Red Sonja - So bad.  So bad.  So bad.  I love it

'Red Sonja' is awful.  Simple as that.  But then that doesn’t explain why I’ve been watching it for around thirty years and loving it more and more every time.  It’s a Schwarzenegger film.  Only it isn’t.  It isn’t because he’s neither the titular character, nor is he in it enough to really be classed as so.  Brigitte Nielsen is ‘Red Sonja’ and therefore the star.  Only she was even less well-known at the time than our Austrian friend.  He had at least played Conan and, believe it or not, was also supposed to reprise the barbarian’s role here (only something to do with the film-makers not having the rights meant that his character had to be changed to ‘Calador’). Arnie is basically the big name to sell the film on while his role extends to little more than an extended cameo.

Anyway, the film follows Sonja and her quest to avenge the death of her family in a 'Lord of the Rings' style world of magic and wizards (only with a hell of a smaller budget than Peter Jackson had when he made his saga).  And she’s pretty good.  Or at least she’s pretty.  If you look closely at her she’s actually not that muscular, so dispatching numerous bad guys with her sword is kind of a little far-fetched (but hardly the most far-fetched aspect of the story!).  Plus every time she gets in danger, Conan (sorry – Calador), turns up and saves her, or at least someone else does.  Like I said, Arnie pops up to help her, plus an annoying kid and his submissive wet blanket of a ‘protector’ (basically a fat servant  who fights with a bone for some reason) also lend a hand every time she’s about to get stabbed in the back (which happens more than you may imagine).

The two leads may look the part, but the fact that neither are born to speak English and this film was made early in their careers, makes their dialogue extremely clunky and laughable.  You can practically see them thinking of their next line before they deliver it.  There's a baddie.  And you can tell that she's a baddie because she has all of those cliched bad-guy traits you've seen in movies.  She has a facial disfigurement, dresses all in black and keeps pet giant spiders in her throne room.  And, all that is about all the 'character development' you're going to get for her.  She's just there to be evil and someone that needs killing in the final act.

So, acting is poor, the dialogue is laughable and the characters are pretty wooden.  And yet I love it.  It’s one of those so-bad-it’s-good kind of films.  It has to be seen to be believed.  If you like Conan (the original!) then you should like this.  And, believe it or not, there are actually some attempts at ‘character arcs’ involved here.  Sonja must learn to trust men (and do other things with them) while the young kid must learn to actually be nice and not be such an insufferable brat.

Even Arnold was quoted as saying that 'Red Sonja' is so bad that he uses it as a threat to discipline his children – if they misbehave they have to watch it ten times in a row, resulting in his kids never really giving him much bother.  I must remember than when my own daughter wants to stay out late.  Either way, it’s so bad that I love it.  Sorry, Arnold, but I disagree!

7/10 if I woke up on Groundhog Day and had to watch this again, I could live with that