Red Sonja

• Directed by Richard Fleischer
• July 3, 1985 (US)
• Based on Red Sonya of Rogatino created by Robert E. Howard and Red Sonja created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith

A fearless female warrior sets out to avenge her family’s death and free her kingdom from the threat of an evil queen.

I’m generally down for an 80s fantasy movie. These came from a different time in filmmaking when just about any idea was tossed against the wall and if it stuck-even a little it-became a motion picture. It was before so much in theaters got watered down for maximum appeal so here I am watching Red Sonja.

Richard Fleischer directed the divisive Conan the Destroyer (also set in the fictitious Hyborian Age) making this set in that same universe though not directly involving Conan despite the presence of Ahnuld who is NOT playing Conan though originally it was TO BE Conan. Then again Sandahl Bergman shows up as NOT Valeria.

Fleischer and pals try for a very Conan-esque tragic backstory for Red Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen). Fleischer possibly lacked the skill and definitely the runtime to do it properly having something that needed to be crafted happen in a big dump. Her family gets killed and Red Sonja gets raped but you shrug it off because it all is done so dispassionately.

How did she wind up with The Grand Master (Tad Horino) teaching her? They have a connection but what is it? It’s her origin story but how she came to be with this sage is ignored. After that unexplained bit we get the setup of the villainous Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) set on controlling a talisman that can only be touched by women called the Talisman because creating a name is hard. You could not even lift something unrelated from Conan creator Howard? 

For a movie that’s supposed to be about the heroic exploits of Red Sonja, Arnold Schwarzenegger as his character Lord Kalidor does the same amount of saving people and action as Red Sonja does if not more so. I understand his presence in the film was a bit of a trick on the part of Dino De Laurentiis, but it still does not excuse the poor insertion of the character. It also doesn’t explain how a guy that looks just like Conan the Barbarian appears in a movie set in the Conan universe but is not Conan the Barbarian. It also doesn’t explain how he keeps popping in at the right moment. As he lingers off in the distance he’s never noticed by anybody though they are supposed to be very capable in some fashion.

Red Sonja is supposed to be a strong, independent woman, but the strength and independence is consistently undermined by the last minute reappearance of Kalidor doing heroics. The feminist message is delivered like a wiffle bat to the head and lands even worse. This has issues beyond that though.

There is Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes, Jr.) and his attendant Falkon (Paul Smith) but you never see any other people from that kingdom. Their beautiful city was destroyed by the evil weapon that Gedren stole to conquer the world. Both are criminally bad comic relief. Tarn is meant to be a brat and difficult royalty but also but he’s just clueless. He’s not funny or entertaining. But he is worse than that.

Prince Tarn borders on being kind of creepy. He keeps trying to make Red Sonja his wife. Admittedly, Nielsen was a stunner back in the day today but his insistence on making her his wife gets just weird. As a one-off joke it’s okay but the more it happens the more it feels like Tarn is a sexual predator in the making.

As a general rule the acting is bad, and the dialogue is worse. There are chunks of the story missing-at least it feels like it. And the climax is a great technical piece, but an awfully underwhelming moment. When things start to pick up and get a little exciting or a little interesting, it’s undermined by pointless and quite unnecessary comedy. 

There were plenty of cheap Conan the Barbarian knock off films that tried to ride the coattails of its success during the 80s. It was a genre defining movie and that’s to be expected. This looks and feels like one of those extremely cheap knock offs. It’s goofy and campy and just more silly than grand adventure. The narration it opens with comes off as a weak imitation of the narration that the Conan films began with.

At 90 minutes it is an adventure that just stumbles around. There’s not much character growth or too much connection between the other assorted adventures. It’s just a bunch of scenes tossed in with a thin veneer of what was then a still very popular film.

Red Sonja had the potential to be something entertaining but it’s just bad. You might feel ashamed that you chose to watch this if you do. I kinda did.