Sword and Sorcery Movie Trends - Quantity and Quality

Movie Queue: The last few years I have been capturing lists of forthcoming Sword & Sorcery movies (Link to 2013 S&S Movie Queue).  Moving beyond that, in an attempt to capture a list of  past Sword and Sorcery movies, I assembled a Pinterest Board.    
This exercise made me realize that I had missed seeing Roger Corman's 1980's Cult Classics movies: DeathStalker I,II,II, IV, and the Barbarian Queen, and the Warrior and the Sorceress. Amazon has a collection deal, in which I can get 4 of those.  Would it be worth my time/money (6hrs/$18USD) to complete this gaping hole in my life? How essential are these B-movies toward developing a well-rounded S&S groupie? I have since ordered the movies...and will be watching them soon...more on that below.

Therapy: I had turned to the Sword and Sorcery group on Goodreads for some biased advice.  There author Bruce Durham directed me toward a great website that details what elements Sword & Sorcery movies are expected to have, and has a great list of movies listed by release date.  To see the trends over time I graphed a histogram:

Quantity - Movies per Year
QualityTrends: The trends show clearly how the 1982 John Milius's "Conan The Barbarian" movie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, inspired a lot of others.  Some featured new perspectives, like Excalibur, Fire and Ice, and Legend...and were good enough not dilute the genre.  Unfortunately many "Conan clones" generally lacked in quality.  Well actually, even Arnold's Conan the Destroyer was not so great...nor was the 2011 Conan reboot with Jason Momoa (which had a blatant disregard for following through on basic story-telling).

Future of Hope: Peter Jackson's excellent treatment of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings in 2001 seems to have sparked another surge.  Fans should be hopeful.  With the excellent translation of George Martins Game of Thrones on HBO (being a series and not a movie, that is not captured in the graph), Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy in progress, a live action version of Fire and Ice in the works, and even a sequel to Solomon Kane brewing...we have reason to beleive that the portfolio of Sword & Sorcery movies will grow in quantity and quality.  In fact  Dealine.com reports that "Legend of Conan ~2014" intends to redeem Conan's credibility:

"There are no plans for Momoa to return. Morgan said that in his mind,The Legend Of Conan not only skips over that film, but also the 1984 sequel that Schwarzenegger starred in. The direct link is to the original, which was directed by John Milius from a script he wrote with Oliver Stone."

Deathstalker: Anyway, as we await new flicks, I find myself checking out the old ones I had missed.  I do not expect much. There is a stunningly hilarious and through review of the Deathstalker series on cinemassacre.com from 2010 (embedded video below). It dissects the absurdity of the series, even going as far as to quantify the ratio of fight scenes to women's breasts shown per movie.  Of course, I have not seen the movies yet, but have just received them by mail and I am mentally prepared now.  What is sad is that many of these had great covers by artist Boris Vallejo, which promised to deliver serious Sword & Sorcery.  Great marketing I suppose.
Boris Vallejo covers for the Deathstalker Series

CineMassacre
Uncensored version link here (Click)
Posted on: March 12, 2010 | Views: 4,509 | CommentJames Rolfe enters a twisted, chaotic world of darkness from legendary schlockmeister Roger Corman.