red sonja be a career step in the wrong direction for arnold schwarzenegger . have make a couple of sword n sorcery film ( a conan ) he have move onto slightly more serious act role in film like the terminator and commando and only to make a mystify return to the sword n sorcery genre for this 1985 debacle . it hard to figure out why he bother and a this be weak than both conan film in every conceivable department . allegedly and this be to have be the third conan film and but for one reason or another the emphasis be shift onto the lead female character and the titular red head and leave poor old arnold to play an incredibly dull support role . spare a thought and too and for director richard fleischer who have give the world classic like 20 and 000 league under the sea and fantastic voyage and the boston strangler and 10 rillington place . in this his penultimate film fleischer also have take a gigantic career step backwards . evil queen gedren ( sandahl bergman ) want to rule the world and and she need a priceless and powerful talisman to do so . she and her brutish army storm a keep populate by priestess and steal the say talisman and massacre the helpless priestess a they go . one of the dead priestess have a sister name sonja ( brigitte nielsen ) and a fiery red head warrior and who upon hearing of her sister death swears revenge upon the evil gedren . sonja rid across the land in search of gedren lair . along the way she pick up travel companion in the shape of a boy prince and tarn ( ernie reyes jr ) and his bodyguard falkon ( paul smith ) . she also meet the muscular warrior conan sorry and i mean kalidor ( . ) who offer to join her in her quest . initially sonja doesn not want the help of kalidor ( arnold schwarzenegger ) and prefer instead to prove that she can confront and defeat her enemy alone and but eventually she warm to him and accept his assistance . red sonja be a staggeringly poor film and all the more so when one muse that it be make in 1985 when the sword n sorcery genre be close to it end . it seem so simplistic and amateurish that one could easily mistake it for an early example of it kind . the performance be poor on the whole and range from bergman embarrassingly ott villain to reyes unbelievably irritate spoilt brat to schwarzenegger wooden and unenthusiastic hero . nielsen be slightly well a the heroine presumably full of enthusiasm at the thought of be in her first starring role but she be let down very badly by the stupidity of clive exton and george macdonald fraser script . the film be riddle with goof and include a scene where schwarzenegger be see in close up hack down bad guy but in a long shot in the same sequence there isn not a corpse in sight . technically it be very inept too and with sub standard special effect and appallingly mechanical monster . there be a few compensation and such a ennio morricone enjoyable music ( morricone spend a great deal of the 80 provide good music for awful film and e. g the island and treasure of the four crown and hundra ) . another compensation be giuseppe rotunno lensing of the location in fact and much of the time it a hell of a lot more gratifying to look at the lovely scenery than the actor stand in the foreground . there be very few sword n sorcery film after red sonja and so in some way it might go down in history a the film which destroy it own genre .