Welcome to a new B-Movie Enema!

This week, we’re traveling to the kingdom of Aruk for this 80s classic from Don Coscarelli. Now, the origin of The Beastmaster actually goes back to 1959. Andre Norton wrote the novel The Beast Master about a Navajo war veteran set in a futuristic and sci-fi setting. When writers Coscarelli and Paul Pepperman adapted the novel, Norton was unhappy. We’re going to come back around to Norton in just a moment, but Coscarelli would eventually sign on as director for the film and Pepperman then took the role of Producer alongside Lebanese producer Sylvio Tabet. Tabet was a producer on movies like Fade to Black and Evilspeak. Later, he was a producer on The Cotton Club and Dead Ringers. So he was not an unknown at the time.

Interestingly, the only film Tabet directed was 1991’s Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time.

Of course, Coscarelli was the creator and director of 1979’s Phantasm. That was the movie directly prior to The Beastmaster. Considering that was made on a $300,000 budget and pulled in a worldwide gross of $22 million, Coscarelli could easily trade on that. In 1981, he and Pepperman began fundraising at various events, including Cannes, and they eventually secured a $9 million budget for The Beastmaster.

However, that’s where the joyride would kind of come to an end. Okay, so, back to Andre Norton… Norton was the pen name for Alice Norton. She was from Cleveland Ohio and specialized in science fiction and fantasy. From time to time, she dabbled in other genres, but she’s likely best known for the sci-fi series she worked on, specifically, the five Beast Master novels. The last of those books, Beast Master’s Quest, was published posthumously. She was utterly disappointed with the liberties that Coscarelli and Pepperman took with the source material and was upset enough to request her name to be removed from the credits. I’d also have to suspect she was a little interested in the 1994 movie Stargate because she too wrote a 1958 book called Star Gate. Her book was about a people coming “from the sky” to help natives of a planet to build a civilization kind of like what you’d see in the Dark Ages in Europe. That’s about as far as I know about the book, but the movie is about aliens who came through a Stargate with a great deal of Egyptian look and style and molded an ancient society that was… Ancient Egypt.

Anyway, I don’t read no books, but I kind of love Alice Norton/Andre Norton because look at her picture on Wikipedia…

Coscarelli ran into other issues too. He began feuding with the film’s executive producers. This was mostly around the editing of the film and casting decisions. Two casting changes frustrated the director. First, the role of Maax was written for Klaus Kinski who, himself, was a bit of a star at the time in both Europe and the States. However, Kinski was dropped for Rip Torn when Kinski started a salary dispute. The big one that really frustrated Coscarelli was his decision to initially cast the young, up-and-coming Demi Moore as Kiri. The executives overrode his decision and instead casted their own choice, Tanya Roberts. Interestingly, off of this movie that earned a pretty quick cult following, Roberts would go on to star in another action/adventure fantasy, Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, and then it’s said that being cast as Kiri led to her eventual casting as the Bond girl Stacey Sutton in A View to a Kill. So, while I don’t think Moore would have benefitted that much from being cast as she was about to have her own arc to stardom very shortly after this movie, Roberts probably benefitted more from being cast as Kiri than her time on Charlie’s Angels.

For Coscarelli, while he was endlessly frustrated while making this movie, it was likely a little too big for him at that time in his career.

The face of the movie, though, is Marc Singer. Singer was kind of new to film at the time, but had spent most of the 70s guesting on several television shows. 1982 through 1985 would be the peak of his career. Not only did he star as Dar in The Beastmaster, but he’d follow this right up with the biggest gig of his life – starring as Mike Donovan on the breakout miniseries V. This, of course, led to V: The Final Battle and the V television series. V is some all-time great TV miniseries stuff and he ultimately could trade off that for decades following the release of those series.

The movie opens with a trio of robed men going to a temple to meet with a trio of scantily clad witchy oracles with some serious butterfaces. These chicks are looking into a pool of water to see a woman. This woman is carrying the son of King Zed. These witches tell the High Priest Maax that this son of Zed’s will be the one who will kill Maax in the future. Soon, King Zed barges in and tells Maax that he’s no fan of his heathen religion or his desire to sacrifice a child, so he’s to be banished. After Maax shows how loyal his people are to him by having his two compatriots kill themselves in front of the king, Zed tells his guards to arrest Maax.

Later, one of the witchy women Maax was meeting with sneaks into the bed chamber of King Zed and his wife (presumably named Queen something or other). She pours some glowing blue goo onto both of the sleeping royals to paralyze them. This causes the Queen’s belly to grow pretty big. The plan is for the witch to force the child to gestate fully and then be born. Now that the kid is born the witch can sacrifice the child for Maax. This is pretty freaky because what this witch does is transfer the child from the Queen’s womb into a cow and then the witch takes the cow elsewhere to slaughter it to get the baby out. It’s some good old-fashioned sword and sorcery, um… sorcery.

Anyhow, a local who happened to be wandering by while the witchy lady was doing her thing at her own little blazing campfire that is full of unusual colors for flames takes notice. Kind of thinking that maybe this is not entirely on the up and up, notices that the witch is branding the child with a hot iron and then is going to kill the child with a dagger. Thinking quickly, the local throws his own dagger at the witch. He thinks he’s killed her, but she’s actually teleported herself. After a brief fight that finds the fugly witch with the absolutely rockin’ bod tossed into one of her own flames, the local takes the child and decides to raise it as his own.

This is good news for his village.

As the years pass, the man raises the child, whom he named Dar, in the village of Emur. Dar learns how to fight, but what’s more, he begins to experience telepathic abilities that allow for him to communicate with animals. This comes in handy as he first senses a bear in the woods about to attack, and then is able to communicate with the bear to leave without any more danger or injury to either him or his father. Dar’s father tells him that what happened there today with him being able to ward off the bear, must never be told to anyone else. It’s kind of a superhero origin of sorts. Don’t go off telling everyone you have these special powers. You have to basically grow into them and be careful how you use them and so on. By the way, the bear in this scene was apparently a bit unruly. It was the only bear working in Hollywood at the time and when it was released to walk into the scene, it went apeshit nuts and began slashing and attacking the handler causing the crew and actors, including the younger version of Dar, Billy Jacoby, running for their fucking lives.

Ah, I love behind-the-scenes stories like that.

Dar grows to young adulthood. He’s a full-on member of the village and works the fields with the other young adults. The peaceful existence is broken when Dar and some of the others discover there’s an incoming attack. The attack comes from a horde of barbarians who are loyal to Maax. Things don’t look too good for the serfs in Emur because they are mostly old guys and those barbarians are many and have horses.

Negotiations instantly break down. And by that, I mean the barbarians don’t even bother to stop and talk to Dar’s father and his buddy at the gates. They just bowl right through them and start killing everyone and lighting the place on fire. It’s chaos before Dar and the rest of the younger, more able-bodied men return to the village. Dar fights pretty well and even kills some of the barbarians, but he’s eventually knocked out.

His faithful pup tries pulling him away and out of danger, but he’s wounded by an arrow. Luckily, the dog is able to pull Dar to safety before everything burns down and Maax discovers Dar’s branding on his palm from the night he was born. Dar wakes up to find the dog has died and he’s the lone survivor of the invasion.

Before leaving his village for the last time, Dar collects all the bodies of his friends and arranges them in a circle. He places the dog on top of his adoptive father. He gears up, and before he leaves, he lights the dead on fire in a giant funeral pyre.

I kind of kidded earlier that the onset of his ability to speak and control animals was sort of like his superhero origin story. That was especially because his father warned him about not letting people know of his powers and to use them carefully and wisely. Well, yeah. This really is your typical comic book hero origin because now that father who instilled within Dar a sense of humility and kindness, and a whole lotta fighting skills, is now dead and Dar must leave his home to become the hero he was born to be. I knew my decades of reading comic books would someday pay off!

In… finding the deeper… meaning of the first act of The Beastmaster. Hmm.

Anyway, a hawk that watched Dar return home and collect the dead and set that funeral pyre is a new sidekick for our hero. Dar uses it to see what he sees and communicates with it as it follows him on his new hero’s journey. The first thing he needs to do on this hero’s journey? Some bad ass bitchin’ sword moves, bro!

Along the way, he gets some of his outfit stolen by some mischievous ferrets and it leads him to falling into quicksand. It was one thing to call off a bear. It was another to use a hawk to have a bird’s eye view. Now it’s time for him to use his animal communication skills to ask for help getting out of the quicksand from the ferrets. He even saves one of the ferrets who fell into the quicksand and nearly drowned. He names them Kodo and Podo and puts them in his bag to come along on his journey. The hawk, a golden eagle Wikipedia tells me, gets a name too, Sharak. Dar gets a vision of another animal nearby. Some of those barbarians capture a black tiger. I think it’s supposed to be a puma but the production literally dyed a tiger black because tigers are far easier to work with on a movie. Anyway, Dar, Sharak, Podo, and Kodo decide to help the tiger. Also, they can kill some of these goons while he’s at it.

You know what? I said they were some of those barbarians. I’m not sure. They kind of had some of the same armor and had crossbows and swords as the barbarians did. Fuck it. They were definitely Maax’s goons. I don’t care. They were being pricks to a tiger. They’re bad guys.

Dar considers what he now has in terms of his team. He’s got eyes in the form of Sharak. He’s got cunning from Kodo and Podo. Now he has strength from his tiger buddy Ruth. That’s Ruth with a rolled R. That’s not Ruth as in Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Chris Ruth’s Steakhouse. Ruth as is, I suppose, a sound a tiger makes? I dunno. Sure he’s got himself that eagle that he’s used to pluck a guy’s eyes out. Sure, those ferrets can also bite and scratch at you. It’s that tiger I’m most concerned with. Do not fuck with a guy who has a pet tiger. That is not going to end well for you.

The one thing Dar does not have, and, I assume, never had, is some tittaes!

We meet Kiri, but how does our hero meet her? Well, that lil’ scamp Dar first uses Kodo and Podo to steal her clothes. That forces her to chase after them. He then sends Ruth out to scare her and that gives him a chance to play hero by scaring him off. He says she owes him her life, but he’ll accept a kiss as payment in return. However, she’s no fan of him TAKING the kiss from her so she trips him and holds a knife to his throat.

Now it’s time for proper introductions. He says his name is Dar and his village was destroyed by the horde that ravages the land. By the way, that horde is called the Juns. They are totally all up ons with Maax. Maax has used them to usurp total control of Aruk. Kiri says she is a slavegirl. She seems somewhat resigned to that role in life, but Dar is shocked to see scars on her back revealing she’s often whipped like an animal. She tells Dar he would do well to forget her so that he can die like a man against the Juns instead of the priest she serves.

She runs away but Dar decides to try to follow her. Surprisingly, he loses her rather quickly. He ends up running a-FOWL of a half-bird and half-human tribe. Hang on a second here… Come on… You gotta like the running a-FOWL thing since these are bird people. Right? Yeah? Ehhh… Anyway, he finds people in wooden cages. Near the cage is a bubbling cauldron. In the cauldron, these bird people cook their captives and then eat them.

That’s not the only way they gain nourishment. When Dar releases the person in the cage, he runs off but right into the wings (arms?) of one of the bird people. After a big ol’ bear hug, the guy begins to smoke and turn into green goo. Soon, he’s dissolved all the way down to his bones. The bird people plan to do the same to Dar, but that’s when Sharak flies in to save the day by landing on Dar’s forearm and showing he is friends to the birds. As a gesture of them being totally cool with Dar, one of the bird men gives him an amulet.

So… what a fuckin’ day for Dar, right? He does some bitchin’ sword moves. He nearly dies in quicksand only to make friends with a pair of ferrets. They, along with a bird that’s been following him around, help Dar free a black tiger. He sees some titties, but loses the girl with said titties, and then runs into bird people who eat normal people and have acidic wings that melt normal people. I’m gonna guess that he had no idea that was how his day was going to go when he was doing those sweet sword moves.

Probably just as unexpected is how his next day begins… by him just being able to walk right into Aruk.

Aruk still looks like the place it did before with the walls and the fiefdom within and positioned surrounding that temple where those totally ugly witches with the really hot bodies would do their pot gazing to spy on pregnant women. However, a few new things that have been added since we were last here are the nice decorations of impaled people leading up to the bridge across the moat of… tar? Is that tar? Hot mud? I dunno. Whatever it is, I’m sure it smells great and really ties the whole thing together.

As he walks into the totally open gate, he doesn’t really see much at first except some beasts of burden. He hears some commotion going on deeper into the town. That’s when he finds the entirety of the kingdom gathered at the foot of the temple. They are watching Maax sacrifice a child.

Goddamn… This Maax fella is super into child sacrifice, isn’t he? Super conservative religious nuts like to call Democrats and other people on the political left baby-killers for wanting women to have the choice to do with their bodies as they desire, but this guy is just straight up making sure babies get born so he can throw them off a fuckin’ temple! As best as I can tell, everyone is just resigned to go and watch. I guess that’s one way to spend a Saturday afternoon. The kid screams all the way down into the fiery pit too.

So Rip Torn tosses a kid into the fire and says that his god says he’s not satisfied yet. So he sends his goons into the crowd to pluck another kid out. Dar uses Sharak to save the kid from the flames just as his little feety toes start to get a little crisp and before Maax can push him the rest of the way in. The town bows believing they’ve witnessed an act of god, but Maax uses it to proclaim that their god wants their children.

By the way… Look at that fuckin’ picture of Rip Torn about to toss a kid into a sacrificial flame. That’s some peak ass Rip Torn crazy right there. Dude once got arrested for being so blitzed that he tried to break into a bank branch because he thought it was his home. He apparently was known for being so easily angered that he could be an absolute nightmare on set. Dennis Hopper, yeah the guy who played one of the most disgusting and unlikable villains in history (Blue Velvet), once said that Torn pulled a knife on him during the making of Easy Rider. Do I believe Rip Torn could throw kids into a sacrificial flame? You bet your fuckin’ hairy asses I do!

But I digress.

Later that night, Dar returns the second kid that Sharak saved to his parents. He learns from the man that King Zed is still alive but imprisoned. Zed’s son disappeared right after he was born. Maax took control of the kingdom and to appease his demon god, he sacrifices kids. He also has sexy slave girls. Kiri is one of them. However, the slaves have all been returned to the temple to prepare for their deaths. Meanwhile, as Dar slips out of Aruk, Maax says his demon god wants this “master of the beasts” (c’mon, boomer, it’s the Beastmaster, get it right) and provides one of his goons with a ring that will lead them to him. That ring has an eye inside it. The hot bod/ugly faced witches use their seeing pool to make the eye come out where they find the branding that Dar got the night he was born. When he sees that, Maax orders his goons to attack and kill Dar now.

The goons try killing Dar by having one noose ’em and the other stab him. But… remember what I said earlier about how it’s not a good idea to pick a fight with a guy who has a tiger for a pet? Yeah, Ruth messes one of the guys up. The other rides off on his horse and leads Ruth into a trap that causes the tiger to fall into a pit. The other goon is about to kill Ruth with his crossbow when motherfuckin’ John Amos shows up out of nowhere and saves the day by hitting the dude with his staff and then forcing him into the pit for Ruth to finish him off.

Amos plays Seth. He’s accompanied by a kid named Tal. They help Dar get Ruth out of the pit. Dar introduces himself and where he came from. Seth says there aren’t any more people from Emur to which Dar says that thanks to the Juns, he is the final Emurite. As the trio teams up, we learn that Tal is a younger son of King Zed. Seth has been wandering the land trying to raise an army to fight Maax and the Juns so they can free the King.

When Tal finds a necklace that he obtained from Kiri, Seth is quite concerned about how he came to possess it. Dar explains it was from a REALLY hot slave girl. Seth agrees that the girl was REALLY hot, but she’s no slave girl. Tal explains that Kiri is his cousin. That… that makes her Dar’s cousin too, right? Like, he wants to bang his cousin, yes? I mean… Yuck. That’s pretty gross, dude! You wanna get with your cousin?

Actually… Looking that over again, it’s cool. I’ll let it slide. You didn’t know she’s your cousin. That’s hardly your problem, right? I mean, you were spirited away even before your mother was far enough along for you to be a viable pregnancy. It was sorcery and shit. Yeah, cool. Have at it, Dar.

With the help of Sharak, Dar is able to see that the goons are heading off with the slave girls. So, Dar, Seth, and Tal go to save them. Well, more accurately, they save Kiri. I’m not entirely sure what happened to the rest of the girls. They just kind of ran away. They likely got caught by Maax’s goons, so they’re likely super fucked. Anyway, Seth and Dar defeat the guards with the girls and free Kiri. They escape the army of barbarians and Seth parts ways to find more to battle against Maax.

Now, among the other treasures that Kodo and Podo stole during their travels was that ring that Maax gave the guy to find Dar. Tal took a shine to it and, since no one knew that it was useful for Maax to spy on Dar, our big bad dude had eyes on our heroes the whole time. Maax says he plans to allow the heroes entry into the temple because he’ll be one step ahead the whole time. As they get into the temple, Dar is initially attacked by beastly monsters in cages that try to grab at his legs and feet. We see later that they are prisoners captured by Maax and his goons torture them and, in doing so, they are turned into crazed monsters.

In one of the cells, Dar, Tal, and Kiri find King Zed. Zed’s kind of a shell of his former self. His eyes have been removed and he seems almost catatonic. It’s not until Maax comes into the room with one of his witchy bitches and Tal yells at the evil sorcerer that Zed realizes that his son is there with him. I guess he doesn’t realize that BOTH his sons are there but I digress. Maax sends his witchy bitch to kill Dar but thanks to Ruth trying to knock down the door to the cell, a temporarily blinded Dar knows where the witch is for him to stab her before she can descend upon him from the ceiling.

Zed, Kiri, and Tal escape through a secret passage that leads out of the city. However, Dar stays behind until he can be reunited with Podo and Kodo who were sent to grab some keys and are getting chased by the newly made monster guy. It’s soon learned that Kiri did not take the escape route as planned and stayed behind to help Dar with another way out. They barely escape the city after being chased by more of the demonic monster soldiers.

It sure seems like everything is coming up Dar and the Gang, but… that turns out to be short-lived. When King Zed speaks with the others who have been assembled to fight against Maax, Zed is no longer the thoughtful and good king he once was. Instead, he turns out to be rather bloodthirsty. He wants Maax and all his followers killed for what they’ve basically taken from him and the others of Aruk. Dar speaks up and says this is not the way. If they kill Maax, it will only incur the wrath of the Jun horde. He knows what they can do. To truly win, they need an army.

Zed asks who it is that is speaking against his plans. Seth says he’s a friend. Zed says he’s a freak who can speak to animals. He doesn’t need a freak at his side. He needs warriors. He tells Dar to beat cheeks and crawl into a hole with his animals. Kiri follows and comforts Dar, but says she cannot leave with him and he cannot stay. Dar says if she stays they’ll die. When she goes back to the camp, Zed and Seth plan their attack and that’s when Seth realizes that Tal’s ring can spy on them. They know the plan. He gets rid of the ring and begs King Zed to run so they can form a new plan, but Zed refuses. Seth realizes they are truly doomed.

The next morning, Dar awakens to find the villager whom he helped save his son from sacrifice is bringing him a horse and begging for help. Surprise, surprise, the attempt to take back Aruk failed pretty hard. Zed, Tal, Kiri, and Seth were all captured and are scheduled for sacrifice at sundown. Dar and team Beast head to Aruk where the sacrificial rite is beginning. Apparently, Dar slept really late that day because by the time he gets to town, it’s pretty much already pretty dang late in the afternoon.

Podo and Kodo free Seth and Tal while Dar fights his way up the temple with Ruth to save Kiri and Zed. His insurrection starts riling up the rest of the people of Aruk. Just before Dar reaches the top of the temple and Maax plunges a dagger into Kiri’s torso, his final remaining witchy bitch tells him that he’s doomed. You see, that unborn son? Yeah, he’s here and he’s ready to fuck him up.

Dar fights off goons at the top of the temple while Maax has an unconscious Kiri on the sacrificial altar and a tied up King Zed that he’s holding a dagger to his throat. Maax tells Zed who Dar is before knifing him but good. Dar then bum rushes Maax and stabs him in the gut with his own dagger. Then, Dar turns his attention to the final witch whom he stabs and she turns into a dove and flies away in retreat.

It’s a pretty good action scene for the climax of your big adventure movie. However, it’s not quite yet done. Maax is revived by the witch before she retreated. He plans to kill Dar by stabbing in him the back as he carries Kiri down the temple. Realizing Maax is about to kill Dar, Kodo jumps onto Maax and bites at his neck forcing them both into the sacrificial flames killing both of them. Seth leads the people of Aruk up to the temple to take it back, but they see the Juns coming. Together, Tal and Dar agree the people of Aruk must fight for their freedom.

Seth sets a trap for the Juns by covering the tar moat and pulling away the bridge across it. Awaiting battle, Dar, and the rest of us, are reminded by the medallion that the bird people gave him earlier. He tosses it up to Sharak. As night falls, the Juns arrive to fight the newly freed people of Aruk. Kiri and Tal attempt to light the moat on fire but Tal is struck by a crossbow bolt. However, Kiri gets through and holy shit the entire moat EXPLODES wiping out most of the horde.

Some of the Juns get across though, but only Dar, Kiri, and Seth are outside the walls of Aruk to fight. Well, Tal is there, but that kid took that bolt right to the chest so… Not looking great there. The people of Aruk may have lost two kings in one day. Nah, I think I’m kidding. I think the little guy will survive. Anyway, the leader of the horde specifically would like to battle against Dar. After all, he’s the star of the movie, and he’s wearing the least amount of clothing so he’s probably a badass. The warlord is pretty experienced and he’s got a pretty cool weapon that looks like a hook on a chain that has distance and many sharp bits. Dar eventually gets the best of him by kicking him onto his very own weapon. There are still several dozen of the other Juns and they are kind of ready to kill the rest of our heroes.

Everything looks pretty bad, but hey, remember that medallion and Sharak being sent away? Yeah, the bird people arrive and literally begin gooifying and eating the rest of the Juns. Seeing the fairly nasty scene play out, Dar suggests to Seth and Kiri that they probably should go back inside. They take Tal inside and save him.

The next morning, Seth says Tal is gonna be fine. However, Seth realizes that, in truth, Dar is the firstborn and he should be king, but Dar declines saying Seth trained Tal too well and Seth is already about as good of a right hand as any king should hope to have. But hey! Dar will still get the girl. Kiri followed him out into the wild. They live together with Sharak, Ruth, and Podo, who has given birth to her and Kodo’s babies. So, yeah, it all worked out well.

The Beastmaster is a pretty good movie. Generally speaking, it runs pretty close to 50/50 in terms of critic appraisal. I believe it was maybe TV Guide who claimed it was a surefire instant cult classic and… yeah. It really was. Mind you, this was just after Conan the Barbarian. In fact, the two movies were likely simultaneously in production. While Conan was an R-rated, for adults affair with twice the budget, The Beastmaster was PG, despite getting a full-on look at Tanya’s Roberts. Conan was a little bit heavier in tone and themes even though that all originated in pulp books and had a popular run in comic books from Marvel. That said, I would say that The Beastmaster was much more the comic book adventure that would have appealed to kids.

There’s something much softer about Marc Singer’s portrayal of Dar. Hell, when he’s cast out by King Zed, he weeps. He didn’t even know that his own father had rejected him. He wept for the people he thought were his friends and newfound family. Schwarzenegger’s portrayal of Conan was much harder and has always held the perception of being the height of masculinity. And, let’s face it, as an animal lover, as a kid, I would have probably preferred The Beastmaster.

Notice I said I “would have probably” preferred this movie… Well, I didn’t really grow up with this movie like a lot of other people of my generation and age group did. In fact, I was always aware of it, it played on TV a metric fuckload, and I remember it at every video store ever, but I don’t know if I actually ever watched it until now. So maybe I don’t have the nostalgia for it, but I still quite enjoyed it. I also, as an adult, can see where some of the failings are with this movie and why it really only grossed about twice its budget in the long run. As Gene Siskel pointed out in a half-positive, half-negative review, it’s good fun and has nothing about it to label it as “bad” but it is over-long. He’s right. There are two final battles in this movie and it’s too much for what this movie is.

Still, I referenced comic books earlier, and The Beastmaster does succeed in being a pretty darn good comic book-style adventure and that’s good enough for me to like it.

Alright, it’s time to get out of here and finish this review. Tomorrow, B-Movie Enema: The Series has a new episode for your eyeballs. Join me and Nurse Disembuadee as we watch the bonkers 50s exploitation crime drama Girl Gang! It’s really something else, so you can check that out by coming here to watch at the website, going to B-Movie Enema’s YouTube or Vimeo page linked in the sidebar to your right, or by checking it out at 6pm your local time on the Roku channel OtherWorlds TV. OWTV is free so get that added to your device, won’t ya? Then, next Friday, I’ve got a Dario Argento movie to review. Be back here for Four Flies on Grey Velvet!