The Lesser Conan

You don't see a lot of films about barbarians in the current era of film. In the 1980s there was a brief period where barbarians were the rage, largely because Arnold Schwarzenegger was a special effect all unto himself and he perfectly looked the part of a overly muscled barbarian. But even then, the appeal was short lived. Conan only got two films, and later attempts to restart that franchise died quickly. Meanwhile, historical epics in general slowly faded in popularity to the point that, now, it's doubtful that you could even get one of these films off the ground. Conan is a dead property, and other works, like Red Sonja, struggle to get out of development hell.

Back in the 1980s, though, during that brief boom, studio Dino De Laurentis Corporation thought they had the winning formula to these films. They had the rights to Robert E. Howard's characters, and they were going to milk anything about the "Hyborian Age" that they could. So after the solid success of Conan the Barbarian and the moderate success of sequel Conan the Destroyer, it was time for Red Sonja to get her turn... and they her film killed the franchise. Watching the film easily illustrates why.

The movie is focused on our titular character, Red Sonya of Rogatino, a girl who sees her family killed before her by an evil queen before that evil queen then has her men repeatedly rape Red Sonja. The queen, Gedren of Berkubane (Sandahl Bergman), finds Sonja to be quite beautiful and wants her as a prize, but she wants the girl broken first. Instead, though, Sonja survives the attack and escapes into the woods where a spirit blesses the girl with increased fighting prowess. Red Sonja then goes off to train to be the best sword fighter the world has ever seen.

While she trains, her one remaining sister, Varna (Janet Agren), becomes a priestess in charge of the Talisman. This artifact is a world stone, capable of creating, and destroying, worlds. Fearing it too powerful, Varna and her priestess sisters planned to bury the Talisman where it could never be seen again. However, Gedren and her men invade the temple before the ceremony can be completed. Varna is wounded in the attack and escapes, but the rest of the priestesses die, and Gedren gets the stone. Now it's up to Red Sonja, and the warriors she collects along the way, to find revenge for her fallen sister, get the Talisman, and complete the task of destroying it, once and for all.

The first issue with 1985's Red Sonja is that it's story is both stupidly simple and needlessly complex. The gist is simply that she has to get from where she finds Varna, across the world, to Gedren's castle, and take care of both the queen and the Talisman. That's s thirty minute story, tops. So to make up for that, the film pads everything out with one complication after another, pushing Sonja from one locale, one adventure, after another, with none of it really adding to the characters or the story. It's all just filler.

This is a film that, essentially, drives itself forward via plot instead of via characters. When we meet Red Sonja she's already gone through all her training, learning to be the best swords-woman in the world. She is, in essence, a character already at the end of her journey, having learned all she really needed to. Thus, killing Gedren is the only thing on her Bucket List that she had to do. This is not a heroine learning to be who she needs to be, she's already there. It's like this is the last chapter in a story, and to make that work, the film just had to throw challenges at Sonja to eat up time. None of it informs us about Sonja in any meaningful way, not does it cause her to reevaluate nearly anything about herself. It doesn't matter.

The same isn't necessarily true for all her traveling companions. One in particular, Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.), is a young hero at the start of his own journey, Gedren destroys his kingdom near the start of Sonja's adventure, and when our heroine meets this boy, he's a spoiled little shit abusing his only friend, and servant, Falkon (Paul L. Smith). Where Sonja has nothing to learn in her own movie, Tarn has much to gain, going from insolent little boy to worth princeling over the course of the story. He's a terrible character, one you really wish could just get shoved off a cliff, never to be seen again, but he does at least have a journey he goes on. I guess that's something.

The other major character in the film is Lord Kalidor, played by Arnold. You can tell Arnie was included in this film to draw in audience members and add some tenuous connection to the other Hyborian films, the Conan series, which also star the hulking Austrian. In this film he's not playing Conan, and he really doesn't act like Conan, but that doesn't mean he does much here other than look imposing, smile, and swing a sword. Like Sonja, Kalidor is already at the end of his hero's journey, and he basically follows Sonja around because she's hot and can swing a sword. He likes that in a woman. Does he learn anything about himself or gain anything from this adventure he didn't know before? No. Like just about everyone else here, Kalidor exists just to further the plot. That's it.

You would think that, at a minimum, the arc between Sonja and Gedren would be interesting; a heroine versus her greatest enemy should mean something to the story. The issue here is that, until the climax of the film, Sonja and Gedren share absolutely no screen time. Sonja's quest for vengeance, and the animosity that could exist between these characters, is something solely told to us but never illustrated. Thus, when we finally get to see the two characters interact, their quarrel is airy and hardly formed. It doesn't help that the actors have no chemistry towards each other, positive or negative, so this central conflict feels like a dull and empty void.

But then, dull and empty void is an apt descriptor for our lead heroine. The biggest issue with Red Sonja is that she's portrayed by Brigitte Nielsen who is absolutely unable to deliver the kind of heroic performance we need for this character. Red Sonja should be big and tough, a dynamic, charismatic force in every scene she's in (and since she's in every scene she should be the center of the film). Nielsen never finds the character of Sonja, leaving us with a central performance that barely rises above white noise. I'm sure there had to be someone the film could have cast in this role that could have delivered a power performance as Sonja, but Nielsen wasn't it.

Compounding on top of that are cheap production values, bad action, bad costuming, and a rather repetitive score from Ennio Morricone. Red Sonja would be a comedy of errors with everything it gets wrong except, watching this film, it's so bad it's not even funny. This is just a terrible, boring, unwatchable film. There was hope for the Conan series when it started, promising a long and powerful "Hyborian Age". Red Sonja managed to kill that promise with just one film. I guess it's a good thing she kills Gedren in this movie because she was never going to get a second chance at it, not if this was all the producers could manage.