You know, I watched Red Sonja a few months ago, and I found it really interesting. There was so much
promise. You look at the opening fight, and sure, the maidens are wearing goofy outfits, but they don't fight much worse than the guys. That's not silly woman-fighting. They were actually letting women swing swords in a real way. That was nice.
Watching Con.. er, Kallidor, or whoever he was, was beautiful. Man, I may not have voted for him as my governor, but back in his prime, the man could swing that sword with crisp assertiveness and make you believe it.
The fact that the end fight was woman versus woman -- again, cool.
Where they really fell, honestly, was in picking Brigette Neilson, who looks great in a bikini but doesn't have the physical presence or ability to play Sonja. Watching her "defeat" a young Ernie Reyes, Jr. was laughable -- he's supposed to lose, so he does a beautiful series of crisp, clean kicks, and then Sonja clumsily knocks him down. Embarrassing to watch, especially when the person who should have won that fight was, what, 8, 10 years old at the time?
Beyond the miscasting of Sonja, there were minor things that irked me -- the fact that Sonja gets her strength by magic instead of by training (hey, no woman could ever be strong unless she got zinged by a fairy queen with magical strength), the evil empress (who seemed weirdly cosmopolitan to the extent that she seemed more like Evil American Manager from Absolutely Fabulous than an evil woman bent on ruling the world), the embarrassing lesbian idiocy, the decision to have most of Sonja's character development come through partially filmed flashbacks, the five minute slightly sexual-sounding death scene in the beginning as all the priestesses get crushed by the closing chamber, and the hamfisted "No man may sleep with me unless he takes me by force," which is so much dumber than just saying "Thanks, not interested," that it defies description.
But I suppose I am fundamentally preaching to the choir on this one.