Transcript
Speaker: It's bad to be bad, it's bad to be bad And I guess it's understood That you would, if you could And you know that you should Yes, you know that you should
Speaker: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to your favorite bad movie podcast. It's the only podcast that's brave enough to ask the question, if this movie's so bad, why do you like it so much?
Speaker: We're your hosts. My name is Chris Anderson, and I would say that I am, uh, let's go with the, the podo of the show. Okay.
Speaker: Sure. You're crampy. Because i I'm missing my Kodo today. Anna is not here with us. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That makes sense. Kodo dies. Spoiler alert. Well, let's... Yeah. out It's tough.
Speaker: Yeah. That part. Things happen in a movie. That's not the totality of their life. that No. That's very true. ah But, of course, we do have Mr. Greg Bossy, obviously the Sharak of the show. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. Yes. Hi. Hi. And, of course, we have with us a very special guest. You might know him as the host of Your Roots Are Showing, but today he's here and we're all marching to the beat of his drum, so he must be our own personal beast master. It's Mr. Michael McDaniel. Hello, hello. Yeah, i was going to say Dar, Young Dar. I'll be both.
Speaker: I'll be both Young Dar and Dar. Young Dar was on The Golden Girls, the actor. Yeah. oh Yes. He was also one ah ah Just One of the Guys. That's right. Okay.
Speaker: He was the younger brother that said, all balls itch. Yeah. Wasn't his name like Steve or something? Yeah, or like Bud. Such a Steve line. Yeah.
Speaker: Well, we're not talking about Just One of the Guys today. We're talking about The Beastmaster. Listeners, if you haven't seen The Beastmaster, here's just a short summary to hold in your mind.
Speaker: A warrior named Dar befriends a group of animals and then embarks on a journey of self-discovery and also revenge.
Speaker: Yeah, I feel like you're leaving out the the the the king and the some of the the the evil Well, that's the self-discovery. there's There's some mild rape in there also. A little bit. that did happen Yeah, yeah yeah there's some there's some bad news. There's some bad things that happen. Oh, yeah. But there's a lotouts there's a lot of fun, i think, in the Beastmaster. yeah.
Speaker: Now, Michael... First of all, I want to talk to you a little bit about your roots are showing. Because when I approached you about this show and coming on and asked you for a movie, you had right at the jump. I want to talk about one of my roots, the Beastmaster.
Speaker: Right. So your roots are showing are the show kind of reflects on a film. But I'm a cheerleader. Wherein there's a whole section where it talks about your queer root. which is the moment in time, that becoming moment when you recognize, like, I am different or I'm queer. um And for me, it was, to be clear, the made-for-TV version of The Beastmester. Okay.
Speaker: Okay. Yes, minus the movies. Because ah even in the made-for-TV version, the Beastmaster's also an ode to the male form. I don't know. oh When you saw this, I just watched it last night, and does the amount of side butt, ugh, chef's kiss. there's a lot There's a lot of Quality beefcake in this movie. Quality, oh yeah yeah. And even when you... And quantity. Well, and when you would be like like... You're not sure. I'm trying to think of what um the king's like faithful sidekick, played by John Amos. Seth? Yes, yes. yes um
Speaker: Even he, as like the older gentleman, is like hopping out, throwing off his robe, and is wearing like full side butt. Yeah, leather bandoliers. Yeah, lots of studded things. even the Even the monsters, even the creatures that get turned into. with like The death guards. The death guard with the the glowy leeches in their brains. even A lot trunk on display.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't, I guess I, it's giving trade before i guess I even knew, i didn't really, like I guess as a child maybe I had like a premonition of that, that so much leather would be in my future. And and it all came to just, it's just a beautiful full circle jerk. and Sorry, I couldn't myself. it makes sense because you can see like,
Speaker: Don Coscarelli was pulling, i think, from like heavy metal imagery from this. And that was pulling a lot from Judas Priest yeah and Rob Halford bringing that sort of gay leather iconography into the metal scene. And by heavy metal, you mean the genre, not the not the cartoon movie. No, no, no, no. Yeah, they the musical genre. They could both be there. yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting to see it then work its way back to like a gay young man and like through that long winding road.
Speaker: The signifier is still there. oh yeah. um But I've been loving listening to Your Roots Are Showing. It's obviously co-hosted by ah our regular guest, Shelley Walston. Yes. And it's been a great time. You guys bring on a different guest every week and talk to them about their roots. Yeah.
Speaker: And what I've been loving about it so much is like, especially so much in this day of age, you know, where we're seeing trans kids across the country being told, you don't know who you are. Right. You can't say who you are to have these sort of queer origin stories and be like, no, I distinctly remember who I was and when I was knowing who I was. And, you know, to to stand up against that narrative, I think is so important. And it's also just a really fun show. And you get to hear a lot of different sort of ah queer voices and like just the sort of normal people who are fun to talk to and like good on the mic, but also...
Speaker: you know, have fun stories to tell. It's been a great show. Yeah. Who doesn't love like a good origin story. I think that's kind of like, and and when you come at it from like my, my lifelong hidden, hidden secret power was that, you know,
Speaker: I'm queer, I'm different. I have this this this way of looking at things differently and and hearing everybody's story. And even like, you know, our hetero allies have an origin story. um For my brother, it was Nicole Waybright's hair. You know, i was a he was in like second or third grade and I was in first grade and he was like, dude, this girl's hair, I just, yeah um I think I'm a man now. Like everybody's got that moment when they're like, okay, yes.
Speaker: Yeah, if you guys invite me on for a straight and Pride Month, I'll talk about a Point of No Return. Oh, boy. Yes. ah But ah back to the Beastmaster.
Speaker: ah Greg, do you have a background with the Beastmaster? Yeah. So two, maybe three years ago, Fillion was like, let's watch Beastmaster. And I'm a big fan of sword and sorcery movies. So was like, yeah, let's do it. And we watched it and we enjoyed the shit out of it.
Speaker: And then he was like, let's watch Beastmaster 2 where he goes to L.A. And I said, yeah, let's do it. And we watched that and we enjoyed the shit out of it. And so I was very happy to ah to be watching it again, especially ah three days after I had just watched Masters of the Universe, which is an interesting ah context to to to witness this one in.
Speaker: How do they compare? ah Very different movies. One is trying to be itself. One is trying to not be that. And a little meta. I was not a big fan of Masters of the Universe. I could see people liking it, but it's just very, it's a meta comedy origin story. And I was just like, that's not really what i wanted to see. Yeah.
Speaker: It was a little too Super Mario Brothers, the movie for you. They went yeah it was a little too far afield. A little too workshopped. Like i i felt the I felt the synergy in the decision making in the group thing. Okay.
Speaker: Whereas I felt like with this one, it was just like people making a movie. Yeah. With no blood whatsoever. Yeah. Like they weren't trying to make a particular type of movie or trying to appeal to a certain audience. They were just movie. They were just like, what would a He-Man movie in 2026 look like?
Speaker: look like Go. Yeah. Yeah. With Beastmaster, I don't have my notes with me, but the first thing I wrote down, it was it was produced by like an entertainment company. It was like something entertainment. It was a leisure entertainment. Leisure entertainment. Yes. Leisure entertainment. That's right. It was so good. It was like, we are this is unpretentious fun. Sit back.
Speaker: Be entertained. And it was it. Yep. Well, I've got a little bit about leisure entertainment in my context notes. If you guys want to talk context. Please.
Speaker: All right, let's hit it. Damn.
Speaker: I wish I had some context About the background of the film Script director, actors on set What was going on on screen I wanna hear some details Gossips can do all that shit Can't imagine all that
Speaker: So the Beastmaster was released August 20th, 1982. Your director, Don Coscarelli, the latest member of the Two-Timers Club.
Speaker: What did Don do prior? ah He did Phantasm too He did the first four Phantasm movies. Oh, well, that'll do it. Fantastic. Yeah, yeah. Love the Phantasm movies.
Speaker: Taglines, two of them. and okay Tagline number one. The epic adventure of a new kind of hero. na Sure.
Speaker: Now with less clothing. Yeah, he's got that. He's got several friends. It's true.
Speaker: Tagline number two. Born with the courage of an eagle, the strength of a black tiger, and the power of a god
Speaker: that's that's That's interesting. ah The Black Tiger is an interesting... Yeah. Yeah, well, more on the Black Tiger later. yeah And the aerodynamics of a hairless wonder.
Speaker: Yes, yeah and and the the oiliness of something you've taken from a cane. All right, so Alice Mary Norton ah was the first woman to be inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.
Speaker: She wrote pulp sci-fi and fantasy starting in the 30s. And in 1959, she wrote a book called The Beast Master. Two words.
Speaker: Okay. It was about a guy named Hostine Storm, the last of the Navajo. And he lived in the distant future.
Speaker: And he could telepathically communicate with his genetically modified animal companions. Interesting. Holstein? What's that last name, etymology? no Not Holstein.
Speaker: It's Hosten. H-O-S-T-E-E-N. First name. Nice. It's a future name, is my answer. First name? Yeah, yeah. Interesting.
Speaker: So one person that read The Beastmaster as a young boy was Don Coscarelli. Don Coscarelli would ah grow up to be a filmmaker, and 20 years after The Beast Master was published, he would make his breakout film Phantasm.
Speaker: Now Phantasm had a budget of $300,000, and it made $22 million dollars at the box office. Good for it. Okay. Good for it. Yeah, and this obviously allowed Coscarelli to level up in terms of what he could do for his next movie.
Speaker: His next movie was The Beast Master. Oh, okay. I like it. So the thing is, ah the only things that Coscarelli really liked from The Beast Master was the title, but he wanted to change it a little bit, and also the talking to animals thing. He pretty much got rid of the rest.
Speaker: he and his longtime collaborator Paul Pepperman licensed the novel and wrote a screenplay that got rid of all the sci-fi stuff and just wrote a straight up swords and sorcery picture inspired by the Steve Reeves Hercules movies of the Okay. Okay.
Speaker: okay
Speaker: Now that Coscarelli had some success under his belt, ah he could do what every independent producer-director had always dreamed of. Make a movie with someone else's money for a change.
Speaker: So he started shopping around his script, first to studios who were not interested. What? So after that, yeah, The Fools. It's right on the page. Everything that's on the screen is going to be fantastic. Yeah.
Speaker: So after that, he went to the foreign distributors of Phantasm ah Leisure Investments. Ah. They were pretty happy with how Phantasm turned out for them, so they put up a $9 million dollars budget for the Beastmaster.
Speaker: I love it. Yeah. The problem is, guys like that, their money always comes with strings attached. Hmm. They made some changes to the script, and they nixed some of Coscarelli's casting choices.
Speaker: ah He was initially going to get Demi Moore in the role of Kiri. Wow. I would have watched that. yeah Yeah, she would have been great. Yeah. ah But the money man, they wanted Tanya Roberts, so Tanya Roberts got the role.
Speaker: Okay. Coscarelli wanted to hire Klaus Kinski to play Mayaxe, the villain. Wow. Which would have been great. But his quote was too high, so instead they went with Rip Torn.
Speaker: Rip Torn's pretty solid. He's pretty good in this. I enjoy seeing him in this. Yeah, he's a fun choice. Oh. So I'm looking at Klaus and it's like, ah yeah. Yeah, he's very intense. He was ah the main star of the German director Werner Herzog, famous for being violent and insane.
Speaker: yeah yeah Yeah. So he had bigger casting problems in that he wanted to cast a Black Panther for the role of Ruh.
Speaker: But the producers hired an animal training company that didn't have any panthers. They did have tigers on staff, though. And they told Coscarelli, no problem.
Speaker: We'll sedate the tigers, and then we'll dye them black with women's hair dye. That's amazing. Oh. Bummer alarm. Bummer alarm.
Speaker: This next bit is kind of a bummer.
Speaker: Unfortunately, one of the tigers died while under sedation. Oh. Yeah. Yeah. It's a real shame. ah And they also, they had to do several other like... ah Animal horrible torture things.
Speaker: Well, they had to have a sharpshooter on hand. They had to make sure that the tiger- Just in case? Just in case. Just in case. I mean, you got to love a situation where you need to just have a sharpshooter on hand. You just got to, legal reasons, you just got to have one. They're throwing ferrets in quicksand and making horses run through tar.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah Yeah. Yeah. They do a lot of stuff that I think you technically cannot do to animals now yeah yeah in this movie, unfortunately. Yeah, sense. um But yeah, you definitely want to, it's much better to have the sharpshooter and not need him yeah than it is to need a sharpshooter and not have him. Right. ah Hell of a job.
Speaker: But they also had to, the tigers would lick off the hair dye between takes, so they had to keep on reapplying the black hair dye around their mouths. That's why they looked a little more white around the mouths. I was so confused as to what kind of a creature it was. i was like, it's like a Puma? Yeah, I was like, Jag? ah What is that?
Speaker: Yeah, it is really surreal looking. It is hard to clock it. It does make for a striking effect in the film. i Oh, sure. i also liked it when Kodo or Poto and the tiger were like kind of nosing each other at the end. Like I was like, how did they make that happen without that tiger? Oh, yeah.
Speaker: ah Basically, they fed that tiger like more meat than it should get in a week. Wow. And they were all like, okay, we're going to do this one time. And after that, we are not trying this again. So they sent them close to each other. They touched noses. They yanked the ferret away. They stopped them.
Speaker: That's beautiful. Wow. That's my christmas card this year. yeah it was a beautiful image. I want to say that. It was. It was very nice. ah Now, ah still, despite all the hiccups that they had and an unfortunate tiger death, The Beastmaster did eventually wrap shooting and make it into theaters, where it did not do great.
Speaker: It only made $14.1 million on its $9 million dollar budget. But this was not the end of Beastmaster. No. The movie really found its home on cable TV, where it wound up into heavy rotation. Yeah, TBS, baby.
Speaker: Yeah, the Beastmaster Station.
Speaker: And ah comedian Dennis Miller famously joked that HBO stood for, hey, Beastmaster's on. ah In a Variety article from 1993, TNT program executive Phil Oppenheim said that it was amongst their most popular movies, crediting it to its mythological appeal.
Speaker: Okay, sure. In the same article, Stefan or possibly Stephen... Stefan. Shalonsky, yeah. Stefan Shalonsky, the manager of programming for Cinemax...
Speaker: ah He credited its success on cable to the fact that you can come into any part of it and you won't have missed much. It's true. No, this, this is a movie that largely you enjoy on the level of spectacle. The plot is secondary. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: This is a vibes watch. but But that long cable life obviously led to ah the TV series that was so important to Michael and to Beastmaster 2, which I tried to watch this weekend, but the version that I had had Turkish subtitles on it. and it That's distracting.
Speaker: Full disclosure, I've never seen Beastmaster 2. you i mean You and me both. I was like, no. It's a pretty good time. i mean it's What year did that one come out? Like in the 90s? I don't know. I think it was like either 92 or 89. Mid-90s. I mean, they go to Los Angeles and they drive a car into Beastmaster World. Yes. So.
Speaker: Okay. I'm saying. take on That is very much up my alley. And remember when you had Matt Finnegan on, we were talking a lot about Beastmaster 2 in relationship to ah the movie. He was talking about Lords of Magic.
Speaker: Yeah. Because it had similar rocket forward through time. Beastmaster 2, Through the Portal of Time, came out in 1991. Now, Mark Singer is looking a little weird in these still images. Oh, yeah. As in older or Uh, his hair is looking bad ah Or post, like, I got that Coke money now because I just did Beastmaster 1 and here we are at Beastmaster 2.
Speaker: I think it's... little rough. he You know how he has, like, a slight Cro-Magnon-y vibe to his face? That has become more pronounced. Okay, so he looks more like the Skinwalker people Beastmaster 1.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. Love those people, but we'll get to them. Yes, please. Okay, yeah. Well, real quick, just the other ah swords and sorcery films of 1982. Before we do that, very quickly, oh this is not somebody cashing in on the success of Conan.
Speaker: ah No, Conan came out the same year. Right, but I mean, like, they were in production at the same time. That's so crazy when that happens. But I really thought that this was a like, what do we what do we got that's a Conan? What do we got that's a Conan? What can we spit out?
Speaker: I mean, it might be since leisure time was in distribution, they might have heard that Conan was coming on the market and that might be part of why they greenlit it.
Speaker: We get us one of them swords and sorcery pictures. Yeah, surplus of sand in Hollywood at the time. Yeah, absolutely. It's a very affordable resource. ah So you also got Conan the Barbarian.
Speaker: now You got The Sword and the Sorcerer, and the Albert Pion movie. ah You got Sorceress. Yeah. You got, and these last two I think are Italian, The Sword of the Barbarians and The Invincible Barbarian.
Speaker: I've seen most of those. Okay. I've seen, i think just Conan. I want to see Swords and Sorcerer. Conan is a classic.
Speaker: Conan is a great, yeah. But, once again, we're not talking about Conan, we're talking about Beastmaster. You guys want to talk about the plot of Beastmaster? Let's do it. Hell yeah.
Speaker: Yes!
Speaker: Plot bumper, listen to me. I'm gonna give you the plot summary. Come on, baby. Here's the synopsis.
Speaker: Plot bumper, plot bumper.
Speaker: We got another one with a lot of plot, folks. So here we go. we And then? And then? There's so much. So we open up on the credits rolling over still footage the Beastmasters' assorted animal companions.
Speaker: We then cut to a ziggurat. You'd love to see a ziggurat in movie. I love zig. that's That's production value. You see somebody took the time to build a multi-story ziggurat for their movie? You're like, okay.
Speaker: Now that's the $9 million dollars up on screen, baby. Now inside the ziggurat we find Mayaks. An evil priest of the god R, played by Rip Torn of all people. And he's great.
Speaker: yeah Yeah, he's got his classic growl. He's still relatively young here, but he's still definitely Rip Torn. He's got dainty braids. yeah Yes. Very cute little side doves. And a strange, very large nose for some reason.
Speaker: Yes. Very problematic prosthetic. container He's like constantly in profile. no and We need to find a baby.
Speaker: I have to kill the children.
Speaker: So he's down there with a couple of his acolytes and they're talking to some witches who are all like super horny, but they have faces like somebody sprayed them with acid. Yeah, they are hot. From the neck down. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: From the neck up, they're beautiful on the inside, I'm sure. Right. Yes. Well, like except for all the evil magic. Like, I'd befriend one of them. Sure. Yeah, i I don't want to cross them, that's for sure.
Speaker: But the witches, they tell Mayaxe that it has been prophesied that he will be killed by the unborn son of King Zed. And Mayak says, no problem.
Speaker: We'll just kill Zed's unborn son. ah King Zed then walks right into the ziggurat and is like, no, don't do that. And he has Mayak's arrested.
Speaker: Right. Yeah. My favorite is one of the witches actually at one point is like, no, seriously, this is the truth. You can't change it It's kind of a blunt line where she's like, no, it's the truth. That's why it's a prophecy. and Yeah. You can't change prophecy. You can't have think prophecy. What are you doing? Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, we're we're up for whatever, but this is dumb. Right.
Speaker: So it's a little too late. Mayax's plan is already in motion. That night, one of Mayax's witches sneaks into the royal bedroom and incredibly, she sneaks a full grown adult cow in with her. Oh, yeah. She needs it too.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. it's It's there for a reason. Oh, yeah. Chekhov's cow. Chekhov's heifer. It was just a very surreal image to see. No, it's one of the weirdest things. And then the way that she subdues them is also yeah really bizarre.
Speaker: Yeah, she pours glowing blue liquid onto their, like, the dimple at the bottom of their throats, whatever that's called. Yeah, the degletage. Yes. The degletae. Yeah, there's a more exposed chest in this movie than you could ever dream of and ah And it does...
Speaker: Remind you that this is from the director of Phantasm. Don Cascarelli knows how to put some weird stuff on screen. That's true. ah So she then magically teleports the unborn child from the mother's womb into the cow's womb.
Speaker: before cackling and magicing herself and the pregnant cow to a remote spot in the woods. Yeah, it's beautiful. Incredible whole concept of it is fantastic.
Speaker: Also, the witches have this, like, witches out sound, where there's like, ha, ha. Every time they die, they're like, bye-bye. Yeah, they always laugh when they're killed. It's a really good touch. So she performs a C-section on the cow, takes the baby out.
Speaker: Yeah. Why wait? And you don't want a baby going through a cow's no system. That seems complicated. oh So she then ah burns a ah brand onto the baby's hand, marking him with the mark of r her evil god.
Speaker: ah But the thing is, she's doing all of this in front of a giant blue bonfire that has drawn the attention of a nearby wandering villager.
Speaker: When he sees a woman about to stab a baby to death, he intervenes, hitting her in the back with some sort of weird throwing weapon that he calls caper before stabbing her and shoving her into the fire.
Speaker: Mm hmm. Yeah. Bing, bang, boom, you saved a baby. He brings the baby home. Yeah. Yeah. She then, he takes the baby home with him and raises him as his own son.
Speaker: He names him Dar and teaches him how to fight and tells him that he must never tell anyone that he can talk to animals, which is a thing that he can do. Yeah. He faces down a bear and he's like, hey, bear. And the bear's like, yeah. Also, when he brings him into the village, he just like holds up a baby and walks in. It's like a party. It's like, look what I found, you guys. It was just like, hell yeah, he's got a little It's also weird because it's like he's not like married or married.
Speaker: From what I can tell. so it's not like he should just suddenly have a child. But everyone's like, I read him as a local beloved widower. Yeah, oh, I like that. Okay, okay.
Speaker: So he's like, look, shit, I found this baby. like Yeah, good good for you. Now you can have that family. Yeah, you wanted a family. And it's a boy. Even better. Yeah, so we can work in our society. That's right. He can he too can be a cobbler.
Speaker: And he can get a body built from working. Yes. ah So soon, Dar is fully grown in all the right places, and he is played by a pleasantly handsome beefcake named Mark Singer.
Speaker: He is a happy villager. he has a dog named Toto, and he's living his best life. In a house on stilts. Yes, all their houses are on stilts. There's another cool like little thing that he didn't have to do, but he did. I thought it was a nice touch. man and Dar's ability to name animals is questionable.
Speaker: Toto, Kodo, Hotmodo, and then the the tiger's name is just the first sound the tiger made, which was rar. That's her name now. And I think probably you could also say that about the eagle. The sharak sounds like something, or shakar, I can't remember which.
Speaker: Yes, exactly. yeah Yeah, I think he just names things after what they say. I think that's his thing. He's a simple man. Dar is a simple man. It's true. And I love that they all have these, well, anyway.
Speaker: Yeah. A horde of barbarians named Juns attack the village. Yeah. Dar's adopted father immediately gets trampled to death by horsemen. Mm-hmm. And his dog gets shot with an arrow.
Speaker: It is rough. Yeah. Tough time for old Dar. To top it off, Mayax shows up. Seems like Mayax and the Juns are working together, or one for the other, or they have something in common. They're allies somehow. They're just vibing with each other, I think, too. It's just like, oh, Mayax is here. Yes, am. You guys are shitty, right? I'm shitty, too. Let's kill some people out there. I'm looking for a boy. I'm trying to kill babies.
Speaker: ah So Dar wakes up and then he lays his dog and his father to rest. But the good news is he befriends an eagle that he named Sharak. I wrote it down. Yeah.
Speaker: And then he begins his quest for revenge. He takes his father's sword, which I liked was a curved blade. I want to say it was like a scimitar maybe. Sure. You know, I think ah you see a lot of double-edged straight swords in in fantasy movies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it was nice. It looked a little different.
Speaker: Yeah, just give some specificity to the Beastmaster.
Speaker: So he picks up a couple more animal frames and some cute scenes that I'm glossing over. A pair of mischievous ferrets named Kodo and Podo. They almost drown in some quicksand.
Speaker: And he befriends a large black panther that he names ru ah he he's now with yeah oh so let say You also know he's ready to fight because there's a whole like five minutes where he's standing on the mountain just like swinging a big stick around. yeah it's a big log. Yeah, he's like swinging this log around and you're like, wait, that guy's ready.
Speaker: That guy's ready to look to to take over. If you can swing a sword swing a log, you can swing a sword. You're ready. Yes, if you can dodge a wrench. yeah Once again, rip torn. It all comes around.
Speaker: I also love when he's like, I have you, my cunning, and it's the fair. So he's like, I have you, my courage, and it's the hawk. and his Or have you, my vision, and it's the hawk. He's like, have you, my courage. the things like i have all the things a warrior needs. It's like, usually warriors need those things, though, not like animals that represent those things, typically. Or food and water. or Yeah, that'll work to weapons. yes He just runs for days. Yeah, yes.
Speaker: Yeah, his cardio is insane. and i bet he has the resting heart rate of like a tortoise. Yeah. ah Let's see. So, yeah, he's got everybody together.
Speaker: But before he can go and find the Juns and get his revenge, he instead finds a topless lady named Kiri, who's swimming in a pond of some sort.
Speaker: He scares her with Ra before bravely shooing Ra away and putting the moves on her. She explains that she's actually a slave and she has to get back home. You know, they don't like it when the slaves are gone too long.
Speaker: And so he's like, fair enough. But then he decides to follow her. But then he loses. stuff One of the fairies steals her necklace, which comes into play later.
Speaker: Yes. Does it? I don't. Yeah, it does. It does. Okay. A lot happens in this. It does. Yeah. So instead, he ends up finding some weird camp by a big tree.
Speaker: There's a bubbling cauldron and a man suspended in a wooden cage. Dar frees the prisoner, who is then promptly killed by some hideous monsters that live in this big tree.
Speaker: They look like giant hairless bats, and they eat the fleeing caged man by wrapping their wings around him and dissolving his flesh. It's incredible. nice Are skinwalkers part of the Navajo like culture, lore? Because when you said Navajo at the beginning, I was like, skinwalker people? I don't know if that's a thing or if there's a connection there.
Speaker: i You know, I don't know enough about either the Navajo or Skinwalkers to speak on it confidently. Okay. Listeners, write in to favoritemadmoviepod at gmail.com if you can confirm or deny that these monsters might have some relation to the Navajo people, the legends of the Skinwalkers, or both. It's great, though. These these creatures are fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, they're very creepy. They're very strange. They do a lot of like, silent staring, which I think is awesome. they never make any noise. Yep. Yeah, they all look like they're nine feet tall. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: yeah So the Monster Men, they notice that Dar is friends with an eagle. And it turns out that they worship eagles or they respect them in some way or something. like eagles a lot. It's the name of their god. It lands on an eagle statue, which is also important to see like an eagle on an eagle.
Speaker: Yeah. ah But they give him an eagle medallion and then they send him on his way.
Speaker: The next day, Dar finds the city with the ziggurat. He tells Ruh to wait outside, because obviously a tiger might blow his cover.
Speaker: And he sneaks inside the walled city to investigate. There he finds Mayax standing on top of the ziggurat as villagers look on. He then sacrifices a small child to his god, Ar, by throwing him into a large pyre.
Speaker: I was very surprised to see a child get murdered in this movie. Yeah, not what I expected. Bye-bye. Then ah he's like, you know what? Not enough. I need another child. Let's double up. I want another baby.
Speaker: You have to go as him for Halloween, please. It's not a bad call. No, that would be a good one. Oh my gosh. So I could, i work in a bookstore. I could use it as saying like, I'm the character from the Beast Master.
Speaker: yeah Yeah. No one will have read it. They can't call you I'm i i'm my this character from the Beast Master.
Speaker: yeah ah So, Dar says that... Oh, no, no, no. Hang on, hang on. Where was I? No, no, There we go. Kid murdered by a second baby. Yeah, he wants another child to throw onto this pirate. And they're like, okay, here's we have another one that's already dressed up for it, I guess. yeah I noticed that, too. I think people get prepped just in case.
Speaker: Yeah, you never know how many he's going to want. And if he doesn't get enough kids, he's always it ends up being a big thing. Yeah. Luckily, Dar thinks that two child sacrifices in one day is a bit much. So he has Shirok the eagle swoop in and save the second child before he flees the scene.
Speaker: And it looks so stupid. Yeah, it's a cartoon kid in the sky. And the child's also like three times the size of the eagle.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. It's like the Eagles holding on to the clothes and the child's just like, yep, I'm just dangling by my clothes from these talons and this Eagles carry me away. It's like, that's definitely not happening. yeah There's no way that Eagles getting off the ground.
Speaker: It's a fantasy, Craig. No, it was great. in moment. No, no, no. I loved it. And i I drank the Kool-Aid, but also I recognized that the Kool-Aid was false. yeah And I love how he puts the staff on the kid's head and is pushing her down. Or is that another scene where he's trying to shove somebody into it? No, This is what I'm pretty sure. Get down there. Yeah, come on. Yeah.
Speaker: Uh, so later that night, Dar, he sneaks back into the city and he reunites the boy with his parents. The boy's father, Socko, favorite character, I gotta say. He's great.
Speaker: Uh, he says that he owes him one and that things in town have been really shitty ever since King Zed got locked up in the basement of that ziggurat when Mayax took over. And Tar says, oh, okay, well, I'll be back.
Speaker: But first I need to go hunt down the damn John and find my girlfriend. Do something. He's sort of going all over the place. I think that's one of the problems with this movie. And there's a lot of like, let's go to the town. Let's leave the town. Let's go to the town. Let's leave the town. Let's go to the town. Let's leave the town. like, what are we doing? They slowly kind of want to, they connect him very sinuously with like an eagle's sight.
Speaker: Like the eagle is kind of telling him where to go. yeah But it's also these weird cut scenes where you're like, what? I guess I'm hearing chimes, so that means he's communicating with an animal at this point in time. as you only That's the only way you know something like telepathic's happening. Yeah. Yeah, and obviously i it's very hard to summarize the telepathy scenes. i mean And then we swoop over a mountain and there's horsemen. There's definitely like a lot of eagle vision and yeah puma vision.
Speaker: Yeah. Yes. Very little ferret vision, unfortunately. Their eyes are too small. yeah yeah Yeah, you could do it like real widescreen, low to the ground, give it like a Sam Raimi vibe.
Speaker: o Back at Mayaxe's lair, the witches tell him that the Beastmaster was the guy that messed up this whole sacrifice situation. He's really pissed off.
Speaker: So he sends some of his acolytes after him, and he gives them a magic ring with an eyeball in it. it's really great. Yeah. I love it. ah I want to know how it works.
Speaker: Like from like a prop perspective. oh Oh, yeah. I imagine it's like just a ah ah glass eye that they put inside. where you Like the person rolls their finger. yeah would be my Yeah, something like that.
Speaker: Work it with your thumb, This Halloween costume is getting better and better. You got to right yeah got to wear the ring. Take my ring. yeah Kiss the ring. That would transition to an everyday wear for me, I'm sure. Yes. yeah ah Now, unfortunately for Mayaxe, what he ends up watching through the ring first is Dar and Ruff fucking these two guys up and killing the shit out of them.
Speaker: In the midst of them getting killed, dar meets Seth and Tal. Seth is a huge black dude, and Tal is his little white boy companion.
Speaker: Seth says that he and Tal are pilgrims en route to Ziggurat City. ah But we know that Zed is actually, or that Seth is Zed's right hand man.
Speaker: yeah We've seen Seth before in the movie.
Speaker: That night around the campfire, Seth explains that Tal is actually a prince, the son of King Zed. And Dar explains that he has a mystical connection with animals.
Speaker: So they both got things. Yeah, that's cool. Also, he gives Tal the eyeball ring. They took it off. One of the ferrets took it off the dead acolyte. And Tal, I was in the bathroom in this part. Yeah. Tal's like, oh, this is cool. Can I have this? Yeah. He like dumps out all of his stuff. And yeah. And he like puts it on. And I was like, you can have it.
Speaker: And that's this is also where they discover the necklace, where it comes back up. Because he's like, where did you get this? Where did you get this? He's like, it was given to me by a slave girl. It was given to me by a slave Who's the slave girl? Oh, that's my cousin.
Speaker: Okay. Which means also we'll later on find out that Dar's love interest is also his cousin. Yeah. I was wondering i was just wondering about that.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, it was a different time, but. It was. and Yeah. yeah Still, I'm going to officially disapprove. No, it was one of those things when I realized that I was like, hmm, that's weird. Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, there's there's a there's there's a few continuity issues with the movie. Oh, sure. yeah There's a few issues with the movie. yeah but For sure.
Speaker: So the next day, Chirac reports that he's spotted Kiri. She's marching along somewhere with four other women. They're being brought by Mayaxe's acolytes somewhere to be sacrificed. It seems like they left the ziggurat. and Now they're going back to the ziggurat. I don't know.
Speaker: They've got to do a pilgrimage. Yeah. It's a different location. Yeah. There's a holy altar somewhere. Mm-hmm. In any case, our boys ride out to meet them, and they pose as ferrymen and free Kiri.
Speaker: Fuck those other four women, I guess. Exactly. Hey, they were there for one purpose. too down. Kiri. Oh, I thought I said that. No, no, no. Naturally, though. But I do like, as they're leaving, they're like, oh, we've got too much weight on the boat, so Kiri just kicks three men overboard to drown in the middle of the river, tied up. It's like, damn, this lady's cold. Well, they were like the weird assassin men.
Speaker: I mean, they're bad guys, but yeah that's cold, man. So at this point, they agree to split up. Seth, since he's got connections, he's going to go and get some backup from somewhere nearby, a valley or something.
Speaker: And Dar, Tal, and Kiri, they're going to break into the ziggurat. I don't know why they're bringing the child. That seems like an odd decision to me. But they're going to freaking... He's a warrior now?
Speaker: he onces He's really into finding his cousin. He's like, yeah I gotta go. I want to be a helper. Let's do this. Yeah, yeah and I guess he he is royalty. He is kind of a charge. They can't say no. right yeah yeah
Speaker: So, Socko, he's back. He helps them sneak in. But unfortunately, Tal is still wearing the eyeball ring, so Mayax is on to them. ah The three of them fight their way through the temple past some assorted death guards who are like weird zombie men. We see them getting made in a laboratory in the basement.
Speaker: There's traps, there's monsters, there's fighting. They eventually find Zed deep in a dungeon. There's lots of daring do as they escape. ah Bravery on the parts of two ferrets trying to get some keys that are ultimately not needed.
Speaker: It's kind of logistically confusing. a little bit. And and that the king is blind, but they don't really... The king has been blinded, was very disturbing. Yep. ah But there's a confrontation with Mayaxe, but they eventually are all able to escape and flee from the town.
Speaker: They bring Zed to Seth and his reinforcements. And King Zed is understandably very pissed off. Yeah. He has been blinded and locked in a dungeon for a while.
Speaker: His kingdom was stolen and several of his family members have been murdered. Yeah. I'd be upset too. It's a rough day. Yeah. Yeah. So he wants to attack the town and he wants to do it now.
Speaker: He wants to go kill Mayax. At dawn. Let's roll out. And I love that everyone's just like, this doesn't make sense though, man. Yeah, this is bad.
Speaker: Yeah, he has clearly have come out the worst of it from his time in prison. ah in addition to obviously being blinded and having several family members killed. Of course. ah Dar says that they're outnumbered.
Speaker: And Zed says he doesn't have to listen to some freak that can talk to lizards or whatever. That's his son, right? He doesn't know that. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I just i wanted to double check that. We'll get there. no yeah I mean, but the king has some good reason to not be into people who have like sorcery or magical powers, right? Like he's like, don't know. Yeah, yeah he has he did have a very bad experience with Mayaxe.
Speaker: Yeah. Dar leaves the camp because his feelings got hurt. And also Zed ordered him to leave. There's also that. there's Yeah. Two good reasons. Although that Kiri is just like it's just like, well, you can't come back with me, obviously. like Yeah, Kiri's like, well, he is my uncle, so so i got kind of I don't like you that much. We did just. We just met. so like I have a duty. Yeah.
Speaker: She talks about her duty a lot. Yeah. At that point. and And she's revealed to be from some line of ancestral warriors or something. Sure. which That wear really cute dresses.
Speaker: Yes. They wear basically burlap prom dresses. Well, she had a cold costume change where she went from wearing almost cover up to the knee to come back into the room with like, it's just below her labia. And like, there's a big leather belt and there's awesome sleeves. Yeah.
Speaker: Yes. It's like the two of them are like looking down a hole and she's like, I'm going to just sneak away. to this secret passage. Secret passage. And then later I'm going to come back out of it and then sneak back to where I was in a different. It's like, what? what It was very strange. yeah i saw like Yeah. The two guys are just like, how did that happen?
Speaker: He's like, huh? Yeah. And when you see open this secret door, you're like, is she a double agent? Yeah, no, I was like, Kiri's in on it.
Speaker: Yeah. But no, was just just costumes. Inside the room. Yeah. I hope, but i in my in my imagination, there was a whole montage scene that they cut out of her going from like a seven to a nine in the in the in the in the temple.
Speaker: It definitely should have been like a musical montage of different outfits. Yes. Ooh, samurai armor? I don't think so. Appropriative. Hip-hop armor and I'm doing The Running Man? No.
Speaker: Yes. So ah Seth ah notices that Tal's eyeball ring is looking at them.
Speaker: How about that? Yeah. Yeah. And it's listening in while Zed is basically laying out their entire plan. So Seth smashes up the ring and is like, hey, we can't do that plan because he he knows our entire plan now. And Zed does not give a shit. They're doing the plan anyway. They ride at dawn.
Speaker: Yes, King Zed. And we don't see any of it. No. It's just a hard cut to, hey, we failed. yeah Yeah, the next day, slightly after dawn, Sokko rides up to Dar's camp and tells him that King Zed's plan has failed terribly.
Speaker: His friends are to be sacrificed later that day. Dar obviously doesn't like the sound of that. ah So he rolls into town and takes care of it.
Speaker: ah Podo and Kodo free Kiri, Seth, and Tal, while Dar and Ruh start killing bad guys, slowly working their way up the ziggurat. Once Dar reaches the top, he faces off against Mayax.
Speaker: Mayax tells Dar that he is actually King Zed's long-lost son before slitting Zed's throat right in front of him. x I also love that like the witch is like, this is it. He's come for you. It's over. yeah yeah I told you. There he by the way. doom arrives.
Speaker: We had a good run. yeah yeah ah Dar stabs Max Mayax in the gut. with His name is spelled M-A-A-X. Mayax. Mayax. Call your mother Mayax. Yeah, definitely he's just Max from Staten Island. Mayax. gets stabbed in the gut with his own dagger.
Speaker: ah Dar is sure that he's killed the evil priest, so he returns to join his human friends. But Mayaxe is not dead, and he lurches to his feet to stab Dar in the back, only to be stopped by the brave and noble ferret Kodo, yeah who sacrifices himself, knocking Mayaxe into the sacrificial pyre.
Speaker: Yeah. Poto is obviously beside herself. ah it's It's such a weird scene, too, because there's a moment where I think, like, I see Poto, and then, like, Dar gets kind of excited again because I think it's like, okay, we're winning. And i was like, wait, so, wait, is that the one, did one sneak out?
Speaker: Is that what happened? Is that what he's excited? No, no. that That fair is dead. Yeah, he tries to reach in, and he's like, oh, shit, that's hot. Yeah. Yeah. Fire. But somehow the kid earlier like got like tripled away down and was fine. Listen.
Speaker: It also got carried out by a hawk. but it's Oh yeah. I forgot about that magic hawk. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where was Chirac? Where were you? Chirac! So we haven't addressed that. Every time he wants to call the hawk, he's just like, and it's the most hilarious thing i've ever heard life. That's his party trick till he dies. Yeah.
Speaker: He just does that and hawks, falcons, eagles just land. Now, unfortunately, at this point, the movie is not over. No. We still need to deal with the Jens who are riding to attack the city.
Speaker: Our heroes marshals the town's defenses, hiding a moat made of tar beneath a thin covering of sand. Luckily, they already had a moat made of tar. I love when they go to the extras. They're just like flicking sand with the tips of their fingertips into the mud pit. Like that's going to work.
Speaker: Like they're just seasoning it with salt? yeah Well, I'm sure they can't add a lot because if they do, it's going to have great continuity for later shots and stuff. You know what I mean? So they're probably like, get some in there, but like not like a lot of it. Yeah, we've only got one tar moat.
Speaker: And a little bit of sand. We can't take anything out of the tar. Whatever goes into the tar stays in the tar mostly. Mm-hmm.
Speaker: ah So soon the Jhun soldiers ride straight into the tar and then little Tal runs out to set it on fire. He gets shot in the heart, but he'll be fine later. ah Then our heroes, Kiri, Dar and Seth all run out and they start fighting the Jhun, the gates closing behind them.
Speaker: eventually dar does kill the jun general in a fight that was probably exciting i can't quite remember much of it and then it's really long it's kind of like at this point i'm checked out yeah it it's a lot like um ah rowdy rowdy piper in they live the the fight scene that goes on for like seven minutes it's a bit like yeah yeah ah So they're still surrounded by sort of your rank and file, Jun. But luckily, Chirac has brought the medallion of the sign of the eagle to the eagle-worshipping monster men.
Speaker: And they come by and they happily strip the flesh off the bones of all the Jund soldiers. they're like, thank you. Yeah. Thank you for showing us a bunch of jerks to eat. There's like a moment where he confronts that they're backing away slowly and he like turns around and there's like three of them standing really tall. and they just give this slight like nod.
Speaker: And it's just like, yep. Okay. It's all beast master. It's cool. Get out of there, dar. They they just want to eat.
Speaker: Then we have more movie. ah The next day, dar finds out that Tal is going to be fine, and he gives him the gift of the old caper throwing weapon.
Speaker: He's going to leave, and he's going to resume wandering the earth. Seth tells him that he should be king, but he instead decides to spend his days righting wrongs with his new hot babe cousin and his animal friends, including new baby ferrets. Aww. Yeah. That were very cute. too They were very cute. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah, so a little, you know, a silver lining to yeah the cloud of poor Kodo's death. The circle of life. That was long plot.
Speaker: It is. You do committed job did a fantastic job. Yeah. Well, thank you. So final thoughts, five star ratings. Where do we land in terms of watchability and in terms of weirdness, in terms of five stars for the Beastmaster? Greg, kick us off. So for me, this is, ah so I would give this a watchability of five, but it's going to be four and a half just because it's it's a little long. It's a little long in the tooth. they The script is, you know, could be tightened up and admittedly some of the action scenes are not that great. But ah generally, like when I think I just want to kick back with a real dumb sword and sorcery movie that's kind of bad, but that I'll be pretty entertained by Beastmasters, a great choice to to to click on. I think um I enjoy it quite a bit. That's fair.
Speaker: What about weirdness? Yeah, I think it's pretty weird actually at times it ah It really delves into some interesting things So I'm going to go with a four I think ok just like just like watching someone rip a baby out of a woman's womb And put it in a cow's womb And the people that surround people with their wings andneath them It's all just, there's always something interesting around the corner a lot of it's never really explained too much, which is great Yeah And I appreciate that and Yeah, I think I wound up ah pretty similar to you, Greg. I was a little less charitable in terms of watchability. I gave it three and a half stars.
Speaker: I do think it runs a little bit long. I think that second ending is kind of a killer. Oh, sure. i think I think John and the Mayaks could have been combined into one antagonist, and that would have been a much cleaner movie. Yeah.
Speaker: Realizing, you don't really need the Jund. You just could have had Mayaxes, minions. Exactly. ah But there is lots of swords and sorcery fun for fans of the genre. There's lots of great animal stuff. ah For Weirdness, I gave it also four stars, mostly because of that cow scene. It was very surprising. It's also so strange.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. I think this goes a little bit. Swords and Sorcery always has a little bit of strange imagery in it. And I feel like this goes a little bit farther than that normally does. So I think it's, it's worth watching, but I think, yeah, the main thing it suffers from is like, i remember reading about how the original version of Phantasm was three hours long. Oh God.
Speaker: And he cut it down to 90 minutes. And so they're just 90 of the craziest minutes you've ever seen in your life. Yeah. Whereas I feel like Beastmaster, it probably could have used a little bit of cutting.
Speaker: It's like two hours long. Yeah. Yeah. It's just shy of two. Yeah. Yeah. If this was a tight 96, I think it would be all killer. No. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. What about you, Michael? Watchability and weirdness. Oh, man. Watchability, I'm going to give 3.25. Ooh. Okay, the rare.25. I love it. I was almost at a half, but I watched it with my partner who did fall asleep.
Speaker: Okay. At one point. And i was also kind of at a point where I noticed I was scrolling Reddit and was like, oh, wait, they're still fighting. It's still a really bad fight scene. There's some fat to trim, certainly, in this. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: And I do agree that the the connection between the well evil sorcerer and the army could have really done some goodness for for the whole thing. Weirdness, also a four.
Speaker: I think... um Yeah, the the amount of like just complete ah random insertions of this lore, this universe, is like if they were like a land somewhere in some exposition that talked about, like oh, the creatures of this world are something to kind of put a little bit of ah a ah thread between some things. But no, it's weird. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I like that there's no opening crawl to like hold your hand. You just have to figure You're like, okay, here we go. All right. It is also very strange to see like this swords and sorcery man just interacting with like ferrets and having like scenes like minute-long scenes with ferrets.
Speaker: And the the whomever, I would love to know, like, whomever trained these animals needs an award. If anybody's winning an award in this movie, it's the the people that worked with the animals because they were great.
Speaker: Well, good news, Michael. I have an entire segment about the people who trained these animals, and we're going to play the bumper and get to that segment right now. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: We didn't even plan that. Sure, the movie's the main event. But that's not the case with this segment. No need to be sad lament.
Speaker: Because we're going on a tangent.
Speaker: Yeah, that's the name of this segment. going on a tangent
Speaker: tangent tangent
Speaker: We like to slow the show down at about an hour mark. Yeah, really dial it back. Yeah, let's kill some momentum. Yeah. So this, the animal company for the Beastmaster was called Gentle Jungle.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Okay. That's cute. Now, Gentle Jungle is still in operation today. Good for them. have They are an animal and animal trainer company based out of Lebec, California.
Speaker: They supply the animals and trainers for the Beastmaster. Their website says that they've been in business for over 50 years. So they were a relatively young company at the time.
Speaker: If you couldn't gather from the fact that they accidentally killed one of their own tigers while trying to dye it black with women's hair dye. Yeah. They were hungry. They had to prove themselves. We'll do what the other guys won't at half the price.
Speaker: ah So it looks like Beastmaster was just their third film as a company, actually. Oh, wow. Although they employed trainers who had years of experience. Nice. They also had on their staff a relatively young animal trainer named Sled Reynolds.
Speaker: Yeah. What? Sled is now the owner of Gentle Jungle. He was trained in the business by his father, Fess Reynolds. Okay.
Speaker: And now Sled's children are in the business as well. What are their names? He also owns the Ashes of Air Bud. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, check out our episode on Air Bud if you want to know the actuals. Our Air Bud Golden Receivers specifically.
Speaker: ah Now, ah since then, they've worked on over 100 films since they've done Beastmaster. Wow. Including Oscar winners like Return of the King, Forrest Gump, Titanic, wow and Gladiator.
Speaker: I remember a lot of animals in Titanic. Yeah, I was like, wait, huh? There must have been something. Definitely. Was there a tiger on the boat? A lap dog? Did they tiger in a cage boat? It's been while. Last time I saw it was the theater, I realize.
Speaker: Never seen it. That was the life of pye yeah Yeah, that boat was much smaller. Yeah. You're right. Yeah, that would have been a really big tiger if it was on the top of Hannah. ah Now, Sled was also on the set wrangling camels for the 13th Warrior, which means that Sled Reynolds, you are also a member of the Two-Timers Club. Congrats, Sled Reynolds.
Speaker: Congrats, Sled Reynolds. Now, you might be wondering, did Sled Reynolds kill that tiger? Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Yeah, because he was jealous. ah It doesn't look like him. Oh. big I don't think he was the one, or ah at the very least, he was not the head animal trainer. Okay. There was someone else credited as head animal trainer, so I think obviously they're going to be the one that's going to have to take responsibility on this.
Speaker: That guy was named Boone Nahr. Wow. Wow. I just want to name all my kids after animal wranglers. Boon Nahr sounds like he should be a character in Beastmaster with a name.
Speaker: Yeah. You know, Sled Reynolds would be a great name for like a cat. Absolutely. Or Sled. Yeah. Yeah. Boon Nahr, he trained the dog in Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, and he trained the lizards in Batman and Robin, which means Boon Nahr, welcome to the three-timers club.
Speaker: Beastmaster, really quite the cast and crew. Five Degrees of Beastmaster. Mm-hmm. But also, ah Boon Nahr, he is no longer employed by Gentle Jungle. He started his own company, looks like, around 1998. Okay. so So that's what I found out about Gentle Jungle and our assorted animal trailers. I love it.
Speaker: Yeah. Well, you fellas want to play a game? Absolutely. Mm-hmm. All right, we're gonna play a little Guess the Title.
Speaker: Let me tell you about this brand new game, where you guess the movie's name. You just tell me what the title is, prove you know about showbiz.
Speaker: Guess the title. Whipper, whipper, whipper, whipper. Guess the title. Gooby, gooby, gooby, gooby. Guess the title.
Speaker: so we're going to play a little guess the title with the films of Mark Singer. Obviously our Beastmaster. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to give you a plot description of a film.
Speaker: I'm goingnna give you three titles. I want you to buzz in and tell me what you think the title is. You'll buzz in by saying your own name. If you get it wrong, your opponent will have the chance to steal. Is everybody ready?
Speaker: see Yes. All right. Hands on buzzers. Okay. Question number one. A young man from Iowa comes to New York City to make it as an actor.
Speaker: When his big break doesn't happen, he takes up stripping to make ends meet. Is that Night Dancer, Beefcakes, or For Ladies Only?
Speaker: Michael. Michael? That's gotta to be Beefcakes. Yeah.
Speaker: I'm sorry, that's not Beefcakes. Greg, can you steal? What were the other two? Night Dancer or For Ladies Only? Night Dancer.
Speaker: God. I'm sorry, that movie has the very homophobic name of For Ladies Only. Question number two.
Speaker: To, what word is that? That doesn't make any sense. Oh, no, I get it. I need to read the rest of the sentence. To land a sports writing job on a national magazine run by a chauvinistic editor, an aspiring female reporter convincingly disguised herself as a man to get the inside story.
Speaker: Is that her life as a man? Byline? byline Or jocks? Michael. Michael?
Speaker: Byline? No, I'm sorry. It wasn't byline. I like queer forward. Like she's also into the ladies and the dudes. I wish. Oh. Uh, jocks?
Speaker: Yeah, that was her life as a man. All right. That felt too like on the notes. like Yeah. like Yeah. These titles. Hmm. All right. I think those are, I wanted, put the two problematic ones up top. Okay. i guess okay Okay.
Speaker: Question number three. A serial killer targets prostitutes who become pregnant. Okay. Three problematic ones. Okay. I was going say. ah Is that Angel Blade?
Speaker: Oh God. Dark Wanderings. Or Mother May I? Sleep is danger. Greg. Greg? Is it Mother May I?
Speaker: No, it's not Mother May What were the other two? Angel Blade or Dark Wanderings? going to go with Angel Blade just because it is the most fucked up name. Oh, God. You're on the board, Michael.
Speaker: Yes. Oof. Question number four. A sexy TV star witnesses a murder, and two federal agents take her to a remote lodge to protect her until the trial.
Speaker: Unfortunately, the cabin is naunted as remote as they think. I was really hoping you were going to say haunted. yeah and No, it is unfortunately not as remote as they think. Is that cabin under fire?
Speaker: Silk degrees. Or three to tango? Greg. Greg? Cabin under fire.
Speaker: I'm sorry, Greg. You're having a rough time tonight. I am. So we've got silk degrees, and what was the other one? Three to tango. I'm going to go three to tango.
Speaker: Silk Degrees? What does that even mean? I don't know. I didn't pick Silk Degrees specifically because it's a Boz Skaggs album title, and I was like, Chris is trying to goad me. Chris is trying to get me to go for Silk Degrees. Did he do the music for the made-for-TV movie? I don't know Boz Skaggs. I'm going to tell you right now, yeah there's no way that that album would work for that story at all. okay Silk Degrees.
Speaker: Great album. What time. If you like terrible albums. Oh, God. Question number five. The true story of U.S. Air Force sergeant who is dismissed for being gay and his fight to be reinstated.
Speaker: Okay. Is that dishonorable discharge? Mm-hmm.
Speaker: Get your mind out of the gutter.
Speaker: To serve with honor or Sergeant Matlovich versus the U.S. Air Force? Greg. Greg? To serve with honor.
Speaker: Nope. What? Michael. Michael? Dishonorable discharge. No, that was Sergeant Matlovich versus the U.S. Air Force.
Speaker: Sergeant Matlovich played by Brad Dourif. Oh. oh Who was Mark Singer? I'm going to assume a lawyer maybe or a commanding officer. but but Mark Singer was in some interestingly yeah titled things.
Speaker: He sure was. Question number six. A research project on sexual response leads two doctors into an affair where their deepest passions and darkest fantasies are revealed.
Speaker: Is that forbidden knowledge, body chemistry, or the sex doctors? Michael. Michael? The Greg. um ah The B, the second one.
Speaker: Body chemistry? Yes. You're correct. Yes. Okay. Greg, were you going to say sex doctor? No, i was good I was going to say body chemistry. Nice. Okay.
Speaker: You said sex doctors, and I was like, I wish I were saying that.
Speaker: Question number seven. A futuristic bounty hunter is assigned to track down four female androids smuggled to Earth for illicit purposes. Dishonorable discharges. man Could be. Or smuggling rare animals. Yeah. Yeah. Silk degree.
Speaker: Is it droid gunner, babe runner, or bots have more fun?
Speaker: Greg. Greg? Babe Runner. Yeah. You knew I was going to say it. i use Yeah. I'm glad you did. um There's a joke within here where like, do electronic prostitutes do something? um Yeah, I tried to get there and I ended up skipping it. was like, it's too worth it. What were the number one and three again, please?
Speaker: Droid Gunner or Bots Have More Fun. I'm going to go Droid Gunner. Ah, yes. Another one. Two left.
Speaker: Question number eight. A light comedy slash love story based on the life of blind musician Tom Sullivan. Oh.
Speaker: Is that one called Night Tunes? If you could see what I hear were the notes you don't play.
Speaker: Ooh. Michael. Michael? going to go with the notes you don't play.
Speaker: No. No. What was the, if you could only see what I hear? If you could see what I hear? If you could see what I hear. You're on the board, Greg.
Speaker: I've done it. but Thank God. One question left. Yes. Yes.
Speaker: Lancelot is sent through time to protect young Arthur before he becomes king, but instead both of them wind up in the present day, pursued by their enemies.
Speaker: Is that Lancelot, knight of the future? Lancelot, Arthur's finest? or Lancelot, Guardian of Time. Ooh, Michael.
Speaker: Michael? I'm going to go with Lancelot, Guardian of Time. I just like like it the most. Yes! You're right. Congratulations, Michael. You're our big winner.
Speaker: um the winner. Get zoo, zoo, zoo,
Speaker: Watch out, listeners, it's time for the Batty Awards.
Speaker: Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Now you're messing with the Batty Awards. Congratulations to all the nominees.
Speaker: That's right. Congratulations to all the nominees. It's the Batty Awards, those little awards that we give out to those moments, people, touches, all the things that make a bad movie so good. Greg, do you have a Batty Award?
Speaker: Yeah. ah So I want to give this to two moments of incongruous sound with visuals that I thought were really wonderful on this. So the first one is near the beginning. i think it's probably where he first gets rawr or whatever. It's very soon after that.
Speaker: um like Rar goes to attack a man and so you just hear like and then a man like giving out blood curdling screams in Beastmaster just puts both hands puts his hands in the fists puts them on his hips and just puts this big beaming smile on his face as you just hear this man being ripped to shreds with the tiger screaming and he's just like yeah and that was hilarious and then the second is at the very end after ah after we've lost our precious Kodo And he's trying to give an inspiring speech and he's got Poto in his hands and he just goes, we will fight.
Speaker: And then he snuggles the nose of the ferret. And it was very cute, but it was also just like, this is not what I would expect someone to do after saying we will fight. ah But also good.
Speaker: Yeah, it was great. I'm going to give my baddie award out to monosyllabic names. Oh, yeah. I feel like this is you can sort of tell what type of fantasy your movie you're watching. If you're watching a Conan type fantasy movie or a Tolkien type fantasy movie, if they have multiple syllables in their names or single syllables in their names. The Conan is all single syllables. Mm-hmm. Conan will be desert with the token will be forest yeah and the wizards and priests will all be evil in your Conan and some wizards will be good in your Tolkien.
Speaker: And, I, you know, and I love that, uh, single syllable names, all of them in this movie, just like really hit that home. You got raw, you got dar, you got tease, you got tall, you got set.
Speaker: Zed. Maybe Max, depending on how you count it. Max. It's so punchy. For your mother. So shout out to single syllable names. Michael, do you have a baddie award? um I have a baddie award called It Didn't Age So Well. Okay. That's fair. There's a moment where he's wrestling with um ah Redhead. What's her name again?
Speaker: Kira. Kiri? Kira. Kiri. He's wrestling with Kiri and she doesn't want to have sex with him and she's like, oh, she's a beast. Yeah. And then has this moment where he kind of stands and as the audience member, you're like, but you're the beast master. And it's just, you're like, yikes.
Speaker: yes a Yeah. But it was also hilarious. Yeah. It was then. There's so much great stuff in this movie. Listeners, you've got to check out Beastmaster if you haven't.
Speaker: Do it. You've got to check out Your Roots Are Showing if you haven't. Do it. Michael, we've got to thank you for coming on the show. Thanks for having Thank you. Hit them up with the plugs one more time.
Speaker: Oh, yeah, you can check us out at Roots Are Showing Pod on Blue Sky. You can listen to us on Spotify, Apple Music, wherever you get all of that ear candy. um Yeah, come check us out. Share us. Share the show.
Speaker: um This show and the show um to all your friends and fans. It'd be great. Yes. Listeners, you've got your marching orders. Check it out. Do it.
Speaker: Come back next week when we're going be joined by my first girlfriend, Sharon Cunningham, in a special apology episode. Oh, yeah. Yeah. We had her on before ah to talk about the first movie I ever took a girl to, which turned out to be the movie Powder. And I felt so bad for making this woman watch Powder twice in her life that I had to bring her back on as an apology. So we're going to be talking about Hot to Trot. Oh, good.
Speaker: So that'll be fun. Something light. And ah so give us ah a subscribe or a follow or whatever your platform calls it. So you can be sure to be made aware of when that's available. And ah while you're pressing buttons on your phone, hit us up with that five stars.
Speaker: Five stars is free, brother. That's what I always say. Amen. Michael, are you going to listen this when it comes out? I will. I kind of hearing my own voice sometimes is a little like, but yeah, I'm going to listen to it. And I'm just going to nonchalantly play it when I'm in the car with people who haven't heard either of the shows. I'm just going to be like, what's this about? This is intriguing.
Speaker: Well, while you do that, hit us with that five stars. Oh, totally. It's that easy. They're free. Yeah, and they're free. Five stars is free. ah So until next week, be good and goodbye.
Speaker: Goodbye. Bye-bye.
Speaker: It's bad to be bad. It's bad to be bad.
Speaker: that you would, if you could. And you know that you should. Yes, you know that you should.
