Marketing and the Movies: Deathstalker (A TRULY Horrible Movie)
An incoherent 1983 sword-and-sorcery disaster with zero redeeming value somehow earned a cult following. Ten marketing lessons from a movie I’m begging you not to watch. Just do your weird thing.
Deathstalker. A muscle-bound barbarian is sent by a witch to track down a magic sword, a chalice, and an amulet before an evil sorcerer can grab them — and along the way, falls in lust, rescues a monster/man and a princess, and returns a kingdom to the people.
This is the quintessential pulp movie. On one hand, chef’s kiss.
OTOH, it is an absolutely horrible movie. Don’t watch it. I honestly wish I hadn’t. It’s barely coherent, it’s got zero redeeming value, and while it might be a cult classic for nostalgia purposes, it comes loaded with the 80s issues of casual misogyny and women existing at the disposal of men because they’re women and men are manly and all of that.
Even when I was younger, I always had an issue with the non-consent issues in these movies, as much as I enjoyed (fine, still enjoy) the gratuitous female nudity. Not trying to make grand social commentary here, simply giving fair warning about what you’re getting into if you watch this one.
Anyway, since I did watch it; here are a few marketing lessons.
Be Who You Are
From the beginning, you know what you’re getting with this movie. The credits open with vaguely threatening, propulsive synth and drums — cheesy-ass 80s music. Menacing figures run along in the background, then jump out and attack someone the second the credits end, along with a touch of gratuitous nudity. It opens in a way that tells you exactly what’s coming.
Some Days, You Just Get the Shit Stick
That group of figures leaps off the screen and attacks a guy who’s obviously a thief — he’s got loot and a bound woman in his camp. About 20 of them, one of him. He runs. And runs. Then he sees a horse and thinks he’s saved. He turns a corner and there’s Deathstalker, staring at him. The thief does the math — one, I saw a horse, I’m saved; two, Deathstalker, hey, maybe I won’t die. Deathstalker kills the entire group. Then he kills the thief too, because Deathstalker isn’t a nice guy either.
“This Just Isn’t Your Day, Is It?” he says over the corpse.
Some days you’re swimming uphill during an avalanche. Every small thing goes sideways. There’s no marketing fix for that, because there’s nothing to fix — the day was just shit. Absorb it. Let it pass through you. Accept it. Move on. There will be better days, and a string of bad ones doesn’t predict them. Don’t quit the newsletter, torch the plan, or rewrite the strategy on the strength of one rotten day. Take the shit stick, set it down, and show up tomorrow.
Tits Ahoy! Know your audience.
The boobs fly early and often, aimed straight at the acne-covered, never-touched-a-girl D&D demographic still living off the high of accidental side-boob contact with Sister Mary Jo Rottenkrotsch at the church dance two years ago. The audience likes boobs, so the director gave them boobs. When Kaira shows up, she’s in a robe, starts a sword fight, and her bosoms flop out — because apparently that’s what all women sword fighters did. Fought naked, no armor, just a harness under the boobs. Ludicrous. But again, it’s pandering to the audience.
What’s this mean for your marketing? At some level, give the people what they want. I used to run editorial surveys — ask for replies, then build the next year’s articles around direct customer feedback. Doesn’t have to be complicated. When you know your audience, you know what to give them. In this case, it’s boobies.
Here’s the catch: most people never ask. They guess at what their audience wants, guess wrong, and then wonder why nobody opens the email. A newsletter is the cheapest, most direct way to actually hear from the people you’re trying to reach — but only if you’ve got one running. If staring at a blank screen every week is the thing keeping you from starting, that’s the exact problem my Newsletter-in-a-Box service exists to solve.
“I steal and kill to stay alive, not for the luxury of glory.”
Deathstalker at least knows who he is. Focus on what moves your business — not your ego.
Power Unearned Isn’t Power
Scars make us human. The immortal sorcerer holds power he never earned — borrowed, taken, never sweated for.
You can’t plug expertise in. This isn’t The Matrix — nobody loads “I know kung fu” into your head and suddenly you can fight. GenAI will hand you the output fast and clean, but it can’t hand you the understanding underneath it. Skip the reps and you don’t actually own the thing. You can’t feel where it shaky, can’t tell when it’s wrong, can’t defend it when someone pushes back.
You bought the answer. You didn’t earn discernment.
Use the tool. Just don’t mistake what it gives you for what you’d know if you’d done the work.
From He-Man to Deathstalker
I literally laughed out loud at the sword pose lifted straight from the cartoon. Everyone borrows from everyone else — there’s nothing new under the sun, and pretending otherwise is just a fancy way to procrastinate. Extending someone else’s work is original. Combining two old things into one new thing is original. It’s your spin — your fold, spindle, and mutilate — that makes it yours.
I looked at the dates just before I hit publish. This might just be a sword and sorcery sword-position trope I’ve never noticed before given Deathstalker came out a year or so before He-Man.
Times Change
If I’d seen this at 12, I’d have loved it — hello, boobies! A little older (most days) and it’s just not good. The boobs-as-scenery, the women-as-furniture was standard in 1983. Honestly made me cringe a bit watching this week.
Times change. The fundamentals don’t — useful beats clever, trust beats hype, same as it ever was. But the surface does. Tone, references, what your audience will sit still for — that shifts under you. Don’t run 1983’s playbook in 2026 and wonder why it falls flat.
And, yes, boobs as scenery still exists — Game of Thrones fans will remember the mini-uproar over the “sexplanation” scenes from Littlefinger’s whorehouse.
Own Your Power
One of the small moments of empowerment for women in the movie: Kaira sits down. She moves a woman who’s seated below Deathstalker and claims that place next to him — not where the other woman was sitting, two steps down, but right next to him, as an equal.
You have products and services people want to buy that will help them own that. There’s nothing more powerful than knowing who you are, knowing your power, and using it.
Never Trust the Evil Sorcerer
The immortal ruler of the land is holding a tournament to pick the strongest person in the realm as his successor. Of course, an immortal sorcerer doesn’t need a successor — he’s immortal. The obvious answer: he’s pulling everyone in so they kill each other off, and then he kills whoever’s left standing. That’s the evil sorcerer’s plan.
Look around and you’ll see hustle bros trying to separate you from your money with false scarcity, fake time limits, and fear. There’s an element of truth in some of their language — scarcity and urgency are viable marketing tools when used judiciously, with the intent of helping rather than scaring. But getting your audience to buy because they’re too afraid not to is just propaganda.
Biggest Takeaway
Do your weird thing. If this godawful piece of shit can become a hidden cult classic and inspire loyalty 40-odd years later, then the weird thing in your head — the one that’s probably not horrible, doesn’t treat women like objects, and might actually be coherent — has at least an equal shot at getting picked up and loved.
There’s no guarantee. Other than the guarantee that if you don’t do it, you won’t be found, you won’t be loved, you won’t be turned into a cult classic. Someone else may have the same idea. It might be worse than yours. But they’ll reap the rewards because they did it and you didn’t.
Closing Thought
So go make your weird thing. It might be bad. It might be a cult classic. It might be both! Or it might be great and beloved or universally hated. You don’t get to find out until it exists — and a barely-coherent 1983 disaster with a director hiding behind a fake name is proof that made and loved is better than unmade and “perfect.”
PS — If your weird thing is a newsletter you’ve been not-starting for a year, that’s a solvable problem. Newsletter-in-a-Box gets it built and out the door with you, so the thing finally exists instead of living in your head. Reply to this one and tell me what you’d like to write about — bryant@simplyusefulmarketing.co.
Musical Interlude
Edited while listening to one of Humano Studio’s playlists. If you’re looking for background music, give ‘em a try.
I kind of like the idea that “bad but made” beats “perfect but never finished.” There’s a whole graveyard of ideas that never got to exist because someone kept refining them in isolation. Even the most ridiculous cult classics at least cleared the bar of existing in the world. That alone gives them more impact than anything still stuck in draft mode. I have so many articles stuck in draft mode - ugh!