Red Sonja

Based on a Marvel comics character created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith, director Richard Fleischer's Red Sonja is an odd adjunct to Arnold Schwarzenegger's barbarian films in which the Austrian oak does not even play everyone's favourite Cimmerian. Sold in the Italian market as Yado (a choice that, bizarrely, implores immediate comparison with Yoda, the amphibian guru from The Empire Strikes Back), complete with a ghostly poster image of Schwarzenegger swirling in the mists of time, Red Sonja is instead a star vehicle for Brigitte Nielsen, a model-turned-actress who is striking and statuesque but otherwise lacking in any of the kind of experience required to carry such a project. Since this is a production of the Dino De Laurentiis Corporation, Red Sonja is pretty lavishly appointed though. The costume and production design, courtesy of the Academy Award winning Danilo Donati, far outstrips every other aspect of the picture. Outfits are suitably baroque, seemingly drawing inspiration from Windsor-Smith's beautiful detailed pin-ups of these mythological characters. Sets are likewise well appointed, with the cavernous, steaming throne room of Sandahl Bergman's evil queen a particular highlight. Despite all this wonderful dressing Red Sonja is a lifeless trudge that often seems to be poking fun at its own limitations. A prolonged battle between Schwarzenegger's Lord Kalidor and a mechanical fish is so repetitive that it becomes clear that every scrap of coverage containing this nascent (and increasingly bankable) superstar is being used. And, not long after, a slow treacherous creep along what looks like a sheer rock face for the principal adventurers is suddenly revealed to be a few feet from the floor when Paul Smith's bodyguard rushes into the frame to help his bratty princeling hop off the hazard.