Though he’s technically the same character as before, Conan seems more comical when he’s babysitting barbarian kids. T’s cartoon gymnastics team, and it works about as well in Conan and the Young Warriors. When Conan the Adventurer left the airwaves in 1993, Sunbow decided to follow it up with a worse idea: instead of pairing Conan with grown-up sidekicks and somewhat dark themes, the sequel clearly needed to put Conan in charge of a trio of three blond kids drawn together by magical “star stones.” It’s the same idea that gave us Mr. No one died and the show treated women with a modicum of respect, but the other parts of Conan lore were undoubtedly there. In fact, it was relatively faithful to the Conan the Barbarian ideal laid out in movies and Robert E.
Sunbow Productions’ Conan the Adventurer series wasn’t such a bad cartoon.
Not bad for a movie that was, according to one of its cast members, essentially a producer’s tax write-off.Īppearances: Conan and the Young Warriors Between the villain’s preposterous look (at a glance, he could be an aged David Bowie) and the constant Clearly Not Homoerotic shots of the stars’ rippling beefcakery, it’s all way too hokey for us to despise. There are monsters to be slain, dubbed-over women to be saved, and a trailer to be narrated by Peter “Optimus Prime” Cullen. Oh, and they also walk around oiled-up and shirtless more often than Schwarzenegger ever did in either Conan flick.
Bodybuilding twins Peter and David Paul play brothers Kutchek and Gore, who go through a reenactment of Conan’s movie backstory: orphaned at a young age, they’re sold into slavery and brought up to be gladiators. The Barbarians isn’t a full-blown parody, but director Ruggero Deodato (who’d made the cult legend Cannibal Holocaust seven years before) knew better than to take it seriously. And with the explosion in Conan the Barbarian imitators since the 1980s, we’ve seen lots of stupid things.įeatured on Mystery Science Theater 3000: No.īy the time The Barbarians emerged, it was 1987 and even the most inept B-movie hacks were starting to realize just how inherently stupid the whole Conan-knockoff genre was. Of course, most barbarian chroniclers miss the point of this and end up with heroes who aren’t just simple-minded they’re full-blown stupid, and so are their stories. After all, that’s their appeal: they’re brawny, fearless types who shun the suffocating depravities of civilization and hygiene. Old-fashioned, National Velvet-type stuff.No one really expects barbarian tales to be smart, and the same goes for the protagonists of such tales. It's somewhat predictable, but there is a neat little twist at the end and, once again, the gruff Mr. However, word gets to Superman, who flies up and retrieves Alice to be re-united with her horse, and hopefully the horse will respond, get up and win the race! The rest, you have to see.
The thug "Sully" (played hilariously by show regular Billy Nelson) turns our two reporters back home with a gun threat. The crooks decide to beat them to the punch and waylay Lois and Jimmy's trip to retrieve the young girl. The crooks, overhearing all of this (10 feet away from the whole newspaper gang but nobody sees or hears them in the barn!). The solution: go back upstate and bring the girl back to her horse. "Joey" is homesick for Alice and is lying down in his stall and won't get up. It turns out, they don't have to: the horse is already ailing. When he hears about Joey, the late entry and a possible threat to win the race, he and his goon sidekick travel to the Joey's barn to sabotage that horse. A big bookie in town, meanwhile, has bet thousands on another horse in the race. The latter's daughter "Alice" (Janine Perreau) is heartbroken to say goodbye to her beloved "Joey," but at least the horse is in good hands heading into the big "Jupiter Stakes." To add honey to the sentimental story, White declares that all money won by the horse will go to children's charities. In a sentimental touch (although he'll never admit to it), Perry White buys a race horse for the Daily Planet from an old school chum.