Summary
After Kull is named the successor to a Kingdom, the kingdom’s heirs conspire to overthrow him by resurrecting an evil sorceress.
My Thoughts
Why did I go out of my way to review this movie, you ask? Well, I was on a Conan/ Sword and Sorcery kick, and I figured I might as well go ahead and get all of the Conan related movies out of the way in one go. Wait, you say, this isn’t Conan. You’re correct. This is Kull the Conqueror, not Conan the Barbarian, but it started as Conan. The original script for this film was conceived as a third “Conan the Barbarian” script, meant to follow “Conan the Destroyer”. However, Arnold, after the success of the “Terminator” and “Predator”, and then being had no real want to reprise his role as the sword wielding, snake crushing barbarian Conan, and thus the project was shelved for quite some time. Until, one day, Kevin Sorbo, who is best known for his titular role on the television series Hercules, was chosen to reboot the role, but instead of Robert E Howard’s Conan, they would change the name to another Howard character, Kull. Instead of being from Cimmeria, Kull was from Atlantis, and therein lies the only real difference between the two characters. This script still has plenty references to Kull being a barbarian, though he refers to himself multiple times throughout the film as an ex-pirate. This movie is full of horrible 90s b-movie crap, terrible makeup and visual effect, absolutely abysmal acting from our lead in particular, but overall, a more interesting story than “Conan the Barbarian”. The problem is that every element of this film takes a stumble, and the film itself ends up flat on its face. This is a truly terrible film, but for fans of horrible fantasy films, you might find some things that make you laugh, and maybe, you’ll even get some enjoyment out of this. Maybe.
Conan the- I Mean- Kull the Conqueror
The Conan movies have never had fantastic plots, which is too bad. Sword and sorcery is a genre that sort of came and went in the 80s and 90s without ever really being explored in great detail. Sword and sorcery films could be amazing; there’s so much that you could do in these worlds, because the magic, the action, and the realms that the characters could explore have largely been left alone. Fantasy films like this are rather expensive, and rarely give great return on investment, so it makes sense why studios really never produce them anymore. Just look at last years “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword”. That film, while not great, was certainly a better sword and sorcery film than we received in the 80s or 90s (it’s easily better than any of the Conan movies, or this flaming pile of garbage, that’s for sure). That movie didn’t even make its budget back, and that one was okay… (Not good. Okay.) Sword and sorcery films don’t do well, but that’s too bad, because it is largely an untapped market.
Where this movie excels is in one small place alone: it branches out with the story a touch more than the Conan predecessors (I know they aren’t predecessors in name, but in everything else, they are, so roll with me). The Conan the Barbarian movies, both the original and the remake, are about Conan getting revenge on the people that killed his parents. It’s a straight and narrow storyline, and it only gets bogged down when Conan decides to wander aimlessly and run into a bunch of pointless side characters. This story actually is a touch more interesting. It has betrayals, and kingdoms switching hands, it has a quest to resurrect a sorceress while a subsequent quest happens to recapture a kingdom. I’m not saying this is a better film than the Conan movies, because this movie is so poorly made, but as far as story goes, it is a little more interesting.
Sorbo the Sad
Well, there’s really no way to get around this: Kevin Sorbo is a terrible actor. I never really watched the Hercules television show; in fact the only thing I think I’ve seen Sorbo act in before was the sci fi channel original movie: Mythica (don’t ask why I watched that). He overacts, delivers lines in weird ways, looks like he’s about to laugh in some scenes, shouts strangely, looks incredibly awkward during sex scenes, and overall gives a performance that prompts more laughs than Amy Schumer trying to be funny. He is awful. There is no way around that. His counterparts aren’t much better either. In fact nigh everyone in this movie is laughable in every scene except for Tia Carrere (“True Lies”). Tia has one scene that actually held my attention, and she actually behaved like a real actress. This scene is right when Kevin Sorbo throws her on the bed in his room, hovers over her like a pervert, but then says that he would never push a girl against her will. Tia’s delivery of her lines about how a slave is never free to choose her own will is actually surprisingly well done. It’s the only scene in the entire movie where I thought I was watching something that could’ve been shown theatrically.
Kull vs All the Horrors of Halloween USA
Another huge issue with this movie is its extremely poorly designed creatures. The monster’s masks look like they were bought from your local Halloween USA, and the demon at the end is so laughable that I don’t even feel the need to throw a spoiler on this paragraph. The demon is to on the lower right of this paragraph. That’s really what it looks like. Seriously. My biggest praise of the Conan series so far has been for its production design. When everything else failed in those movies, at least they kind of looked cool. This movie overreaches; it tried to have characters that are bizarre but interesting monsters and it stumbles horribly, instead showing us creatures that look like they came from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season One.
Verdict
This movie is terrible, but, I hate to say this, I still kind of enjoyed my viewing of this movie. It’s so ill conceived and poorly executed that towards the end I actually found myself smiling and laughing. I can’t say I’d recommend this movie to anyone, ever, but if you’re like me, and you just really like fantasy films, no matter how truly terrible they are, you might still get a few chuckles out of this. That’s not a recommendation; watch this film at your own risk. It’s garbage, but fun garbage.
Do you like the schlocky sword and sorcery worlds of Robert E Howard? Then check out more films like this in our An Age Undreamed Of series.
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