Beastmaster 2: Attraverso il portale del tempo

During the closing credits (at least in the version that hit theatres), the Beastmaster can be seen running into the sunset. This sunset is actually a painted backdrop, and after a while, you can clearly discern that the guy is actually running in place for almost two minutes as the credits roll! A perfect end to a perfect movie!

A middling sequel to the original, not as good as that but far better than the third. This one does actually have a budget, albeit a B-movie budget, and starts off with the usual low rent heroic action before moving the action to then-modern day L. A. where the usual fish out of water action takes place. A typical mix of CONAN and DR DOOLITTLE here, a far cry from THE ICEMAN COMETH but reasonably entertaining if you're in the right cheesy mood. The cast includes genre standby Wings Hauser, a young Kari Wuhrer, and Uncle Phil himself.

Like the first Beastmaster movie this is s so-so ripoff of Andre Norton's Beastmaster and Lord of Thunder, great science fiction about the last survivor of the Navajo nation who arrives on a new planet following earth's destruction during a war with the alien Xik, and learns to deal with his loss and love his new home Marc Singer's character in no way resembles Hosteen Storm and his animal companions are only close to the book. This is basically a cheapo that owes more to the Hercules movies of the 60's than to Sci-Fi.

Truly bad as part of the series, stupid in almost every way. If you're gonna watch it, just pretend it has nothing to do with the other films. It sucks less that way. It even has some charm, so I think it deserves more than one star.

The film breaks fundamentally with the tone set in the original. That was primarily an adventure film, though not without its lighthearted fun/silly moments. This one is just comedy, and not very good.

Two examples of how bad it is (minor spoilers):

1. The language in Dar's world turns out to be LA American English! They actually speak the exact same accent as the LA characters in the story.

2. The nukes in the US are extremely badly guarded, anyone can just walk in and grab one, if they're willing to knock out a guard behind a desk. And when they're stolen, it is is a local LA police department that handles the case.

First of all: Remember that this genre was quite popular in the beginning of the 90's, as well during the 80's of course. Many out there who're voting, and never seen this before, tend to compare this with modern movies and their film techniques and not seeing it for what it is. Not going to say masterpiece here, nor a work of art, but well above average. Actually, there's one part of this movie-series that are in some fashion a work of art, and that'd be the work they did with the animals. No you say? How do you get a friggen tiger to behave, the ferrets (Of which we won't get to see too much, except for in the beginning, as they "acted" in the first movie. That eagle, how do you train one to begin with? Let alone getting it to lay almost dormant on the ground for that period of time until Dar picks him up?

Then there's that nostalgic feeling of the 90's vs. a parallel world without modern technology. That part I like, and also am missing the 80-90's when ppl. were more friendly (Started to become worse during the 90's though) and not like today were we're screwing one another over something as trivial as monetary issues, or even worse, status. I'm not saying that y2k is when it all started or anything, 'cos it did way before that, I'd say like the 70's or something like that, probably before that, but what I'm saying is that it has escalated enormously since technology grew into what it is today when it's easier to hide behind a computer instead of socialize as we did 'back then'.

With this I want to point out that "thanks" to science we've become increasingly obsessed about, or should I write picky about how well a movie is made, what funding it had, how good the directors (status) are etc. This is what passes for good movies nowadays. Yeah, sure, a lot of them ARE good, but that's most likely because they (Companies behind them) were well funded and all of that ballet. Back in the old days the filming-crews were experimenting with new cameras, lenses, and generally improvised whenever something difficult to shoot came up. They didn't have the same kind of funding either, as the the investors weren't aware whether it'd be a success or not. And by saying that, they also didn't have that much insight into the technical stuff (A.k.a. - This is how the movie will turn out to become!).

It bothers me that ppl. are ignorant of such things, as well as clanking down on actors ("Bad" movies in general), when it's really the (casting-) directors fault, or just a bad written script. It's rarely ppl. take a movie for what it is and how much heart has been put into it.

This movie I think they mostly did for fun, and because we ppl. always have it in for cultural hick-ups and also we like it when disasters happen and all that jazz.

I gave this 6 out of 10 just because it's fun, retro, and I like Mark Singer (Mostly from V-series really) as an actor.