Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time

• Directed by Sylvio Tabet
• August 30, 1991

A barbarian from another dimension travels to 1990s Los Angeles and with the help of a young woman must stop his evil brother from stealing a neutron bomb.

One thing that has ALWAYS irritated me was when movies ignored previously established info to tell their story rather than workaround that info. In The Beastmaster, Dar (Marc Singer) was the firstborn son of king-what’s-his-face and that was what made him so important and how he fit into the prophecy that brought down the maniacal Red Skelton.

Low and behold Dar is now SECOND born and has an older half-brother named Arklon (Wings Hauser) who is an evil king and Dar is leading a group of revolutionaries against with that revolution being quickly forgotten about to the point YOU will forget Arklon is even a king before the credits role. This was a direct-to-video sequel made with all the thought and care of a toddler playing with Legos.

I love me some Sarah Douglas. She has been in MANY movies and shows I love during her career and always gives every part top effort. In Beastmaster 2 she plays the mostly evil Lyranna that (maybe) works for the rebels before quickly joining Arklon to gain power via marriage. And that pretty much sums up her character.

Arklon is evil and seeking greater power. Dar is good and pretty much fighting solo. Lyranna is absolutely stunning and seeking to marry her way to the top. These are about as basic a set of characters and motivations as you can get and they change little from start to finish beyond a supposedly climactic battle. The characters are two-dimensional. How they begin is how they end. This adventure is about as inconsequential as one can get. The only one with any kind of arc is Lyranna but she only reacts as needed for the plot and not to anything that actually occurs.

Clearly to cut costs, they set a lot of the movie in LA. Location shooting is cheaper than building once-and-done sets I’m assuming. What it also does is make something kinda goofy hard to take seriously. And despite the title, they make it clear Dar and pals are from another reality and NOT from another time. A petty complaint on my part but still bugged me.

The Beastmaster was no Conan the Barbarian but it wasn’t bad comedy neither which this often segues into. We have Dar in LA searching for an evil witch and his brother who he just learned was his brother and Dar is helped out by a wild child daughter of a US senator. There is even meta humor when they drive by a movie theater marquee with this movie’s name on it.

The dialogue is a weird mixture of Shakespearean and fantasy. And there’s also a hefty attempt at witty one-liners. While previously the dialogue wasn’t the most artistic it was at least consistent. I didn’t expect art from this, but I expected competence and there is not much here. It’s like they had the idea and then winged it. I’m left with a feeling when watching there were numerous rewrites along the way and maybe even a few pages ignored because they couldn’t film them and rather than cover whatever was lost with some dialogue they just didn’t do anything at all. It gets far too silly. A little goofiness is acceptable, but this turns into a self parody. It degrades itself rather than entertain.

But it can be fun to watch. Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time has an undefinable quality. Could it be Marc Singer acting in a way only Marc Singer can? Can it be because Wings Hauser hams it up? Maybe Sarah Douglas who adds class to every project. Maybe it is all three coming together in a happy accident.

I feel kind of guilty for liking Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time. As a sequel to the first film it’s not worthy. As a bad rip off of Masters of the Universe it’s acceptable. I can’t recommend this one though.