The Red Shoes (1948)

Red Sonja is like Conan the Barbarian, but with an angry red-headed woman instead of an angry gym bro. However, in the same way that He-Man had to keep popping up in episodes of She-Ra to help her out, Arnie Schwarznegger keeps popping up in Red Sonja to help her out too. Only this time around, he's called Kalidor. I'm sure they're a company that make garage doors.

So, the plot. Sonja has red hair so is known as Red Sonja. She's also very angry. And angry ginger people aren't to be messed with. She's been assaulted, and her family has been slain by the evil Queen Gedren and her army. Understandably, Sonja wants revenge.

Adding to her anger is the fact that Gedren has stolen the talisman, a magical illuminated green rock that holds the power to create and destroy worlds. Gedren's theft of the talisman happened during a ceremony to destroy it due to its powers getting out of control. Most of the priestesses carrying out the ceremony are killed by Gedren's forces. One escapes: Varna, who happens to be Sonja's sister. During her escape, Varna is wounded, but is found by Conan, sorry Kalidor. Varna tells Kalidor to find Sonja. Kalidor finds Sonja. Varna tells Sonja to find Gedren and the Talisman. Varna then dies.

Kalidor offers to accompany Sonja on her mission, but Sonja, being a strong independent woman way before they apparently got invented in the 2020s, prefers to go it alone. Unbeknownst to her, Kalidor stays on her track, and gets her out of sticky situations numerous times throughout the film.

During her adventure, Sonja meets Prince Tarn and his servant, Falkon. They are all that are left of the kingdom of Hablock after Queen Gedren destroyed that too. Prince Tarn is an obnoxious little brat, but inevitably learns humility during proceedings. Eventually, Sonja, Kalidor, Prince Tarn and Falkon join forces to take on Gedren and her minions together.

Red Sonja's plot is very linear. It really is a case of evil Queen steals magical green rock lamp thing. Sonja and her groupies engage in sword fight after sword fight across various landscapes until they reach Hedren for the final boss fight. There's a battle with a mechanical dragon part way through, and Sonja and Kalidor have a flirty knife fight, which is something I've not seen before. That's mostly because Sonja says that no man can have her until he beats her in a fair fight. The fight goes on so long that they're both too exhausted to take things to another level. And as I watched this film on TV, an ad break came on and suddenly I found Dormeo trying to sell me a bed for the next five minutes. Unless it wasn't an advert, and Sonja and Kalidor ended up in a Dormeo bed.

The film is a weird in that it feels low budget and amateurish, but has pretty decent sets and scenery, and a surprisingly good soundtrack by Ennio Morricone.