9/2/08: Deathmaster (1972)A lot of great horror films were made in the aftermath of the Manson Family. Too bad that zombies weren’t more fashionable then, or we might’ve gotten at least one based on Altamont.
Deathmaster isn’t just a Manson film, though. It’s also kind of a Count Yorga movie, starring Robert Quarry in a role very similar to his work as the ’70s best ersatz Dracula. There would eventually be a legal wrangle over the matter, with the studio behind the Yorga films finally releasing
Deathmaster. Even stranger, an ad campaign for
Count Yorga Returns—originally released in 1971—would incorporate references to both characters, such as, “The Deathmaster is back from beyond the grave!”
Deathmaster certainly begins like either of the Count Yorga films. A coffin washes ashore on a California beach, having been summoned via flute by a mute henchman. Then we cut to what looks like a classic hippie vs. biker scenario, as anti-social Monk rides into Topanga Canyon with his girlfriend. He soon has a confrontation with peaceful kung-fu practitioner Pico. After a quick fight, a friendly Pico invites Monk and his gal to stay at his place—which seems to be a local abandoned castle turned into a commune.
The place could use a guy like Monk. Pico’s gotten bored with his hippie friends, and complains that he’s “hung up all night always on the same damn thing—looking for my head.” He proclaims the whole scene to be a “goddamn motherloving bore.”
That’s when Khorda strolls in, looking quite regal—or like a Beverly Hills hairdresser. He turns down an offer of food, claiming that fruit is destruction. Khorda then offers more deep thoughts. Everyone quickly decides that they’re Khorda’s disciples. That’s pretty impressive, considering that Khorda mostly sounds like he’s reciting one of Donovan’s lyric sheets.
“We groove on what you’re saying,” proclaims Pico. The only sensible guy is Monk. He isn’t happy the second time that Khorda appears. (It can’t help that Khorda’s first instruction to the hippies is to clean up their house.) “Nobody’s going to get me to take a sweetwater enema,” Monk declares. He’s also disdainful of how Khorda is scared of Monk’s Iron Cross medallion: “I’m going to town to get me some steak and whiskey!”
Monk misses out on some good action—including Khorda’s seduction of his girlfriend. That’s how she’s the first to learn that their new guru is a vampire. (This is also when we learn that Quarry is using the same distinctive upper-and-lower fangs flashed by Count Yorga.) Khorda uses some kind of psychic power to lock all the other hippies in other rooms while he claims his first victim. They hear the screams, though.
Pico finally gets out, and asks Khorda what’s going on. “The nights of our lives,” claims Khorda, “are always filled with meaningless screams.” Khorda would make a fine CAIR spokesman.
Khorda then uses some bongo music to turn all the other hippies into vampires. Pico’s the only one who escapes. The next morning, he’s trying to convince elder hippie Pop that the castle is full of vampires. He figures that Pico just had a bad trip. Pop, incidentally, is played by the great character actor John Fiedler. Readers of a certain age will recognize his distinctive voice as that of Piglet in Walt Disney’s Winnie the Pooh cartoons. You know you’re having a bad trip when Piglet is saying that you’re imagining things.
Pop starts to believe Pico after they find Monk’s dead body, and some of Pico’s roommates come into town while acting like zombies and wearing pre-Christian symbols around their necks. Pico and Pop go off to the castle that night to confront Khorda. They get there just in time to interrupt Khorda’s plan to use Pico’s girlfriend for a blood sacrifice.
Khorda is doing his usual speechifying, and there’s one part that’s a perfect New Age spin on vampirism. It comes after Khorda talks about the notion of sins: “We, knowing not of God in so shameful a context, can therefore never delude ourselves or defile his image. We do not sustain ourselves on empty religious content—we abstain from them, in order we can hold solely and always to the ever-enduring continuity of human life itself.”
As noted, Khorda’s saying all that while he’s getting ready to kill a young girl. He’s got a whole rap to rationalize that, too. The entire movie is full of Khorda’s bizarre rationalizations, not to mention grand statements that are really just sour grapes. Earlier, he’s seen talking about how great the night is, with “no cruel glow of sunlight to show the limits of our horizon.”
It’s interesting that Khorda keeps the rap going even after he’s converted his followers to vampires. It’s like the hippies still need that sustenance. Fortunately, Pico is at a point where he’s ready to be a little more resourceful. The ending’s kind of a downer—in the typical style of a Count Yorga film—but Pico seems to get out okay. At least, until that final frame that looks like a tribute to the end of Roger Corman’s
The Trip.
Make it your own: Earlier this year, schlock director Fred Olen Ray—who helped revive Robert Quarry’s career with low-budget roles in the ’80s—released a Quarry
twofer DVD of
Deathmaster and 1991’s
Teenage Exorcist. The second feature’s kind of useless, but we’re looking forward to hearing the commentary track on
Deathmaster. Quarry’s a pretty funny guy. He probably improvised a lot of Khorda’s dialogue.
