Kull the Conqueror

Is this the worst adaptation of a Howard character? The argument could be made, although Conan the Destroyer was pretty fucking bad too, and Red Sonja was no masterpiece, although one could say that one only sort of counts as a Howard character. The so-called Kull the Conqueror represents the pernicious influence of the De Laurentiis family taken to its logical extreme.

In retrospect, it really seems that the effectiveness of the original Conan was kind of a fluke, brought about by the vision of John Milius and his refusal to compromise it. He may not have been that faithful to the original character, but at least he had guts. The sequel displays more of the De Laurentiis’ desire to dumb the stories down, make them bloodless and family-friendly, and pay almost no attention to the source material. And here, with no one to stop her, Rafaella De Laurentiis finally got her way and produced this piece of crap.

This movie started life as the intended third Schwarzenegger film, to be an adaptation of The Hour of the Dragon and to be titled Conan the Conqueror. However, after the whole debacle of Red Sonja, Schwarzenegger was disgusted with the mishandling of the franchise and refused to come back, as his contract was up. Rather than recast the iconic role, the De Laurentiis camp simply had the script rewritten to become a Kull story. That’s something that could actually have been done well, as the stories about Kull and Conan dealing with life on the throne and plots to depose them are kind of similar.

It’s not done well here. As usual, there is almost no resemblance to any actual Howard story except for a few bits here and there. There are some plot points borrowed from “A Witch Shall Be Born” and Hour of the Dragon. The main villain, Akivasha, shares a name with the undead princess Conan encounters in Hour, but nothing else about them is the same. Mostly the script is just a pile of half-assed cliches and stupid, declarative dialogue tying together a standard fantasy quest story where Kull has to go to point A to get plot item B and thus overcome the poorly-defined villain.

The look of the movie could certainly be worse. Shot on locations in Slovakia and Croatia, they took advantage of some nice-looking castles to add a good bit of production value, and some of the matte paintings and miniatures are not half-bad. The costuming is significantly better than what we got in the 2011 Conan, though the wigs are not better, and so almost everyone looks ridiculous with bad, poofy hair all over the place.

The casting is pretty much a disaster, and a lot of it is because the director, John Nicolella, was a TV guy and so he cast TV-level talent. Sorbo was well-known at the time for the Hercules TV series, and he plays pretty much the same character here, with his stupid SoCal accent and smirking expression. Native rapper Litefoot is bland in a bland part, and Karina Lombard is blank and boring as ever. We also have to discuss the fact that Harvey Fierstein shows up for really no reason. The only person who seems to be having any fun here is Tia Carrere as the villainous Akivasha. In an outrageous red wig and some over-the-top outfits she preens and prowls her way through every scene, chewing the set like it was made of cookies. She’s honestly the best part of the movie.

The real problem, besides the bad script, is that the director is a TV director, and he shoots this like it was a TV movie. The fight scenes are a disgrace, and he was actually proud of the fact that there is no blood to be seen. Zero. The pacing is sluggish, the “action” is dull, and the dialogue is embarrassing. The really sad part is that even considering that this cost $20 million to make, it does not look appreciably worse than the 2011 movie, which cost north of $90 million.

So this movie represents what Raffaella De Laurentiis always wanted a Conan movie to be: broad, filled with slapstick humor and with zero blood or gore to be seen. They already tried this crap on Conan the Destroyer and the movie made less than a third of the original’s $100 million take, now this movie was even more family-friendly and made only $22 million worldwide. You would think that people would wake up after that and realize that to make a successful Howard movie you have to commit to grit and gore and violence, and you have to adhere to the damned source material. And yet here we are, decades later, and Hollywood still can’t figure it out.