Red Sonja (1985)

"Falkon, may I give you a word of advice? Put him over your knee and beat some manners into him!"

I was expecting to enjoy this film no matter what; I'm rather fond of a bit of sword and sorcery hokum, as regular readers will have noticed. I was expecting something rather similar to Conan the Barbarian, except perhaps with more lines for Arnold Schwarzenegger, this having been made after The Terminator. Instead, I found a film which was really rather brilliant.

I love Conan, but it's a cheesy film. This isn't, deep down. The script (co-written by George MacDonald Fraser of Flashman fame, no less) is much more coherent and clever, and uses the tropes of the genre in ways which are quite witty. Yes, the performances are not exactly the sort of thing you'd see at the RSC, but they're what the film needs. None of the characterisations are particularly deep, but they don't need to be.

I don't know much of the original Red Sonja, but she seems to have been a comic book creation of Roy Thomas and Barry-Windsor Smith, loosely based on a similarly named character in a short story by Robert E. Howard, who is credited here. That's interesting; I'm well aware of Roy Thomas through his many runs on many titles for Marvel, and he's always struck me as a good writer, occasionally a very good one, but essentially a writer of high quality fan fiction who prefers to play with other people's worlds and characters rather than create his own. I have no idea whatsoever if any of that applies here; the few Conan short stories by Howard that I've recently started reading are not really reflected by the 1982 film, but it works, I think, as an example of its genre. I'm going to treat this film the same, as an example of 1980s sword and sorcery cinema, without attempting to judge it in relation to the source material.

There's only one moment during the film that I found unintentionally amusing; the bridge of bones. The impressive matte painting in long shot becomes a rather less impressive model in medium shot. But I'm being picky, really. Yes, you can see the joins a bit, but it works, I think, in the terms of its time. And the visuals are often fantastic- I particularly like Tutte Lemkow's wizard with his colourful potions and psychedelic scrying thing. Magic gets presented as something really quite druggy, which works nicely. The fights are all very well choreographed, too. And I really liked the beheadings.

Brigitte Nielson gives a performance which is really rather functional (in fact, Arnie out-acts her, which is saying something!) but she's as good as she needs to be, playing a character who wants to save the world and seek revenge against the dastardly Queen Gedren, who murdered her entire family after Sonja spurned her Sapphic advances. I suppose one might raise an eyebrow at the fact that the baddie is not only gay but that the whole vendetta essentially starts with a bit of Sapphism, but I think that would be a little harsh. After all, Gedren is as camp as a row of tents.

We first meet Sonja being trained as a warrior so she can seek revenge, an obvious parallel with Conan. It's interesting, and ambiguous, how she rejects the advances of men, and seems rather wary of them, swearing only to love a man if he can vanquish her in combat. There's all sort of stuff going on here, if you happen to be both dirty-minded and pretentious like myself. After all, a sword is a phallic symbol, so Sonja has trained herself to gain total mastery over a symbolic penis. Perhaps this indicates a simple desire to be in control. Perhaps it indicates a fear of the penis, and a desire to control that fear. Perhaps it indicates both. People are complicated.

Similarly, Sonja is a fiercely independent woman, very resistant to receiving any help from men. As she very clearly insists to Kalidor. Yet on the other hand she will yield to a man who defeats her in combat, which could be interpreted as a desire for a strong man. One could argue that this is rather misogynistic- after all, the script is by men, as they so often are, and one of those men is the author of Flashman. I don't think we can necessarily assume that, though. Sonja is clearly presented as a strong woman, who takes charge of her own destiny and is clearly the central character. (The main McGuffin can only be destroyed by a woman, after all.) It's just that people are complicated, and being strong doesn't necessarily mean being alone and sexless.

Anyway, I love the swordfight between Sonja and Kalidor, which continues until they're both really exhausted. At first I thought I was watching a metaphor for foreplay, but then, as it went on and on, I realised that it was a metaphor for really, really good sex. With her on top, naturally.

So, getting back to less dirty-minded matters, I liked the film, basically. The film started off threatening to be very silly; what could possibly be more Monty Python than yellow text in a fancy font rolling up the screen to a backdrop of hills? But in the end it was only moderately silly, with a great little comedy double act in the young, arrogant Prince, with his fondness for occasional bullock-kicking, and the humble chubster Falkon. The film has a good script, looks good, and is as well-acted as it needs to be.