“Hey, wait! I don’t even know these guys!”

Drake’s rating: This is part of the movie swap. I sent Justin a perfectly good James Garner movie, and he sent me The Barbarians.

Drake’s review: There are a few ways to approach a movie swap. One way, certainly, is to consider the recipient of the swap, and to then delve into their Mutant psyches, researching their review histories with a fine tooth comb and to derive from that exhausting inquiry a film that suits their unique, if somewhat disturbed, personality.

On the other hand, you can instead just pick a flick that you really think should be on the site, but one that you in no way want to review, and foist it off on the first unsuspecting Mutant who comes to mind. I’m not sure which approach Justin took in sending me The Barbarians, but I’m kind of hoping it’s the latter.

I had seen this one, once, years ago, and it didn’t leave a good impression, so I wasn’t exactly stoked to revisit the antics of bodybuilding twins David and Peter Paul again. Surprisingly, The Barbarians wasn’t as bad as I remembered. Which is not to say it’s good, just that it could be so much worse.

So 1987 was a pretty late date to be submitting your entry into the “Sword & Sorcery” film sweepstakes. Conan the Barbarian had done fairly well at the box office five years prior and had inspired a slew of imitators to rush into production, but the genre lost steam fairly quickly and low-budget producers turned their interest to more profitable fare (e.g., continuing to rip off The Road Warrior instead).

However, Cannon Films, those legendary purveyors of ‘80s schlock, missed the memo stating that the loincloth era was done. So they got a director best known for his controversial cannibal exploitation films, hired a pair of brothers who hyped themselves as “the bad boys of bodybuilding,” and cast a young actress who literally had no credits to her name. What could go wrong?

Surprisingly, less then you might expect. Yes, The Barbarians is a cheap production, but at the same time it’s an energetic one. David and Peter Paul bounce from scene to scene like a pair of overenthusiastic Cocker Spaniel puppies, just happy to be there and eager to please, and director Ruggero Deodato is wise enough to let them play unleashed.

We start off with the Ragnicks, a group of nomadic circus folk who come under attack by the evil Kadar (Richard Lynch, The Sword and the Sorcerer). Capturing their queen, Kadar has the young twins Kotchek and Gore imprisoned since one of them had the temerity to bite off two of his fingers. From here The Barbarians simply photocopies Conan the Barbarian (the film, not the literary source material) in having the young men develop from scrawny adolescents into burly barbarians, even though the rest of the slaves around them are a pretty underfed lot and there’s nary a set of free weights to be found.

Setting them against each other in a pit fight, Kadar expects one to kill the other. Instead, they figure out that they are long-lost twins and make a break for it, encountering both a young thief named Ismene (Eva LaRue) and their tribe of Ragnicks. Swearing revenge on Kadar, the brothers make plans to free their queen, but she asks them to first find her magic ruby, which she had a trusted servant hide even as Kadar attacked the Ragnicks years before. Thus begin the misadventures of the twins as they battle mercenaries, a dragon, and Kadar himself, all while bickering in brotherly fashion.

Again, what makes the movie work is the energy of the Pauls. Neither one can act worth a darn, but they can certainly ham it up, argue and crack bad jokes. Ismene is a welcome addition to the pair’s antics, as she provides the single brain that the three of them make use of to wind their way through the movie, and Eva LaRue, though a neophyte actress at the time, is nevertheless as full of charm as the Pauls are of vigor. And this is frankly a good-looking movie. The costuming is surprisingly decent, especially for the Ragnicks, and Deodato’s veteran presence behind the camera is a boon to the film. He captures some nice scenic moments and the action scenes are shot with an eye towards coherence over spectacle.

With that said, however, The Barbarians suffers from an overabundance of dumb. Veering unevenly between action and comedy (of a sort), it leans far too heavily on the latter without having any true talent in that arena. The old Universal horror-comedies at least had the benefit of casting Abbot and Costello, but here the funny bits rely on a pair of musclebound brothers whose acting skills are limited, to say the least, and whose comedy routines play like a bad beer commercial, but stretched out over 90 minutes.

It’s hard to dislike The Barbarians, though. Like the aforementioned Cocker Spaniel pups, it tries its best to keep you entertained, and if it gets too excited racing around the house and knocks over the water dish, you just have to smile and remind yourself that it’s just happy to see you.

Intermission!

• This was Eva LaRue’s first acting job. She had won the Miss Riverside beauty contest mere weeks before, and was set to enter Miss California, but gave up her crown and jumped on a plane to Italy instead.
• “Fight or run?” asks one brother. “Run,” says the other. Actually a fairly legitimate tactic in sword & sorcery stories. They were less about grand quests and more about surviving to pillage another day.
• So the two brothers age about 15 years while they’re enslaved, but everyone else stays the same age. That’s just weird, right?
• When attending a pit fight, please keep your arms and legs out of the cage area. The management will not be responsible for any lost limbs.
• One of the brothers dead-lifting a sleeping woman and then just walking around with her gorilla-pressed over his head is actually pretty funny.
• Jacko the arms dealer is played by Italian actor George Eastman, an exploitation film veteran. He’s 6’9” tall, which is why he towers over even the Paul brothers.
• OK, I admit it: I had a pretty good time watching The Barbarians. Maybe Justin used the first approach in picking this movie after all. That idea kind of disturbs me.