa Ordway), the daughter of Talon (Lee Horsley), hero of The Sword And The Sorcerer, is charged by her half-sister princess to track down her father and liberate the kingdom from the grip of newly-risen vampire queen Xia (Whitney Able, hilariously incomprehensible due to her over-sized fake fangs).

Along the way Tanis teams up with a string of other rogues who all happen to be children of Talon - including an oddly camp Kevin Sorbo.

Horsley only truly appears on screen for a single scene - but he steals the show in that one performance - while the cloaked figure we see later, wielding the famous three-bladed sword, may - or not - actually be Horsley as we never see his face.

Right from the off, Tales Of An Ancient Empire is victim to a series of strange and misjudged decisions: background information is imparted through on-screen text that disappears too quickly, the story is broken up into pointless, titled chapters (one lasts the length of time it takes two characters to walk down a hall, while another lasts for the entire third act) and there is much mumbled delivery, often in thick accents, by large portions of the cast.

On top of that there are just too many characters, several of whom look very similar, to keep track of and Pyun's heavy reliance on montage and flashback just confuses things further.

Improvements in special effects technology over the last three decades seem to have passed this production by. While the monsters (all vampires) are good and the smaller atmospheric effects work fine, the exterior of the main palace at night and a sailing ship that Tanis heads off on both looked like unfinished previsualization tests and a lot of the basic green-screening is very obvious.

Most of the film's production faults could have been overlooked if there had been a satisfying conclusion to the story (or any sort of conclusion, really) but to just stop when it did and then taunt us with a tease of better looking scenes was just cruel.

I so wanted to love this film, as I do the original, and I really like the idea of a party of adventures composed of half-brothers and half-sisters, but annoyingly this was a half-movie.

TALE TWO: Following my disappointment with Tales Of An Ancient Empire (expressed, pretty much as above, on a different, earlier blog) I was contacted by director Albert Pyun (yeah, I know! The power of the Internet, eh?) who explained that the version I had seen was a "rough early cut" that was released "without [his] okay".

And then, proving what a cool director he was, Albert (emailing from the set of Red Moon, the sequel to/continuation of Tales Of An Ancient Empire) allowed me a sneak peak at the first 18 minutes of the official, final cut and mix of the movie.

The first thing that strikes you is that the expositional text and chapter headings have gone, replaced by an on-screen, talking head narrator - Hekate (Cazzy Golomb).

If nothing else, this adds a degree of "Know, O Prince," Conan-style gravitas to proceedings and, unlike the chapter headings from my DVD, Hekate only pops up a couple of times during this first 18-minutes.

With less exposition, the story is allowed to unfold at its own pace, which cuts out a lot of the narrative repetition of the previous version, diving straight into the first meeting between Princess Tanis (Melissa Ordway) and her roguish half-brother Aedan (Kevin Sorbo) after the initial introduction of the arch villainess, the vampire queen Xia (Whitney Able).

The stunning Victoria Maurette as Kara

Melissa Ordway as Princess Tanis and Lee Horsley as Talon

The attack on the palace is then told in flashback and this helps to make it clear what is going on.

I was even, this time around, able to pick up on the fact that Tanis is the (adopted) daughter of the king that Talon (Lee Horsley) is riding off to save at the end of The Sword And The Sorcerer.

As well as the CGI shortcomings of the original, reviewed, version of Tales Of An Ancient Empire now being fixed, it's subtle differences that make all the difference in the director's cut (well, the 18 minutes I saw anyway). 

These give me hope that the finished product would have more likely been on a par with The Sword and The Sorcerer.

You Know What Your D&D Games Need? Deathstalker!

Although the Kickstarter-funded reimagining of/sequel to the original - and infamous - swords-and-sleaze classic Deathstalker has yet to materialise on these shores, my old pal Pun (of Halls of the Nephilim) stumbled over a fresh treat on DriveThruRPG.

It's a free, official, 18-page PDF called the Deathstalker D&D 5e Compendium, and describes itself as follows:

Bring the world of Deathstalker into your Dungeons & Dragons 5e games with this guide from Shout! Studios and ProgCore Fantasy. Featuring full D&D5e stats for 12 of Deathstalker's deadly adversaries and two powerful magical artifacts, all straight from the new Deathstalker film by Steven Kostanski.

This compendium is produced by the ProgCore Fantasy team for Shout! Studios, and is offered FREE in conjunction with the February 17 2026 Blu-ray release of Deathstalker.

Fearing spoilers, as is my wont, I've only skimmed the booklet. I was impressed by the variety of creatures on display, but I noticed a couple of things in particular that piqued my interest:

Firstly, Deathstalker seems to have had a real human man name before he was Deathstalker, which, to me, rather demystifies the character and fails to understand the central joke at the heart of the original quartet of low-budget movies.

Secondly, one of the magical items is a multi-bladed sword called Light of Talon. Is this iteration of Deathstalker also the long-awaited sequel to Albert Pyun's The Sword and The Sorcerer? Does this signal the establishment of a Deathstalker'verse???

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Albert Pyun

Back in 2022 we lost the B-movie maven Albert Pyun.

He'd hit the ground running in 1982 with his first movie, The Sword and The Sorcerer - which gave us the legendary blade-firing Tri-Sword.

And it was through this movie, which I wrote about on a previous blog back in 2011, that he achieved a god-like status in my eyes when he made contact with me via the comments section of that post.

My write-up had concluded with a trailer for Tales of An Ancient Empire,  the long-awaited sequel to The Sword and The Sorcerer.

It so happened that I had acquired what I thought was an 'official' DVD of that sequel via eBay, but as Albert would go on to explain that was actually an unsanctioned early cut that he was not best pleased to discover was out in the wild.

He sent me a link that allowed me to view the first 18 minutes of the actual cut of Tale of An Ancient Empire... and it was such an improvement on the first version I had seen.

I've always had a preference for sword-and-sorcery B-movies, so my knowledge of the rest of Albert's vast oeuvre was very limited.

IMDB, which has a lengthy biography of Albert, says this of him:

"He is credited with pioneering the cyborg sub-genre and is considered to be a maverick and renegade in independent genre cinema. With over 50 titles to his name, he has enjoyed a prolific career spanning 30+ years and has earned himself a fevered cult following."

I did enjoy his take on Captain America, from 1990.

From our brief interactions well over a decade ago, Albert came across as a genuinely nice, and enthusiastic, film fan and it was his willingness to reach out to me all those years ago that really made an impression.

That he was keen to engage with a random small-time blogger such as I and ensure that I saw, and reacted to, the film as he had actually envisioned it spoke volumes.

Albert Pyun passed away on November 26, 2022, at the age of 69.

The Sword and the Sorcerer (1982)

Albert Pyun's 1982 The Sword And The Sorcerer is B-movie gem that doesn't need a review.

If your gaming is fuelled by a love of these great, pulpy epics from the '80s then you will have seen this countless times and realised that - as much as anything - it's a Dungeons & Dragons adventure turned into a movie.

From the pithy one-liners and dark humour to the casual nudity (primarily restricted to the one scene where our roguish hero escapes through the bad king's harem), this is a love letter to Conan The Barbarian and Leiber's Lankhmar.

The protagonist, swashbuckling Talon (Lee Horsley) - seadog, adventurer, mercenary general - is a great role-model for player characters, cut from the same loin cloth as Howard's Cimmerian warrior.

And you have to appreciate the fact that, although the rightful heir to the kingdom being fought over, Talon has no interest in the throne, or marrying the princess he rescues. This is just one adventure for him, out of a string of many.

While full of memorable moments, as all this era of swords and sorcery cinematic shenanigans were, the most memorable aspect of The Sword And The Sorcerer is the titular 'sword'.

And I'm pretty sure it's not even magical!

The wholly impractical sword had three blades, with the added bonus that the exterior two could be fired off like high velocity, short-range missiles.

Of course they didn't have an automatic return mechanism, so it was pretty much a one-shot effect for each combat... and if, for some reason, you were unable to reclaim the shot blade you'd need to find a swordsmith willing to make you a replacement.

But such logistics are irrelevant in this old school genre of movie.

Captain America (1990)

I'll admit upfront that I have a soft spot for the work of late B-movie director Albert Pyun. Having had a couple of interactions with him in my previous blogging life, he came across as a lovely, genuine person.

Following on from my reviews of the last couple of days, it thus felt like time to revisit Albert's 1990 extravaganza: Captain America, featuring Matt Salinger - son of author JD Salinger - in the titular role.

Despite what you may have heard over the years, this adaptation of one of Marvel Comic's core characters isn't actually too bad. Salinger does a pretty decent job as Steve Rogers and Captain America, the costume doesn't look too silly and the production values give it the feel of Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman.

There are some odd changes to Cap's established mythology, with the most bizarre being the transformation of his legendary Nazi nemesis The Red Skull (Scott Paulin) from a German to an Italian (hand-picked as a youth by Mussolini to take part in the Nazi 'super soldier' programme).

The scientist in charge of the experiment, Dr Maria Vaselli (Carla Cassola), clearly hadn't been reading the memos and is horrified to discover that the first test subject is a young boy and so flees the country.

Seven years later, at the height of the Second World War, Vaselli is working for the American Government on its own super-soldier programme with polio victim Steve Rogers selected as the first candidate.

There's flashing lights and sparking machinery - clearly borrowed from Dr Frankenstein - before a Nazi agent kills the professor.

This is quite familiar territory for Cap fans, with him soon finding himself strapped to a Nazi superbomb heading towards the White House (which he manages to redirect at the last moment, of course) that, instead, crash lands in Alaska.

He is discovered 50 years later and refuses, at first, to believe it's now the '90s - until he meets up again with his hometown sweetheart, Bernice, and - after her death - attaches himself to her daughter, Sharon (Kim Gillingham plays both mother and daughter), who he then proceeds to drag into all kinds of danger.

The President of The United States (Ronny Cox) is kidnapped by a cartel of evil industrialists - led by The Red Skull - who opposes his pro-Green stance (they intend to stick a mind-controlling implant in him!) and Cap heads off to Italy to rescue the President from The Red Skull's castle.

There are some nice touches: such as President Kimball having been a little kid who saw Cap save The White House and was inspired by him, and the fact that The Red Skull (whose accent swings from Mafia Don to Count Dracula) mocks Cap as "his brother" (as they were both created by the same experimental science).

The main flaws with Captain America come from the fact that it looks really dated and while there are some stunts and effects they are nothing spectacular. And the same can be said of the script, by Stephen Tolkin. It's very pedestrian and despite the odd moment of inspiration it really isn't much better than a cheap, Saturday afternoon television movie, peppered - for the most part - with clunky, corny dialogue and enormous plotholes.

It even introduces us to The Red Skull's daughter, but she's a total drip compared to Sin, from the Captain America comics, which was a major disappointment as well.

However, Captain America is only 97-minutes long and while great chunks of logic and believability are sacrificed to keep the pace up, it races through the story like a steam train and carries you along quickly to its blissfully cheesy ending.