Movie: (1988) The medieval adventures of a smirky hero, who goes on quest for some magical stones and battles an evil sorcerer.
First shown: 2/17/96
Opening: Crow has new hair–and calf and hinder implants
Intro: Pearl is sick, and M&TB make things worse as a fast food restaurant
Host segment 1: The bots put on a Ren Fest for Mike
Host segment 2: Mike just can’t get enough of the Ren Fest
Host segment 3: Crow reads a trashy romance novel to a medicated Pearl
End: Letter, Servo forges the “One Ring,” and Dr. F. goes Hitchcocky
Stinger: “Potatoes are what we eat”
(97 votes, average: 4.58 out of 5)
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Please call me Escobar, and let’s begin.
• First of all, I cannot believe we are this far into season seven and I have not mentioned our EXCLUSIVE season-seven continuation of the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, here on this site. We paid good money to get these! You’re welcome. Read them! You can read Kevin’s comments on this episode here.
• After two good-but-not-great installments, the season really picks up steam with this one. I love it! Zany movie, great riffing, funny segments, just lots of fun.
• Kevin has a few thoughts about Pearl’s endless cry of “Clayton!” I loved it. Great work by Mary Jo. Great work by Trace. Hilarious bit, but even funnier by the intrusion of M&TB doing an elaborate fast food bit that drives Dr. F to the brink.
• Note that Crow and Tom’s name tags say “Mary Jo” and “Paul.”
• Crow and Tom wear the goofy hats into the theater, but Mike soon removes them.
• “Aw, this is a sequel to somethin’!” cries Crow in dismay. Indeed it is. It is a sequel to “Deathstalker” (1983) and “Deathstalker II: Duel of the Titans” (1987). But wait! There’s more! It is also a prequel to Deathstalker IV: Match of the Titans (1990). Sheesh.
• M&TB take on Ren Fests once again (previously pumelled in episode 303- POD PEOPLE and also given the razz by Frank in an invention exchange in episode 402- THE GIANT GILA MONSTER with his renaissance festival punching bags. But here they devote two entire segments to it.)
• Annoying commercial: Nike’s “Ken Griffy for President” campaign, featuring James Carville spouting buzzwords on cue.
• The bots mention Edgar Bronfman a guy who was looming large in BBI’s life at the time: he was at the heart of a series of big media deals that were causing various companies that were paying BBI to repeatedly change hands.
• The line “I dreamed a gold man was reading to me from a dirty book” will live forever in the hearts of humankind.
• When, toward the end of the movie, they yell “Sampo! Sampo!” I assume they are talking about me. You are invited to think so too.
• Callback: “Mr B! Natural!”
• Somebody mentions a Gavin Sabatini? Google turns up nothing.
• Being a LOTR buff makes this episode extra fun (and remember that this was still years before the popular movies came out, and LOTR was still the province of uber-nerds). We hear Tolkien proper nouns like Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, Khazad-dum and nazgul. There’s even a segment in which Tom tries to forge The One Ring (and apparently succeeds–good for him!). I know that Paul was a LOTR fan (when Erhardt and I visited BBI just before the beginning of season eight the topic somehow came around to Tolkien and he admitted to being a fan and even used the phrase “ash nazg gimbatul,” which caused much derisive snickering among his cohorts).
• The final bit with the glass of milk is a reference to Hitchcock movie “Suspicion.”
• Fave riff: “Guess what I’ve been doing!”
This episode is like the gold standard of MST: great host segments, stupid plot, unlikeable and incompetent characters, bad special effects, and practically every riff is a classic. This is definitely a desert island episode.
I gotta wonder if the camera operator was a fan of Mr. Relson’s b/c we get way too many shots of his area. No matter what anybody says, this film is definitely not for the ladies.
Fave riffs:
“Watch out for the editing!”
“Choke on a bone, please God, choke on a bone!”
“I don’t have any syphilis that I know of”
“Someone tp’ed your ghost”
“You’re too intense for me Gary”
I love it when they make fun or our hero’s weird, hairless chest since I’m a gal who has a big weakness for hairy chested guys.
This episode means more to me now than ever before. Why? Because I finally saw Hitchcock’s Suspicion recently! Now I can appreciate the ending on a whole new level. Huzzah!
“These guys are like warriors… FROM HELL!”
I agree! Great stuff! This is one of my favorite episodes! Definitely deserves a DVD release in a future MST box set!
Favorite Riffs:
“Hey! Can we jam a lime wedge in his mouth?”
“Last guy in line… you wanna just stab DEATHSTALKER up there?”
“RISE! Whoa… not that kind of rise!”
About mst3000 and Tolkien, I first noticed a reference to him in The Final Sacrifice. I lost my video tape copy so can’t check to see if Paul made that allusion. It might be (and then again might not be
) interesting if some uber-uber nerd would some time make a list of all mst3000 Tolkien/Middle-earth references. I wonder what the over/under on number of movies and refernces are?
I don’t know why some people badmouth Season 7 – this episode is perhaps one of the best in the show’s entire run! (It’s in my Top 10!) It’s sort of a companion piece to the last sword-and-sorcery flick they did, Outlaw (which is a brilliant episode too) – bad ’80s fashion combined with low quality special effects, a goofy villain nobody can take seriously, and an unlikeable hero.
Troxartis is hilarious, even on his own. His Shatner-esque reading of “This has. Nothingtodowith. LAND.” busts me up every time (as does Servo’s corresponding riff “I. Put the. Beatsinmyown. Script and I’m. Sticking WITH them.”) That scene where he’s trying to revive the Warriors from Hell and Mike keeps giving his wife lines like “You’re not gonna mow the lawn today, are you?” is so funny, I literally can’t breathe from all the laughing. “Lodac, you talkin’ to the toilet again?”, “You, who could open beer with your TEETH!…”, “Honey, were you usin’ this thing? It’s all screwed up!”, etc. Oh, good times. His overacting is even more prevalent in the scene where the Warriors finally do rise (“And YOU, you nut! Get over here!”).
Dirty Potato Girl offers a lot of great riffs too. “You sleep in the barn.” “This isn’t the barn?” I’m always confounded by the horse’s double-whinny, which the guys don’t riff on but they do laugh disbelievingly in a “What the–?” kind of way.
Deathstalker really is one of those heroes whom you want to deck. As Crow points out, “I’m glad he gets hit a lot.”
I’ve never been to a Renaissance festival. From the looks of this episode’s host segments, I’m better off for having deprived myself of the experience. $45 for a heckling from medieval insult comics and a half-eaten turkey leg isn’t my idea of a good time.
I don’t care what anyone says, Mary Jo is funny in this episode. The concept doesn’t seem funny on paper, but her delivery is what saves it. “Clayton! Clayton! Ah, God, yer KILLIN’ me, Clayton!” I also like the interaction between her and Trace as he’s about to go shopping (“Do you want anything?” “No” “All right then–” “See if they have any peanut butter cups” “Okay, anything else?” “No” “Well then–” “See if they have any Nails-B-Strong…”)
Capping it all off, the swordfight between Deathstalker and Troxartis is among the funniest stretches of riffing ever done on the show. “You clever bastard, so the editor’s working with you!” And y’know, they’re right, he really does look like Sam the Eagle.
“I’d like to shoot everyone in this movie entirely in Mexico.”
I believe they said “Gaby Sabatini”, full name Gabriella, an Argentine (female) tennis player. Mike, I believe, is (or was) a big tennis fan. I remember a piece he wrote in the old newsletter on the subject.
My wife and I cannot have potatoes for dinner without loudly proclaiming “Potatoes are what we eat!”
It’s time for the “Guy Who Hates Season 7″. With the exception of the host segments, this one sucks. Dull, dull, dull. Scattered laughs at best, with the exception of “Laserblast”, it’s all downhill from here. Now, back to the folks that love it.
Maybe Midwest Renaissance festivals are less ably run than East Coast ones, but I’m not getting all the hate. I can understand that they won’t appeal to everybody. The bile that Kevin unloads seems excessive though.
Now I think I’ll briskly walk away before a lynch mob forms to tar and feather me for expressing something less than utter contempt for Renaissance festivals.
Have to concur with Season 7 as worst of the ten, though I did not hate it. Deathstalker, along with Season 9′s Delta Knights, is one of those movies that looks like it ought to be prime MST3K fodder on paper and ends up being intensely dull. If Blood Beast did not exist, this episode would be the nadir of Season 7. As someone who recently rewatched almost the entire series over a year, Brute Man and Laserblast were much better than I remembered with Melting being just as good as I thought and Escape somewhere in the middle. However, the potato lines are classic.
I prefer the Society for Creative Anachronisms (sca.org) for my fake sword fights and green wool tights. All hail the King and Queen of Atenveldt! Huzzah!
Never saw this one. God, I wish Shout Factory! would release a box set every month!
loran1958@hotmail.com
Put me down as another viewer who has yet to see this episode, but from most of the comments, it sounds like a good one!
“Smelled your food.”
A great episode. A perfect film for MST3K: 1. odd performances; 2. cheesy props/effects; 3. a ridiculous but somewhat followable story and 4. potatoes (see Trumpy).
I’m somewhat in the middle on this one. On one hand, the movie is very dull. On the other hand, Troxartis is one of the funniest villains in the history of film. He is a mincing, scenery-chewing bald marvel. I’d compare this episode to Prince of Space- it would have been a dog (like Invasion of the Neptune Men) without an A+ comic bad guy. Did the director ever watch the dailies?
The funniest parts of the episode are when they mock the bat helmet guy and when they mock the dumb triumphant song.
You season seven haters are crazy. Out of six episodes, four are classic (Brute Man, Deathstalker, Incredible Melting Man, and Escape 2000). That’s a better ratio than any of the other seasons.
It’s just too bad it had to be cut so short.
I have only seen two episodes from season 7: Laserblast and Night of the Bloodbeast, and I loved them both. I am really surprised there is so much hatred for season 7 – sometimes even more than season 1, or so it seems.
loran1958@hotmail.com
Where to start? Where to start? This is definitely my desert island episode in terms of sword + sorcery films.
Movie:
* Even though this is the 3rd movie in the Deathstalker series, I think this is the only one where John Allen “Relson” is Deathstalker. That doesn’t guarantee a good or likable actor in any of the others, though.
* The “Hey, he’s going on a little camping trip!” isn’t the first time I’ve ever heard that analogy. During one of the many “THE talks” I heard as a teen, I was given the advice to immediately cease affection with a girl once “the tent goes up.”
* This is yet another movie where the hero only wins in the end because the villain ultimately proves to be the more incompetent one.
* “Lodac, did you back up the toilet again?” is of course a callback to The Magic Sword.
* Mike’s notoriety as an audiophile slightly presents itself again when he talks about the first time the sound of the meowing eagle is heard.
* In Deathstalker’s defense, I do have to say that he sticks to his guns in making sure that any fight he wins is a fair one, as he (unlike Ator) refuses to kill Troxartas when he’s disarmed- even though it results in the death of another woman he was SUPPOSED to protect.
* Another great episode simply because of the numerous running gags: The bat-soldiers, potato women, LotR jokes, etc.
* In case anyone else hasn’t noticed, one of Elizena’s bodyguards is also Vadihno from Pumaman.
* Favorite riffs (way too many to list just one each):
Mike:
- “That’s my stick! Stick stealer!”
- “I’m sorry, I just keep breaking out with TALK!”
- “Ah, you clever bastard. So the editor’s working with you, is he?”
Crow:
- “Horses are what we ride!” <– Also my all-time favorite Trace moment.
- “Dude, get some towels and stuff ‘em under the door. The RA’s coming!”
- “I’d like to shoot everyone in this movie entirely in Mexico.”
Servo:
- “Don’t step on the dead guard!”
- “Guess what I’ve been doing!”
- “Hey, Gandalf, it’s like 98 outside!”
Host Segments:
* They’re a mixed bag for me in this episode. Crow’s implants are disturbing and the Ren fest ones get stale quickly, but the rest are hilarious.
* I haven’t seen “Suspicion,” and thus think about the milk-throwing scene in “I was a Teen-age Werewolf” during the final segment instead.
* I’m still noting down LotR references in the show to eventually submit to Ward E on this site, but since I’ve only seen about half of the overall episodes, it’s slow going.
* Favorite line: “I went ahead and forged you a Ring of Power.”
One of my favorite Mike episodes. A movie hilarious in its own right, but made even better by the riffs.
I still can’t stand Pearl’s “Clayton!” though.
To all the Season 7 haters out there, I would rather watch the worst episode of MST3K than most anything playing on TV right now. If it were not for my collection of MST episodes and other favorite TV shows and movies on DVD, I would have thrown out my television set long ago.
This episode is golden. A perfect storm of incompetent filmmaking rife for M&TB to attack. Deathstalker will forever be inshrined along with Mitchell, Agent for H.A.R.M., Pernell Roberts, and many others as a ‘Hero You Hate More Than The Villian’.
This is one of my fav episodes of all time. I’m a huge fan of the 80′s, sword and sorcery flicks, and bad movies, though… so this kind of takes the cake.
In addition to the riffs already mentioned (which were all awesome), I’d like to throw these out there…
-”This may be the most ambitiously bad movie we’ve ever done” <- Meta riff.
-Either of the Michael McDonald riffs at the very beginning.
-”Let’s see how long these accents last…”
-”Is it too early to hate this guy?”
Just saw this one about a month ago and boy was it hilarious. I’ve got a soft spot for just about any fantasy movie they riff on, and this just fit right in.
What really amazed me was the speed and volume of riffs. Mike and the bots just start up right from the credits and just roll one joke after the other. My wife turned to me about ten minutes in and said, “Wow, they are really unloading in this one.” And it was to great affect.
As others have mentioned Troxartis is really the scene stealer here. He is so over the top, so hammy, so EEEEEEEVeeeIIILLLLL that you can’t help but laugh. And the riffing just adds to it. And on top of that, I’ve got the baggage of remembring him from “Buck Rogers” and “Wizards of the Lost Kingdom”. So it just makes the whole thing funnier to me.
And the potato line has now entered weekly use at our house. Sad how these things get picked up.
I enjoyed most of the host segments. I thought the Ren Fest stuff was a little too much (I had some fun at the couple I’ve been to), but I can also see how it wouldn’t appeal to some people (and yeah they can be really pricey). The last bit with Dr. F and the milk was hilarious. Now the copy we watched was pretty murky, but was the milk glowing, just like in the Hitchcock film?
All in all this was a solid five star episode in my book. I was laughing the whole time and enjoyed the 80′s fantasy vibe of the whole thing.
This is one of my favorite episodes ever (but I love all the bad fantasy movies they riffed on – Outlaw, Delta Knigts, even The Undead).
Others have already pointed out the hilarity of Trucksartist, with his weird pauses, his Robert Picardo-esque looks, and his unique sense of fashion (“It’s hard to take him seriously when he’s dressed like Maude”), as well as our smug, moussed, punchable hero and his rocker-chick girlfriend. But I’m always endless amused by the actress who played Elizena and her competent sister, with her complete inability to emote with her face and her stunning acting range from “dull suprise” to “spoiled brat”.
Favorite lines that have not already been mentioned:
“Smelled your food” “That was the last guy’s name!”
“What are we?” “BATS” “What do we want?” “INSECTS” “When do we want them?” “NOW! Now. Squeak!”
“I have a cat poster.”
I haven’t seen this one in years. I’ll have to dig it out.
I always loved the titles riff, “With a heavy font like that, you have to double-brace the H!”
I also really enjoyed Pearl crying “Clayton!” incessantly. I even got to use it years ago: A group of MSTie friends had gathered at GatewayCon in 2000, as Kevin, Mike, Bill (and Mary Jo) were appearing. Since it was St. Louis, and you could only rediscover the harm of the Henry CVIII hotel so much, we took in the sights, which required a lot of meandering routes. All of them seemed to inevitably take us through … Clayton, MO.
So, every time I saw a sign for Clayton, I immediately started calling out, in my best Pearl voice, “Clayton! Clayton! Oh, Clayton! Clayton!” I thought it was hilarious – and no one ever threw me out of their moving cars, so it couldn’t have been that bad.
Good times. Good times.
As is probably evident from my chosen handle, I absolutely love this episode. One of my all-time favorites. Some folks express dislike for this episode, because it’s ‘boring.’ BORING?! This film is so incredibly whacky and wonderfully stupid! Just a few examples:
-Troxartes gadding about in his feminine clothes, casting spells with his weird, urgent, stilted dialogue.
-Grizzled old Nicias spinning like a broken top and bursting into smoke.
-The busty sorceress woman performing electro-genital torture on the hero (not a fun sentence to write).
-The cave woman and potato-chick.
-One of the worst choreographed (or not) stage fights in history.
This movie’s a lot of things, but not boring in my estimation. This is one that I’ve shown to first-timers, and it’s gotten a lot of laughs. I also think it’s packed with memorable characters (probably not in a good way, but still). Deathstalker, Nicias, Troxartes and Potato-Woman are pretty unique and tough to forgot; kinda like a train wreck.
You’ve gotta love the 80′s take on the Middle Ages; between this one and Outlaw it’s amazing to consider how much hairspray was available in the feudal system. Also, the number of accents on display is equally amusing (although I guess if Kevin Costner can be Robin Hood….).
I agree with Sampo; I loved the Tolkein references. Although they can now be enjoyed by everyone because of the popular films, many of us can still revel in the fact we got the jokes before they were “cool.”
Also, I believe this was a discussion thread already, but I think Sampo’s favorite riff “Guess what I’ve been doing!” is probably the dirtiest/naughtiest joke they did. If you haven’t seen the episode it won’t sound bad, but when connected with the visual…blech! I can’t help but wonder if it escaped network notice because it was said in the half-second before the commercial break.
#6 is correct, they are refering to Gabriella ‘Gabi’ Sabatini.
A propos of nothing, Don Imus used to refer to her as Grabyoursmelly Slabofweenie.
* In case anyone else hasn’t noticed, one of Elizena’s bodyguards is also Vadihno from Pumaman.
Yes I did notice. I wrote to Sampo about this a few years back and he answered in the affirmative. Thanks Sampo. Well i’m going back to listen to my old Michael McDonald and Leon Russell tapes.
This is a good one. It’s not high up for me but it’s still very enjoyable. Movie is good, as are the host segments.
I rated this one a 5. I watched in on DAP last night for the first since broadcast and what a treat it was to get re-acquainted. Host segments were killer and the movie was so energetically crappy and even more energetically riffed. Tons of good quality gags. As Mike says “This is the most ambitiously bad movie we’ve ever done”.
“Clayton Clayton” had me in stitches, and when she calls his cellphone. ACK !! It is touching to see that Dr F did give his mother his cellphone number. And perhaps the whole set-up serves as a counterbalance to the henpecked Doctor, allowing him to to have some measure of control over the situation.
Back to the subject film for a second : It was not all terrible, I found one scene, where Death’s Talker first meets up with the un-dead and he has a bit of a chat with Garagas ( sp ? ), to be quite nice, well put together, almost skillful.
I will watch this one again soon ( but be warned, the quality of the DAP avi is pretty poor ).
Oh and can i add let’s have a round of applause for MJP ? I know nothing about “acting” but starting with Season 7, she really kicks ass.
Just voicing a pet peeve of mine:
“It is also a prequel to Deathstalker IV: Match of the Titans (1990).”
A “prequel” is a subsequent, but chronologically earlier, film, such as “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” or “The Phantom Menace.” What DatWfH is, is a *precursor* to Deathstalker IV.
Not episode related but MST3K Genesis page is up on mst3k.com and it is above and beyond anything I could have imagined. Jim actually did very good here. I won’t spoil it but suffice to say there is a ton of previously unreleased media there.
I’m gonna throw in my two cents and then go back and read everybody else’s, so forgive me I cover any old business…
“Night of the Bloodbeast” and “Brute Man”, while good ovarall, are hit and miss throughout. The final four episodes of Season 7, however, when the fate of the show was at stake, the show got better then ever with four dynamite episodes. Next week is one of my all time favorites, “Incredible Melting Man”, but “Deathstalker” is great too. Makes me wish they did more Deathstalker films on the show.
The host segments are great in this one, with the opening the only sketch with Dr. F and Pearl looking somewhat like she would in the Sci-Fi years. The Ren Faire skits are great (love the puppetry on Crow’s arm when he spanks Mike; the “Let’s go pet the dead camel!” punchline) although stretching it out to TWO host segments feels a tad lazy. I didn’t get the reference to “Suspicion” at the end when I first saw this.
The movie segments are pure gold. One of the things I love about MST3K is the “time release” jokes, references I might not get till years laters or gags I never noticed. Upon recently reviewing this episode I had never gotten Mike’s reference to the semi-obscure Jerry Lee Lewis song “Spo-Dee-O-Dee”! Weird. Also, a LOT of Weed jokes in this one, which I always like, although “Laserblast” may hold the record for pot jokes in an MST episode. I wonder who the dopers on staff were? I mean, besides Kevin Murphy? And now some quotes:
Mike: Relson? What kind of a name is Relson?
Crow: Mike, were there crackers in the middle ages?
Crow: Yes, it’s Renaissance Festivals of the Ooooold West…
“I’ll have a few words for you!”
Tom: They are ‘Frog’ and ‘Pant’!
“He gets around- One village one day, another the next…”
Mike: …So, two villages…
Crow: Ah, that trademark Relson laugh!
“What are you waiting for?”
Mike: I’m waiting till I’m not sharp any more!
Crow: Use tongue as blunt object. Swab tongue over every available surface.
Crow: Oh no, this is a sequel to somethin’!
Crow: Excuse me, Mr. Moose Warrior?
Mike: I’m a bat! Squeak! Squeak!
Tom: Ah, good, always show your audience the inside of your hero’s mouth…
Mike: Well, I instinctively have to get away from you…
Tom: I think she just got edited to the ground…
Crow: Hey, put you dwarf on oscillate!
Tom: The director’s vision: Confusion wracked with ambiguity…
Crow: Death means one glorious thing- Freedom from THAT guy!
Crow: Hey, dude, get some towels and put them under the door, the R.A.’s comin’!
“I’ll have to take a look…”
Mike: That’s leak, sir.
Crow: Last guy in line, you wanna just stab Deathstalker there?
Mike: Why does she live in the primate house at the Milwaukee zoo?
Tom: I just heard an eagle meow.
Tom: Go ahead, enjoy my area.
Crow: Ma’am? Have a look?
Tom: Clint Howard in “The Bruce Springstein Story!”
Mike: This movie is like playing “Doom” when there’s no monsters or opponents!
“The world is almost in my grasp…”
Tom: At least, the Quad Cities…
“I always like a nice conversation before dinner…”
Tom: And a little doobage, if you got it…
“I wish I was the kind of man who could kill a woman!”
Mike: Instead I just repulse them!
Mike: He made a saddle out of Grover!
“Don’t change the subject.”
Crow: It alters the meaning of the sentence.
“Drop your sword.”
Mike: Like you have your accent.
Crow: Okay, we’ve seen his crotch, his pits, up his nose, inside his mouth, what’s next!?
Mike: He’s a wandering goat visitor?
Crow: Here, drink this, it’ll put crepe hair on your chest…
Crow: I’m glad he gets hit a lot.
Crow: Hey, check it out, he’s going on a little camping trip!
Tom: GUESS WHAT I’VE BEEN DOING!!!
I love this episode… I really hope hey release it soon. I can barely breathe through much of the movie for laughing.
Squeak.
I happened to see John Allen “Relson” on 24 and Vanished BEFORE watching Deathstalker. So I thought it was hilarious how his acting has barely changed. Sure the sleazy attitude works better when he’s playing politicians.
For a long time I thought Cave Dwellers looked cheap until I saw Outlaw. For some time after I thought Outlaw looked cheap… then I watched Deathstalker.
One of my favorite Mike episodes. The movie was funny by itself and the riffing just made it that much better.
Deathstalker himself seemed familiar to me when I first saw this and I remembered that he played the young cop in Killer Klowns From Outer Space. One of my favorite B movies.
I still can’t stand Pearl in this one though.
5 stars!
I love this episode. It’s on my short list of “I want it now!” episodes that I want on DVD.
Thom Christopher is great Troxartis.
I love the whole “potato sketch” in the movie. “Potatoes are what we eat!” (This alone is reason enough to have a scene selection menu on MST3K DVDs.)
Another good riff from that scene:
Servo: “This ISN’T the barn!”
The host segments are great. I love it when Crow reads “Loves Sweet Throbbing Gondola” to Pearl. He sort of skims through it, but the parts he reads are funny. “Yielding petals of womanhood . . . and it just goes on from there.”
Also, what is up with that snot the undead warriors were eating? It’s made even grosser by Servo’s riff, “Guess what I’ve been doing!?” It happens when they show the one dead guy with white goopy stuff covering his beard. Ick!
Another thing, there is a guard who was guarding the princess’s tent. Is that actor Miguelangel Fuentes, known to us as Vidalia from the movie “Puma Man”?
I love all of season 7. I find it hard to understand how everyone cannot feel the same.
Anyway, the movie is a hoot, great riffs, etc.
I, too, like Pearl’s CLAYTON! CLAYDON!, and the other segments give me a good chuckle.
Hey, the last guy past, you wanna reach up there and kill Deathstalker?
I notice that as Deathstalker is tied down, and is being tortured, he says, “You have the face of an angel”, to which Kevin whispers, “A wasserangel!” A water angel… Hmmm A fish?
Crow, we didn’t even know.. (..was wearing a hairpiece?!)
“Potatoes are what we eat.” My son’s favorite line, spoken at many many meals.
The first time my husband saw Deathstalker, he said, “William Katt could kick his ass easily.” I have a hard time looking at Deathstalker now, without imagining him being smacked around by the Greatest American Hero. I agree with Ang (#1) that despite the movie maker’s intentions, this is NOT a film for the ladies. I for one found it horrifying to have to look at Mr. Talker’s batch in far too many shots, especially the torture segment. Gaahhh!
As many others have mentioned, Troxartis is purely wonderful. Never has there been a lamer, more labored sword fight.
I have been to a Ren Fest, once, in my callow youth. The host segments are spot on, as far as I’m concerned.
Overall, a fun episode. “Clayton? Clayton. Clayton! Clayton?”
You know, this is thee very first (fantasy/action) MST3K movie with any reference to ‘Hell’, the devil, or Satan anywhere in the title (Except for Hellcats, which wasn’t apocalyptic or a dystopia). The SciFi/(ScyFy) era has a plethora of them , but the Comedy Central era has just this one… Not that SciFi is all-inclusive – they don’t have titles such as ‘vs.’ like Comedy Central did, but I’m glad you got one in with Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell.
Wow. Talked about mixed feelings.
I absolutely LOVE the riffing and the movie. One of my favorite Mike episodes. The villain is too good to be true, the hero is hilariously unappealing….just great.
HOWEVER….please count me among those who not only loathe the “Clayton” bit…but, find it to be quite possibly the worst moment in MST3K history.
I find it literally unwatchable and it is my Exhibit A for why I absolutely cannot stand the Pearl character.
All that said…I enjoy the riffing and the film too much to dock the rating too badly. 3 stars. Without the “Clayton” bit….we’re talking near 5 star territory.
My friend practically has rabies over this episode. To say he loves it is a bit of an understatement. As for me – it’s quite enjoyable, and the host segments bust me up too.
Also, I cannot look at the trashy romance novels for sale at the bookstore without cracking up.
A friend of mine who likes to unleash odd videos upon our MST group found the opening for Deathstalker 2. It’s spectacular.
#32: “Not episode related but MST3K Genesis page is up on mst3k.com and it is above and beyond anything I could have imagined. Jim actually did very good here. I won’t spoil it but suffice to say there is a ton of previously unreleased media there.”
I just checked it out, and it really is surprising. At the end of the “sick flower” sketch from K01, Joel refers to “Beeper.” Did he just make a mistake, or did they not change the name to “Servo” for an episode or two?
DON3K #38
It’s ‘Weisse Engel’. Der Weisse Engel ( The White Angel ) is a name applied to NAZI War Criminal Josef Mengele.
I think that sketch is from the pilot but got mislabeled.
Of course in reference to #43.
In Kevin’s book A Year At the Movies he admits that he used to be a Tolkien nerd (pretty much writes a whole chapter on it), and hung around Renaissance festivals, until he got into punk rock, so I imagine he hates them so much because they make him think of how he used to be, which he doesn’t like (however he still has a soft spot for Tolkien, evidently). I think we can safely assume that he probably pitched in with some of the Tolkien riffs as well as Paul.
As someone who thinks that Season 7 is perhaps the best season of the show in terms of the quality of the episodes (but all too short of a season), I love this episode a lot.
A big part of my reason for loving it so much is their complete evisceration of the title hero played by John Allen “Relson.” Like Omega2010, I saw him play the sleazy weasel on 24 before this – and was pleased to see that not a whole lot has changed. It’s hilarious whenever the three cheer upon seeing Relson get hurt or make some kind of disparaging remark about him (“Is it too early to hate this guy?”).
When Crow asks Mike if there were crackers in the Middle Ages and we get that later scene of a smug Deathstalker being frisked by PotatoDamsel, you get a good idea of what you’re getting into.
Another great part of the episode is the femmy villain Troxartis. He’s one of the most over-the-top villains ever seen in a MSTed movie and it only works to the strengths of Mike and the ‘Bots. The riff about Troxartis inserting his own beats into the script is tears-in-the-eyes hilarious.
His costume choices and overdramatic gestures (“Win, team… WIN!”) don’t help much, either.
The cheapness of it all – from the bat helmet to the “chilling sound of cardboard on cardboard” – makes it seem right at home with the worst movies on MST3K. The out-of-nowhere Tron effects at the end are laughable as well.
And the music… just plain ridiculous. We needed the “tooty-toot” jam session over the film’s end credits. Mike’s riff towards the end – “Music by a total spaz” – sums it up nicely.
In short, this episode makes a very powerful case for the excellence of Season 7.
Favorite riffs:
“And these two? The Merchant-Ivory of Mexico.”
“Well, let’s see how long THESE accents last!”
“Get a tennis racket!” “They get in your hair!” “THEY HAVE RABIES!”
“Death means one glorious thing: freedom from THAT guy.”
“57 oracles and nothing on.”
“It’s Trucks-artis, Sunday at the Metrodome!”
“Hey, put your dwarf on oscillating!”
“Is this what guys did instead of putting their baseball caps on backwards and playing touch football?”
“Okay, if you’re done degrading the human race, can we get on with the movie?”
“Zing!” “It’s like Nick and Nora Charles!”
“Ava Gardner!”
“The wine cellars of Ernest and Julio Deathstalker.”
“Uh, that was suggestive, right?”
“Corpse baked in parchment! Mmmmm!”
“Gotta start the smoke, stir the sauce, all the time watching the helicopter…”
“I get to keep the glass!!!”
“Oh, you clever bastard… so the editor’s working with you…”
“It was a good idea to film the walkthrough.”
“There can be only one or two!”
“Oh, they’re ruining Andy Capp’s pigeon cages!”
“Ah, he’s overwhelmed with feelings of ambiguity.”
I always try with this one…well, about three times over the years I guess…but it’s never been an absolute slam-bang gold standard one for me.
The ingrediants are there all right. Christopher hilariously off-the-wall as Troxartis, a ‘hero’ you want to thump, bad acting and bad SFX. But for me it feels less than the sum of its parts, it gets good but then keeps dying down again. There isn’t the inspired lunacy of something like Cave Dwellers, so it just ends up pretty good…not great.
I’m pretty sure I’m in the minority in this, of course, but that’s it for me.
Excellent episode. Relson had been known mostly for Baywatch and soap operas, so we didn’t expect much from him, and he didn’t disappoint.
The “Clayton” yelling bothered me so much that it turned me off the Pearl character for the rest of the series. (I like Mary Jo, though.)
Just like as in Casablanca how Bogart never said “Play it again, Sam” we have a line living in infamy that wasn’t said quite that way in this episode. The line was actually, “There was a small, golden man reading to me from a dirty book.” No dreaming was mentioned. Nit-picking, okay, sure.
Anyway—-
I liked this episode. Pretty funny. Most of the lines I found funny were mentioned already.
A few more:
(During opening credits) Servo: “Oh, so you can just declare something a “classic”, huh?”
Mike: “They missed on the haircuts by about 1200 years.”
(After a pretty bad edit) Crow: “Where are we now, and how long did we ride?”
Mike: “If I knew your name or anything about you, this’d be very sad.”
Crow: (In exasperation) “EVERYTHING’S outside!”
Mike: “The potato sketch, ladies and gentlemen. Let’s hear it for…”
Mike: “Free range potatoes! I’ve seen these before.”
Servo: “Ever listen to that one Striker album?”
(When Troxartis says his name) Crow: “Could you paint my van?”
Servo: “Never has an entire village thrown up at the same moment.”
The line that made me laugh the most was when Troxartis shouts, “Stop them!” and Mike says, “Stop WHO from WHAT?”
Hey, wasn’t Troxartis’ chick in Alien Nation? (the series).
Not the best of season seven, but good overall.
I’ve gotta agree with everyone who finds Pearl’s incessant yelling of ‘Clayton’ to be extremely annoying and not at all funny. Droppo (#41) may be right, it may be one of the worst segments.
However, the annoyance didn’t make a real lasting impression on me, since to me Pearl of the SciFi era to is essentially a completely different chararacter, who I find fabulous.
I love, love, LOVE this episodes. Near flawless wall-to-wall riffing of a enjoyably bad 80′s Sword and Scorcery flick. The host segments are great (yes, including the Mary Jo’s ‘Clayton’ segments) but the Ren Fest skits are by far some of my favorite in the series. So simple, yet so perfect. Trace was really knocking it out of the park in this season and his proformance as the insult-spewing Crow is note perfect (“Well then, get thee to a cash machine, ye toad!”). I also love Mike’s pronunciation of renaissance as “RENAI-ssance”. Kills me every time.
As for the riffing, there isn’t much to say that hasn’t already been said. I did notice something strange last time I watched this. There is a whole string of jokes evolving Troxartis painting murals on vans (ya know…”Trucks artist”) that all seem to be added in post production. To my memory, Trace delivers them all but Crow’s mouth never moves in the theater. I can’t think of another time where they added a whole string of jokes based around one theme in post like that.
HOTCHKA! I can’t wait for next week!
I’m a fan of the “Days of our Years” music piping in during the dirty book segment in this ep
#45: “I think that sketch is from the pilot but got mislabeled.”
I don’t think so. It has the series version of the door sequence, rather than the pilot version.
Who are we? Bats!
What do you we want? Insects!
When do we want them? Now!
…squeak…squeak…squeak…
There’s also a pre-season eight appearance of “I thought you were Dale!” here.
And somehow the grand quote “You know even for a midget he seems little” has gone unmentioned until now.
“There can be only one or two”
I’m surprised there weren’t more Highlander references in this episode.
My favorite line in the Ren-fest skit has to be Crow’s delivery of “The camel’s dead” followed by Tom’s suggestion that they pet the dead camel. I wonder if they were trying to suggest something there.
great episode!!! love season 7, also seasons 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,8,9,10.
#54 I’m a fan of the “Days of our Years” music piping in during the dirty book segment in this ep
Oh, you know, I was going to mention that, but forgot. Yeah, I liked that they pulled that as something Pearl was watching on a little TV next to her bed.
#44, Thanks for the clarification. Really sounded like he said wasser, but I guess not.
The fast food segment is one of the best. M&TB as well as Mrs & Dr F were all in sync on this one.
Deathstalker was about as smarmy smug ninny as ever seen on the screen. Is he named DS because everyone he meets wants to kill him?
Its probably my imagination, but when he interacted with the bevy of undernourished females (Tater Tart, Spud Mom, Broke Princess I & II, villianess) you can actually see their skin start to crawl.
Truxartist must have been the inspiration for “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”. not in a good way.
In closing, were the warriors FROM HELL the same dead warriors from the Magic Sword? Also, in order to raise warriers from the dead, are you required to wear a very girly looking turbin as in both films?
I’m someone who actually enjoys Ren fests to some extent, so I always have to skip those host segments. Blah. The rest of the episode, however, is comedy gold.
“Guess what I’ve been doing!!”
“Look — he’s goin’ on a little camping trip!”
“The fog CRUISES in on little cat feet!”
Also, anything with “Love’s Sweet Throbbing Gondola” and how the book itself just appears out of nowhere. Ahaha!
just watched this episode last night on DVD…I liked it
Ah, Clown Burgers. Is there really a chain up that way that offers such an entree? Or is it just an example of their malice towards the fast food industry manifesting itself? Regardless, I love it! Will this be together?
One of my favorite riffs of all time is in this movie: “Don’t change the subject. It alters the meaning of the sentence.” So true, so true. Honorable mention: any of the many Tolkien references and “The chilling sound of cardboard on cardboard!”
one of the best episodes
I adore Season 7, and have a particular fondness for this episode. Low-budget 80s trash always made for classic MST (see Outlaw, Zombie Nightmare, Alien from L.A., Escape 2000, etc.), and this is no exception. And what a great opportunity for the Brains to further purge their seething contempt for Ren fests; this episode is practically devoted to it.
“Is my Aunt Minnie in there?” Great nod to A Night at the Opera.
“Watch our for the editing!” One of my all time favorite riffs.
“Put your dwarf on oscillating!”
“Clint Howard in the Bruce Springsteen story!”
“Fight choreography by Moe Howard.”
“It was a good idea to film the walkthrough.”
“Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown.”
“AAAND YOU, YOU NUT! GET OVER HERE!”
Fantastic episode.
I love this episode – great riffing, great host segments, perfect movie to mock – and every one of my fav riffs have already been mentioned, so I won’t repeat them. But there’s a quick part of the movie that’s always made me laugh hysterically that I don’t think anyone here has mentioned:
…in the last 15 minutes or so of the movie, DS and Marcuze(sp?) (aka guy who wears the bat helmet) are in a sword fight. At one point, their swords clash, and they’re pressed up against each other. DS puts his head against Marcuze’s chest, then starts shaking his head with what looks like a smile on his face. It’s as though “Relson” knew the absurdity of the scene, as well as the movie itself, and couldn’t contain himself; he was pulling what I like to call a “Larry Buchanan”…in other words, he “just didn’t care!”
But this was definitely a 5-star episode!
Honestly, this entire episode would be worth it for Love’s Sweet Throbbing Gondola alone. The first time I saw that sketch, I nearly asphyxiated. Brilliant delivery. A wonderful combination of boredom and not really comprehending what he was reading aloud. Especially the abrupt ending of the scene being read. “Wait, I think I skipped a bit. … nope!”
But yes, all the other stuff in this episode only makes it all the more of a great episode. Honestly, Blood Beast is the only episode of the short season I’d call “average”, the other five are all homeruns as far as I’m concerned.
This quite possibly is THE best MST3K episode of all and that is saying quite a bit. And season 7 for me outshines all others by far. Its one of the few episodes that I will often pull out the old video tape to watch (please release this ep on DVD already!).
“Is there a sheet metal factory around here?”
Nicias,
Thank you for inserting the phrase “electro-gential torture” into my brain; not only will I be mentally repeating it the entire weekend, but “torture” sounds like it’s being said by the inter-galactic middle manager from “Teenagers From Outer Space”
Help me…..
I failed to mention that my sister-in-law’s family is notorious for devouring potatoes, so I gave her a “Potatoes are what we eat!” T-shirt for Christmas last year. She was very appreciative.
Not really on topic, but it’s worth tracking down the original Deathstalker (not sure if it’s out of print or what these days). Of all the swords and sandals series that emerged in the wake of Conan the Barbarian, the original Deathstalker is by far the nastiest of them. The Deathstalker played by Mr. Relson is practically a saint compared to the portrayal of the character in the first film. Plus, it’s got a boar-headed man and Barbi Benton (who has been the target of MST jokes and is now all but forgotten).
This was for me the best episode of Season Seven. Most of you have already covered my favorite scenes and riffs here, but I have to say that the sword fighting climax was perhaps the most god-awful poor choreographed fight scene I’ve ever seen. On its own without the riffs it was hilarious!
#73 thecorman – My pleasure. It’s tough to take, but I felt compelled to conjure up a suitably vivid description in the name of “Deathstalker Awareness.” Nonetheless, I apologize for inflincting tangential TOHTCHA! on you in the process.
Also, #63 MrRocco – Tater Tart! I absolutely love that!
“…And you who could open beer with your teeth.”
” I ment a potato rabbit.”
“Ah sir there is a sunfish limit.”
Love It! Maybe my favorite for this season.
Troxartis is my favorite villain in an MSTed movie. He’s bold, he’s full of joy and truly happy in his work. He’ll wear a lavender colored turban and doesn’t care who knows it.
My favorite scene with is when Anicius appears out of nowhere. Troxartis is overjoyed to see him. He’s not just seeing the wizard he was looking for, he’s seeing an old friend. If this were that John Saxon-type guy from Cave Dwellers, he probably have barked some orders to his guards and slapped Anicius.
The Doom joke killed me because it was spot on. I haven’t been to a ren-fest in a long time and I was very young so I can’t really say if it was enjoyable or not.
“Now you guys would tell me if I looked stupid, right?”
I love this line and use it myself at appropriate moments.
Was there something in the water during the 80′s that prevented directors from decided on a single era and people in these movies? They all end up looking like a Visigoth-meets-Middle Ages-meets-The Old West-meets-The Disco Age.
It’s still going on to a certain extent. I haven’t seen them myself, but I’m reliably informed that in the Solomon Kane comic books recently published by Dark Horse, the garb worn by the characters looks very Old West even though the time period it takes place during is the Age of Exploration. FTW Solomon Kane is a character who was created by Robert E. Howard of Conan fame and is probably best described as a badarse Puritan.
Killer host segments in this one … Crows ‘new hair’ floors me and Mike as the fast-food joint manager is perfect! Horrible movie and it gets the treatment it so richly deserves!
5 stars all the way!
btw, i’m still freaking out that the live Rifftrax will be happening 4 blocks from my house! Holy S##T! Hope they do an autograph session after the show!
Sitting Duck #84:
Solomon Kane wore nothing of the sort in the new comic book series. It doesn’t look “old west” to me. It’s perfectly obvious that he’s wearing his traditional clothing, as described by Robert E. Howard.
What a great birthday present for me: reviewing one of my favorite episodes, Deathstalker! Absolutely can’t stop laughing all the way through this one. Most good riffs are above but everyone failed to mention one:
Mike: (as Troxartis) Whoa, thought I was Neil Diamond there for a minute.
Stil loving Season 7.
Dear God Not The Chickens!
Apparently my sources aren’t as reliable as I thought. My bad.
A wonderful episode. So many great riffs, and yet the movie alone might be good enough for me. Troxartis’s line reads, the fight choreography, the look on Deathstalker’s face when one of the potato-eating women is examining his junk, Deathstalker’s amazing forced smug laugh.
I rewatched this a couple of days ago, my new favorite moment is when Deathstalker is informed there were actually three stones, not just two. In a particularly awful line and line read, Relson responds with the forced smug laugh and then “Nissius! Oh Nissius, that crafty old trickster! Yes!”
Top quality cheese.
For anyone who thinks Mary Jo was not an asset this season I remind you ” A Gold Man was reading to me from a dirty book.” Thanks Sampo for reminding me of that line I laughed for 15 minutes the first time I heard that. And it still brings a chuckle when I remember it.
This is one of those episodes I found pretty dull the first time around, but found upon rewatching that it’s one of my favorites of the entire series (other examples being The Creeping Terror and Track of the Moon Beast). The riffing is brilliant and spot-on every step of the way. It’s a Top 5-er for me. I must watch it at least once every other month.
One moment I can’t believe nobody mentioned yet is Troxartis’s death, where he is stabbed, falls off the parapet, and explodes. EXPLODES. For absolutely no reason. Mike and Servo react with appropriate exclamations of incredulity, while Crow riffs, “Whoa, I guess he eats jelly gasoline on toast every morning.”
Other favorite riffs:
“Dah ha, KILL, dah ha!”
“He’s out there…somewhere…”
“Please don’t sing, sir.”
“Part man, part pig.”
“You once told me it isn’t easy being a princess. Well, it’s not easy being a hero, either.”
“Oh, never before has an entire town thrown up at the same moment!”
“The third stone!”
“…is something we should explain at some point!”
“Fight choreography by Moe Howard.”
“Goodbye, Shelly! Hope your perm works out!”
[after Nicias is taken away and Troxartis is just standing around looking smug] “Well, what can you add to that?”
“Stop them!”
“Stop who from what?!”
“Oh Popeye! I got an arrow Popeye!”
[Deathstalker explains in hushed tones his plan to Potato Girl; she leaves] “Okay, I’ve gotta supposed to find a pirate and put him by a wall.”
“More snotmeat, anyone?”
I’d better stop myself before I list every riff in the episode…
Crow as the Potato Daughter says something like “Do they have Ninabees and Horrastores out there?” Does anyone know what the heck he says/means?