PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *cosmological, sociological*
Although Victor Webster is back for his second outing as Mathayas the Scorpion King, the producers decided to get rid of Number Three's vision of a broody hero and to revert back to the jokey, freewheeling approach of the original movie. Trouble is, it's a mostly dismal sword-and-sorcery retread with no good humor and mostly ordinary action.
Mathayas once again puts himself at the service of a royal patron, trying to steal a magical item from the treasure-vault of a minor tyrant (Lou Ferrigno). Ferrigno's only in the movie for the length of his fight with Mathayas and his partner Drazen (Will Kemp), and in truth the two-on-one fight with Ferrigno is the movie's high point. After the tyrant is bested, Drazen betrays Mathayas, leaving him imprisoned while making off with the magic doohickey. It turns out that Drazen's actually the son of another king, the enemy of Mathayas' patron.
Though the hero wants vengeance, his king instructs him to broker peace with Drazen's father. Drazen has the Scorpion King locked up, during which time the hero meets saucy wench Valina (Ellen Hollman). Then Drazen offs his old man, planning to claim the talisman's power for himself, and frames Mathayas for the crime. Mathayas and Valina escape Drazen's sanctuary, and Valina talks the muscleman into getting help from her eccentric scientist-father Raskov (Barry Bostwick).
Yes, that's right; I said "scientist"-- for in the movie's biggest deviation from the other films in the series, supposedly all the "magic" in this world is really science-derived, according to Raskov. The hero and his new girlfriend kill some time listening to the wacky old guy and fighting with some other tribes before they try to obtain the secret concealed by the talisman. All the phenomena they meet are one form of super-science or another, so I'm not sure what advantage the writers gained by claiming this is a "sword and science" world.
Webster's just okay as the muscle-brained hero, and Hollman's about the same, though at least the director and writers give her character quite a few fight-scenes against both male and female opponents. Michael Biehn, M. Emmet Walsh and Rutger Hauer also appear in minor support-roles, for what that's worth.
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