Films based on works by R. E. Howard (1985—)

Red Sonja (1985)

Dir. Richard Fleischer

The She-Devil with a Sword was created by Roy Thomas for Marvel's Conan comic series, but she was based on Red Sonya of Rogatino, a Howard-created character that appeared in a short story titled The Shadow of the Vulture (1934).

Arnold Schwarzenegger co-stars as a tactless barbarian that isn't Conan. My guess is there was some kind of licensing issues behind the scenes, because it's one hell of a missed opportunity, or it would be if the Red Sonja film was better.

The addition of an irritating child character means the sexualised female warrior role is curtailed, but the homophobia remains. Typical.

I can't remember the last time I saw so many polystyrene rocks collected together in one place.

Kull the Conqueror (1997)

Dir. John Nicolella

It was planned to be a third Conan film until Arnie dropped out. Kevin Sorbo stepped in, the hero was changed to one of Howard's other creations, Kull of Atlantis, and reset to the Thurian Age, which predates the Hyborian.

Sorbo plays the Atlantean as a kind of less-perfect version of his television Hercules character. Being in the right place at the right time grants him some power, but his radical social reforms don't go down well with the established order, so shit hits fans.

I like Sorbo, but his inclusion makes it hard to see it as anything other than a TV Movie. Ironically, even though it isn't, that's a beneficial way to think of it because it falls very short of being a cinematic experience. Still, it's fun.

Solomon Kane (2009)

Dir. Michael J. Bassett

My TV is capable of displaying tens of millions of colours. Solomon Kane made use of about ten percent of them. It's a colour-drained bore in which even the grass is grey.

The characters are just as limited. Kane is a charisma-vacuum who walks around like some kind of fake Highlander. Admittedly, having a soul that's damned and fearing the reaper will reap your ass at any time would put a dampener on life, but did the gloom have to be passed so completely onto the viewer?

It rains a lot. It's set in England, so I guess they should get credit for reflecting that side of it.

The reliance on CGI only serves to increase the sense that nothing is real, except the feeling that I really wanted the misery to end.

Conan the Barbarian (2011)

Dir. Marcus Nispel

The 2011 version of Conan matures under paternal guidance. The father-to-son element has its merits in fantasy movies, but it lacks the weighty 'forged in servitude' nature that helped define the character in a previous outing.

I have to be honest and say it wasn't as bad as I expected. He's too much of a pretty-boy and for a while it's a humourless slog with the obligatory battle scene, but it picked up as it went along.

Ultimately, it's a Hollywood action movie with action scenes typically filmed too close and has stupid, exaggerated sound effects. It seems slightly better than average elsewhere because it's not set in a yawn-some, modern, gritty American city like most action movies are, and it at least makes some effort to include scenes that are reminiscent of the old Conan comics.

EDIT: originally I opened the post with the most well-known adaption of Howard's works, namely Dir. John Milius' Conan the Barbarian (1982), but later learned that animals were knowingly and wilfully harmed during filming. A most despicable scene was mercifully absent from the version that I watched, but that any such thing happened at all is unforgivable. Therefore, no further mention of Milius' violation will be made on the 7th and Last.

If I'd known prior to writing, I'd never have featured it. I can only hope that I've not made the same mistake elsewhere. And because there are similar reports surrounding its sequel, Dir. Richard Fleischer's Conan the Destroyer (1984), I've removed it, too.