Kull le Conquérant

I like Kevin Sorbo, so I watched the film. It wasn't mentally tasking and it never set out to be. The movie was designed to be campy and it said so. You heard the rock music in the background during the trailer, so why are people so disappointed with it? I still enjoyed it for its dry wit and simplicity. It was a nice flashback to those old Conan movies. I've heard that Kull is Conan's father, and I don't know much about this character from the Conan films, but I dug him. I found him charming. The Conan movies wasn't much in the way of smart either, but people still enjoy it. I liked the combination of modern themes and music with the extremely old school nature of the film. It was like a land before time or something. Watch it if you just wanna watch something and don't expect much.

"Kull The Conqueror" is cinematic cheese, and knows it. The actors know it. The director knows it. Certainly the person responsible for the inclusion of the constant heavy metal guitar solos know it! Which is the best part of the film, the constant screams "waaaa-wa-wa-wa-wa!!!" of that heavy metal guitar, briefly punctuated by your standard grade-Z fantasy film dialogue. I laughed my arse off throughout the entire film and had a great time. Anyone who takes this film, or themselves, too seriously, will hate it. Anyone who knows how to kick back and enjoy fluff, will have a grand old time.

First the good news. This picture has production design worthy of Conan creator Robert E. Howard's legacy. Everything else is bad news. The script is allegedly a many version hand-me-down re-working of the never made third Conan movie, the film in which Conan would finally win the throne of Aquilonia. Instead we get Howard's backup hero (Kull) who takes the throne at the beginning of the film in an un-stirring, non-epic little battle and then loses it quickly to Witch Demon Akivasha (played to the hilt by Tia Carrere who obviously had rare fun as a bad girl). Kull then kills an hour on a very routine quest-to-find-his-right-to-rule and finally returns for the classic Howard showdown between good brawn and evil sorcery. The main problem is Kevin Sorbo, who got so good at playing Hercules in self-spoofing post-modern fashion that he simply doesn't resonate with the necessary authentic bronze age thuggishness of a Howard hero. Here was a chance to play a variation on his usual screen self and he punted it. Too bad. The set decorators captured the proper essence of Robert Howard...

I saw the movie on television yesterday evening. When I had looked into the tv magazine I saw that the movie is rather new (1997), but I had never heard of it, which means nothing good. Then I saw that Kevin Sorbo starred in it. I don't have a problem with him, but he's absolutely fixed to that "Hercules"-role, so I knew exactly what to expect. But it wasn't THAT bad. The plot was mediocre, but not ridiculous. The special effects weren't too good, but some looked nice. The scenery looked extremely fake from time to time, but there also were some nice backgrounds and such. It's not really a bad movie, I was not bored when I watched it. If you are a fan of such medieval settings and lower your expectations a bit it might be worth a watch.

5/10

Former slave and pirate, Kull is now a great warrior but can't seem to fit in with the army because he is one of the few who does not have noble blood. When he stands up to the King for slaying his relatives, Kull is forced to fight and kill him and, as a result, the King sees the light and passes the crown to Kull seconds before dying. The Princes don't like it and the court officials are pretty unimpressed but the law is the law and whatcha gonna do? When he starts to free slaves, treat lesser as equals and generally be a nice king, the Princes plot his removal but when assassins fail they go to a wizard to breathe life into a demon in a ginger wig in the form of a gorgeous woman.

I must admit that, when I recorded this I thought that it was Krull from 1983 simply because I had misread the television guide. Never having bothered with Xena, Hercules or any of these modern swords and sorcery television series and movies that tend to clutter some cable stations in the UK because they all seemed of very low quality to me, but I still decided to watch this anyway. Perhaps it is because the lack of development and character isn't a major problem for me over 90 minutes whereas it is over a 22 week long series but I actually did enjoy this even if it just plays like an extended version of one of these shows – all rock music and modern humour.

The plot is very simple but is enough to allow for the basic fighting and swaggering that the audience would demand. It isn't that well written of course and simply has lots of mystical nonsense in the place of narrative while the characters could only be more one-dimensional if they had been painted onto a wall. Likewise the cast don't do a great deal but at least they seem to be having fun and at least not take it too seriously. Although I'm not about to claim he is anything other than a muscle-bound cable television actor, I was quite won over by Sorbo's charisma and good humour – he makes a good lead for stuff at this sort of level. Despite being stuck in a silly red wig that does nothing for her looks, Carrere enjoys overacting in a vampy role which is good even if she has little screen time. Lombard has a plainer, less fun role but I did enjoy her and she worked well with Sorbo. The princes are quite fun, in particular Griffith and, as always, Fierstein camps in up in the way only he can. None of them are great but at least they make the film seem like a bit more fun.

Overall this is not the film to come to if you don't like the genre or have standards higher that daytime television (Hercules is now a kids TV filler on channel 5 here) but if you like that sort of thing then this does just about enough to be an entertaining little bit of modern sword and sorcery in the mould of, well, everything else Sorbo has been in!