Kull the Conquerer

Review by William Weird

Field trip time, kiddies! Okay, everybody pile into the Delorean real quick, 'cause we're gonna head back in time, alright?

Alright. The date is August 29th, 1997. Hercules: The Legendary Journeys is one of the highest rated and favorably reviewed shows on television. It's star, Kevin Sorbo, has decided to capitalize on his street cred as a heavy-hitter in the fantasy genre by taking the lead role in KULL THE CONQUEROR, a new movie based on the works of celebrated sword-and-sorcery scribe Robert E. Howard. Somewhere in Hollywood, a Universal Studios executive smiles, nods his head, and thinks "Yeah, this is a good idea."

Hey. Hindsight is 20/20.

Y'know, I like the fantasy genre. I especially like the sword-and-sorcery subsect of fantasy. I also like old pulp stories, and I like Robert E. Howard. But when KULL THE CONQUEROR came out in 1997, even at age ten I could just tell there was no way this was gonna end well.

I was right.

The aforementioned Sorbo plays the title character, a brutish yet noble Atlantian exile who, through a short series of fortuitous events, finds himself crowned the king of Valusia. Shortly after his rise to power, the primordial demoness Akivasha, a.k.a. The Red Witch, is resurrected and makes a villainous pact with those who wish to possess the Valusian throne for themselves.

The seductive sorceress Akivasha is played by Tia Carrere, here dying her long, dark locks a punky, unnatural orange, in an attempt to capture that otherworldly feel. In truth, all she really ends up capturing is that Vitamin C feel, which puts me in the mood for a glass o' Sunny D. Gotta give credit where credit's due, though. Tia Carrere may not have the most impressive resume' in the acting community, but she's sexy as hell, and appropriately exotic as the sexually charged witch-queen from a time before man. I'll be damned if Ms. Carrere doesn't make me go "schwing" everytime I see her. What can I say? Asian chicks give me wood.

Anyway, Akivasha and her little alliance of cutthroat anti-Kull mutineers devise a diabolical plan wherein Kull gets seduced by Akivasha, weds her, and is then poisoned by her that night in their wedding bed (of course, the poison doesn't killed Kull... it just puts into a death-like comatose state... which he promptly wakes up from shortly thereafter... so that he can go on an adventure... and so the movie's runtime isn't a mere 20 minutes).

Now, Kull has to learn the true nature of his unholy bride, journey to the far ends of the Earth to bring back the one mystical force in all of creation that can vanquish her, avoid being killed by his numerous enemies, and eventually depose Akivasha, now the all-powerful queen of Valusia. Joining our hero is a seer/concubine/love interest, played by Karina Lombard (who?!?), and a warrior/monk/sidekick, played by the one-name-only Native American known as Litefoot, a not untalented actor whose career got off to a decent start with a starring role in THE INDIAN & THE CUPBOARD , but was then knocked flat on its ass by the one-two punch of KULL THE CONQUEROR and MORTAL KOMBAT: ANNIHILATION (ouch!). Also waddling around in the cast, for some bizarre and unfathomable reason, is the irrepressibly flamboyant Harvey Fierstein, an amusingly out-of-place presence here filling the role of Juba, a scheming pirate itchin' for a chance to stab ol' Kully-boy in the back.

By the end of the movie though, no big surprises here, Kull accomplishes his tasks, reclaims the throne, and brings freedom and equality to the people of Valusia. In a way, Kull's a lot like Abraham Lincoln. Only instead of a stovepipe hat, he carries around a big honkin' battleaxe.

Oh, by the way, did I mention this whole sloppy mess is rated P.G.-13? Talk about takin' all the fun out of a barbarian story, eh?

Now, contrary to what you'd probably expect, the movie actually is pretty faithful, by and large, to the Kull stories penned by Howard back in the 20's and 30's. It gets a majority of the details right. What it bungles, though, are things that more important than the details. The nitty-gritty isn't what's important here. Details, continuity, the backstory, the timeline. Those don't actually matter all that much. What really, truly matters is the spirit of the story. And that's where the filmmakers behind KULL THE CONQUEROR went way, wayyyy wrong. Not only does this picture fail to capture the spirit of Howard's Kull stories, it completely betrays them. Gone is the harsh, violent, pre-Hyborian savagery and the surprisingly introspective meditations on philosophy. KULL THE CONQUEROR is soft, dumb, generic, and geriatric. Though Sorbo's Kull claims allegiance to his axe, he could hardly be a less threatening character. Likewise, the movie itself is disdainfully safe, watered down n' diluted, made more palatable for pimply-faced preteens too old for Power Rangers but not yet old enough for anything with "adult content." The kind of kids who were watching shows like Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, and would be therefore willing to follow Kevin Sorbo into the multiplex.

Don't take this the wrong way. I'm not bashing that particular T.V. show, nor the people who watched it. I watched it. I was one of the very same kids I just described in the paragraph above. When Hercules: The Legendary Journeys hit the airwaves, I was eight years old and completely obsessed with Greek and Norse mythology, not to mention a loyal devotee of the Renaissance Pictures gang. Only difference was that, unlike the my easily baited compatriots who found themselves in the crosshairs as Universal Studios' target audience, I actually had a brain, and I understood what it meant for a movie to have an R rating or a P.G.-13 one, and, even at that age, I understood that the former was infinitely preferable to the latter. I loved fantasy movies, and I'd seen CONAN THE BARBARIAN and THE BEASTMASTER and DEATHSTALKER so I knew what a kick-ass fantasy movie looked like (in point of fact, I consider CONAN and CLASH to be the top two best fantasy movies ever made), and I knew right from the start that KULL never had a snowball's chance in hell of being any such goddamn thing.

So, no, I'm not bashing people who watched Hercules back in the day. I'm just bashing people who watched Hercules back in the day who also happened to be stupid, and who Universal felt the need to pander to, the kind of folks that movies studios seem to continually feel the need to pander to and who thus cause the majority of all motion pictures released in American theaters today to add up to little more than a whole lot o' arse-waste. That's who I'm bashin', and that's who I'm trying to differentiate myself from.

Also, for the record, I'd just like to point out that I was much more into Xena anyway. At least you could bust a nut to that show.

Whatever. Getting back to the point I was originally tryin' to make, the problems here don't really come from this flick being too loose of an adaptation. As I said, it's not. The big problems come mainly from the movie completely wimping out of presenting the actual essence o' what a Kull story is supposed to be like, the spirit of the thing. The problems also come from KULL THE CONQUEROR being a just plain shitty fuckin' movie. From the dialogue to the direction, etcetera, etcetera, it's all pretty bad.

The plot is your a generic sort of "we need to go on a quest!" thing that pretty much all fantasy flicks gotta have. Not bad in an of itself, just weak, and not at all helped by the mountainous peaks of suckiness that surround it. On top of that, the script which brings to life the already so-so plot doesn't do a very good job. It's pacing is a bit off, and the entire middle portion of the film is so uninteresting that it'll probably turn you off completely. Then there's the score, which is an ill-conceived mish-mash of hard rock guitars and cliché orchestral histrionics. The production of KULL is a good display of what happens when bad decisions pile up upon bad decisions upon bad decisions upon bad decisions. Just about the best thing KULL has going for it is a brief appearance by Sven-Ole Thorsen (the big, burly bearded guy from THE RUNNING MAN and MALLRATS , as well as one of the two lead henchmen in CONAN THE BARBARIAN) as the batshit crazy Valusian ruler who hands the kingdom over to Kull with his dying breath. And when Sven-Ole Thorsen (cool as he is) is your big bread-winner, you're in big fuckin' trouble.

Postioned within the eye of the shitstorm is Kevin Sorbo. The guy's acting style can only be described as lighthearted and cheesy. It works better on the small screen, in the comfy confines of the campy, comedic Hercules mythos that Renaissance Pictures concocted. Transposed to the big screen, and trying to play shit deadly serious, the dude just doesn't cut it.

When Sorbo tries to be badass, the results are slightly less than totally laughable. The blaring orchestra and bad heavy metal just makes matter worse. When Sorbo tries to be vulnerable, he goes too far and looks like a pussy. When he tries to be menacing or authoritative, it's a joke. And when he tries to be charming, which is a not small portion of the time (charming, it seems, is what he thinks sword-and-sorcery protagonists are predominantly supposed to be... which is so fundamentally wrong as to be baffling blasphemy), it doesn't work at all. The guy comes across more like a gigolo than a barbarian.

I'm sorry, Hercules or no Hercules, Kevin Sorbo just doesn't cut the pre-industrial mustard, and he simply hasn't got the chops to portray Kull the way Kull needs to be portrayed. Instead of the gloomy, contemplative precursor to Conan that Kull originally was in Howard's tales (the character was something of an unlikely existentialist icon, really), the Kull that Sorbo creates is more of a cuddly, clueless, one-dimensional Conan wanna-be. He looks more like a tall glass of "Diet Fabio" than anything else. Marc Singer could shove Sorbo's dinky damn plastic axe halfway up his poopchute and still have more than enough energy left to teach his ferrets how to stealthily disrobe tavern wenches or some such shit (hey, that's what I would do if I had a pair of super-smart helper ferrets at my command). Now that's a sword-and-sorcery protagonist, goddammit!

Boatloads of bad acting, a horrendous music score, and a lame story I can handle though. The worst let-down here is that damnable P.G.-13 rating, depriving me of any tasty violence, sex, or nudity. No blood, guts, or sluts? Such a flimsy formula adds up to KULL being the biggest barbarian bummer since CONAN THE DESTROYER (although I still rank it a rung or two above that Schwarzeneggerian travesty). Even worse, there is not a single instance of camel-punching at any point in the movie whatsoever. Sacrilege!

Watching KULL THE CONQUEROR, it becomes obvious that this is a movie which makes no bones about admitting what it is: a paper-thin, opportunistic cash-grab made soley as an attempt to take advantage of Kevin Sorbo's Hercules fanbase using a half-forgotten CONAN script. Yes, that's right. The screenplay for KULL was originally intended as the screenplay for a follow-up to the above-lamented CONAN THE DESTROYER. Really, considering how bad DESTROYER was, it's not to surprising that it would eventually spawn the similarly soul-crushing suckiness of KULL, is it?

Christ, CONAN THE DESTROYER was just... godawful. In fact, as I parenthetically mentioned earlier, I may be in the majority here, but I'd go so far as to argue that DESTROYER is so bad that KULL, sucky as it is, is actually better! That's not really saying much, but I suppose that is one teeny-tiny little feather in KULL's cap. Better than no feathers at all.

From a purely entertainment-based standpoint, completely eradicating my preconceived notions about what a good sword-and-sorcery movie or a good Robert E. Howard story ought to be, I will admit that KULL is at the very least well-made enough to classify as a disposable (though mostly just despicable) time-waster. If you switch your brain off, it's a serviceable way to kill an hour and a half, especially if you're an undemanding, non-discerning fan of the fantasy genre in general. The first and final acts of the movie do a decent job of keeping your attention, despite all the faults. However the middle part of the movie is a real bore. If you find yourself watching KULL THE CONQUEROR sometime in the near future, my advice is to take advantage of that dull-ass second act and use the time given to you to go n' make a sandwich or something. A big one. Hell, make two. And grab a bag of chips while you're at it. Seriously, act two is fucking bland as cardboard. Sucks more cock than Nina Hartley.

Of course, there is another perspective from which to try n' view KULL, and that's the "so bad it's good" perspective. The CineMasochist perspective. If you're the kind of sick fuck who (like me) keeps copies of flicks like TROLL 2 and SHOWGIRLS in special places of honor on your D.V.D. shelf, then KULL might hold some appeal to you as an object of ironic enjoyment. Yes, I confess, it does have plenty of camp value. With the proper mindset, the proper sarcastic b-movie addict friends gathered at your side, and the proper amount of intoxicants coursing through your bloodstream, there's definitely a lot of primo opportunities to crack jokes n' yell insults at the screen. So if ya happen to know a pair of fellas named Crow n' Servo, then I'm sure KULL THE CONQUEROR will turn out to be a hoot. Even then, however, there's still not really many reasons to ever revisit the movie afterwards.

To be blunt, KULL THE CONQUEROR blows. It's too concerned with being kid-friendly, and favors "action" over "violence" (there's a big difference, boyo). When all's said n' done, it's a one-time-only movie-viewing experience, and that's about it. If ya dig fantasy movies, then give it a look-see, just to satiate your curiosity (and, maybe, to quash your own dreams), but let that be that. This is the kind of flick where you watch it once and then, aside from if you're really fuckin' bored or really fuckin' stupid, or you happen to know someone who hasn't seen it that ya think might get a twisted kick out of how bad it is, you probably won't ever feel the need to watch it again.

Unless of course you're a fat, unloved, poetry-scribblin' Kevin Sorbo-lovin' fangirl. Or a fat, unloved, meat-beatin' Tia Carrere-stalkin' pervert.

The fact that I myself recently decided to offer up five o' my own hard-earned dollars to procure myself a D.V.D. copy of KULL THE CONQUEROR from a local bargain outlet should clue you in on the (sad to admit) fact that yours cruelly is indeed one of the two such sort o' people described above. And since I neither write poetry nor possess a vagina, that only leaves one option.

Tia Carrere, I love you.

Until next slime...
Stay sick.
Your pickled pal,
William Weird.

Rating: 2 out of 5 tiger totem tarot cards
Recommendation: rent it
Best moment: Akivasha's true form is finally revealed... as is the answer to the question "Where the hell did the F.X. budget for this movie go anyway?"