Psycho's Movie Reviews #199: Red Sonja (1985)

Red Sonja is a 1985 epic sword and sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer and written by Clive Exton and George MacDonald Fraser. It is based on the character Red Sonya of Rogatino, created by Robert E. Howard, who also inspired the comic character of the same name, created by Roy Thomas and Barry Windsor-Smith. The film introduces Brigitte Nielsen as the title character, with Sandahl Bergman, Paul Smith, Ronald Lacey, and Arnold Schwarzenegger in supporting roles.

As in Howard's stories of Conan, the film takes place in the Hyborian Age, a fictional prehistoric time that had been depicted previously in the films Conan the Barbarian (1982) and Conan the Destroyer (1984).

Red Sonja was theatrically released in the United States on July 3, 1985, by MGM/UA Entertainment Co.. Upon release, the film received generally negative reviews from critics. It grossed $6.9 million in the United States under a budget of $17.9 million, becoming a box-office bomb.

Plot

Sonja, a young, red-haired woman, is raped and left for dead by the soldiers of Queen Gedren, a despot who murdered Sonja's parents and brother after she rejected the queen's sexual advances and scarred her face. Answering her cry for revenge, the red goddess, Scáthach, appears to her and gives her heightened strength, stamina, agility and fighting skills on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat. She trains under a sword master called "The Grand Master" and is distrustful of all men besides him. At a nearby temple, Varna, Sonja's sister, is a member of an order of priestesses who are preparing to banish a mystical light-powered relic, the Talisman, that created the world and all living things. The Talisman can only be used and touched by women – men vanish if they touch it – and has become too powerful to control. However, Gedren's army and her aide-de-camp Ikol intervene and slaughter most of the priestesses and shield maidens before they can imprison the Talisman in permanent darkness.

Varna watches Gedren steal the Talisman and imprison the surviving priestesses in the vault that contained it before escaping, but is mortally wounded. She is discovered by Kalidor, the Lord of Hyrkania, who goes to find Sonja and bring her back to Varna. Before dying, Varna tells Sonja to find the Talisman and send it into darkness before it ravages the world with storms and earthquakes. Kalidor asks to accompany her, but she rejects the offer. After witnessing the Talisman in use, Sonja arrives to the now-ruined kingdom of Hablock. She meets the young, pig-headed Prince Tarn and his servant/bodyguard Falkon, who say that Gedren used the Talisman to completely decimate Hablock when Tarn refused to surrender. Tarn, demanding vengeance, announces that he will crush Gedren and invites Sonja to work for him as a cook. She politely declines before being told that Gedren is based in Berkubane, the land of Perpetual Night.

Arriving at the mountain gate, Sonja fights Lord Brytag after he refuses her passage for not paying him a 'tender tribute'. When she kills him and takes his key, his troops surround her; Kalidor, who has secretly been following her, attacks their rear, allowing Sonja to escape. Sonja comes across Tarn again, being tortured by bandits. She frees Tarn and kills the bandits with Falkon. They decide to stay together and travel onward toward Berkubane, and Tarn takes Sonja's advice and utilises some good manners over sword practice. Gedren's wizard uses a large magic dish to show the approaching party; Gedren recognizes Sonja and orders that she be brought to the fortress unharmed. Using the Talisman to conjure up a storm, she forces Sonja's group to take shelter in a watery cavern in Ictyan where Gedran's “Killing Machine" is unleashed upon them. Kalidor appears and helps Sonja blind the mechanical beast so they can escape.

Sonja accepts Kalidor's company after learning he is descended from the lords who entrusted the Talisman to the priestess temple. He flirts with her, so she warns him that "no man can have her" unless he can defeat her in a sword fight. Kalidor challenges her and they fight to a draw, despite Tarn trying to knobble Kalidor to tip the duel into Sonja's favour. The party arrives at Castle Berkubane and, to protect Tarn, they convince him to stay behind and guard the front entrance. Ikol, realizing Gedren is insane when she refuses his pleas to stop utilizing the unstable relic, plans to escape the castle with bags of Hablock's gold. Sonja confronts Gedren in her council chamber while Kalidor and Falkon deal with her guards in the castle's dining hall. Ikol is stopped by Tarn at the entrance and is crushed to death by the door.

Overpowered by Sonja, Gedren flees to the Chamber of Lights where the Talisman is stored. Now powerful beyond control, the Talisman causes the floor to split open and reveal a chasm of molten lava beneath the castle. Sonja and Gedren duel in the Chamber; Sonja runs Gedren through with her sword, sending the evil ruler plunging into the lava below. Sonja throws the Talisman in after her, destroying it and starting a chain reaction that tears Castle Berkubane apart. The heroes manage to escape as the rising volcano consumes the castle. Sonja and Kalidor kiss after Kalidor won against her in a sword fight while Tarn and Falkon head back to Hablock to have it rebuilt.

Production

In Conan the Barbarian, Sandahl Bergman played Valeria, a thief and the love of Conan's life. Bergman was offered the role of Red Sonja, but turned it down, choosing instead to play the villainous Queen Gedren. De Laurentiis met with actress Laurene Landon and was set to offer her the role of Red Sonja until he discovered she was in an earlier film called Hundra; fearing that it was too similar, de Laurentiis decided not to give her the part. On a 2015 episode of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, soap opera actress Eileen Davidson revealed that she auditioned for the role and was actually runner-up to Brigitte Nielsen. It took Laurentiis almost a year to find an actress "Amazonian" enough to play the title character; he was still looking, eight weeks before the scheduled production, when he saw Brigitte Nielsen on the cover of a fashion magazine. The 21-year-old native of Helsingør, Denmark, in Milan for a modeling job, soon found herself on a plane heading for Rome and a successful screen test.

George MacDonald Fraser, who had recently adapted Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea for De Laurentiis, was hired to work on the script during filming.

Several scenes were shot in Italy, around the Gran Sasso massif (Celano, Campo Felice and Campo Imperatore), and in studios in Rome.

The musical score of Red Sonja was composed and conducted by Ennio Morricone.

Release/Reception/Box Office

The film received generally negative reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 19% based on 27 reviews, with the site's critical consensus stating, "Dull, poorly directed, and badly miscast, Red Sonja is an uninspired conclusion to Schwarzenegger's barbarian trilogy." On Metacritic the film has a score of 35% based on reviews from 6 critics, indicating "generally unfavourable reviews".

Schwarzenegger commented, "It's the worst film I have ever made." He joked, "Now I tell my kids that, if they get out of line, they'll be forced to watch Red Sonja ten times in a row. It must be working, because I've never had much trouble with any of them."

John Grant, who authored the film's entry in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), gave Red Sonja a negative review, commenting "Morally dubious (Gedren's lesbianism is depicted as one of her evil attributes) and worse-acted than words can explain, Red Sonja is a great embarrassment."

Film historian Leonard Maltin seemed to agree, giving the movie 1.5 out of a possible 4 stars. He went on to cite the picture as: "Spectacularly silly...While it might amuse juvenile viewers, most of the fun for adults is in deciding who gives the worse performance -- Brigitte Nielsen or Sandahl Bergman. Ennio Morricone's music score is far better than a film like this one deserves, as are Danilo Donati's costumes and sets."

Joe Kane, the "Phantom of the Movies", gave the film an even worse review: 1 out of 4 stars. According to him, "While Conan the Barbarian was sword-and-sorcery, this is grunt-and-groan: the actors grunt, while the audience groans...Amid wooden thespianism, redundant comedy relief, and clunky storytelling, Arnold Schwarzenegger's most impressive feat is managing to stay offscreen for more than half the running time despite being top-billed."

Siskel and Ebert also gave the film negative reviews. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert agreed that the film was poorly made, yet it contained enough campy humour that it might have been intended as a spoof; Ebert noted the "dialogue which sounds like the actors have already read the Mad magazine parody of this film". Both critics laughed during their reviews, notably when Siskel noted the awkward position of the Buddha statue.

Andrea Wright writing for the Journal of Gender Studies has argued that the film represents a problematical representation of women, because the character of Red Sonja is sexualized and relies on a male counterpart.

Budget $17.9 million

Box office $6.9 million

My Review

I started watching this once before but opted out fairly quickly. Figuring to give it another shot, I pressed forward and managed to make it through Schwarzennegger's self-professed worst movie ever. At least he was honest about it, which is as much as you can ask. I guess if you were going to team up Mr. Olympia with a female counterpart, Brigitte Nielsen does seem a natural with her height and physique, providing some credibility as an Amazon-type queen.

For a warrior genre film, this one had it's comical moments among all the fighting and swordplay. Arnold has a Johnny Weissmuller moment when he battles the mechanical mini-Kraken, the idea of which is fairly ludicrous considering the era when this would have taken place. Then there's that scene where Sonja, Kalidor and Prince Tarn (Ernie Reyes Jr.) hug the face of a rock wall attempting to traverse a narrow ledge, when all of a sudden, Falkon (Paul Smith) breezes by on foot just two feet below them on solid ground. What were they thinking with that one?

As far as goofs go, keep an eye on Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman) right after she reveals the scar on her face in the latter part of the picture. She immediately begins her sword fight with Sonja, and repeated shots of her face show the scar no longer there, except one time when it reappeared.

As for the junior Reyes, I kept thinking a diminutive Bolo Yeung, the resemblance was uncanny. I guess it's a credit to his ability to pull it off that most viewers find him just plain annoying. Come to think of it, I wouldn't have been too upset at the finale if Arnold might have dropped the beam.

OK, I know I'm going to either get a lot of hate for this and a lot of confused emails, but Red Sonja to me is an ultimate guilty pleasure. My sister and I used to watch this movie all the time when we were kids, we both wanted to so badly fight with Red Sonja and be apart of the group. So oddly, after years of not watching this since I was a kid, my sister and I found the DVD for 5 dollars and decided to watch it. Oh, the things that are so wrong with this film that makes it so right again. Looking to be a spin off of Conan, we were introduced to Red Sonja played by Flava-Flav's ultimate true love, Bridgitte Nielson. The 6 foot tall drink of glass shows us that this was her acting class as she rehearses her lines as if she had just read them the night before and screams "Gedren, where are you?!" while moving her mouth in the strangest way. She teams up with world's other tall drink of … beef(?) Arnold Schwarzenegger as they battle it out on who can act the worst? Well, who knows who will win with this silly story.

A large temple full of white-robed priestesses are getting ready to destroy a large, glowing green orb called the Talisman. This dangerous artefact's destructive power increases from exposure to light and the priestesses intend to destroy it before it gets out of control. However, the evil Queen Gedren and Ikol attack with their army. The warrior-priestesses resist, but are ultimately subdued by Gedren's forces. Gedren gets her hands on the Talisman, but not before proving the myth that only women can touch it and survive. Gedren orders the remaining priestesses to be imprisoned in the vault which held the Talisman. One of those priestesses, Varna, manages to escape. She doesn't get far before she's mortally wounded by an arrow in the back. As luck would have it, she literally falls into the arms of the mighty Lord Kalidor. She begs him to help find her sister, Red Sonja. Sonja has been training with a Chinese sword master when Kalidor informs Sonja about her sister. Sonja arrives just in time for Varna to tell her about what happened at the temple. Before dying, Sonja's sister urges her to find the Talisman and destroy it, or else the world will be destroyed.

Everything about this movie is bad, but that's what I love about it. You know how sometimes you just need a bad movie that you can make fun of and have a good time with? Supposedly, Arnold Schwarzenegger jokes that he uses this movie as punishment for his kids when they act up. Is it that bad? It is bad, but it's a ton of fun. I loved the action, Arnold fighting Bridgitte for her love as no man may have her unless he's trying to kill her, lol. I loved the last fight scene between Red Sonja and Queen Gedren, Gedren loves pulling a ton of jump cuts on her as well as one of Gedren's wizards who is using vodoo to cut Sonja to weaken her, then when she discovers the wizard, instead of him cutting her again, he just stands there, lol. Also the little Prince Tarn with Falkon was classic and they worked so well together. I think the scene that made me laugh the most was when Red Sonja, Prince Tarn and Falkon are stuck in the cave with the machine dragon and Arnold is just riding around with it making it look more like a roller coaster ride rather than a fight for his life, lol! My opinion, if a movie entertains you even if it is bad, why fight it? This is a good bad movie and I know I will always enjoy it. My recommendation being if you have an open mind and decide to just let go and enjoy the ride Red Sonja takes you on, take it or leave it. 6.7/10