Plot
Sonja, a young, red-haired woman, is gang raped and left for dead by hundreds of soldiers of Queen Gedren, a despot who murdered Sonja's parents and her brother after Sonja had rejected the queen's sexual advances and scarred Gedren's face. Answering Sonja's cry for revenge, a nameless female spirit appears and gives her heightened sword-fighting skills on the condition that she never lie with a man unless he defeats her in fair combat. She trains under the warriors of a sword-master called "The Grand Master" and distrusts nearly all other men.
At a nearby temple, Varna, Sonja's sister, is in an order of priestesses preparing to banish a mystical light-powered relic, the Talisman, that created the world and all living things. The Talisman can be used and touched only 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, slaughtering most of the priestesses and shield-maidens before they can imprison the Talisman in permanent darkness.
Varna watches Gedren steal the Talisman and throw 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 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 Gedren used the Talisman to decimate Hablock when Tarn refused to surrender. Tarn announces that he will crush Gedren, and invites Sonja to be his 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 followed 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 travel together toward Berkubane, and Tarn takes Sonja's advice and learns good manners over sword practice.
Gedren's wizard uses a large magic screen to show the approaching party; Gedren recognizes Sonja and orders that she be brought to the fortress unharmed. Using the Talisman to conjure a storm, she forces Sonja's group to take shelter in a watery cavern in Ictyan where Gedren's dragon-like “Killing Machine" is unleashed. 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 temple. He flirts with her, so she warns him that "no man can have her" unless he defeats her. Kalidor challenges her and they sword-fight to a draw, despite Tarn's trying to hobble Kalidor. 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 with bags of Hablock's gold. Sonja confronts Gedren in her council chamber and kills her wizard, 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. Dueling Gedren, Sonja runs her 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 a brief, non-conclusive "sword fight", while Tarn and Falkon ride back to Hablock to rebuild it.
Production
A film adaptation of Red Sonja was first announced in 1983 with Ralph Bakshi directing. Production was pushed back a year and Bakshi was replaced with Richard Fleischer, who also directed the previous Robert E. Howard adaptation featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan the Destroyer . [5]
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. [6] 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 De 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. [7]
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. [8]
Several scenes were shot in Italy, around the Gran Sasso massif (Celano, Campo Felice and Campo Imperatore), and in studios in Rome.
On the Italian market the movie was re-titled as Yado with Schwarzenegger on the poster, as if he was the main character. Lord Kalidor was in fact re-named Yaod, and that's how he introduces himself to Sonja when they first meet. A plausible explanation for such a change has yet to be found.
Reception
Critical response
The film received generally negative reviews from critics. [9] Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 21% based on 28 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." [10] On Metacritic the film has a score of 35% based on reviews from 6 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". [11]
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." [12] [13]
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." [14]
Film historian Leonard Maltin gave 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." [15]
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." [16]
Siskel and Ebert also gave the film negative reviews though both considered the film unintentionally funny. Both Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert agreed that the film was poorly made, yet it contained enough campy humor 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. [17]
Andrea Wright, writing for the Journal of Gender Studies , has argued that the film represents a problematic representation of women, because the character of Red Sonja is sexualized and relies on a male counterpart. [18]
