Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus

• Directed by Gabrielle Beaumont
• May 24, 1996
• Based on the 1959 book The Beast Master by Andre Norton and characters created by Don Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman
• NBC

The Beastmaster must rescue his OTHER brother from an evil lord who is looking to obtain immortality by freeing the dark god Braxus from his prison.

The TV movie. Back in the past it was the death knell of a film franchise. Not that The Beastmaster series was a major franchise at any point. The first was just a Cult Classic followed by significantly lesser films. And this is a significantly lesser film that feels like a pilot for a never happened TV series.

Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus strings together random events tied together with a thin connecting thread tossed before our cast of characters to simply slow them up and make this 90 minutes. What really struck me was how much the ending of this paralleled if not outright ripped off Conan the Destroyer minus Ahnuld and the excellent music by the great Basil Poledouris.

It creates a rather gingerly pace for the story leaving you feeling like the effort to protect the land (not sure if it is their entire world or a specific area) is just for fun rather than about stopping a great evil. The powerful Lord Agon (David Warner) who is sucking life from people on the daily and looking to bring back an evil entity from a deep pit? Sounds like fun!

Yet the music DOES work somehow. Much like that of Commando it does not feel like it should work yet here we are. It is that cheap bordering on generic type of music found in so many direct-to-video or low budget movies of the era. It helps take away from the reality that this was filmed in sunny Southern California.

Marc Singer as Dar and Tony Todd as Seth make a great adventure film buddy pair. Despite trying to stop the return of an evil god they make this a fun adventure between old friends though I am lost at how they know each other. Todd is a fantastic actor who’s been in a fair fair share of A and B Movies and Marc Singer is, well, Marc Singer. He has a unique presence that though he was never a huge success gave him a permanent place in pop culture.

There is a lot of dumb luck on the part of the characters that keeps the story moving. They just happen upon the right people or stumble into the right area. Everything they need crosses their path. They could be heading south and wind up north and in the northern spot they need to be in. This thing is so poorly written.

The evil god Braxus (Michael Deak performance/J. D. Hall voice) is accomplished via a rubber suit with some very capable facial expression. It bore a striking resemblance to King Koopa from the Mario Bros. games. Even down to the shell on the back.

This was a TV movie and my guess would be this was probably a mild attempt at perhaps a syndicated series given the time this came out in. The movie ends with Dar and a few newly collected fellow adventurers being dispatched by his rescued brother to go off adventuring and fighting evil.

As a film Beastmaster III: The Eye of Braxus is enjoyable, but ultimately forgettable. Weirdly though it is an improvement over its predecessor, which was just plain bad. I think you won’t be disappointed, but you’re ultimately just not go back to it.