Archive for September, 2007

The Beastmaster (Source Novel)

Picked up this yellow-paged pocket pal a few years back at a second-hand shop, for a whopping four times its 1959 cover price. Don Coscarelli’s film The Beastmaster is a rich fantasy film born of his imagination but loosely based on this novel. Very loosely.

Author Andre Norton (whom also penned two others within the same mythos, Beastmaster’s Ark and Beastmaster’s Circus) was apparently not too crash-hot about the film straying from the source material. Yet reading through the credited “based on” source novel, one can appreciate those faint threads that run from the page and into the cult classic flick. Broadly speaking here, the story in the two duelling mediums are two sides of the same coin - subtract a few thousand of years for the film’s setting, add a couple thousand for the novel’s. At the heart of each lies the warrior/animal base concepts.

Here, I’ve transcribed two thoughtlessly out-of-context excerpts below - have a party.

“Sir, there is a transport leaving for that sector tommorow. My papers are in order, are they not? I think I have all the necessary permits and endorsements-”
…..The young man who wore the green of the Galactic Commando, with the striking addition of a snarling lion’s mask on the breast of his tunic, smiled with a gentle detatchment at the Commander.
…..That officer sighed inwardly. Why did they always dump these cases on his desk? He was a conscientious man man, and now he was a troubled one.
…..”Hosteen Storm. Rank: Beastmaster. Race: Amerindian. Native planet: Terra of Sol-”

And the description of the title character:

…..”Storm is a Navajo Indian, one of the last survivors of a planet that was destroyed in war with the humonoid Xiks. With animals he has trained, and with whom he is in rapport, he joins the explorers and settlers of the colonial world, Arzor. Because, on Arzor, he expects to find the enemy he has never seen and whom he must kill for the honor of his tribe and his people…”