Dungeons & D-Listers: The Beastmaster II (1991)

Nine years pass. No, I’m not talking about the time between my last Dungeons and D-Listers review — I’m talking about the gap between The Beastmaster and its sequel, The Beastmaster II: Through the Portal of Time.

During that nine years, Marc Singer magically transformed into Nick Nolte.

Not even joking.

Now, I got a good bit of enjoyment out of the original Beastmaster, even if it wasn’t exactly a masterpiece… and, perhaps mistakenly, decided to watch the rest of the films.

…

<muffled sobbing>

I really don’t wanna review this, it’s really bad, please don’t make me. Goodness gracious it’s no good at all. Trying to watch this was like trying to eat a 10-inch brick of human feces and, with only a very few small redeeming moments, has left me with a literal headache.

First, just to get them out of the way, let’s start with a checklist of absolutely shameless continuity fuckups:

• Kodo and Podo are back and just fine, despite the fact that Kodo died in the first movie. I guess dying is for pussies.
• Since the tiger, Ruh, died from being turned black with toxic dye, they decided to get a new Ruh, who is just a normal tiger. In the nine years they had, the developers of this pile of shit couldn’t scrape together a single non-lethal hair dye… or, y’know, just get a black tiger since they fucking exist.
• Sharak, the eagle, is very obviously not the same eagle and may not actually be an eagle at all.
• Not a single character from the original film (besides Dar and his mysteriously-resurrected-and/or-mutated animal buddies, obviously) appears in this one. Nor are any of them mentioned in any capacity whatsoever.

At least this one probably lived a long healthy life.

There is so much bad about this I don’t even know where to start. Why don’t we start with the main villain, Maximum Ruler Arklon?

I didn’t make that up, folks. That’s what he calls himself. The Maximum Ruler. As far as I can tell, he’s not a professional wrestler of any sort.

Maximum Ruler Arklon is an evil warlord (or, I guess, a maximum ruler) who does bad things on account of the fact that he’s evil and enjoys doing bad things. And when you’re evil, doing stuff like taking over the world is very fun and rewarding. Looking like a cross between Keifer Sutherland and the Goblin King helps him along with the whole “evil” bit, as does his ridiculous Phantom of the Opera mask.

You guys have to stop doubting me when I give outlandish descriptions.

Anyway, he’s being a real dick and therefore Dar has to lead Le Resistance against him, none of whom we ever actually see. Instead, Dar gets kidnapped instantaneously, leading to the first of many shitty battle scenes with him and his animal buddies. Dar escapes, with Sharak maiming Sir Maximum Ruler and forcing him to wear the aforementioned stupid mask for the entire rest of the movie.

Meanwhile, an evil backbiting witch who is suspiciously far more fascinated with the fact that she has boobs than anybody else, has… somehow discovered a means of magical time-travel. And knows a great deal about the realm beyond (Los fucking Angeles) despite having supposedly never been there. Since she is evil and Maximum Ruler Arklon is also evil, she finds him to pitch some evil stuff so that they can be evil simultaneously – together, with Maximum Ruler Arklon’s magical glowing dildo-wand, the two of them will venture to L.A… to get nuclear weapons.

<rubs temples> I’m sorry, is it too late to quit? I’m just like twenty minutes into a two fucking hour long movie, and all of it’s this bad. Some of it’s worse.

Like what happens immediately after, where Dar is wandering around through the swamp and gets attacked by an eye-laser-shooting were-goblin swamp beast creature. After fighting very briefly, the monster sees the mark on Dar’s hand and recognizes him, confessing that she is his motherfucking aunt.

His aunt.

His aunt.

She then sits down for exposition storytime, explaining that Dar has a long lost brother and weirdly maybe-explaining Dar’s powers by claiming that he was implanted into the womb of an animal as a fetus. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really much care anymore.

His aunt then wanders off to die for absolutely no given reason, cutting Dar off when he tries to get more answers because she has to go die now, dammit.

I’ve still barely scratched the surface.

Cut to L.A., where Kari Wuhrer is playing an annoying spoiled rich granola girl driving her Porche from the cops (and speeding, obviously). She pops through the portal to… Beastmasterland(?) with the cops behind her, only to find the Maximum Ruler Arklon isn’t very accepting of any visitors that aren’t him, and tries to kill everyone rather than doing anything rational (like grilling them for info on this totally foreign world he’s never been to). The cops escape back through the portal, while Kari Wuhrer drives off into the desert, where she is intercepted by Dar.

Oh, by the way, this may be set in Los Angeles but it is not the Los Angeles you or I know today. It’s early 90’s Los Angeles. So expect an absolutely agonizing amount of surfer lingo and “WAY RAD”s tossed in there from time to time.

When we’re not being reminded of our mother’s inappropriate cleavage.

All the boyish personality I mentioned Dar having in the first flick is long gone with this one, replaced with halting barbarian speak and awkward exposition on things we should already know since this is a sequel. Honestly what it is with sequels that need to fill you in on what happened in the first movie? How many people are expected to watch sequels without watching the original films? Is that a thing? Is there some covert sect of sequel-watchers ruining it for everyone, complaining that they don’t know what’s going on when they jump in the middle of a franchise?

Shit. I kinda lost my train of thought.

Okay anyway, Dar and Maximum Ruler Arklon play monkey-in-the-middle with Kari Wuhrer continuously throughout the film. She pops up in Maximum Ruler Arklon’s camp, gets saved by Dar, gets kidnapped by Maximum Ruler Arklon again, escapes and finds Dar once more, teaches him how to say “asshole,” and then kinda wanders off and hides during the climax. Gee willikers, she’s a popular gal.

“…Did I leave the oven on?”

So things do move from Beastmasterland to Los Angeles stupendously late-on in a film called “Through the Portal of Time,” with Maximum Ruler Arklon (who, you guessed it, is Dar’s lost-lost evil brother and shares the hand-mark) trying to find some kickass explosives despite having a pretty awesome magical one already. Dar half-assedly tries to stop him, which amounts to such heroic activities as:

Hanging out!

Eating lunch!

Terrorizing the butler!

Disliking modern music!

Learning how to use curse words!

And in general acting like a fish out of water, since this is a Fish Out Of Water movie, because nobody can get enough of fish when they’re not in water. It’s funny because they aren’t acclimated to this world. Get it? GET IT?!

Fortunately, while Dar’s dicking around, Maximum Ruler Arklon also has time to act like the outrageously hammy goofball he is, such as when he visits a… mall(?) to change his wardrobe. Since he will only settle for clothing that makes it very obvious that he is the villain, he first settles on a deep green Dr. Doom-ish overcoat before finally swapping it out for a better-fitting all-black M. Bison outfit, complete with silly hat. Gotta give it to him, even with his Phantom of the Opera mask, he’s got an eye for supervillain style.

Only slightly less than Maax.

This movie couldn’t have a worse concept of pacing. The most intense fight is in the very beginning, before hopping to unintentional comedy, to intentional not-funny comedy, to a looong stretch of pure boredom – eventually leading to an apparent climax! Maximum Ruler Arklon blasts Sharak out of the sky with his dildo-wand (which was previously able to totally immolate dudes’ heads), but the “eagle,” despite being knocked unconscious, appears to be totally unharmed. Then, finally, it’s time for the battle of brothers, Dar vs. Maximum Ruler Arklon!

However, this of course takes place at a circus, so Kari Wuhrer decides to turn on the loudspeakers so that a recording of a circus barker could completely undermine anything resembling seriousness concerning the final battle. So yeah, to reiterate, the grand climax is played to cheery, dissonant circus music and non-funny intentional/unintentional “comedy.” Dar wins, because of course he does, and then we can all go home.

Except Kodo and Podo, they have to stay in L.A. with Kari Wuhrer for absolutely no reason at all.

Because of… nope, I got nothin’.

This flick has two sorta good parts, which I’ll mention since fuck it, I might as well. The first is a bit where Dar is presented with a plate of what appear to be weird little appetizers (that transform into roast beef once he actually eats them). After looking at them for a moment, he turns to Kari Wuhrer in genuine confusion and asks; “Is this… to eat, or to look upon?” A pretty standard fish out of water joke of the “is it something you eat?” variety, but fairly well-delivered and got a chuckle out of me.

The second was a bit of a brick joke – the witch (who I’ve not talked much about, since she only really had one thing she did, and this is it) always gets a bit uppity when people mention carving her heart from her bosom, claiming that her bosom has better uses. After a few people threaten this exact punishment upon her, and her giving the same reply each time, we get to the final time – which actually draws a sort of quiet laugh from Kari Wuhrer that feels so organic I’m not sure it was in the script.

I’m not sure why I liked this part. The joke started off stupid and only got worse, but it was nice to see a  character actually react when another character says or does something stupid and unrealistic. Hence, this may have been the only joke in existence that only gets funny after someone laughs at it. For me, anyway.

Long story short, this movie’s horrendously bad. While I enjoyed the first film, the second had barely any redeeming qualities to exhume it from its self-made mire of continuity glitches, absent-minded storytelling, and just all-around non-shit-giving. Not worth watching.