Aside from having more guys named Yuri in it than any other English language film ever made, the only interesting thing about Barbarian is that I don't have the slightest idea when this thing was made. It's a remake of/sequel to a 1983 sword-n-sorcery flick called Deathstalker and IMDb.com officially lists Barbarian as coming out in 2003, so unless there were some Galifreyan investors involved, it must have happened sometime between those two dates. But with its noticeably cheap production values and retrograde camera work, I can't believe this thing was made at any time during the 21st century or even the 1990s. On the other hand, the multi-syllable monikers in the cast list place this production clearly in Eastern Europe, which locates it sometime after the fall of the Soviet Union. However, who would bother to cannibalize something like Deathstalker after that much time had passed? Who would even remember it or want to claim it? It is a puzzlement. Usually when you call something "timeless", that's an indication of high quality. Well, Barbarian is "timeless" but only in the sense that it sucks so hard that it's impossible to chronologically quantify it. If you showed this to people and then asked them when they thought it was made, they'd probably guess some time after 1970 but after that, all bets would be off.
And when I say this is a remake of/sequel to Deathstalker, I mean it not only appears to be retelling the exact same story but it uses footage from the first film, both as flashbacks and as filler in between new material. In fact, it looks like there might be scenes from several more low-budget flicks being repurposed here in that same way. And again, someone trying to pass off a hack job sequel full of re-edited footage from a bottom-of-the-barrel D-n-D flick might have made some sense if it was done relatively soon after the original. Doing it 10 or especially 20 years later is head-scratchingly peculiar.
The storytelling and acting and special effects in this movie are so uniformly terrible that it's hardly worth going into them. There are plenty of attractive, topless chicks and an abundance of fight scenes, but the combat staged here doesn't look like anything that's been done in any professionally made film since 1990. It's more like a bad imitation of that 1970s TV series Kung Fu, which brings us back to the time paradox that is Barbarian.
I will say that anyone who ever criticizes Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting should view this thing for a reality check. Star Michael O'Hearn is big and muscular, has no accent and is more conventionally handsome than Arnold. Yet if you put him opposite a 30something Schwarzenegger, O'Hearn wouldn't just be blown off the screen. He'd be pulverized into a wet, pulpy mess.
And if you read the other reviews of this weird dreck, you'll notice the common scorn for the character Wooby. He's a giant Ewok/midget Wookie who's meant as comic relief and is at least a 7 out of 10 on the Jar Jar Binks Scale of Annoying Anthropomorphs. Which once more revives the question of when the heck this thing was made, because Wooby is only something that would have been conceived in the immediate aftermath of Return of the Jedi, putting this movie that was released in 2003 and likely shot in 1990s post-Cold War Eastern Europe as somehow being actually made around 1985 or so. The Time Bandits need to team up with Timecop and hitch a ride with the Time Riders down the Time Tunnel and figure out what went on with this film. Maybe I need to look at it again and see if I can spot Michael J. Fox and a DeLorean in the background anywhere.
And just to be clear, Barbarian is only watchable if you're going to MST3K it, but don't try and turn its crappiness into a drinking game. You will seriously damage your liver.
And when I say this is a remake of/sequel to Deathstalker, I mean it not only appears to be retelling the exact same story but it uses footage from the first film, both as flashbacks and as filler in between new material. In fact, it looks like there might be scenes from several more low-budget flicks being repurposed here in that same way. And again, someone trying to pass off a hack job sequel full of re-edited footage from a bottom-of-the-barrel D-n-D flick might have made some sense if it was done relatively soon after the original. Doing it 10 or especially 20 years later is head-scratchingly peculiar.
The storytelling and acting and special effects in this movie are so uniformly terrible that it's hardly worth going into them. There are plenty of attractive, topless chicks and an abundance of fight scenes, but the combat staged here doesn't look like anything that's been done in any professionally made film since 1990. It's more like a bad imitation of that 1970s TV series Kung Fu, which brings us back to the time paradox that is Barbarian.
I will say that anyone who ever criticizes Arnold Schwarzenegger's acting should view this thing for a reality check. Star Michael O'Hearn is big and muscular, has no accent and is more conventionally handsome than Arnold. Yet if you put him opposite a 30something Schwarzenegger, O'Hearn wouldn't just be blown off the screen. He'd be pulverized into a wet, pulpy mess.
And if you read the other reviews of this weird dreck, you'll notice the common scorn for the character Wooby. He's a giant Ewok/midget Wookie who's meant as comic relief and is at least a 7 out of 10 on the Jar Jar Binks Scale of Annoying Anthropomorphs. Which once more revives the question of when the heck this thing was made, because Wooby is only something that would have been conceived in the immediate aftermath of Return of the Jedi, putting this movie that was released in 2003 and likely shot in 1990s post-Cold War Eastern Europe as somehow being actually made around 1985 or so. The Time Bandits need to team up with Timecop and hitch a ride with the Time Riders down the Time Tunnel and figure out what went on with this film. Maybe I need to look at it again and see if I can spot Michael J. Fox and a DeLorean in the background anywhere.
And just to be clear, Barbarian is only watchable if you're going to MST3K it, but don't try and turn its crappiness into a drinking game. You will seriously damage your liver.