KULL THE CONQUEROR
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: King Kull comes to the screen as
Rafaella Di Laurentiis continues her father's
series of Robert E. Howard adaptations. Badly
damaged by a horrible musical score and unmemorable
villains and a bit too much sex, the film is still
manages to be an acceptable adolescent adventure.
Rating: high 0 (-4 to +4); 5 (0 to 10)
Last year we had the film THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD tell us about the personality of Robert E. Howard who from rural Texas spun yarns of barbarians fighting sorcerers. His chief character was Conan but some of his stories were about King Kull and took place in an earlier never-was. Kevin Sorbo, who plays TV's Hercules-with-pants stars as the title barbarian. The chief problem with this film is that it tells its story without worry too much what its audience is. The plot is a little lightweight for an adult audience and has a little too much sex-play for a children's film.
Kull (Kevin Sorbo) is a barbarian fighter come to join an army in a country with an old and unbalanced king. The king has several sons fighting for the throne. In a fit of anger the old king kills some of his sons and Kull fights the king to stop him. Mortally wounded the old king names the angry barbarian newcomer as his successor. Suddenly Kull is a king with new enemies trying to steal his kingdom. And his enemies are willing to make bonds with the forces of evil including an old sorceress, Akivasha (Tia Carrere) who is revived from the dead to be an ally of the vengeful brothers.
The film is written by Charles Pogue who gave us DRAGONHEART last summer. While it is not a highly ambitious goal to capture Robert E. Howard's style in a script, he does a reasonable job. The villains could have had a little more depth. Of course one of Kull's better villains, Thulsa Doom, was borrowed for CONAN THE BARBARIAN. Conan lived well after Doom in Howard's pseudo-history. Here the problem was the script had times when it was a little hard to follow and there was perhaps a little too many "Shall I undress now, your highness?" scenes for a film essentially intended for adolescent audiences.
Director John Nicoletta makes unfortunately makes little effort to preserve the period feel and it is here that the film falls down the most. The horses are shoed and have bridals that would look too modern in a Civil War film. But Nicoletta's biggest mistake is in allowing Joel Goldsmith's totally misplaced main theme. It is difficult to evoke so ancient a period with electric guitars and Joel's attempt is merely jarring and obnoxious. The visual effects are not always convincing, including some bad mattes, but for me that is a small fault.
Sorbo is not the most exciting actor in the world. Charleton Heston claimed he was cast in a lot of historical films because people thought he had a historical sort of face. I am told by one of the women that Sorbo's great virtue is his pectorals. But Sorbo does not really evoke a historical period. Part of it may be that he never dresses for the period. As with the Conan films, there is an odd mix of cultures and races in the primeval world. Most of the sets are Egyptian-looking. Sorbo's sidekicks include a priest of an unknown cult played by Litefoot, who played the title role of INDIAN IN THE CUPBOARD. Tia Carrere is of Chinese descent, I believe. Then there is Harvey Fierstein as a pirate captain. I cannot honestly say he was badly cast since had I never seen him before he might have not seemed all that strange in this role. For once his gravelly voice might have made him seem tough.
Tone down the sex and this might have made a decent matinee film. As it is there is a lot of sex but no nudity and a lot of violence with virtually no blood. I rate this one a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1997 Mark R. Leeper
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