Beastmaster III - The Eye Of Braxus (1996)

The beastmaster Dar (V's Marc Singer) is reunited with his young half- brother Tal (Starship Trooper's Casper Van Dien, sporting a most unconvincing wig) now ruler of the small barbarian kingdom of Aruk, and the warrior Seth (horror legend Tony Todd), both characters from the original movie, but now recast.

Tal was bequeathed a mysterious amulet by their late father, and this is - of course - the MacGuffin (the titular Eye of Braxus) sought by the warlord-wizard Agon (the ever-excellent David Warner).

After Dar leaves Tal's encampment, it is set upon by Agon's Crimson Warriors (so-called because of their red-coloured sword blades) who kidnap the king and take him back to their master.

You can't go wrong with David Warner

Agon is pissed though because Tal no longer has all of the Eye of Braxus, which is required to open a doorway beyond which lies the imprisoned Lord of The Pit, the evil old god Braxus, and "ultimate power" to any who release him.

Canny Tal had given half of the medallion to his wandering, nomadic brother for safe-keeping.

Driven to rescue his brother, Dar teams up with Seth, who had been acting as Tal's advisor, and roguish-swordswoman Shada (Sandra Hess, who played Andrea Von Strucker in The Hoff's Marvel movie, Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D, and who has surprisingly coiffured hair for someone in her line of work).

Shada's loyalties tend to flip-flop, as she - rather successfully - plays both sides, and eventually picks the winning one.

As a love-interest for Dar, Shada was never going to measure up to Kiri (the late, lamented Tanya Roberts of Charlie's Angels fame) from the original Beastmaster, but she grew on me as her character developed.

Near-naked and constantly oiled-up Dar is never without his small coterie of telepathically-linked animal companions, a pair of ferrets (representing his cunning), a hawk (as his eyes), and a lion (for strength).

Oddly the lion has the same name - Ruh - as Dar's panther from the first film, but I suspect this is a similar naming convention to The Witcher's Geralt of Rivia always calling his horse Roach.

By the way, these aren't CGI creatures, but flesh-and-blood animals on the set, which does make a scene of the lion's capture slightly uncomfortable viewing, but I like to think the noble beast's handlers took good care of it.

After a run-in with some savage hill people, Seth, Dar, and Shada get to Agon's city, and decide to join a circus camped outside the walls, as a cover to smuggle themselves in.

Only the circus (which seems to have just two performers and a stable boy on staff) turns out to be run by an ex-lover of Seth's, Morgana (soap opera stalwart Lesley-Anne Down), who possesses a magical gem in her headband that can turn living things into animals.

Morgana, Dar, and Shada

This all gets a bit awkward, and leads to an another apparent betrayal of Dar, but Morgana actually has a plan and Dar being imprisoned in Agon's fortress is part of it.

I have to admit that I really enjoyed Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus, like the previous films in the franchise it neither takes itself too seriously nor sends-up its subject matter.

The low, made-for-TV, budget, and the steady hand of established television director Gabrielle Beaumont (who lists multiple episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Hill Street Blues, and L.A. Law, to name-check just a few, on her CV)  lends an air of Xena: Warrior Princess and Legendary Journeys of Hercules to proceedings that prepares us mentally for the "man-in-a-rubber-suit" final Big Bad.

While David Wise's script has its plot wobbles on occasion and isn't going to win an Oscar, there's great evidence of world-building here. More places and people get actual names in Beastmaster III than most B-movie sword-and-sorcery flicks.

The cast may be small - and this makes for some comically empty backdrops to some scenes - but most of the named characters we meet are interesting and quirky.

So much of the story also has a very Conan feel to it, but it's just the budgetary limitations once again that prevent it from going full wide-screen barbarian, instead recasting Dar's band of brothers as a mismatched party of Dungeons & Dragons adventurers instead.

It's all a question of managing your expectations, if you go in expecting another chapter of Peter Jackson's Lord of The Rings, you're going to be disappointed, but if you're looking for something more akin to Hercules or Xena then you can have a great time with this hour-and-a-half movie.

Yes, of course, it could have been so much better, but there's actually so much to enjoy that did make it onto the screen that I must confess I was pleasantly entertained by The Eye of Braxus.

Friday the 13th Part VI - Jason Lives (1986)

Turns out we were lied to in the last film, Jason has not been cremated but is buried in the Crystal Lake - now renamed Forest Green - graveyard.

However, Tommy Jarvis - a couple of years older and played by a different actor (Thom Mathews) - wants to make sure, and plans to dig up the killer's corpse and burn it himself.

Unfortunately, the combination of a thunderstorm, a metal fence post, and Tommy's grave-robbing accidentally end up in bringing Jason (C.J. Graham) back to life... as an unstoppable zombie!

Jason, of course, was already some kind of zombie, having come back from the dead once after Tommy killed him when he was 12-year-old Corey Feldman, but now Jason's supercharged and bullet-proof.

Tommy tries to warn the local police, but Sheriff Garris (David Kagen) is having none of this "Jason has risen from the grave" bullshit, and wants to drive Tommy out of town.

Not only has Crystal Lake changed its name to try and forget its bloody past, but someone thought it would be a great idea to open a new summer camp on the lake shore.

One of the new counsellors is the sheriff's slightly wild daughter, Megan (Jennifer Cooke, the 'Star Child' Elizabeth from the classic series of V), who takes a shine to Tommy and believes his claims about the supernatural slasher.

However, Jason is heading back towards the camp, and as bodies start to fall, the Sheriff reckons Tommy is responsible, that it's part of his Jason-obsessed psychopathy.

Tommy, of course, knows better and, with Megan's help (and occult knowledge gleaned from a paperback book bought at a Forest Green convenience store) hatches a plan to defeat undead Jason once and for all.

After a couple of rather middling movies in the series, this is more like it. Jason Lives is peak Friday The 13th. It's back on brand with the coterie of camp counsellors for Jason to slaughter and the action has returned to Crystal Lake.

Production values have increased from the first swath of movies, making the kills more visceral and horrific, but this is tempered with a better quality script, and even some moments of deadpan humour.

Writer/director Tom McLoughlin's screenplay even includes a nice Nightmare On Elm Street Easter egg, with the the little kid that has nightmares about all-powerful monsters being called Nancy (Courtney Vickery)

Elm Street only came out a couple of years before this, but already it seems as though the seeds were being sown for some kind of connection between the two blockbuster horror franchises.

When the general public talk about Jason, I think this is the era they mean, starting with this great little slasher flick.

Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives is when the mythology really starts to expand, as it draws on supernatural elements, which I'm pretty certain will now become a more prevalent feature in the upcoming entries in the franchise.

Galaxy Of Terror (1981)

Recommended to me by my good mate Paul, Galaxy Of Terror is a slightly bonkers, early '80s Alien-wannabe, produced by the legendary Roger Corman and resplendent in that "they're making this up as they go along" feeling that he always brings to his movies.

In an alien galaxy, there is a world ruled by a glowing-headed dictator known as The Master (a very natty special effect, it must be said, and a character that has nothing to do with Doctor Who), who hand picks a miss-matched team of astronauts to embark on a rescue mission to the desolate planet Morganthus - where an earlier ship has crashed.

The rescue team boasts a host of well-known performers: Erin Moran (Joanie from Joanie Loves Chachi and Happy Days), Robert Englund (Nightmare On Elm Street, V etc,) David Lynch-stalwart Grace Zabriskie, horror-movie veteran Sid Haig and familiar TV faces Ray Walston and Bernard Behrens.

Throw in some rubbery monsters and an unpleasant assault by a giant rape-maggot that ranks with the original Evil Dead's animated tree as just plain wrong, and it's no wonder this has become a cult classic.

To be fair it quite quickly shakes off its Alien aspirations as it heads more into pseudo-psychological territory somewhere between Shakespeare and Space 1999.

For a low-budget schlockfest, Galaxy Of Terror has some very impressive visuals: as well as the storm-lashed surface of Morganthus we are treated to the sci-fi/Dungeons & Dragons delights of the massive, maze-like interior of a pyramidal structure the adventurers have to explore to turn off the energy beam that caused them to crash-land as well.

And if that isn't enough of an incentive to track this B-movie treasure down (as long as you can stomach the giant maggot scene and a squirm-worthy moment involving a shard of crystal sliding under someone's skin) there's the added bonus that the film is only 81 minutes long.