If you lived in the tri-state area between 1983 and 1990, chances are you caught one of the 5,678,908,414 showings of The Beastmaster on any of the local access channels around at the time: WPIX 11 and WFOX 5 in NY, WTIC 61 and WTXX 20 in CT or perhaps WSBK 38 out of Boston. The Beastmaster was grade-A public access filler: a Conan the Barbarian knock-off with enough skin for the adults and animals for the kids! How can you go wrong? I'll tell you how, by killing off the beloved ferret Kodo. You can have all the human sacrifices you want, endless dwarves being slimed into bones by weird birdmen but come on, leave the ferrets alone! Kodo meets his end (which hey, we technically don't see so maybe he lives?!) by jumping on the nape of the evil priest or whatever he was with enough force that his (Kodo) 5 ounce body causes the bad dude to be cast into the pit of fire with ferret still attached. Altruistic and heroic to be sure but did you know that Kodo left a pregnant ferret wife (Podo)? That one brave act meant gone were the days of scrambling across the melon-hard pecs of the leather adorned Beastmaster and the countless hours being carried in Dar's smelly, tattered hide pouch.
On second thought, maybe Kodo knew what he was doing.
Anyhow, I'm not sure what made me think about The Beastmaster other than my co-worker here is pregnant. See, the beginning of the movie has some weird blue-goo-based transfer of the unborn beastmaster into the belly of a cow to protect him from...something. The birdmen? I'm sure the cow must be thrilled with all the leather the Beastmaster wears as an adult--what an ingrate! Marc (with a "C") Singer, AKA The Beastmaster, went on to star in exactly the kind of movies being the lead in Beastmaster will get you.
