Three laughs: The Barbarians

It is hard to rate some trashy films. Films can be really good entertainment in spite of themselves, and it is an even better pleasure to find some trash that keeps surprising you than watching most quality films. My friend says that he knows a trash film is worth something if it gets three laughs out of me. I mean proper, good belly laughs when you can't believe what the film is showing to you. That's as good a rating as any for these movies. Any film that has these three laughs has a special place in my heart.

The Barbarians (1987)
Director: Ruggero Deodato

In the 1980's, the once lucrative Italian film industry started to diminish, with directors turning to churning out cheap knockoffs of American hit genre movies for VHS markets. The barbarian picture seemed to be a particularly popular of them, since peplum movies had been big before, in the 50's. And to make one, you really didn't need any more than just a very muscled main actor, a sword, a desert and lots of muscle oil.

The Barbarians was co-produced by the legendary American B-movie company Cannon Films. The original director was the Serbian Slobodan Šijan, but he was replaced by the man behind Cannibal Holocaust, Ruggero Deodato. For a Deodato movie, the end result isn't as dark as one would think, and the nihilism is kept strictly below the surface. The film's world sees hippie-like natural people getting easily brutalized by stronger hands, and gives little hope for any brainier activity to have much use in the world or there to be any non-violent way to solve conflicts. The Barbarian Brothers (Peter and David Paul) bumble their way through a fantasy landscape, with little agenda of their own and never, ever, giving any thought into anything.

It's a very casual movie for a genre that usually features a larger-than-life threat and some operatic melodrama. As it happens, it is probably the best Groo the Wanderer adaptation one could ever hope for. With twice the Groo!

Three laughs (SPOILERS):

1. The first 20 minutes or so are pleyed relatively easy as far as Italian genre movies go. Michael Berryman from Hills Have Eyes is included in a group of nasty desert warriors who kidnap a woodland hippie queen and take her sons captive. They are seperated and raised to be barbarian gladiators, fighting against bigger and bigger opponents for sport. The first laugh of the film comes from when it is decided they should fight each other, and they are given the first pieces of dialogue. The Pauls really aren't much of actors, and it seems to take everything they have in their heads to try to pronounce words somewhat correctly. But the film is written as they argue with each other all the time. So, there is a contrast of two child-minded muscled barbarianmen arguing unconvincingly and fighting nonchalantly against horders, while Berryman throws more and more goons into finishing them off.

2. The film seems to recognize many of the other faults of the leading men, even making fun of them at points. I especially love the scene where during an espionage mission, they happen to peek into a tent which happens to feature a harem of beautiful ladies. The reaction the Brothers have for this is to do a noise, which is sort of a mixture of an excited yell of a bull in heat, and the wheezing laughing struggles of an asthmatic who has heard the most hilarious joke in the world.

3. The producers, Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, were notoriously cheap, so in their pictures everything that was possible to do cheaper, often was. Case in point was the sets and the special effects. The film manages to have a halfway convincing dragon, which looks like a roasted pig, for about two seconds of screentime. The fun begins when it gulps down our heroes and we see how he looks on the inside. It looks like a tunnel with blue and red christmas lights and a fog machine. Who knew dragons had a techno club inside them!