David W
As low budget 70's horror goes I've seen worse. The acting is, shall we be charitable and say 'variable' and production quality isn't the greatest. It's obviously a Jekyll and Hyde homage (the first words of spoken dialogue even foreshadow this) but despite lulls in proceedings it's largely effective and watchable despite a lack of any real gore. Not bad and worth a watch if like me you enjoy cheesy 70's horror.
Rated 3.5/5 Stars •
Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars
01/14/24
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Matt S
I grew up watching this film as a kid in the 70's.
Yeah it's a bad movie with corny dialogue but it's entertaining all the same. It's a Hippie/Biker/Manson Family/Vampire film with suave Robert "Count Yorga" Quarry as the vampire Kourda, Bill "Fake Hair Kung Fu Hippie Pico" Ewing, Bobby "Monster Mash" Picket & John "The voice of Piglet" Fiedler as Pops.
With an incredible score by Bill Marx (Adopted son of Harpo Marx).
What I love about this film is it's downbeat ending, the best kind of horror film in my book.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
10/30/23
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beth m
Robert Quarry was excellent, but the script let the movie down.
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
03/31/23
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Audience Member
There’s a show on Red Letter Media that I watch regularly called “Best of the Worst.” It’s one of my favorite things to watch on Youtube, but I could never imagine having to sit through the actual movies with them. I think Deathmaster is the first film I’ve ever watched that felt like it belonged on that show. This movie has all the cheesy weirdness of a 1970s horror B-movie. At first I was stymied by the whole thing, because it seemed a little silly and not at all like a horror movie (with the exception of the coffin that shows up.) As things were revealed and I realized the kind of movie I was watching it actually surprised me and for a minute, because I thought this might work. The concept of a group of hippies becoming mesmerized by a vampire version of Jesus was unique and I thought they could do some neat things with that. Sadly, it seemed to devolve after the reveal of those sharp teeth. No longer was Quarry someone who could draw in a crowd, instead he was just your standard vampire. After a while I started to just have fun laughing at the movie. The silly lumbering of the villains, and the fact that every action taken in the movie was kind of dumb, made for some good laughs. The speeches were tedious, but also kind of funny. The fact that they kept reusing the same sets again and again was worth a chuckle or two. Perhaps the biggest problem was that the guy playing the protagonist was a terrible actor, so I just rooted for him to die. By the end of the film I was completely disengaged to anything that could be construed as horror, and instead waited for it to end hoping for a few more laughs. Clearly this is not a genre that works for me, but I think I see why the Red Letter Media gang enjoys them.
Rated 1/5 Stars •
Rated 1 out of 5 stars
08/31/18
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Audience Member
A time-capsule of early '70s exploitation horror, I remember this flick from late-night showings on WOR TV out of New York. Cheap as it is, I remember that the gloomy ending - when it came at 2:00am - was disturbing and scary. Robert Quarry ("Count Yorga, Vampire") stars as Khorda, a juxtaposition of Count Dracula and Charles Manson, who descends upon a group of hippies and plies them with hippie philosophy. They take him in as their guru, blissfully unaware that his endless philosophizing that they purge their blood of drugs and impurities is just so that they provide him an impurity-free food source. The only one who doesn't fall for Khorda's guru-act is Pico (Bill Ewing), who tries (and fails) to save his friends and girlfriend (Brenda Dickson) from Khorda's feast. The script is inferior at best, deliberately tossing in as many exploitation elements as you can think of (bikers, kung fu, hippies, and so on). It's Quarry (who also produced) who saves the movie, rising way, way above the material to provide an almost Shakespearean performance. He plays his role absolutely straight, even when he has to spout out atrocious hippie-drivel. It's just fun to watch him work. The presence of veteran character actor John Fiedler helps legitimize the film to some extend.
As explained by Quarry in an excellent commentary track, this film was purchased by distributors as a tax write-off, and was given a very limited release. It spent some time on late-night television before disappearing for nearly thirty years. Watching it now, it's an amusing bit of nostalgia, and watching Quarry give his all makes it at least worth the viewing experience.
Rated 3/5 Stars •
Rated 3 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
Audience Member
another classic SATURDAY AFTERNOON HORROR MOVIE from CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE here in PHILADELPHIA, PA in the mid-1970s through early-1980s.
COUNT YORGA PART III: BILLY JACK VS COUNT YORGA.
in the early 70s there were "BILLY JACK movies" (BORN LOSERS, BILLY JACK, THE TRIAL OF BILLY JACK, and BILLY JACK GOES TO WASHINGTON) movies where an AMERICAN-INDIAN guy fights back against The Man; the hero in DEATHMASTER looks like BILLY JACK a little.
IN DEATHMASTER COUNT YORGA "disguised as" KHORDA (not really), washes-up on a beach; he's aided by BARBADO (played by the guy from ALBINO) to infiltrate a hippie-commune in California.
ROBERT QUARRY having just played COUNT YORGA twice in two previous AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL PICTURES is made-up to look like JESUS CHRIST as he enchants the hippie-commune into vampiristic monsters.
The AMERICAN-INDIAN kid is immune to KHORDA'S spells and must battle KHORDA on his own hopefully before the vampire-venom fully takes-over his girlfriend.
It sounds pathetic, but DEATHMASTER is AWESOME!!!
"preceded" by:
COUNT YORGA, VAMPIRE
and
RETURN OF COUNT YORGA
Rated 5/5 Stars •
Rated 5 out of 5 stars
02/14/23
Full Review
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