GUNAN, KING OF THE BARBARIANS (1982) ** ½

Gunan, King of the Barbarians starts off with a lengthy, but interesting bit of exposition that sets up the movie’s not-bad mythology.  A set of twins are found by warrior race of women who have been waiting for a prophecy to be fulfilled so they can defeat their mortal enemies.  However, the prophecy says there can be only one chosen one, which makes twin boys problematic.  That means the brothers must face off against each other to prove who is the best.  

Zukhan (Pietro Torrisi) is clearly the superior warrior, but his twin brother thinks he can save the village singlehandedly.  When he sneaks off to take on the evil Nuriak (Emilio Messina) all by himself, he is promptly decapitated.  Enraged, Zukhan sets out to get revenge and fulfil the prophecy.

Gunan, King of the Barbarians is only 77 minutes.  The fight scenes are mostly idiotic and features some truly terrible swordfight choreography.  There’s also an overreliance on slow motion, which can get a bit irritating.  I can understand the slow motion during the fight scenes (although that just magnifies how truly cruddy the choreography really is), but director Franco Prosperi uses it during simple scenes of people walking around.  My only guess is if these scenes weren't in slow motion, the movie would be only be an hour long.  Remember how Yor was a two-part mini-series that was edited down into one movie?  Maybe Gunan was just one episode of a TV show padded out to (almost) feature length.  

Also, as far as I could tell, there never was a guy named Gunan (the hero is called Zukhan) and he was the king of a tribe of women, not barbarians.  

Despite the awful fight scenes, I have to say that this is far from the worst sword and sandal epic I ever sat through.  Whatever its shortcomings may be, I can't hate any movie where a queen looks at Sabrina Siani and says, “She'll make good breeding material. Get her ready for copulation!”  Too bad the version on Amazon Prime butchers her nude scenes.  Oh well, at least the scene where the villain forces her to have sex with Zukhan while a bed of spikes forces her closer and closer to him is positively priceless.

AKA:  The Invincible Barbarian.  AKA:  Lost Warrior.