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!