Heh heh...nice mullet
Before there was Xena, there was Red Sonja, the sword-swingin' redhead creation of Conan creator Robert E. Howard. I've never read any original Howard material, so don't look for insight from me coming in that direction. I've just seen the movies.
Brigitte Nielsen plays Sonja, who is described in the opening crawl as "a fierce warrior with flaming red hair". When first we see her, she's waking up after her home (village? Community center?) has been burned, and is visited by the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi, who tells her that she must study under Yoda on the planet Dagobah to learn the ways of the Jedi Knights. No, wait, I think the ghost is her mom, and she says that she has to learn how to wield a sword under the instruction of some old Asian guy with a huge, huge costume. So, off she goes to learn those skills, but just as soon as she's mastered them (phew, great timing!), her sister's cult of Talisman-protecting acolytes (the Talisman created the world, and if it keeps getting exposed to light, will destroy it) is slaughtered by an army of men. Watch this scene for the most hilariously inept swordplay you'll ever see.
These men are under the control of Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) who wants the Talisman to control the world, of course. Anyways, a muscular hunk named Kalidor (Arnold Schwarzennegger - no, he's not playing Conan, but he does get to swing a sword around and that's good) finds this sister, and brings Sonja to her dying body, where there is much weeping and "You must stop Queen Gedren!"-ing. Sonja sets off on her own to The Land Of Eternal Night (I wish the real world had place names like this) to destroy that Talisman before it destroys the world.
Along the way, she meets up with two more tagalongs (and has a couple of totally irrelevant battles with some male blowhards), the young regent of a recently-sacked kingdom (Ernie Reyes Jr., who's referred to alternately as a king and a prince), and his much-abused babysitter. Let me tell you, you don't know what annoying is until you watch a movie filled with this kid. It seemed pretty popular at the time to have movies with martial-arts fighting kids who could beat the crap out of any adult, and sure enough, that's what this kid does. He's also MEANT to be annoying, to a degree, but I don't think director Richard Fleischer really counted on just how irritating it would be to hear this kid cry out "Hiy-YAH!" every time he so much as scratches his ass. And he can say it at a rate of about three times a second.
I taped this off of WTN, which has a weird affection for made-for-TV movies about suburban moms who solve mysteries, and you'd think that they'd choose a movie whose feminist (well, feminist-ish) ideas aren't so consistently undermined. Yeah, Sonja can swing a sword, but every time she's in any serious trouble, Kalidor comes galloping to her rescue from out of nowhere.
The performances are all what you'd expect; Bergman chewing scenery, Schwarzennegger still fumbling his way past his accent, and Nielsen usually talking like she usually talks but occasionally trying to slip something of an indefinite European accent in there. (additionally, that mullet of hers looks awful, and the color doesn't suit her...a lot of women look fabulous with red hair, but not her) Nielsen's most unintentionally hilarious moment has to be the goofily intense/perplexed look on her face when she's chasing the evil Queen around and cries out "Gedren! Where are you?" I hope I can find a screen capture of that one somewhere.
Probably the biggest unintended laugh is during the climactic battle between Sonja and Gedren; they're dueling each other in this room that's been blocked off by a portcullis, and her three male tagalongs finally catch up to her. Trapped on the other side of the gate, watching Sonja locked intently in her life-and-death struggle, Kalidor shouts out "Sonja! Over here!" as if he expects her to call a recess so she can help them lift the damn thing. Yes, a good sized spray of Pepsi went flyin' out of my mouth when I heard that one.
One thing I definitely must give this movie credit for, is fulfilling the four necessities of the swords-and-sorcery movie: blood, steel, fire, and tits. Okay, the tits are barely glimpsed with a throwaway gag, and there isn't THAT much blood, but they're there, and that's way better than you know any 90's/post-90's movie is going to do. I like Xena as the escapist fun it is, but one of the more off-putting aspects of it is that how no matter how many people Xena slashes across the belly (I don't think I've ever seen her thrust with that sword), never does a drop of blood show up on that blade. She may as well be whacking these people across the belly with a stick. Here, you don't really get to see gobbets of giblets and gouts of gore, but at least stabbing/slashing weapons get some grue on 'em.
And hell, I liked the wacky costumes, and the occasionally cool set (like the chamber in which the Talisman is kept to make sure it's never in the dark), and Ennio Morriconne's score is bombastic, intrusive, and probably a great listen on its own too. Red Sonja is fun, sure, provided you can not only shut off your brain (how often do you think you'd hear the expression "Thank God!" in a world of polytheists?) but promise it that you'll chase this movie with something more intellectually stimulating, like, uh, Conan The Destroyer.
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