Swords-and-Sucking
Has anyone out there (other than me) ever seen an old, 1980s turkey called Red Sonja? It was based on a comic book from the late 70s, and I loved it as a kid. Which only further proves that kids will watch any dreck you shove in front of them.
Warning: Overlong, snarky commentary plus spoilers.
This film was made in the wake of the Conan movies, and it even recycles two of The Barbarian’s stars: Sandahl Bergman, who plays the villainess, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays Conan again, only with a different name this time. Why he wasn’t just Conan beats me because it’s not like Red Sonja wasn’t a spin-off character from those comics anyway.
First things first. Red Sonja isn’t the most politically correct movie in the world. To say the least. The big bad is an evil lesbian. And the movie certainly acts as if calling her an evil lesbian is redundant.
I can remember from when I was a little girl asking my mom about who the pretty, useless, young girl that Bergman is always dragging around was. “Is she a princess?” “Yeah, princess. We’ll, uh, go with that.”
In the grand tradition of 80s swords-and-sorcery epics, we follow a character who is on a quest for vengeance after the slaughter of a peaceful, pastoral family. Red Sonja, played by Brigitte Neilson with even more accent and less finesse than old Arnie, has a harsher backstory than most. Or at least she would even we were given more than a few seconds to actually give a damn.
The filming of her origin story has obviously been chopped down significantly, probably in an effort to maintain a PG-13 rating. However, it’s now barely coherent, but the gist of it is that Evil Lesbian Queen Gedren tries to force Simple Country Girl Sonja to be her little sumthin’-sumthin’. Disgusted by the come-on, Sonja disfigures the queen, who turns around and kills Sonja’s mother, father and brother; has Sonja gang-raped by her soldiers; and then burns down the family farm.
A goddess shows up and promises to bestow upon Sonja mad sword fighting skiz-ellz, so that she can go out and wreak havoc upon her enemies. And all she has to do is promise to not sleep with any men unless they can beat her in a fair fight. Of course, because Sonja now has magic, ass-kicking ability, nobody can beat her in a fair fight. Why the goddess wants her to be celibate, we don’t know. Just go with it.
Admittedly, a lot of this my personal interpretation and also what I gleaned from the comic book adaptation because, like I said, all that information comes at you in a whirlwind teaser segment that takes barely two minutes of screentime. You half-expect Neilson to voice-over, “Previously on Red Sonja...”
We cut to several years later because Sonja is in no real hurry to wreak havoc. Her only surviving family member is her older sister, Varna, who is a priestess at the Temple of the Talisman. The talisman in question is apparently what God used to create the world and then left lying around when He was done with it. It’s been entrusted to the priestesses for thousands of years because only women can touch it, and it really looks like nothing so much as a basketball made out of kryptonite.
It draws its power from the light just like Superman, too. Apparently, it’s grown too powerful and will destroy the world, so the priestesses are going to destroy it first.
I salute their initiative, but here is where the priesthood could’ve taken a lesson from Scott Evil. Instead of just shoving it into a dark closet, they stick it in its very own Unnecessarily Slow-Moving Deathtrap. Which gives Queen Gedren all the time in the world to steal it.
And the sister is mortally wounded in the ensuing battle, but lives long enough to run into Arnold’s character, who in turn fetches Sonja to go seek the talisman and destroy it. And thus, the adventure begins.
Sonja takes off after the talisman with Arnold following surreptitiously behind her. He would just travel with her, but she violently hates men. And he would just put on a pair of gloves and take care of the whole thing himself more efficiently, but then they’d have to change the name of the movie.
Along the way, she encounters a boy-prince and his manservant, both of whom she drags along for the purposes of comic relief. They aren’t really funny, but they make up for it by severely grating your nerves. The prince is played by Ernie Reyes Jr., who at the time was to martial arts what Shirley Temple was to tap-dancing a few decades back. And his only redeeming quality is that you like Sonja better when she’s talking about how much she wants to beat his ass.
The whole crew travels to Gedren’s kingdom, “Berkabane: The Land Of Eternal Night.” Granted, maybe that isn’t the best place to take your new superweapon that feeds on the light, but oh, well. She makes up for it by keeping the talisman locked in her “Chamber of Lights.” Basically a huge set filled with candles.
You might wonder what one does with a Chamber of Lights before you have a light-sucking talisman. The answer is that you film Police music videos there.
On the trip to Berkabane, they encounter a big, mechanical Death-Fish, evil gypsies (more of that PC-thing I was telling you about), and many people who want to get in Red Sonja’s pants. Sonja never deviates from her she-mullet and metal skirt combo, but Arnold changes outfits several times like the preening Ken-doll that he is. He tries to kick her ass so that he can sleep with her but fails. And the kid and the servant grate some more.
Everything goes pretty smoothly, to be honest, and they get to their destination with surprisingly few distractions. And then the final battle takes approximately a third of the movie. In fact, the battle is so long and so boring that it makes you really, really, really ready for the 89-minute long movie to end.
The suckiest part of that is how Queen Gedren shouldn’t even require that kind of length. She isn’t really the kind of villain who does much of her own fighting. She hires people for that. So she gets taken down with rather disappointing ease.
In fact, the final battle goes so well, that the annoying little prince gets his own bad guy. Because he is Ernie Reyes Jr. he does land a few good shots on the queen’s main hench wizard. But then he gets kicked away in the same manner that should’ve been used to deal with Chuckie from the Child’s Play movies. And then he wins by luck. Disappointing, but sort of on par for the way the fights go in this picture.
Finally, Sonja kills Gedren and flings the talisman into some lava. After repeating about 60 bajillion times that the talisman could only be destroyed by sending it into darkness, that always struck me as kind of cheap. Even when I was five. Again with the disappointing.
And then, of course, since she no longer has to procrastinate in killing off her mortal enemy, Sonja decides to give Arnold a freebie. No dueling required. As the end credits roll, all I can think to myself is that I seriously hope the sex is good enough to justify kissing off (literally) her superpowers.
Warning: Overlong, snarky commentary plus spoilers.
This film was made in the wake of the Conan movies, and it even recycles two of The Barbarian’s stars: Sandahl Bergman, who plays the villainess, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, who plays Conan again, only with a different name this time. Why he wasn’t just Conan beats me because it’s not like Red Sonja wasn’t a spin-off character from those comics anyway.
First things first. Red Sonja isn’t the most politically correct movie in the world. To say the least. The big bad is an evil lesbian. And the movie certainly acts as if calling her an evil lesbian is redundant.
I can remember from when I was a little girl asking my mom about who the pretty, useless, young girl that Bergman is always dragging around was. “Is she a princess?” “Yeah, princess. We’ll, uh, go with that.”
In the grand tradition of 80s swords-and-sorcery epics, we follow a character who is on a quest for vengeance after the slaughter of a peaceful, pastoral family. Red Sonja, played by Brigitte Neilson with even more accent and less finesse than old Arnie, has a harsher backstory than most. Or at least she would even we were given more than a few seconds to actually give a damn.
The filming of her origin story has obviously been chopped down significantly, probably in an effort to maintain a PG-13 rating. However, it’s now barely coherent, but the gist of it is that Evil Lesbian Queen Gedren tries to force Simple Country Girl Sonja to be her little sumthin’-sumthin’. Disgusted by the come-on, Sonja disfigures the queen, who turns around and kills Sonja’s mother, father and brother; has Sonja gang-raped by her soldiers; and then burns down the family farm.
A goddess shows up and promises to bestow upon Sonja mad sword fighting skiz-ellz, so that she can go out and wreak havoc upon her enemies. And all she has to do is promise to not sleep with any men unless they can beat her in a fair fight. Of course, because Sonja now has magic, ass-kicking ability, nobody can beat her in a fair fight. Why the goddess wants her to be celibate, we don’t know. Just go with it.
Admittedly, a lot of this my personal interpretation and also what I gleaned from the comic book adaptation because, like I said, all that information comes at you in a whirlwind teaser segment that takes barely two minutes of screentime. You half-expect Neilson to voice-over, “Previously on Red Sonja...”
We cut to several years later because Sonja is in no real hurry to wreak havoc. Her only surviving family member is her older sister, Varna, who is a priestess at the Temple of the Talisman. The talisman in question is apparently what God used to create the world and then left lying around when He was done with it. It’s been entrusted to the priestesses for thousands of years because only women can touch it, and it really looks like nothing so much as a basketball made out of kryptonite.
It draws its power from the light just like Superman, too. Apparently, it’s grown too powerful and will destroy the world, so the priestesses are going to destroy it first.
I salute their initiative, but here is where the priesthood could’ve taken a lesson from Scott Evil. Instead of just shoving it into a dark closet, they stick it in its very own Unnecessarily Slow-Moving Deathtrap. Which gives Queen Gedren all the time in the world to steal it.
And the sister is mortally wounded in the ensuing battle, but lives long enough to run into Arnold’s character, who in turn fetches Sonja to go seek the talisman and destroy it. And thus, the adventure begins.
Sonja takes off after the talisman with Arnold following surreptitiously behind her. He would just travel with her, but she violently hates men. And he would just put on a pair of gloves and take care of the whole thing himself more efficiently, but then they’d have to change the name of the movie.
Along the way, she encounters a boy-prince and his manservant, both of whom she drags along for the purposes of comic relief. They aren’t really funny, but they make up for it by severely grating your nerves. The prince is played by Ernie Reyes Jr., who at the time was to martial arts what Shirley Temple was to tap-dancing a few decades back. And his only redeeming quality is that you like Sonja better when she’s talking about how much she wants to beat his ass.
The whole crew travels to Gedren’s kingdom, “Berkabane: The Land Of Eternal Night.” Granted, maybe that isn’t the best place to take your new superweapon that feeds on the light, but oh, well. She makes up for it by keeping the talisman locked in her “Chamber of Lights.” Basically a huge set filled with candles.
You might wonder what one does with a Chamber of Lights before you have a light-sucking talisman. The answer is that you film Police music videos there.
On the trip to Berkabane, they encounter a big, mechanical Death-Fish, evil gypsies (more of that PC-thing I was telling you about), and many people who want to get in Red Sonja’s pants. Sonja never deviates from her she-mullet and metal skirt combo, but Arnold changes outfits several times like the preening Ken-doll that he is. He tries to kick her ass so that he can sleep with her but fails. And the kid and the servant grate some more.
Everything goes pretty smoothly, to be honest, and they get to their destination with surprisingly few distractions. And then the final battle takes approximately a third of the movie. In fact, the battle is so long and so boring that it makes you really, really, really ready for the 89-minute long movie to end.
The suckiest part of that is how Queen Gedren shouldn’t even require that kind of length. She isn’t really the kind of villain who does much of her own fighting. She hires people for that. So she gets taken down with rather disappointing ease.
In fact, the final battle goes so well, that the annoying little prince gets his own bad guy. Because he is Ernie Reyes Jr. he does land a few good shots on the queen’s main hench wizard. But then he gets kicked away in the same manner that should’ve been used to deal with Chuckie from the Child’s Play movies. And then he wins by luck. Disappointing, but sort of on par for the way the fights go in this picture.
Finally, Sonja kills Gedren and flings the talisman into some lava. After repeating about 60 bajillion times that the talisman could only be destroyed by sending it into darkness, that always struck me as kind of cheap. Even when I was five. Again with the disappointing.
And then, of course, since she no longer has to procrastinate in killing off her mortal enemy, Sonja decides to give Arnold a freebie. No dueling required. As the end credits roll, all I can think to myself is that I seriously hope the sex is good enough to justify kissing off (literally) her superpowers.