Fauxnan the Barbarian, Part One – Black Gate – A survey of Conan-likes
I love these sorts of themed film surveys. As children yearn for the mines, so too do I yearn to put movies into categorized lists. Full disclosure, I've only watched the entirety of 1 movie on this list (Deathstalker 2025), but I do watch a lot of RedLetterMedia, so I feel like I've gotten the gist of all of them lol.
Anyone got any affinity for the genre or particular recommendations for barbarian-type movies? Cause, I gotta be honest, I watched that Barbarian movie from several years back based on nothing but the title, and, let me tell ya, I felt VERY misled... (/s of course... Mostly.)
The two that come to mind for me (outside of Conan the Barbarian, ofc), are The Beastmaster (1982) and Red Sonja (1985). Haven't seen them in forever, so I don't know how well they hold up.
From what I understand, there's an argument to be made that Red Sonja started not holding up at its own premiere haha.
That being said, I can lightly recommend the Red Sonja remake from last year. I did a double feature of that and Deathstalker 2025 awhile back, and had a really good time. It's kind of wild that we had two revivals of non-Conan barbarian properties released right around one another. Like an even schlockier version of Deep Impact vs Armageddon haha. Admittedly, I think Red Sonja 2025 benefitted from having watched Deathstalker 2025 first. Like the reviewer in the article, I only started to have a good time with the latter film once I A) learned its budget was barely $100K and B) came to terms with its comedic tone. Therefore, Red Sonja's somewhat po-faced earnestness and modest budget ($17 million-ish) felt like a breath of fresh air by comparison.