Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #115805 in DVD
• Released on: 1998-02-24
• Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Running time: 96 minutes

Amazon.com
If you're into sword-and-sorcery tales, look no further than this critically underrated big-screen fantasy based on the fiction of Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard. It was a troubled production and the outcome is far different from the more serious and intelligent epic that screenwriter Charles Pogue had originally conceived. Still, this is a giddy, energetic throwback to the Ray Harryhausen movie fantasies of the 1950s and '60s, and it's a perfect vehicle for Kevin Sorbo, the hunky star of TV's Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. Sorbo brings an appropriate combination of depth and physical agility to the role of Kull (son of Conan), but he and director John Nicolella know better than to take this stuff too seriously. The movie's humor is nicely integrated into the dialogue without resorting to lame punch lines, and Tia Carrere is enjoyably campy as the evil goddess who lures Kull from his favorite concubine (Karina Lombard) as she plots to overthrow the kingdom of Valusia. Playwright Harvey Fierstein also provides comic relief in a scene-stealing role, and with an abundance of black magic, stunning Slovakian locations, and grand battles of good versus evil, this heroic adventure is more entertaining than you might expect. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

WRONGHEADED BUT ENTERTAINING . . . SORT OF
To begin with, Jeff Shannon needs to do some fact-checking. Kull as the son of Conan? Huh? Kull only existed a hundred thousand years before Conan's Hyborian Age . . . but this film WAS intended as the third Conan movie, and was in fact considered by Schwarzenegger for his return to the role. Arnold ultimately passed on the part, leaving it for Kevin Sorbo to inherit. So in a sense, KULL THE CONQUEROR is the illegitimate child of CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Perhaps that's what Mr. Shannon meant. If so, my apologies. If not . . . check your facts, J.S.!

The basic plot is taken from Robert E. Howard's THE HOUR OF THE DRAGON (his sole Conan novel) and his Kull tale "By This Axe I Rule!" Conan's brief but eerie encounter with the ghoulish vampire-queen Akivasha in the depths of a Stygian pyramid provided the producers with a villainess to use in place of the resurrected sorcerer Xaltotun (a situation hijacked for THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER -- with the heart-stealing sorcery of the Master of Yimsha from "People of the Black Circle" thrown in for the hell of it. Howard has been so consistently ripped-off that we've been seeing bits and pieces of his work for a long, long time, although uncredited). Kull's smashing of the stone tablets of the law so that the lovers can marry loses something of its dramatic value when he does it purely for his own convenience (as the film translates these events). Screenwriter Charles Pogue (who did such a fine job on Cronenberg's version of THE FLY) meshes the elements of the novel and the story fairly well, although I suspect his script was heavily tampered with. (Most of Harvey Fierstein's dialogue seems to have been ad-libbed.) Typical of this is the clumsy, "Oops, we forgot to explain this", thrown-in-at-the-last-minute exposition of Kull's quest for the Breath of Valka.

Based on such strong story material, this could and should have been a much better film. However, Raffaela de Laurentiis decided to camp it up, probably in an attempt to hedge her bets by drawing in the HERCULES fans. Foremost among the offenses is a truly execrable, irritating and just plain lousy rock score by Joel Goldsmith. It's about as appropriate to Kull's world as PSYCHO would be if scored with the zither music of THE THIRD MAN. The score constantly ruins the mood of the film with annoying MTV riffs that prevent any sort of emotional involvement in the material.

Other reviewers have noted that this is just a liteweight, campy, "don't-take-it-seriously" popcorn movie. Yes, that's just how it ended up, and that's my chief complaint. Howard's splendid fiction deserved better treatment than this tossed-off, by-the-numbers version.

The casting: I like Kevin Sorbo as an actor (his portrayal of Hercules was highly enjoyable), but he just isn't Kull, any more than Arnold was the pantherish, quick-tempered barbarian from Cimmeria (though I enjoyed the first CONAN film, the second was just plain putrid). Part of the problem is that the film was made in the tongue-in-cheek HERCULES vein. While some of the comedy lines Sorbo is given are undeniably funny (and he delivers them well), Kull had less of a sense of humor than Conan did, and Conan's was more along the lines of dumping treacherous courtesans in cesspools than dry one-liners. Sorbo doesn't display Kull's savage impatience with civilized strictures. His approach is too gentlemanly -- a far cry from the raw Atlantean savage Howard envisioned. He's an appealing hero, but he just ain't Kull.

Another problem is that the producers tried too hard for their PG-13 rating, robbing the material of serious treatment. This is probably another reason so much comedy crept in -- as the old saying goes, "if you can't be good, be funny." KULL comes across as a grade-schooler's version of Robert E. Howard, sanitized and made safely squeaky-clean.

Tia Carrere, resplendant in green contact lenses and red wig (although the makeup artists did nothing to hide her brunette's complexion, which renders the wig a tad fake-looking), is a marvelous villainess, making the most of her feline playing with her patsy Enaras, a masochistic renegade priest, to whom she reveals the true meaning of pain. By turns she's vicious and alluring. She plays Akivasha almost as broadly as one of the villains on the old BATMAN TV show. She has some wonderful lip-curling moments of bitchy arrogance.

Harvey Fierstein is just plain annoying, turning Jubah into a sneering, woman-despising gay stereotype. (Can anyone else have injected more snide venom into his "You know I hate the smell of fish" line?) If you like that sort of thing, I suppose he's amusing enough. He's about as inappropriate to Kull's world as Quentin Crisp would be, though.

Karina Lombard is a bit stiff at times, although she hits her stride nicely in the temple of Valka. She brings a nice intensity and conviction to this scene, giving it some much-needed credibility. (Valka's gigantic, cross-eyed stone face is rather risible, I'm afraid.)

Litefoot tries hard as Ascalante, but his character is written badly. The priest of Valka won't take a man's life (refusing to accept a sword from Kull when they're surrounded by enemies), but he doesn't have any problems with setting them on fire or drowning them when the occasion demands. It's tough for an actor to bring such a muddled mishmash to life.

So what's the final score? As a liteweight investment of 90+ minutes, the film is enjoyable if somewhat uninvolving. However, as a longtime admirer of Robert E. Howard, KULL strikes me as only marginally better than drivel like CONAN THE DESTROYER, or the even-worse RED SONJA. What really grates is that now probably nobody will ever film Howard faithfully -- deeming his work to be a failure because most of the films based on it have been failures.

MR. HOWARD IS NOT PLEASED!!!
Poor Robert E. Howard...He never lived nearly long enough to enjoy the fruits of his labors that would have made him a very wealthy man. Conan movies, TV shows, comics, magazines, toys...He'd be startled to learn just how popular barbarian hero had become. He'd be equally horrified to see the results of Kull the Conqueror. Kull was actually created by Howard before Conan and in fact Howard re-wrote several of his Kull stories that Weird tales rejected, as Conan stories.

One immediately knew things were not going to be good with Kevin Sorbo playing the title role. He's too slender, and altogether too 'pristine' to have played Kull who was essetially a savage tribesman, much like Conan. In Howard's original works, Kull took the throne of Valusia by force by killing the petty despot King Borna and took the crown from his head and became King...no matter who liked it or not. There was nothing so trite as the dying king merely handing over his crown to the man who just killed him...a man who was a savage at that.

Borna's heirs are none too happy that they've been left out of power and enlist the aid of a resurrected witch named Akivasha to get rid of Kull. We then get some mish mash of a quest that Kull has to complete to defeat the witch...ho hum...It's obvious that Sorbo was cast to cash in on the popularity of the Hercules TV show but he's just too nice a guy to be playing the savage Kull.

Tia Carrere fairs no better than Sorbo. Again we have someone just a little too good looking to be playing their role. And again someone whose acting talent is meager to begin with. And where is Kull'f long time companion Brule the Spearslayer? And instead of creating the new character of the witch Akivasha, why not use Kull's actual arch-enemy Thulsa Doom?

This plays more like a maede for TV movie than a big screen film. A huge disappointment.

horrid treatment of Howard's work
This movie is just horrible. Whereas Robert Howard's Kull was a somber, brooding character capable of both savagery and scholarly pursuits, this movie's Kull lacks any definable personality at all. Sorbo--horrible actor he is--simply is not the right actor to play Howard's first savage barbarian. Putting Acheron ahead of Valusia's time shows the writers couldn't even research the source naterial carefully enough to at least try to translate Howard to the screen. In addition, Howard's Kull is uninterested in women, while this Kull is almost as much a womanizer as Conan. (If they wanted to make another Conan movie, they should have done so. This is a completely different character.) Almost all--if not all--of Kull's supporting characters are removed in favor of holdovers from Howard's Conan stories (ie, Ascalante, Akivasha, et al). Though the story vaguely borrows from several Howard stories like The Hour of the Dragon (Howard's Conan novel), "By This Axe, I Rule!" (the story Howard converted from a Kull story into the first Conan story), and Exile of Atlantis (Kull's origin story), it is sloppy and incoherent and reduces his lyrical writing to dissonant garbage. Although of course it too has its flaws, Conan the Barbarian featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger is a much more satisfying rendition of one of Howard's creations. This movie should definitely be avoided while someone in Hollywood finds a way to bring a worthwhile version of something the late, great Texan wrote to the screen. Lastly, even the reviewer couldn't get things right, for Kull was an Atlantean of the Pre-Cataclysmic Age even as Conan was a Cimmerian of the Hyborian Age of several thousand years after Kull's time. Ah, well. I'm done venting.