Dick Warlock Movies

The most fascinating thing about Beastmaster 2 is how well the cartoonish sword-and-sorcery characters blend in to contemporary Los Angeles -- it may as well be documentary. Marc Singer plays Dar, a muscle-headed barbarian whose main claim to fame is his ability to communicate with a wide array of animal friends. Dar is informed that his evil brother Arklon (Wings Hauser) has nefarious designs on the universe. Arklon has teamed up with Lyranna (Sarah Douglas), a sexy witch who cracks wise in Valley Girl vernacular, a parlance picked up during her travels through the portal of time to a netherworld called L.A. Arklon has to find a quick way to decimate the universe, so Arklon and Lyranna travel through the portal to steal a neutron detonator from a military base close to Los Angeles. Dar and Southern California teen Jackie Trent (Kari Wuhrer) -- who had gotten stuck in the portal and ended up in Togaland -- pursue Arklon and Lyranna as they make their way through the time hole. Once in La-La land, Dra and his companion find themselves pursued by the LAPD, which considerably slows up their race to catch Arklon. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Thomas Magnum (Tom Selleck) feels guilty when innocent bystander Emily Jackson (Talia Balsam) is seriously injured as the result of a high-speed car chase between Magnum and a gang of black marketeers. To make amends, Magnum brings Emily to Robin's Nest to recuperate from her injuries. Soon, however, it becomes apparent that Emily was not merely a "bystander" in his confrontation with the villains--and chances are that she's not entirely innocent, either. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The only installment of the Halloween series to abandon the Michael Myers story line, Halloween III: Season of the Witch is an intricate sci-fi horror hybrid. A week before Halloween, an older man named Harry Grimbridge (Al Berry) is wounded by a mysteriously dispassionate group of assailants in an industrial parking lot. After receiving treatment at a local hospital from Dr. Dan Challis (Tom Atkins) -- a hard-drinking divorced father of two -- Grimbridge is killed by an assassin who later sets himself on fire. Blowing off his own kids, Challis teams up with Grimbridge's daughter, Ellie (Stacey Nelkin), to find out why the middle-aged toy salesman was murdered. The duo's search soon leads them to a Halloween-mask factory run by inventor and practical joker Conal Cochran (Dan O'Herlihy). In between bouts of passionate lovemaking, Ellie and Challis begin to realize that the sinister old businessman has something other than treats in mind for America's kids -- something to do with the Silver Shamrock masks that Challis' children and thousands of other youngsters have bought for the holiday. Original screenwriter Nigel Kneale, whose scripts for Britain's Quatermass TV series made him a beloved science fiction fixture, sued the producers of Halloween III to have his name removed from the credits after seeing the gory finished product; director Tommy Lee Wallace ultimately received screenplay credit. John Carpenter, director of the first Halloween film, co-produced the third installment with Debra Hill, who would later soldier on without Carpenter for additional, belated sequels. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi