Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.PCS 1/10/84; site mtgzz.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!drutx!mtuxo!mtgzz!leeper From: leeper@mtgzz.UUCP (m.r.leeper) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: RED SONJA Message-ID: <909@mtgzz.UUCP> Date: Sun, 7-Jul-85 12:33:37 EDT Article-I.D.: mtgzz.909 Posted: Sun Jul 7 12:33:37 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 8-Jul-85 01:01:13 EDT Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ Lines: 59 RED SONJA A film review by Mark R. Leeper Three years ago Dino De Laurentiis produced the first of his Robert E. Howard films, CONAN THE BARBARIAN, directed by John Milius. It was a film of blood and steel. It had a literate script, a great villain, and a really superior musical score. Apparently, De Laurentiis wanted a lighter touch and last year's CONAN THE DESTROYER was directed by Richard Fleischer. A number of people seem to prefer the second film, though to my mind it was a step down, a +2 rather than the +3 I gave the first film (on a -4 to +4 scale). Now the third film is out--RED SONJA. It is set in Conan's world of Hyberborea and supposedly also based on Howard's writings. Robert E. Howard fans tell me that Red Sonja is a minor character in Howard and her story is, I believe, set in the Fifteenth Century, a far cry from the barbarian age in which the film was set. By all accounts, the film is based more on the similarly misplaced character appearing in a comic book. Well, by comparison to either of the Conan films, RED SONJA is a giant step down. Apparently only a few scenes of what was probably the first half hour of the film were filmed. We are told in a few sentences that when Sonja (Brigitte Nielsen) repulsed the lesbian advances of the evil queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman), the queen had most of Sonja's family killed. As the story opens, the queen is in the process of killing Sonja's sister, who is one of the priestesses who guard a glowing green sphere that gives ultimate power (people who saw HEAVY METAL will immediately think of it as the Loc Nar). Gedren gets the sphere and through mis-use will destroy the world with it unless Sonja can get it back. (It's the old theory from James Bond films: if your hero is trying to save the world, the story has got to be a lot more exciting than if he is just trying to get an enemy decoder, right?) Just to help the film along, Arnold Schwarzenegger is along, not as Conan, but as Kalidor, a poor slob who keeps arriving in the nick of time to save Sonja and wins only ingratitude from her. And here's one for Ripley's "Believe It or Not"--Schwarzenegger is probably the best actor in the film. Sandahl Bergman, who was so good in the first film, seems to have recently graduated from the Tanya Roberts school of acting. Brigitte Nielsen does a little better by the title role, but not much. Both women seem to have visited Conan the Cosmetician and have come away with large supplies of Hyperborean mascara and lipstick, amazingly like the 20th Century equivalents. The script is exceptionally unimaginative, with few of the fantasy elements of its predecessors. What is in the script is never explained. At one point, a mechanical robot-monster shows up totally without explanation as to where the technology to build it came from. The music is just barely adequate, perhaps due to having been contributed by Ennio Morricone instead of Basil Poledouris, who did the CONAN films. The fight scenes, much better orchestrated in the earlier films, are laughable and even less convincing than the acting. Perhaps with the first half-hour returned and with better acting, RED SONJA might have been acceptable, but what got to the screen is short and a mess. Rate it -1. Mark R. Leeper ...ihnp4!mtgzz!leeper