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The Lord Zirpola character


Actor David McLean did a good job portraying the unscrupulous, mean-spirited, and psychotic citystate dictator, Lord Zirpola, although looking at him, he does sort of look like he's the heavy-drinker type.

Does it make one wonder how his Lord Zirpola character passed the censors? Lord Zirpola was one old, lecherous, mean, sadistic, son-of-a-b****. He had the right idea in arranging for beautiful women to dance au natural on a darkened stage among hanging, glass rods. I mean, what warm-blooded guy wouldn't enjoy the sight of beautiful nude dancers on a dark stage. But then he degenerates into an unbelievably misogynistic and sadistic bast**d by electrocuting the dancers. There was an implication that the dying, psychotic Lord Zirpola was not only suffering neurotic dementia, but was impotent. He expressed his sexual rage by hurting defenseless women. Many a viewer of DEATHSPORT missed the finer points of this movie by just simply ridiculing it. Sci-fi producer and direct Roger Corman never intended to produce Oscar-award blockbusters. His grand purpose was to entertain us efficiently and economically, to which he has brilliantly succeeded.

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I don't care how old this thread is. I want to comment about Deathsport.

He really was a seriously effed-up character. He was on a level with the libertine sexual sadism that nearly turned my stomach when the girl fell to the floor and I realized what was going on in the scene. Although not shot in a particularly graphic way (aside from boobs or whatever), and the modern 'torture porn' that you can see in Saw and Hostel and the like is much more visually sickening, the thought behind creating Lord Zirpola's character was more twisted than just about anything you actually see in movies.

My favorite line in the movie was when Richard Lynch, who played Zirpola's main henchman Ankar Moor, said to Zirpola when he put his hands on the former, "Don't you ever touch me!" Moor's disgust directed at the degenerate Zirpola was so palpable in Lynch's delivery. Moor had just appeared as a mindlessly obsessed zealot up until that point, and that simple line with its brilliant delivery from Lynch instantly added a fun and interesting depth to the character that I liked a lot.

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