Year:
1997
Studio:
Balenciaga Production,
Keller Entertainment Group
Movie: 3/5
DVD:
0/5
The "Conan" series ran for one season of 22 episodes, back when
"Hercules: The Legendary Journeys" and "Xena: Warrior Princess" were
popular and spawned a few syndicated fantasy shows. Ralf Moeller stars
as Conan and he at least more or less looks like a Conan to me, which
is more than I can say for Kevin Sorbo as Hercules, though I did like
that show much more.
"Conan" is set in the world of Hyboria, more or less. You get familiar
cities, kingdoms and people. Some of the stories are patterend after
some of the Conan fiction but it seems like most of the episodes had
different stories. It's certainly a more mainstream made-for-tv Conan
rather than the darker world of Robert E Howard's stories and the
movies.
Anyways, in the series Conan has three companions to bring more variety
to the show. There is the diminutive Otli (Danny Woodburn), the silent
Zzeben (Robert McRay) and the ninja-like Bayu (TJ Storm). Bayu replaced
the overweight Vulkar (Andrew Craig) starting in episode five.
The five wander the world, gathering support against the evil Hissah
Zul (Jeremy Kemp), a major evil wizard with a hidden fortress. Other
than the regular cast members -- and Hissah Zul appears in every
episode -- is the Queen of Thieves, Karella (Aly Dunne), who appears
more frequently towards the end of the season.
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It's a very
low budget series. Lots of scenes are on stages or at least small scale
shots. You'll get few vista shots in this show. Special effects are
rather poor though luckily it's mostly swordplay action that dominates
the show. Unfortunately the swordplay is also rather bad, especially
when the heroes are fighting Hissah Zul's soldiers.
Truer to the Conan world, there are lot of scantily clad women in the
show, usually two or three speaking roles per episode. Besides Karella
there are other female warriors (such as Amazon warriors), most notably
Red Sonja (Angelica Bridges) who is featured in one late-season episode.
Somewhat notable guest stars include Ali Landry (playing a spoiled
princess), Brooke Burns (playing a virgin), and Robert Culp (playing an
evil King).
Overall though, this is a below average series that didn't deserve a
second season. Still, watching the episodes you can sort of revel in
the low-budget campy badness of it all. One thing that I really
appreciated is that they do defeat Hissah Zul in the final episode,
setting up the next season as Conan becomes King of Argos and is pitted
against three rival wizard-kings.
There are no extras.
In summary, not a worthwhile buy unless you like to collect Conan stuff.
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