SpuffyWeb Sadly Over-hyped

ReaderKenka Let's be realistic.

Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Sienna-Rose Mclaughlin The movie really just wants to entertain people.

Paul Magne Haakonsen Now, I will not understand why they opted to go with John Terlesky in the role of Deathstalker in this 1987 "Deathstalker II" movie. He just was nowhere near what Rick Hill is in portraying the Deathstalker character.As much as I enjoy the sword and sorcery genre, then this movie was just an ordeal to get through. Sure, it had a fair enough storyline, although it was quite generic for the genre. However, it was the cheesy 1980's music, which didn't correspond well to the sword and sorcery genre at all, and it seemed more at home in a movie like "Beverly Hills Cop" or something like that. But also the fact that they hadn't improved on the props one bit since the first movie; the rocks were still unfathomably fake to look at and the swords, well let's just say that they were laughable. Or maybe it was the fact that most of the costumes looked like a bad Halloween dream made flesh, wow, just wow. So many of the costumes were really awful to look at, and many of them actually looked like a rock concert gone awry.Or perhaps it was the lack of proper acting from anyone on the cast. I will say that John Terlesky managed to hold his own, but still his performance was not impressive. But the icing on the cake had to be the acting performance by Monique Gabrielle. That was simply just outrageous. I think I actually never witnessed anything quite like it."Deathstalker II" is a poor sequel to the 1983 movie. And having seen it, I can check it off the list, and never make a return trip to it again. It was just a blemish on the "Deathstalker" saga.The sole reason for my three out of ten stars is because the movie does hold some good elements crucial to a good sword and sorcery movie.This is a movie to give a wide berth, because your love for the sword and fantasy will not be particularly enriched from having watched this movie, not in the least.

unbrokenmetal Deathstalker (John Terlesky) is not a real hero, but rather a reckless rogue who fights only as long as it is fun, and his only ambition is to marry a rich princess some day. He meets Reena (Monique Gabrielle) who claims she can see the future in her crystal ball, but the results are not convincing. However, she also tells him she is a princess, and once the evil sorcerer Jarek (John La Zar) is out of the way, she might sit on the throne, rightfully. Before they face Reena's enemy, the queen of the amazons (Maria Socas, I recognized her from 'The Warrior and the Sorceress') has a special challenge for Deathstalker: wrestling a fat amazon to the death...'Deathstalker II' is a comedy in the first place, the dialogs are hilarious! Actually, 'Deathstalker II' doesn't look like a sequel to 'Deathstalker' at all. 'Deathstalker IV' had Rick Hill return as the hero, 'Deathstalker III' was at least written by the same scriptwriter, but in 'Deathstalker II' there is no personal continuity with the first movie. Which is probably a good thing, because this comedy within the series works very well as a movie of its own.

Vomitron_G Nevermind my low rating. This is a really good movie.While the first DEATHSTALKER movie played it with a straight face (making it a much easier movie to poke fun at), this second installment in the series is tongue-in-cheek all the way. It did make me laugh as hard (or perhaps even harder at times) as with the first one, though maybe the enjoyment I got out of DEATHSTALKER II might be a bit less, how shall I put it... satisfying? Because after all, we're supposed to laugh with this one, and when it comes to the humor, it is as dumb as it gets. But still, nothing too wrong with that, I suppose. And to make things crystal clear from the get-go, the fun already starts in a most verbal way, just before the opening credits, when evil sword-wench Sultana shouts "I will have my revenge! And Deathstalker too!", and then whoosh, the "Deathstalker two" title-logo comes on. Brilliant.Part of the fun still comes from unintentional events, like scenes starting and ending abruptly, a chase-scene on horses were people just seem to be riding the same part of the road endlessly, stock footage from the first DEATHSTALKER (with a different look, easy to spot) inserted in this sequel for pointless reasons, etc. Another reason for incomprehensible chuckles comes from the movie's subtitle. It reads DUAL OF THE TITANS, supported by crackling flames... What titans? Who? Where are they? And like if the opening-credits weren't enough to make us reflect on this movie in a grinning or dumbly drooling fashion, then wait until the end-credits start to roll. They show us a handful of bloopers, at times even supported by silly voice-overs. Those bloopers are likely to kill off any braincells one might still have after viewing DEATHSTALKER II: DUAL OF THE TITANS! (Which titans?)The performances of the whole cast, this time, are indeed deliberately campy. Most actors handle a contemporary language completely unsuitable for a swords & sorcery film. Especially our hero (John Terlesky) seems to be exquisitely enjoying himself doing so. Blond Barbie-doll Monique Gabrielle (in a double-role, no less) was as painful as she was funny, watching her deliver her lines trying very hard to strike the right comical note (or vicious note, for that matter) when called for. And has John Lazar (of Russ Meyer's BEYOND THE VALLEY OF THE DOLLS fame) ever acted so laughably idiotic before in his life? Fitting for these slapstick characters, is the fact that they all seem to run around on sets made out of cardboard or styrofoam. In other words: real works of art.Of course, DEATHSTALKER II offers enough female eye-candy. Knockers and buttocks are displayed quite randomly in this one (thank you, Jim Wynorski). Sometimes they use stock footage from the first movie for this purpose, but thankfully there's new boobage to behold too. Especially the sex-scene between Deathstalker and evil princess Evie is as gratuitous as can be. The one naked girl dancing in that completely retarded bar-fight (at the beginning) was quite funny too. Her dancing skills were limited to 'wiggle waggle, bounce & shake' and 'duck' when a hurled brew-holder comes flying over her head. Now that we're talking retarded scenes anyway, the movie reaches an absolute lowest point in the middle during an embarrassing wrestling scene that goes on for way too long. It's Deathstalker vs Utterly Fat Growling Barbaric She-Thing. I think that says enough.But you have to at least give Jim Wynorski some credit: He really watched and understood the first DEATHSTALKER movie. He took several elements of the first film (characteristics of the 'hero', the nudity,...) and enlarged, emphasized and mainly spoofed them (out of the many examples of this, Warthog-Brute returning for a silly cameo is one of them). So at least, he aims to please and for the bigger part also succeeds. Even that inappropriate western-vibe is, at times, again present on the movie's soundtrack. And will you check out that one, eardrum-piercing sound-sample, used numerous times throughout the movie. It goes "shreeeeeeeuw!!!"... What was up with that? Other highlights include scenes distinctively showing Wynorski's inexplicable ways of film-making. One scene has Stalker and Reena on a horse, trying to escape some villains repeatedly shooting exploding arrows at them. The villains just shoot without aiming and the scene is packed with seemingly pointless explosions. It's like Wynorski just said to the pyro-technicians "When I yell action, you guys go nuts, okay? I don't care how you do it, just make sure you blow the hell out of everything!". And so they did.Another favorite scene of mine (and another pointless one it is), is the one with the zombies at the green cemetery. I don't know why or how this cemetery is all green, but it is. Just look at it: Green graves all over the place. Magnificent. I guess it's all just proof that DEATHSTALKER II is one in a row of many successes by a genius film-maker. So, watch more Wynorski films is the main message here. Thanks for listening, and I'm off to prepare myself mentally for entering the third installment, undoubtedly yet another epic tale of mind-boggling barbaric fantasy, called DEATHSTALKER AND THE WARRIORS FROM HELL. Unfortunately, it was not directed by Jim Wynorski.

Witchfinder General 666 "Deathstalker" of 1983 was an incredibly crappy movie, but in its own way incredibly entertaining and fun to watch, simply due to its value as an unintentional comedy. The first sequel, "Deathstalker II: Duel Of The Titans" of 1987 almost seems to be a spoof of its predecessor. As the first movie, "Deathstalker 2" is again extremely crappy and therefore quite funny, but it seems that director Jim Wynorski as well as the actors and everybody else connected with this film were actually willing to do a movie as crappy as possible on purpose. While the Deathstalker was basically a brutal and invincible Barbarian cheapo version of Conan played by muscleman Rick Hill in the first movie, the title character became a skinny guy with a tendency towards stupid jokes. The dialogue is even sillier and out of place than in the first movie ("a cigar for the lady", "is that your sword or are you just happy to see me"...), the acting is (intentionally?) terrible and hardly anything in the movie makes sense.The movie is set in some fantasy land and fantasy time that seems lie an in-between of the middle ages and the stone age. The fact that the people are clearly pagans, of course, doesn't stop graves on cemeteries from having crosses on them. At one point of the movie a warrior explains that he had fought under Attila The Hun's command, while his buddy has served for Ghenghis Khan. The fact that Attila The Hun died over 700 years before Ghenghis Kahn was even born is, of course, ignored. Scenes like these, and other oddities, should keep the viewer entertained. "Deathstalker II" also features an Amazon tribe and warriors with human bodies and pig heads (one of those was my favorite character in the first film). Some of the women are lovely to look at, especially Monique Gabrielle, who plays the female lead, and Maria Socas, who plays the Amazon Queen, are a treat for the eye. One of the main aims of "Deathstalker II" is to show breasts (although not quite as often as the first film), but sadly it fails to achieve the amount of gore featured in its predecessor. All said, "Deathstalker II" is an extremely crappy movie, but great fun to watch. I recommend to watch the first "Deathstalker" before watching this, and I personally laughed more during the first film, but I guess it doesn't quite make a difference. People with a sense of humor and able to bear a bit of awfulness should certainly have a good time, 3/10