THE BARBARIANS: An Underappreciated Fantasy "Gem"

HEY!....

Where's da Ruby?

If you watch this particular film without any sense of humor and with absolutely no joy in your soul, that is all you're likely to remember from The Barbarians, a 1987 fantasy adventure film starring the Barbarian Brothers- Peter Paul and David Paul (the recitation of their names always gives me flashbacks to the "Mario Mario and Luigi Mario" scene from Super Mario Brothers and if you're wondering if the Express is going to make a stop there, all I can say is you bet your sweet ass it is).

But this was a film I was fond of as a child and looking back before a re-watch, I wasn't entirely sure why. I didn't  remember it being good. I didn't recall it being clever. Hell, I didn't even recall it as being particularly funny, intentionally or otherwise. So why did I remember it at all?

Well, it's because Peter and David Paul looked like this:

"Alright boys, on three- FLEX!"

Why, yes that is a pair of identical bodybuilding twins in armor. And YES, that shit is very memorable.

But re-watching it, I started to recall why young me enjoyed it, but didn't love it. And it will become clear as I explain why adult me didn't just love it, but adored it.

See, young me had not yet played his first game of Dungeons and Dragons when he first watched this film, so was occasionally put off by the campy humor of The Barbarians, all the moments when our heroes broke the tension of a scene with their shtick of meat-headed antics. He'd roll his eyes and wonder how on Earth he was supposed to buy that a bad-ass fantasy hero would act like that under any circumstances, let alone TWO of them.

THEN...at the tender young age of 15 I started playing D&D, and my life changed forever- because the brand of buffoonery on show in The Barbarians became my Friday night with friends... because if you can watch THIS SCENE and not say to yourself "Yeah, my group did that one time," then I regret to inform you that you've been playing D&D wrong.

So, the first thing you must do is imagine not a far-away land of mythic heroes, but a group of high-school age friends getting together for a night of D&D ala Stranger Things. Our DM has big plans for the night. But then three of his friends say they can't make it, calling off because of the usual stupid reasons. So only two of his regular group can make it, Peter and Eva. And Peter has brought his brother David along who has never really played before.

But our DM doesn't want to give up on gaming for the night. I mean, his mom is already making pizza rolls...

Our DM screams internally, but decides "Whatever, we'll still be able to play with three. What's he want to play?"

"What's Peter playing?"

"A Barbarian."

"I wanna play one too." Of course he does...

"....fine. The dice are in the bag, roll one up."

"Okay!" David says, excited to be included. "...How do I do that?"

Before our DM can scream externally, Eva speaks up, just finishing her level up of her rogue.

"How about David and Peter share his character sheet? They can be identical twin brothers or something!" she laughs.

The DM thinks this is a dumb idea. Possibly the dumbest he's ever heard. But he has a crush on Eva.

"That...could work..." he says.

"I mean, how silly could that possibly get?"

Which is where our story actually begins, the DM pulling the basic story of every sword and sorcery movie he's seen out of his butt to make the game into a satisfying one-shot for the night.

Long ago, in ancient lands, many barbaric tribes wandered the young world. But safe from harm and beloved by all are the nomadic Ragniks, who are the world's entertainers and show-folk. A combination of acting troupe and traveling circus, they seem like pretty nice folks, and have adopted a few orphans into the tribe, a little girl named Kara and twin boys Kutchek and Gore.

All this is laid out via epic movie narration, and it is kind of a nice change of pace from the usual grim and gloom about warlords and shit, just sets up the important stuff for the story, none of the other supposedly impressive stuff that makes an audience not actually give a shit if you don't happen to be Star Wars. But sadly, barbarian movies only begin one of two ways- a baby being taken away from an evil king or a random attack by raiders. This one chooses raiders.

See, the Ragniks have a mystical gem in their possession, a ruby called the Belly Stone (cuz the queen wears it in her belly button). It carries their love of music and showmanship in it and some other vaguely defined powers, but the important thing was it was given to them by an ancient king and is said to be more valuable than a mountain of gold. So, this local warlord Kadar (Richard Lynch of God Told Me To, Bad Dreams and a similar turn in The Sword and the Sorcerer) has decided to seize it, as something worth a mountain of gold would be really handy in his world domination scheme.

But speaking of handy, in the ensuing melee, the gem is rushed away to be hidden, and one of the boys manages to bite off two of Kadar's fingers! Those were his pointing and yelling "Seize them!" fingers! How are his men supposed to know who to seize? But their adoptive mother, Canary- the current queen of the Ragniks, swears that if he harms them she'll never reveal the location of the Belly Stone. So Kadar swears he shall never harm them, but still takes them prisoner along with the queen and takes them to his stronghold. And there he sentences the boys to handed over to the Dirt-Master (Micheal Berryman of The Guyver, The Hills Have Eyes, and more) for training to be pit fighters.

Pictured: a gourmet chef and an absolute master of Dirt, apparently.

Dirtmaster has a neat idea to kill off the pesky brats, but it's a long game. While working them mercilessly in his prison "The Pit", he has them separated, told the other is dead. and beaten viciously by men in helmets, one brass, one iron. Once they've grown to be both mighty beefcakes and to instinctively hate anyone wearing these helmets, they are sent into the pits wearing helmets that look like their longtime tormentors.

In a move my inner DM thought was pretty cool, honestly.

But when one of them gets his helmet knocked off, it still takes a minute for one of them to figure it out. Because now that they are being played by identical twins, they have only one character trait apiece: Kutchek (Peter Paul) is dumb, and Gore (David Paul) is thunderously stupid. Also one wears a red headband and the other yellow. But once those get dirty, they become useless for a positive ID. But it doesn't matter.

They're the Barbarians, they're back together, and they're gonna go fight stuff.

For Justice, Revenge, and Baby Oil.

Once they reunite with their tribe they find that without Canary and the Belly Stone things have gone south for the Ragniks. They're captured and nearly executed along with the thief Ismene (Eva LaRue of CSI: Miami) before they are recognized as fellow Ragniks by their matching tattoos of the "Winding Road".

And only after Gore pulls off a  truly bizarre "Sure, roll for it." "I got a 20 on the die, what's that mean?" "Oh dear god..." moment: snapping the rope he's hanging from...by flexing his neck super hard.

Aaaand now you can hear this picture.

From there, the brothers and Ismene go a-questing to rescue Canary from Kadar, retrieve the Belly Stone, and save their people. Kadar, meanwhile, is not having a great week. Or month.

Or past decade, really.

See, when he captured Canary, with the intention of making her his concubine and extracting from her the location of the ruby, he was a king in his prime. His throne a giant chair on a raised platform held up by twenty slaves, a city stronghold, an army at his command, a harem of hot babes, (one of them straight up green, the Shatner-esque mofo) a sorceress at his side- the dude had the whole package as far as evil warlords go.

But all these years later, things aren't as great. The obviously huge amount of cash it takes to keep such an operation running at full steam has not materialized over the last ten-ish years or so, largely because despite every attempt to win over Canary with gold, jewels, and other gifts, he still is an objectively terrible person and keeps her prisoner, and thus hasn't swayed her. 

And since it appears important to him that she give in willingly, not only has he not actually 'taken' her as his concubine (while neglecting his harem), he has never found the Belly Stone, resulting in his little fief falling into disrepair. And something like this ( a warlord with cash-flow issues and a shitty personality) is a detail I can't recall another fantasy film ever really taking into account, like- ever. Especially for a villain.

He hasn't been laid in years, his bank ain't what it used to be, he's hung up on a girl who doesn't feel the same way and has slowly become a CR 10 Incel, can you blame his sorceress for pointing out that he looks tired?

"BUT I DON'T GET IT! WHY ARE YOU
 BEING SUCH A BITCH? I'VE BEEN NOTHING BUT A NICE GUY!!!"

But the real reason to watch this movie is just the one in the title, The Barbarian Brothers. They made a variety of tv appearances, movies, and whatnot during their brief period of fame, and of all of them, I can say this is the best thing they did. It's not hard to figure out their shtick of "giant amiable meatheads go on larger-than-life comedic adventures" gets old SUPER fast, but in this movie it actually works.

The movie is breezy, moving from one set-piece to the next pretty quickly, has characters that are unique, but still familiar enough archetypes for the genre that they are instantly recognizable, and just has a sense of fun all the way through. Buoyed by the genuine back and forth between the brothers, bringing their real-life endearingly argumentative chemistry to life as Kutchek and Gore while also showing off what made them unique amongst body-builders of the time: they were actually as strong as they looked. If you know anything about body-builders you know how rare this actually is, as most body-builders work out for the aesthetic in competition, not for actual strength and endurance. But regularly through the film, Kutchek and Gore pick up entire people without the aid of wires, and generally lift the heavy things. This does mean the fight scenes themselves are rarely anything special, since these are not agile men. But they are unique and literally play to their strengths.

And this is one of the few sword and sorcery, Dungeons and Dragons-feeling movies that has an actual dragon in it. It seems like it would be a staple, but because they are not easy to realize on screen with the typically low fantasy movie budget of the 80's, it's basically Dragonslayer and The Barbarians.

I mean, yeah- it looks like THIS, but it's more than any Ator movie ever managed.

And it avoids many of the tropes of this genre that can get super toxic. For instance, Ismene is rarely the damsel in need of saving, but usually the one who comes up with the good ideas that save them, and operates as an equal with the boys on their adventures. This role is mostly taken by Canary, anyway- but in a way that makes sense for the story. And when the Barbarians do find a moment for some sexy times, it's not the usual vaguely rapey, sexist overtones of the Barbarian Taking the Wench while she struggles and secretly likes it, instead being a sexy dog-pile by the neglected harem of Kadar that the boys just kinda shrug and go along with. And honestly, that's about as wholesome as that trope is ever gonna get, so why not enjoy it?

And their method for slaying the dragon, followed up with climbing around inside it to find "da ruby", is so D&D it nearly made me cry laughing.

And it's Ismene who ends up being the long-lost heir to a mystic throne instead of the male leads!

And to close this out, I wanna talk about the Paul Brothers a little bit. They very much fell off the radar after the 90's until recently, when David Paul passed away very unexpectedly in March of this year, just two days before the brothers mutual birthday. He would have been 63, and it made me very sad because they seemed like a lot of fun, having mellowed into eccentric artists with gentle souls, much like the Ragniks they portrayed in this movie.  And I'd lost a brother very unexpectedly when I was younger so it resonated how much it must hurt for a twin to lose a brother.

So while sure, not all their movies are good, this one  was- or is at least better than it has any right to be- and you should check it out, give it a watch. And when you do,  enjoy these two brothers having the time of their lives living out their dream of being movie stars, all while fighting monsters, toppling warlords, and arguing over who's got "da ruby".

Rest in peace, Gore. Heaven just got a LOT louder...

Express Tips for Enjoying THE BARBARIANS:

• Take a shot every time someone says "da ruby". You''ll get FUUUUCKED UUUUP.
• Take a drink whenever Gore makes that braying noise. 
• Actually scratch that, between tips 1 and 2, you could accidentally kill yourself.
• Whenever Kadar is arguing with his sorceress pretend they aren't warlords, but a behind-the-scenes look at a bitchy drag show.
• If you play D&D, bring your group together for a watch party, and take turns calling each other out as "That's you!" when the Barbarian Brothers do something stupid.
• Or, just sit back and watch it- this one can be fun all on it's own.

The Barbarians is available to watch for free on PlutoTV.


NEXT STOP: CELLAR DWELLER!

All Aboard for "Devil's Express"! or, How to Make a Movie with 4 Genres

HELLO! And welcome to the first entry of the Bad Movie Express!

For those of you coming here from our sister blog, BEYOND MIDNIGHT MOVIES,  you'll find this site a little different. On BMM I like to do analysis and appreciation more than straight review, and that is....labor intensive. I'm finding myself watching a movie I'd love to write about, then looking at the other articles and going..."But can I do that level of quality on this movie about a rubber monster in the basement?" So, long story short- BEYOND MIDNIGHT is for the stuff that's special to me or could use a deeper look. The Bad Movie Express is for my other love: trash cinema. The stuff that's so bad it becomes amazing. And if you aren't sure how to enjoy a movie, don't worry, I'm going to leave some tips for gaining maximum joy from the depths of badness. All the irreverence, not as much research. Just my unvarnished opinions on B movies I watch for entertainment.

But here I am jawing away, when the Express is headin' on out!

...the DEVIL'S EXPRESS, that is...

"Git ya tickets out,  I'm gonna be your Smooth Operator this evenin'..."

WHAT GENRE IS THIS MOVIE? No, man- I really wanna know.

It's a more complicated answer than it appears at first. It is one of the two films in the entire universe, as far as I know to feature the spectacularly named Warhawk Tanzania.

......
.......
......

Sorry for the long pause there, typing his name snapped my keyboard clean in half and I had to go buy a new one reinforced with pure Titanium-F (for Funk). With a name like that, the year it was made (1976, so that it wouldn't eclipse Star Wars), and the other credit for Mr. Tanzania being one BLACK FORCE in 1975, you'd be sensible to figure it's blaxploitation. And you'd be right. Except it has enough martial arts in it (more than the usual amount in Blaxploitation caused by the cultural osmosis of Chinese films gaining broader releases in black neighborhoods in this period) to also qualify as a martial arts movie.

So there, done right? Nope. There's also a plot that takes up way more of the film than you'd think about tension between black and Latino gangs and the Chinese Triads erupting on the streets of Harlem and getting out of control, to the extent that this film is distributed in some territories simply as "Gang Wars". So it's a gang movie? NOPE, the main plot according to the synopsis is that a martial arts master sets himself against an ancient demon killing innocent people in New York's subways.

"You keepin' up, baby? Then we shall continue."

So how does a movie that is trying to be four movies at once in a blender play out? Well, no doubt it is more choppy than socky. Even the opening credits can't decide on their personality, cutting back and forth between a POV shot of a subway train screaming through the subterranean labyrinth of NYC with ominous droning music, and a brightly lit traveling shot through the streets above complete with bouncy, happy funk music. It happens enough times, I actually yelled at it to pick a tone and it opted to completely ignore me (Rude).

But before that we have to establish that there are demons in this movie, so we establish that in China in ancient times, some dudes plopped a coffin in a big hole with a magic necklace, and to ensure that no one would ever find and accidentally release this ancient beast of destructive power filled the pit with SWEET FUCK ALL....

But they do commit ritual suicide so that no one is around to watch the hole for the next couple centuries. So glad these guys were on this job, what if they'd hired total idiots instead, right?

This is probably where some other movie would jump to the modern day of China with archaeologists digging up the demon and getting his good and mad. But nope, this movie jumps to the modern day and immediately introduces us to Warhawk in the midst of what I presume is his favorite activity: schoolin' fools.

HAI-KIBA!!!

And he's one hundred percent why you need to watch this movie. It's mesmerizing to watch someone who is such a subtle and unique blend of natural charisma and a complete lack of knowledge of how to behave in front of a camera. He really bounces back and forth so fast between "bad motherfucker" and "I'm not sure what to do with my hands and I'm trying not to look at the boom-mike" that it might have been at least part of the inspiration for Black Dynamite. He dispenses kung fu wisdom that his students respond to by nodding sagely and saying "I can dig it..." It's that kind of movie and it's a hoot.

I'm not going to do a blow by blow of the plot, I promise. Just in a film like this it needs some set-up.  So, Warhawk is playing a dude named Luke, who sees himself as an unofficial protector of his neighborhood-

Hold up...This sounds vaguely familiar....

-and part of his way of doing this is teaching martial arts to people to improve their body and mind, and lay a beat down on the bad elements of the neighborhood if they are dumb enough to come knockin'. Luke has that one friend we've all had; he's our homie, but he's got problems. Shoots first, thinks never kind of guy named Rodan...

"SWEET CHRISTMAS!!!"

Which is the other reason to watch this movie. As weirdly paced as it is, this was obviously written by a geek in the 70's who decided to slip subtle references to everything he liked at the time, along with all the different movies he wanted to see, and made it one movie, and one of the wildest Blaxploitation genre mashups I've seen in awhile. Sadly, there was only one part of the film where I got bored: The fight scenes.

We don't get to properly see one until Warhawk and Rodan go on a spiritual sojourn to China to hone their bodies, minds, and spirits. (Apparently the screenwriter liked Luke Cage, but not Iron Fist cuz they spend a good fifteen minutes of this movie in China and nobody  says Chi)

And that's when we find out that the 'best there is', Luke...well, he sure moves like he's seen a lot of martial arts movies...

They're either fighting or holding trays of invisible drinks.

*historical note: according to the very little I could find on the man behind the myth, Warhawk studied karate, which is apples and oranges when compared to Chinese gung-fu. Thus, while I can see he's definitely a talented martial artist, there's stuff going on it the blocking of these fights that makes him have to pretend karate is kung fu and...it just isn't.

And every fight is directed from either a little too close to be interestingly framed or too far away to be dynamic. And they're ALL too long. Like, "We need to get to feature length, let's put in the not as good takes too" too long. It's sad, because it bogs the movie down from being as awesome as it's concept desperately wants it to be.

But luckily,  where the movie is awesome is everywhere else. Every amusingly goofy cliche is there, and once the monster is on the loose, thanks to Rodan finding his way into the open pit with a demon in it and taking the magical necklace that keeps it bound that's just kinda laying out in the open like someone forgot it (Hmm, maybe if they'd done something to make it harder to find by passersby like literally anything), the movie gets fun and stays fun whenever we're not stuck in a fight scene (the one good one of these is actually from an unnamed waitress character who turns the tables on a few abusive patrons, and she has the raw shit that makes a good fight scene, and uses karate with authority and strength, without any flourishes to make it pretty-looking, which is how I like my karate fights. Gimme a Devil's Express 2 about her...).

The demon scenes and the rest of the movie are cut together in such a way that I began to genuinely wonder if these were filmed together, but made explicitly so there could be two cuts of the movie, one with and one without the supernatural element. Yes, the movie can really still function as a narrative just fine without the titular Devil up to about 10 minutes or so before the end of the flick. The demon is just wholly separate from the rest of the movie to such an extent that when named characters run into the subway, and thus run the risk of crossing paths with the demon, I perked up because 'oh my god you guys, the streams are crossing!'

"Mmm, supporting protagonists, my favorite!"

The monster is pretty good too.... for an episode of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. It even follows some of the goofier rules for one: Rubber Suit, check. Ability to take the form of a victim to save make up money, check. Shot mostly in the dark, Big Check.

Big props to this guy for doing some loooong
walks in the street with his eyes shut...

And once Warhawk is done fucking around with the rest of the movie he suits up in his best super-hero attire-

Or he just puts on regular clothes for 1976.
Could go either way.

-and sets out to vanquish evil. But not without crossing paths with gangsters, the two white cops in New York who both know him, and the single worst make-up job I've ever seen to make a human still look like a human.

GENTLEMEN....BEHOLD:

NO. NO, PUT HIM BACK IN THE OVEN
FOR ANOTHER 20 MINS.
HE'S NOT DONE...

Like, I honestly can't tell if this is a Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins situation where this is a white guy made up to look like an old Chinese man, or if they couldn't find an old Chinese man and slapped this on a young Chinese man? I was expecting him to turn into the demon for the whole scene because what other explanation is there for THIS?

Oh, and Brother Theodore is in this movie, for those of
you who love The 'Burbs. I don't know why he's here.
I'm guessing he doesn't either...

So, all in all, this one can be easy to enjoy all on it's own, but if you're looking for help, here's my

EXPRESS TIPS TO BETTER ENJOYMENT:

• Let this movie just bathe you in it's New York-ness in way  only 70's movies could do.
• Anytime you wonder why something just happened say "Warhawk Tanzania" to yourself until the sensation subsides.
• Cringe a little at all the times Warhawk's best friend is openly racist against the culture he idolizes.Or Cringe a lot. I did.
• Finally find out what would happen if Luke Cage was the main character of a Kolchak spin-off. And his only weakness in this version was shirts.
• And finally, there are big swathes of this movie where characters talk, but there is no recorded audio, so instead these are used as montage and establishing shots. I'm 100 percent certain this is not on purpose and that scenes got shot, but no usable audio made it through. Feel free to make up your own dialog for these scenes. I did!

In closing, I wanna talk about the man, the myth, the Warhawk Tanzania.

"All that beat-down for this Cracker Jack bullshit?

Very little is known about this mysterious figure. I was able to find virtually nothing, outside this:
He was born in 1946 as Warren Hawkins. He studied Nisei Goju-Ryu karate with the founder of this style, Hanshi Frank Ruiz. Ruiz also staged his action scenes in Black Force and Devil's Express. He still lives in New York.

I'm forced to only one conclusion: Devil's Express is a docu-drama and to this day, at 74 years young, Warhawk Tanzania is still out there- teaching the kids karate, defending the streets from Triads and pushers, delivering spin-kicks in three inch platform heels, killing demons, and STILL never wearing a shirt.

"WHAT DID I TELL YOU I'D DO
I FIND YOU JUMPIN' TURNSTILES
IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD AGAIN,
FOO'?"

New York couldn't be in safer hands...

NEXT STOP: THE BARBARIANS!