Sadly, sequels are rarely as good as the original, and with Conan the Barbarian being such a good movie, this one had to produce something special to live up to its predecessor.
Well, we still got Arnie as Conan, so that's a good start. And we have one of the other cast members from the first flick, in the shape of Mako. But that's about where any good stuff ends.
The first death knell for this movie is the casting. We have Tracey Walter as Malak, a thief side-kick of Conan's (whatever happened to Gerry Lopez's Subotai character?) Tracey does a very good impression of Peter Lorre...throughout the whole film. Then there's Grace Jones (perhaps the original singer-turned-actor) as some kind of demented she-warrior. All she is really good at is glaring at people and hissing like a snake and she does this......throughout the whole film. Sarah Douglas as the obligatory evil queen...the only thing she seems to be queen of is sequels (Superman 2, Puppetmaster 3, Beastmaster 2 etc.) and Olivia D'Abo, who is just irritatingly helpless and annoying here.
The plot is trivial and the dialogue poor and some of the effects are lamentably bad (look for the island in the lake and the "man-ape"). Also, did I mention that Grace Jones is just horrible and hisses a lot? I did? Oh well, it bears repeating..
All in all, this is a cash-in movie, designed to rake in some easy money on the back of the original and not really caring much about a plot or good actors. Even Arnie, the world's best actor at not saying many lines, is hampered by having too much dialogue.
Avoid it unless you want a laugh.
Well, we still got Arnie as Conan, so that's a good start. And we have one of the other cast members from the first flick, in the shape of Mako. But that's about where any good stuff ends.
The first death knell for this movie is the casting. We have Tracey Walter as Malak, a thief side-kick of Conan's (whatever happened to Gerry Lopez's Subotai character?) Tracey does a very good impression of Peter Lorre...throughout the whole film. Then there's Grace Jones (perhaps the original singer-turned-actor) as some kind of demented she-warrior. All she is really good at is glaring at people and hissing like a snake and she does this......throughout the whole film. Sarah Douglas as the obligatory evil queen...the only thing she seems to be queen of is sequels (Superman 2, Puppetmaster 3, Beastmaster 2 etc.) and Olivia D'Abo, who is just irritatingly helpless and annoying here.
The plot is trivial and the dialogue poor and some of the effects are lamentably bad (look for the island in the lake and the "man-ape"). Also, did I mention that Grace Jones is just horrible and hisses a lot? I did? Oh well, it bears repeating..
All in all, this is a cash-in movie, designed to rake in some easy money on the back of the original and not really caring much about a plot or good actors. Even Arnie, the world's best actor at not saying many lines, is hampered by having too much dialogue.
Avoid it unless you want a laugh.