Red Sonja (1985)

I think this movie would have worked as a very short film, because there's certainly nothing that would fill out an entire movie. This film features a woman known as Red Sonja trying to get rid of an evil talisman that an evil queen has stolen. That's it for the plot and it's really stunning how needlessly padded this film is. I mean, there's so little going on and everything is drawn out. There's this really obnoxious kid known as the Prince of Tard in the movie too. In fact, most of these characters are annoying. There's this one scene where Arnold fights a fish robot or something.I swear this scene goes on for like ten minutes and it's so monotonous. I'm actually giving credit to "Conan The Destroyer". This happened to be based on another one of Robert Howard's works. Arnold and the main girl fall in love, like completely out of nowhere. I mean, that's cheesy even by bad movie standards. There's so many scenes of characters just playing around and doing nothing. The villain has no backstory or anything. The effects in this movie are so laughable, particularly with how they show teleporting by using cheesy jump cuts. Arnold even himself joked about how bad this movie was. *1/2

This review will be short. I'm giving this rating with a heavy heart. It had passed 15+ years since I heard and watched the intro again. A warrior riding in vast landscapes while one of the greatest soundtracks ever made is playing in tempo with the galloping of the horse. It's truly epic. A birds view shot from the temple, great photography of the priestesses doing their ritual. The evil queen arrives and takes the talisman away, finishing off the remaining alive by dropping them in the talisman's hole. She pulls the lock off the hole's hatch and drops the key in it, assuring a brutal doom to the priestesses. Till there, you think, this is quite great, why is this movie so underrated? Well, from this point on, is where almost everything should have been revised or rewritten. I rest my case.

The third film in the Conan trilogy...well it pretty much was wasn't it. This film is directed by Richard Fleischer who also directed 'Conan the Destroyer', the same studio, Dino De Laurentiis Company, made all three films, Sandahl Bergman was in this film and 'Conan the Barbarian' and of course Arnie starred in all three.I mean lets be honest here, Arnie plays Lord Kalidor, the character is virtually a Conan clone, I dunno why they didn't just make him Conan and be done with it. I believe Sonja comes from the Conan universe originally (I may be wrong) so why not? I'm guessing there may have been copyright issues somewhere.So its the same story again for this fantasy adventure, need I describe the plot? A small band of goodies up against an evil baddie leader and all her baddie warriors who are all holed up in an intimidating fortress. Arnie rides around in his rather unattractive red sparkly jumpsuit (changes to a black number out of the blue half way through) whilst Nielsen sports a long red mullet cut, but she's still cute.This is suppose to be the weakest of the Arnie broadsword adventures but personally I don't see it. Its no worse than the other two and gives you just as much visual sorcery. In fact there's more fantasy stuff going on here than 'CtB', giant pet spiders, giant skeleton bridges, a metallic sea monster thingy and a silly Flash Gordon style baddie wizard. This film boarders more on other films such as 'Krull' and a bit of 'Willow' in my opinion.Reasonable amounts of blood and limb chopping but not overkill. Everything looks a bit tacky later on in the film but again no worse than the other two films. Unfortunately there is an annoying kid in this film, kinda like Data from 'The Goonies' or Short Round from 'Temple of Doom' (same kid actor there), tends to give the film a more slapstick approach at times, 'Conan the Barbarian' was always the most grown up of the three.At this point I reckon Arnie was possibly getting worried he may end up typecast as a barbarian meathead in fantasy films. I can see why this was his last as all three of these films are very similar and not overly wonderful frankly. Still the musical score was always in good hands with Morricone at the helm, how did they manage that? As a kid I loved these films, nowadays the rose tinted shades can't quite save them, amusing and naff, oh and the baddie Queen is a lesbian. Oh yeah, the whole story is down to Sonja simply rejecting her advances at the start, fancy that.5/10

This is a important "culte" film for my very personnal universe, but...what can we say? "red Sonja" looks like a Conan 3. Indeed it is done just after the second episode is an adventure independent, Kalidor looks like Conan but it will eventually Red Sonja (the original title). It remains in the spirit of Conan the Destroyer also directed by Richard Fleischer, a simple action film in the barbarian fantasy universe. Despite the promising features such as the introduction superbly served by the theme music of Ennio Morricone, the film is still disappointing, in the tradition of Conan the Destroyer elsewhere.Red Sonja warrior wants to avenge the theft of an artifact to excessive and destructive powers and the death of her sister. Kalidor who have just enough time to bring Varna (Sonja'sister) to Sonja, will travel with Sonja to have this revenge. By the way they will encounter a couple slightly loufouque a young prince insolent child and his faithful servant, who go to avenge the destruction of their city kingdom. This group of four raiders will travel to the palace of Queen Gedren to avenge her.The plot is fast. We quickly found the palace And very quickly to meet the wicked queen and the four raiders. A very fast action and fighting clumsy especially in the interpretation of stunt or figuration with a great reinforcement of the decor that smell strong cardboard a inanimate sea monster and the atmosphere of the film resembles a large series B to moderate budget.This movie is disappointing despite the talents involved. But all fans of barbaric fantastic and simple fantasy films must watch it because this universe is too rare in a movie.jelios [email protected]