|
|
OK everyone! Get ready! It's time for another movie that's prone to make me constantly reference Glistening Chests. Seriously. I'm sitting down to watch Red Sonja. While I have never actually seen this before, it's generally agreed to be one of the most stereotypical sources of sexist sword and sorcery cheese out there. Let's get right into it! We start off with a very 70s-fantasy-novel font intro scroll, which, surprisingly, isn't narrated, explaining how sexy-fighty our main character is. Then a village burns down and here's our main character getting the backstory she should already know from some sort of magical fairy ghost while wearing a tattered peasant's dress. Evil queen arbitrarily burned down her village, killed everyone, ordered her soldiers to rape her, so now here's some magical fairy sword swinging power to get revenge.
Now we cut to Arnold Schwa riding around, some people dancing around with swords, the big glowing green eye of argon, and some priestesses approaching said eye with some really ridiculous costumes. It's like, half flowing white robes, half plate mail. But it's not like a breastplate over robes. It's like... metal panels woven into the white flowing robes. Pretty crazy hats too. Meanwhile, here's some baddies, also dressed in ridiculous cloth and metal combo clothes. They bust in when they're about to uh... put the eye in a big box. Suddenly, everyone has a big freaking broadsword, no pants, and we've got a fight scene going on. Seriously what happened? Nobody's costume looked at all skimpy until the fight broke out. Actually, we're now getting a bit skewed away from GC perfection since some of these here warrior-priestess types are actually being successfully stabbed. Sure, most are just ending up in tattered dress and being gently carried away by evil goons, but still.
|
Anyway, the evil queen has one of her goons touch the eye of argon to see what happens, and... he instantly gets vaporized after spending half a second at a glowing green skeleton. Then she has another goon touch it. This second goon is not too pleased with this prospect, but being one of the rare female goons, she's fine. The eye of argon is exist, and only vaporizes guys. So then they dump captives down the pit conveniently under the box of evil sealing. Meanwhile, Sonya, who was apparently in here disguised as a priestess, I guess? Finds a secret passage to squeeze through and flee, chased by some guards. Now we have this awkwardly long scene with the box of evil sealing very very slowly closing, as the bad guys absent-mindedly shuffle out of the room, and the captives dumped in scream. Well, grunt softly in mild pain.
Now Sonja escapes the mountain the temple is on via oddly convenient zipline, but is shot in the back, passing out. So, once she's done sliding down, Arnold helps her down, yanks it out of her back, and kills the pursuing soldiers, decapitating one of them in really hilarious fashion. And aha! This is apparently Sonja's SISTER. Much less of a plot hole this way. Now we spontaneously cut away to some mongolian barbarians sparring. Oh, OK. Sparring with Sonja. Makes sense. They really do just call her "Red Sonya" too which is kinda weird. I mean, not like she came back from the dark world. The wise mystic training her here looks pretty freaking awesomely silly by the way. He has this crazy beehive hairdo, then he has these two huge shoulder pads, with sheathes on the back, and flags hanging off, so basically, he looks like some sort of Kimba's Dad parade float in humanoid form or something. Anyway, he tells her not to be such a frigid man-hating stick-in-the-mud, then gives her a sword. Suddenly Arnold shows up, and we have this exchange: "I'm looking for Red Sonya!" "I am Sonya." "Your sister's dying. I'll take you to her." I know it doesn't seem like it but this comes off exactly like the conversation in The Gamers where they get the replacement mage. So anyway, they head off to Arnold's camp... where he basically uses a giant stone demon-cow as a tent. Um. Wow. That is extremely random and awesome and demanding of explanation.
|
OK, so, Sonya offers to pay Arnold for bringing her to her sister, and he says "I'm a mercenary. Nobody pays me." Uh... what? Paying mercenaries is what you do! That's what makes them mercenaries! No wonder you're stuck living under a dead stone demon cow! Anyway, Sonja ditches out on the idiot, for now, and... helps King Short Round down off the severed giant statue's hand precariously balanced over a pit of boiling mud he's trapped over, because his slave is just comic relief... and did they just call him "The Prince Tard" just now? Seriously? Wow. Anyway uh... apparently the eye of argon is a laser canon, and was just used to totally nuke Short Round's kingdom. He doesn't really seem phased by it. He's just having his one surviving slave rebuild his castle by hand, and planning to go recruit a new army the next day. It's a really weird scene all in all.
So she rides on to the next scene, while Arnold kinda stalks her from a distance because he doesn't really have anything better to do or anything. OK, I have to say, I'm entirely amused how the landscape of Hyboria here is just nothing but barren wastelands, and huge opulent semi-ruined castles. This one belongs to Brightag apparently, whose soldiers have some really freaking cool helmets. They're like, Lady of Pain level spiky. And vaguely bird-like. Anyway, he charges a toll to pass through his uh.. castle, I guess. For guys, it's cash, for girls, it's apparently sleeping with him. Sonja put a ton of points into Indecorate Mettle though so she instead opts to fight him. This involves a lot of pointless leaping around the room. Eventually, she kills him, then the horde advances. Oh crud, girls suck at fighting hordes since they can't kill a whole bunch every round. If only there was some Mighty Warrior to help out here! Oh hey, there is! Hi Arnold! So they basically kill a bunch of guys then leave. Well, Sonja leaves. Arnold locks the door and goes back to fight more worthless minions. It's not even like he's guarding the gate, he's just running around having a good ol' time goon hacking.
|
Next she comes across a bandit designed by Yoshitaka Amano drawing and quartering King Short Round. OK, uh... how did Short Round get ahead of you? Didn't you just get directions from him, saying the way you just went was the shortest possible route? Was it only saving you like 5 minutes vs. going around, and it took you that long to fight your way through? Anyway, turns out Slave Dude isn't totally comic relief, because he kinda helps with the resulting fight scene a bit. Meanwhile the evil queen's army is putting the laser cannon back in the laser back in the laser cannon room, and the prisoners in the prisoner room. The laser cannon room is called "the chamber of lights" apparently. And why? Because it has a few thousand candles going in it. Her advisor actually points out that seriously, this is a stupid number of candles to have lit at once. Apparently, to work as a laser it needs to absorb light, and he claims he's worried about overloading it, but I say he just doesn't wanna deal with replacing all those candles later. Then the queen goes to pet her cute little pet giant spider. Wow. That's just great. Oh, and here's an alchemist of hers playing with one of those alcohol-filled squeeze bulb bubbly things. Apparently it works as the remote for their magic view screen. They're changing the channel from the topless dancer girl show to the what the main characters are doing show. Uh... dude? This is a movie from 1985 rated PG-13. How the hell did you just manage to show a topless girl dancing around for a minute? You know, I thought for a second that there were some clearly exposed nipples on the main character at the beginning when she was wearing her tattered peasant's dress there, but I was willing to dismiss that as shadows or something on good faith. Now I'm going to have to call retroactive boobs by paragraph 3! Within the first 10 seconds even.
|
Anyway, Sonja, Short Round, and Slave, now have to cross the uh... bridge let's call it, over the lava filled canyon between them and the evil queen's castle. Now, what I'm calling a bridge? This is a GIANT UNICORN SKELETON. It's like, someone killed the 4th Colossus when it was in the middle of stepping over this lava canyon. So yeah, that bit of weirdness done, Sonja is distracted by the sound of Short Round's cheesy ninja sword training in the middle of the night. "Ha! Hiya! Hiya! Ha!" Sonja walks over and explains that as fun as that is, you need to learn how to fight dirty too. Also, this scene has all kinds of sexual overtones to it that are TOTALLY inappropriate what with Short Round being, like, 8. Apparently the bad guys were watching this on TV too. OK, wasn't this the middle of the night? Does Sonja just go to bed at like, 6 PM or something? That's the only way this makes sense. Oh, and apparently it isn't really a laser cannon, it's a weather dominator. The storm it summons cases Sonja to... furiously rub her hair trying to dry it out. Hh. Meanwhile, Short Round is distracted by a huge shiny on the wall, in a stone monster mouth. Slave's all. OK, if I yank this out for you, we're going to get attacked or cursed or something. You realize that right? Short Round doesn't care though, so they go ahead and push that Don't Push button. Even without getting it out, the cavern they're in is flooding. Sonja's all "Dudes, come on, seriously." But no, they yank it out, and now Sonja has to go and fight a giant metal alligator sorta thing. It looks more like a dragon than an alligator though. It's kinda like, you know that whole deal where someone tried to explain what a giraffe was to some Chinese nobles once, and somehow they ended up with all these statues of these dragon-horse things all over the place with the same name as giraffes? OK, if the same person explained an alligator to these people? This is the resulting fight scene. Arnold just showed up to help out by the way. At this point everyone else has already gotten out of the water to safety though, so they're just kinda staring at him in a "OK, WTF are you still doing in there?" fashion. Arnold points out that he can't kill it because it's "a machine" so they'll have to just blind it instead. So, Sonja comes over and pries its eyes off, and now I have to deal with the fact that someone glued a big pearl to the wall of a cave in the middle of nowhere, and built a highly sophisticated robot monster to guard it. What the hell is up with this? Seriously.
|
Arnold finally gets around to explaining how the reason he's been trying to join the party is that destroying the eye of argon there is, like, his main mission, so, seriously, why aren't people working together on this? Sonja meanwhile explains that she refuses to sleep with anyone who can't beat her in a fight. Arnold points out that this is kind of a frelled up vow to go and take, because you're basically saying you refuse to sleep with anyone not trying to rape and/or murder you. Well, he's classy enough to only mention the murder part, but still. So they start fighting as a formality here, when suddenly, Short Round hops on Arnold's back and starts punching him in the neck which kinda kills the mood big time. Not completely though! They're still going at it, and now Short Round is watching and mirroring sword moves, and again, we get into really creepy vibe land. You don't do the whole "first we fight, then we have sex" deal with a little kid watching. Oh, and then as an extra level of creepy, Short Round comments "Why does she fight so hard? She doesn't want to win." So wait, you caught the premise here, and still decided to join in? Uh... can we officially ditch Short Round? He is REALLY starting to skeeve me out here. Anyway, it's apparently a draw, because we're moving on.
I feel I should point out now that Slave is constantly carrying around this cartoonishly huge thigh bone as a club. It looks like a prop from a live action Flintstones adaptation or something. Anyway, they're getting ready to head in to the next presumably baffling scene, but someone is going to have to stand guard outside. Who volunteers? Why Short Round of course! I guess this is an act of contrition for creeping me out so much lately. I mean, even his slave heads in, but not before handing off his lucky bone... which he now has again. Whee, continuity error! I'd also like to take this time to point out that the evil queen decorates her throne room with metal skeletons wearing crowns and veils. That's a look I can get behind honestly. Anyway though, mooks come up on the random encounter table and are fought. Slave does some really weird stuff tossing people down a big hole. Then after the fight he falls down another big hole, landing in the dining room and immediately kicking off another fight scene. During which Arnold starts using a table as a weapon. This is also apparently a combination dining room/armory, what with all the armor and spears decorating the walls. Oh, OK. The bone Short Round got is apparently a second, smaller one. He's fighting florentine with it and his sword now. And by fighting I mean threatening an evil advisor type. And by threatening I mean repeatedly shouting "Hiya!" Eventually the guy just kinda gets sick of it, smacks the kid across the room, and goes to leave, but... kinda trips and gets caught under the closing giant rolling stone door and dies. Short Round apparently still gets the EXP for it though, and continues on to... literally walk right into the evil queen's clutches to briefly be a hostage. Really briefly though. They just kinda drop this immediately, shout, and start fighting. Also, I should probably point out that that last guy tripped because the eye of argon is causing a huge earthquake. So lots of stuff is falling over, and Sonja and queeny are sword fighting.
|
Then queeny runs over to her magic TV, whereupon her alchemist fiddles with the vials and starts teleporting her around the room. It's a lot like fighting the Concubine in the new Prince of Persia. Seriously though, this alchemist here is just WEIRD. If he was a standard evil wizard, this would all make sense, but he's doing evil wizard stuff by just... playing with bubbling vials. He's not even drinking them or throwing them, just playing with'em. What the hell? Sonja gets sick of it and beheads him. Meanwhile, the menfolk have a wacky meeting as they all come around corners expecting an attack. Then the main event moves into the chamber of lights, where many a candle is knocked over by stray sword swings. The door gets closed behind them though, so all the guys just kinda have to watch. Oh, and I should mention now that Slave is actually named Falkin or something, so when Arnold decides to lift the portcullis, he turns to him and shouts "Falkin help!" You know, in a fashion where it sounds like he's swearing at him. Funny. They lift it just enough for Short Round to crawl under and get crushed by falling rubble. Man you such Short Round. Eventually the evil queen gets stabbed, and falls into a gaping lava filled crack that opens up in the floor, then Sonja tosses the eye down after.
Now... I'd like to point out that if our heroes had just stayed home, the forces of evil would have just sat around, denying how their super weapon was kinda causing their castle to totally collapse into a fiery pit, and one of the first things to go would be the eye tumbling down, destroying itself rather nicely. So, yeah. Whole adventure's totally pointless. Also, woohoo! You know how Glistening Chests has a skill whose only purpose is holding up collapsing beams while everyone is fleeing the crumbling strong hold after the evil queen/wizard dies? Yeah, this movie totally has this coming up. Again, the only thing wrong is that at a couple points, female characters actually get stabbed instead of just having their clothing torn.
Then on their way out, Arnold mentions to Short Round his new policy never to sleep with any woman who can't beat him in a fight. So... I guess they're going to have to have a couple fights before they can properly consummate their relationship here. So they start their creepy overtones fighting again, Short Round pretty much just goes "... yeah whatever" and leads his slave off to... rebuild his ruined castle by hand I guess. And you know, another thing. We've got all these arbitrary massive castles, but not one piece of siege equipment or, you know, lookout or guard posted anywhere. They really seem to serve no purpose at all besides falling in on themselves when bosses get killed.
