The Beastmaster (1982)
Article 6045 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 2-19-2022
Directed by Don Coscarelli
Featuring Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, Rip Torn
Country: USA / West Germany
What it is: Dr. Doolittle meets Sword and Sorcery
A warrior with telepathic ability over animals faces off against an evil high priest.
Though I think it runs a good 25 minutes too long (I’d do some trimming during the first hour of the movie), it’s hardly the worst Sword and Sorcery movie I’ve seen, but it’s hardly the best either. There’s enough here to make for a decent time-killer; the final battle is fairly exciting, the stunt work is pretty good (especially during a sequence in which a fight takes place on the steep sides of a pyramid), and I don’t have any major problems with the cast. I also like that the leopard looks a bit odd, and no wonder; it was actually a tiger dyed black, though the dye doesn’t surround the mouth in some scenes. My biggest problem with the movie is that the story isn’t really all that interesting; it’s a standard issue Sword and Sorcery story. Oddly enough, the opening prophecy turns out to not quite come true, but I suppose bringing a ferret into it would have only drawn laughs.
Fantastic Movie Musings and Ramblings 
The hero and animal protagonists all come from an Andre Norton novel of the same name, which was uncredited as Ms. Norton didn’t care for the plot which bore little relationship to her book.