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Possible Spoilers As Peter Jackson has so brilliantly shown in his `Lord of the Rings' trilogy, it is quite possible to make good films, even great ones, within the heroic fantasy genre. The genre has distinguished literary antecedents, dating back to the mediaeval chivalric romances, particularly the Arthurian legends, upon which Tolkien and other authors have drawn. `Lord of the Rings' apart, however, it is difficult to think of any other sword-and-sorcery films which are any good. I would agree with the reviewer who said that the best of a bad bunch was Ron Howard's `Willow', and even that achieved little distinction other than that of being a merely mediocre film as opposed to a positively bad one. `Red Sonja', however, cannot achieve the even more modest distinction of being simply a bad film as opposed to an appalling one.
As with `Willow', many of the plot-elements in `Red Sonja' are derived from `The Lord of the Rings'. An evil ruler seeks to gain control of an artefact with supernatural powers in order to achieve an ambition of world domination, but is thwarted by an assorted group of heroes. The film, set in the Hyborian Age, a barbaric era in the earth's remote past, starts with the villain of the piece, the wicked Queen Gedren, making unwelcome sexual advances to the heroine Sonja. When these are rebuffed, Gedren (not a woman to take no for an answer) reacts by murdering Sonja's parents and brother. (In 1985 it was presumably still considered politically correct not only to make the chief villain a woman but also to make one of the main motives for her villainy frustrated lesbian lust).
Gedren's next move is to capture the Talisman, a sort of fluorescent green soccer ball with magical powers, by slaughtering the whole of the scantily-dressed female priesthood charged with protecting it, just as they are about to destroy it because they feel its powers have become too dangerous. Among the dead is Sonja's sister, her sole surviving relative. Sonja herself, however, has not been idle, but has enrolled in a martial arts academy from which she graduates summa cum laude, and sets out to avenge herself. Along the way she teams up with Kalidor, a heroic wandering swordsman-king resembling Tolkien's Aragorn, Prince Tarn, the spoilt child-ruler of a kingdom that has fallen to Gedren's powers, and Falkon, Tarn's loyal servant. The rest of the film is fairly predictable, as Sonja and her allies try to overthrow Gedren and prevent the destruction of the world threatened by the out-of-control Talisman.
Just what is it that makes this film so bad? Well, the acting, for a start. Arnold Schwarzenegger as Kalidor gives the sort of typical wooden, poker-faced performance that became his trademark, at least in the early part of his career, complete with heavy foreign accent. Compared with Brigitte Nielsen as the heroine, however, he looks like Laurence Olivier. Miss Nielsen seems to have had even worse language difficulties, delivering every line in the mechanical, toneless voice of someone who has just completed lesson three of a `teach-yourself-English-by-correspondence' course. One wonders if she was hired for the role just to make Arnie look good by comparison. The other characters, while not conducting their own private struggles against the English language, are simply cartoonish caricatures, especially Prince Tarn who must be one of the most obnoxious screen youngsters ever.
An even worse fault than the bad acting, however, is the film's almost complete lack of imagination. This is a particularly glaring fault in a fantasy film, as films of this genre need to rely on their imaginative power in order to persuade the audience to suspend the natural feelings of disbelief that would be provoked by a fantastic plot. When we watch Peter Jackson's masterpiece we can persuade ourselves, at least for the next three hours, that we are in Middle-Earth, that elves, wizards and hobbits do exist, and that the fate of the world really does depend upon the destruction of a magic ring. When we watch `Red Sonja' we are persuaded of nothing except that we are watching a bunch of actors with bad accents fighting one another on a hillside for possession of a lime-green football.
This lack of imagination even starts with the film's title. The British science-fiction author Brian Aldiss, when challenged about the exotic names given to his characters, replied that there was little point in creating a fictional alien society with its own distinctive culture if you were going to spoil the effect by calling the hero Joe. (Admittedly, Tolkien was able
to get away with giving the name Sam to one of his main characters, but that was because Hobbits were supposed to be reassuringly familiar, the Middle-Earth equivalent of tweedy, pipe-smoking Englishmen). Similarly, giving the heroine of a tale ostensibly set in a long-gone barbaric age a common girls' name like `Sonia' (which is how the name `Sonja' is pronounced) is about as appropriate as calling her `Betty' or `Mary-Jane'.
The film seems to have been made on a very small budget, which makes me wonder why they bothered at all. Fantasy needs to be done convincingly, or not at all. It was obviously shot in a remote mountain area, with little or no attempt to suggest a distinctive culture. The few buildings we see, such as the temple of the Talisman or Gedren's palace, are obviously cheap sets. We learn that Tarn's capital city has been destroyed by Gedren using the power of the Talisman, but we do not actually see this event; all we see is what might be a thunderstorm taking place on the other side of a hill. At first you wonder how Sonja intends to overthrow an entire kingdom with only a few allies, but when you see how small an army Gedren has at her disposal it becomes more understandable. When an earthquake threatens to destroy the palace, you wonder if this is the Talisman at work or merely a crew member inadvertently leaning against the set. If we can enjoy this film for nothing else, we can at least enjoy it for its inadvertent humour; a fine example of the so-bad-it's-funny school of filmmaking. Ed Wood would have been proud of this one. If it had been shown on Californian television the night before the recall election, Gray Davis would still be governor. 2/10.


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