The shop received a pair of titles from Australia today: Tom Savini’s 1990 remake of “Night of the Living Dead” and Don Coscarelli’s “The Beastmaster,” a sci-fi action movie about a He-Manesque* warrior who can telepathically bend animals to his will. The picture was a staple on television for years — during the early 80s, the movie aired on HBO so often that it spawned the claim that the channel’s name stood for “Hey, Beastmaster’s On!” The gag seemingly took on new life as the picture moved from premium to basic cable; one Facebook commenter today posted that TBS stood for “The Beastmaster Station.”
* = Can anyone seriously deny that Marc Singer’s Beastmaster character didn’t have some influence on the look of the cartoon character He-Man, whose television series premiered the year after the film came out?