In an age when to be dorky is to be damned, when eons have passed since the final battle between charm and naffness sealed the fate of many brave artist-warriors yet to be born, a hero will rise. His name… is Steven Kostanski. His conquests are legendary in the latest chapters of cult cinema; from forging attention-grabbing titles like Psycho Goreman to conjuring bonafide nostalgic artefacts like Frankie Freako, there are few fighting back against the darkness of AI slop and television in cinemas like this Canadian cavalier. It’s nigh-on impossible to imagine a better champion of VHS-era garbage than him when his works are so eye-catching and his work ethic so prolific, and it seems fit for him to pull an unfashionable rusted sword of a franchise from a long-forgotten mossy stone and smith it until it glimmers and glistens better than ever before. That’s right, it’s the remake nobody asked for: we have a new Deathstalker.
For those unfamiliar with the great tomes of low-budget fantasy nonsense from the 1980s, Deathstalker was a Conan the Barbarian rip-off co-produced by exploitation big dog Roger Corman, featuring a bemuscled, oiled-up hero with a highly suggestive and absolutely massive sword and an also scantily-clad buxom female sidekick whose narrative purpose is nebulous to say the least. Its first instalment was a notoriously nasty ode to sexual assault, a terrible move that prompted its sequel to back-pedal considerably and change the tone from horned-up Masters of the Universe to medieval Big Trouble in Little China, turning down the rippling abs and upping the wise-cracking comedy. Two more films followed with increasing anonymity, but evidently affectionate trash-fiend Kostanski saw potential in both, now rebooting the cheap-as-chips gore/boobs fest and finding the exact sweet spot between the two.
2025’s Deathstalker is Daniel Bernhardt, a long-serving and underrated acolyte of the 87 Eleven stunt network, and he’s exactly the type of grizzled but chiselled tough guy to look cool in a terrible wig. Now a scavenger lifting jewellery off soldiers in the warring kingdom of Abraxion, his grumpy mercenary finds himself inextricably linked to an amulet that could spell the end of existence if it falls into the hands of evil sorcerer Nekromemnon (Nicholas Rice). Picking up friends in the form of the diminutive goblin-thing Doodad (voiced with Nathan Lane-esque sarcasm by Patton Oswalt) and spiky pickpocket Brisbayne (Christina Orjalo), a new chapter in the book of Deathstalker is written with refreshingly increased respect for women and pleasantly dismissive attitudes towards how a human body would actually explode in the real world.
Like all of Kostanski’s films, Deathstalker is simply happy to be what it is: eccentric, splatter-tastic and totally unserious. As an agreeable, non-offensive but still distinctly adult rebirth of this troubled franchise, it feels for the first time like it has legs.
It can be very easy for something as reverent to the past and self-consciously edgy as a 2025 reboot of Deathstalker to be obnoxious, tiring and back-slapping, but by the old gods and the new, Kostanski somehow nails the tone. Setting up the lightly-comic frivolity with a great title drop gag (although still second fiddle to Deathstalker II’s incredible “I’ll have my revenge…and Deathstalker too!” opening joke) and subsequent brawl with a two-headed tumour of a troll, it’s clear Kostanski has figured out the exact balance between silly plastic reality and sincere magical gobbledygook. Trying to parse the logic of how the amulet works or what it means for the fate of all is honestly irrelevant to the wall-to-wall bold design choices Kostanski, art director Chloé Olson and costume designer Chelsea Graham take in making the daftness sing. Take the enemy soldiers whose armour looks like Dracula’s blood-red dragon suit from Coppola’s 1992 version, only if it were turned inside out and varnished in viscera, at once painful to behold and impossible to look away from. Add to that a mid-game boss that’s a golem with a rotating set of faces, a whole host of decrepit beasties and bastards populate this wacky adventure from front to back, and use the production’s meagre budget extremely resourcefully. Top that off with a delicious score from Blitz//Berlin featuring a guest appearance from none other than Slash on their cover of Deathstalker II’s catchy theme tune, there’s little doubting Kostanski’s Deathstalker as a sensory delight.
Bernhardt might also be the ideal leading man for this, both wooden and knowing in every moment, looking the part and being just the slightest bit creaky enough to let you in on the joke. In a career so full of body doubles and bit parts, it’s lovely to see him take centre stage with a camera that truly loves him, and one can only hope for another instalment for him to get his dues. Less successful is Patton Oswalt’s Doodad, a comedy sidekick and mystical brother in arms that is rarely funny and frequently irritating; while Bernhardt’s limited acting range feels right at home, Oswalt’s schtick is tired and flat. The central trio ends up overall being in the positive zone however, thanks to Christina Orjalo’s winning charm that blazes a progressive new trail for Deathstalker heroines after a truly retrograde legacy for women in the franchise’s sordid past. On the boo-hiss bad guy front, Paul Lazenby’s magically-enhanced henchman Jotak is a total hoot, and plenty of plywood and fiberglass scenery is chewed up by Nicholas Rice’s Nekromemnon; after all, what fun would these swords-and-sorcery tales be without cackling villains?
Running a touch too long at 102 minutes, there’s a good chance you may have forgotten the ins and outs of Deathstalker’s plot by the next morning. The lore is incomprehensible and the stakes completely whiffly… but who cares? It exists in a similar realm to the recent big-budget Dungeons & Dragons film in its joyously loose writing and laissez-faire attitude towards whether or not audiences will go with them, and that’s very refreshing. Like all of Kostanski’s films, Deathstalker is simply happy to be what it is: eccentric, splatter-tastic and totally unserious. As an agreeable, non-offensive but still distinctly adult rebirth of this troubled franchise, it feels for the first time like it has legs. Can Kostanski keep them well-oiled, tight and muscular? A new prophecy seems to suggest as much.
DEATHSTALKER (2025) HAD ITS US PREMIERE AT FANTASTIC FEST 2025
