Unlike its two predecessors, the film was a critical and commercial failure with even Arnie stating in later years that it was the worst film he'd ever made. Given that this is coming from a man with such gems as "Junior", "Kindergarten Cop", "Jingle All The Way" and of course "Batman And Robin" ("Let's Kick Ice!") on his CV, harsh words indeed. So does it deserve the vitriol? Only one way to find out folks...
The film starts with a quick flashback sequence on Sonja's background - apparently she was approached by the evil Queen Gedren (Sandahl Bergman who confusingly played Arnie's love interest Valeria in the first Conan film) to become her lover and co-ruler (because as everyone knows, lesbianism automatically equates to being evil. Face, meet palm...) but turned down her advances with Gedren slaughtering Sonja's family, having her soldiers rape her and burning down her village. Escaping from the wreckage, Sonja is visited by a friendly spirit (a fairy I guess?) in the woods who gives her supernatural strength and agility.
We then cut to Conan riding across some mountains until he reaches a bridge across a canyon which is down. Meanwhile, in a temple nearby, a group of priestesses are performing a ceremony (which we find out Conan was due to attend before his bridge-based problems) to send an ultra-powerful talisman which is threatening to destroy the world into a sealed darkened vault where it can't get any light to power it. However, Gedren and her followers raid the temple and kill most of the priestesses before taking the talisman. We find out that the talisman can only be handled by women as when one of Gedren's male followers tries to touch it he gets instantly vapourised.
Meanwhile, one of the priestesses, a redhead, manages to cut down a few of Gedren's soldiers and escapes as far as the canyon. She tries to zipwire her way across it but is shot in the back by an arrow from one of the soldiers. Luckily for her she lands in Conan's arms who promptly dispatches the two goons who were following her. It turns out that this is Sonja's sister Varna who asks Conan to go and track her down.
It turns out that Sonja has been training as a warrior in the intervening years and has just graduated from the academy of the master Kyobo. At her ceremony she picks out a sword while Kyobo tells her that while he thinks she is one of the best warriors ever to pass through his training, her distrust of men worries him and he's worried it will one day be her downfall (yeah 'cos when you've got a film with a strong female lead it's so important to have an anti-feminist message in there, right?) Anyway, Conan arrives at the academy just after the ceremony finishes and he and Sonja ride out through the legs of a giant stone warrior (probably better not to ask).
Sonja is reunited with Varna but unfortunately the latter has been fatally wounded and she asks Sonja to retrieve and destroy the talisman to avenge her death. We find out that Arnie's name is actually Kalidor and not Conan in this film (why this is I do not know as the character is basically Conan in all but name) and he offers to come with her on her quest, an offer which Sonja not-so-politely declines. Seeing a storm over the mountains, she deduces that this must be the work of the talisman and rides off to investigate.
Arriving at the city of Hablock, Sonja is greeted by the annoying sprog Prince Tarn and his bodyguard Falkon who are the only two survivors of the city after it was sacked by Gedren's army. She saves them both from falling into a pit of boiling mud (!) with Tarn offering her a place in his court as a cook. Sonja tells him to sod off (not in those words unfortunately) and sets off towards Gedren's kingdom while Tarn and Falkon set off to the wilderness to try and recruit anyone they can find to put a new army together.
To get to the mountains, Sonja has to pass through the citadel of Lord Brytag (Pat Roach again, fresh from playing an evil wizard in the previous Conan film) who says he'll let her through the gate if she sleeps with him. Unsurprisingly, Sonja doesn't take too kindly to that and promptly kills him in a sword duel. His men try and stop her but Kalidor arrives to fight them off long enough for Sonja to escape through the citadel gate.
Passing through some woods, Sonja comes across Tarn again who has been captured and tortured by some bandits. With some help from Falkon and his giant bone club (!), they manage to fight them off and the three agree to join up to defeat Gedren.
The team eventually arrive at the entrance to the "Kingdom of Infinite Night" with Tarn and Sonja having an argument. After Sonja beats him in a sword duel and agrees to give him some lessons to help him improve, Tarn agrees to become a bit less of a brat and start being a bit more co-operative with the mission.
Gedren meanwhile has seen Sonja and her party approaching and orders her deputy Ikol (Loki backwards, and the two of them have the same headgear as well - what is it with Conan films nicking stuff from Thor?) to capture Sonja and bring her in unharmed. Oh and she also has a pet giant spider which for some reason only appears in this scene as well.
Ikol conjures up a thunderstorm forcing Sonja and her crew to take shelter in a cave where they're ambushed by a giant mechanical fish called the Icthyian Killing Machine. Kalidor arrives just in time to help and he and Sonja defeat the beast by taking out both its eyes and blinding it. The fight sequence here is just plain ridiculous as it basically involves Arnie riding a mechanical bull type thing underwater for five minutes.
Back outside the cave, Kalidor and Sonja get talking and apologise for being rude to each other earlier with Kalidor explaining his connection with the priestesses and the Talisman. Kalidor also admits that he quite fancies Sonja who tells him that she has taken a vow that only a man who beats her in combat can have her which is the cue for the two of them to have a ten minute swordfight which ends in a draw when both of them are too exhausted to carry on. Erm, no offence but given that they've only got a finite amount of time before the talisman goes boom, this might not have been such a good idea...
The team press on to Gedren's castle with Sonja, Kalidor and Falkon infiltrating through an air duct while they persuade Tarn to keep watch outside the door by persuading him that's what heroes do. While Kalidor and Falkon battle Gedren's guards in the dining hall (a fight which is clearly aiming for the award of "most innovative uses of a table"), Sonja goes after Gedren. Back in the castle meanwhile, Ikol realises that Gedren is actually a bit insane and decides to do a runner with the gold. However, he runs into Tarn outside the citadel who beats him in a swordfight and knocks him under the giant stone wheel door to be crushed. Ouch.
Sonja finally tracks Gedren down to her chamber and goes to fight her - however, Gedren has her court wizard to help her by making her teleport and use voodoo to cut Sonja. Eventually, Sonja realises what's going on and we get another gratuitous decapitation scene involving the wizard.
Gedren flees to the talisman's chamber where the device is going into meltdown with the floor being rent apart. After a fight, Sonja knocks Gedren into the lava stream below before throwing the talisman down after her, causing the castle to self-destruct and some actually quite cool explodey type special FX. Finally back to safety, Kalidor and Sonja go to duel again but just end up kissing while Tarn and Falkon just sort of go "meh" and head off back to Hablock to rebuild the city. And that's that.
While it's far from the worst thing I've reviewed on this list, it's pretty obvious that the Conan franchise was very much running out of steam by this point and it's no shock that it was pretty much abandoned after this film flopped so badly. Nielsen's terrible wooden acting really doesn't help here (I never thought I'd see the day where Arnie was carrying the acting load in a film) and some of the sequences (such as the mechanical fish robot) go beyond being enjoyably daft into downright ridiculous. And I'm sure it can't just be me who finds some of the story themes (All lesbians are evil! No matter how strong a woman is she needs a strong man to look after her!) a bit sinister in this post-Weinstein era.
A fourth Conan film, "Conan The Conqueror" was planned for release in 1987 but by then Arnie was busy with "Predator" and "The Running Man" and director Richard Fleischer and producer Dino de Laurentiis both turned it down. The script eventually surfaced in a bashed-about form as the B-movie "Kull The Destroyer" in 1997 but Marvel had actually stopped the Conan comic series four years earlier meaning we won't be covering that film in these reviews, likewise the Conan reboot from 2011 as it's outside the time frame when Conan was part of the Marvel franchise. Meanwhile, Arnie would go on to movie superstardom, Brigitte Nielsen would go on to marry Sly Stallone and star alongside him in a few films before drifting into the world of B-movies and general craziness. And us? We've got an even bigger Marvel bomb than this to review next week starring a talking duck. Oh joy...
FINAL RATING: 🗡🗡🗡🗡 4/10
CURRENT MARVEL FILM TABLE
1. Conan The Barbarian (1982) (6/10)
2. Conan The Destroyer (1984) (6/10)
3. Doctor Strange (1978) (5/10)
4. Red Sonja (1985) (4/10)
5. Captain America 2: Death Too Soon (1979) (4/10)
6. Spiderman (1977) (4/10)
7. Spiderman: The Dragon's Challenge (1979) (3/10)
8. Captain America (1979) (2/10)
9. Spiderman Strikes Back (1978) (2/10)
NEXT WEEK: Fuzzy Duck? Does he f...
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