Pluskylang Great Film overall

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Payno I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Paul Magne Haakonsen While this movie is no "Conan", it still was rather entertaining, and even more so if you enjoy the fantasy adventure genre.Story-wise, then the movie was quite stereotypical; a conflict of good versus evil, an underdog that will rise to be king against every possible odd.The story is about Kull, a former pirate slave, who happens to earn the throne and Crown to the Kingdom of Valusia. But dark things stir beneath an otherwise calm kingdom, and a wretched wizard brings back to life an ancient and long dead sorceress queen. To save the kingdom, Kull embarks upon a treacherous quest to the frozen north.The costumes and props were quite good in the movie, and really helped to bring the fantasy world to life. And I must say that I really liked the designs of the armors in "Kull the Conqueror".The music was adequate. Most of the time it was suitable and fitting for a sword and sorcery fantasy movie. But there were times where the music took on a heavy metal twist, which was really awkward and misplaced.As for the cast, then I will admit that they actually put together a good ensemble of acting talents for the movie. Kevin Sorbo is cut out for the sword and sorcery genre, no doubt about it. But Tia Carrere really brought something good to the movie with her usual charm and also with her portrayal of Akivasha.If you enjoy sword and sorcery and the fantasy genre, then you should sit down to watch "Kull the Conqueror", because it is an entertaining movie.

punisher5150 Being a huge Robert E Howard fan, Kull the Conqueror isn't quite the literary version of the character, but all in all, it's nice seeing Robert E. Howard getting some screen time! (Conan fans, yes even Arnold's Conan barely resembles the literary version so relax a little). This movie is nowhere near as bad a some make it out to be. Kevin Sorbo, fresh from TVs Hercules fame, does a good job as the title character. The movie plays more like lite fantasy than epic fantasy, but still has some awesome moments. For some reason I love the scene at the end when Kull destroys the stone wall with the old laws written on it with his Axe. I've seen the movie probably a dozen times and it doesn't get old. Karina Lombard is gorgeous as Kull's love interest, and Tia Carrere does a fine job as the villainess. (Ironically, the Conan movie with Jason Mamoa (2011) uses the same villainess and a similar plot of resurrecting her.) Thomas Ian Griffith as Taligaro also does a good job as Kull's warrior nemesis. He should get more roles! Rounding out the cast with Litefoot as a priest of Valka and brother of the love interest, and you have a quest plot that resembles something like Jason and the Argonauts. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the action and the humor of Kull the Conqueror! "By this Axe I rule!"

Ky-D On the scale of sword and sorcery flicks, this ranks below 'Conan The Barbarian', above the dreary 'Red Sonja', about on par with 'Conan The Destroyer'; which is to say that it's an energetic fantasy film that doesn't take itself seriously and can be a lot of fun if you let it be.Kull of Atlantis seeks to join the army of Velusia, but instead, through an unexpected turn of events, he finds himself proclaimed king of the empire instead. Holding onto his new throne will be much harder than taking it, as the blood heirs to the empire make a deal with a wizard to revive a 3000 year-old demon who seeks to kill King Kull and claim the empire for herself.'Kull the Conqueror' originally started out as 'Conan the Conqueror', but after Arnold refused to reprise the role, the script was changed to accommodate Howard's other barbarian hero, Kull. As such, much of the story is actually taken from the Conan stories ('The Hour of the Dragon' in particular). Interestingly, the first Conan movie took most of it's story material from the Kull tales. A little bit of irony for you.As for the film itself, it does enough things right to entertain; Sorbo fits Kull role perfectly (actually truer to the source character than Arnold ever was), Griffith is an effectively grim villain and Tia Carrere hams it up nicely as the evil Akiavasia. The locations and sets have a wonderfully fantasy feel to them and the assorted fight scenes are well choreographed and fast paced. Given their age, the FX and make are good without ever looking terribly real. One thing I found very enjoyable in the film was the liberal dose of humor; not lame one-liners or goofy antics, but some solid humor that compliments the scenes rather than ruining them.The biggest problem the movie has is the damn PG-13 rating; it keeps the movie from really delving into adult fantasy the way you want it too. Both 'Red Sonja' and 'Conan the Destroyer' suffered the same problem. Another issue is the generic butt-rock music that accompanies the fight scenes; the music for the rest of the film is epic and fits the period nature of the film, but the lame guitar riffs that get churned out during every fight is just annoying. Also, many of the supporting actors just aren't any damn good at acting and tend to injure many of the scenes. Lastly, the script is a little lean for an epic adventure film, clocking in at just 90 minutes, almost no time is spent getting to know the characters any better than is necessary to drive the plot.All told, this is a fun, fast, fantasy film meant to be enjoyed rather than analyzed. It makes a decent entry in the Howard film canon (the best way to watch it is part 4 of a Howard marathon; Conan 1 & 2, Red Sonja, Kull). The film made no money in theaters, which is too bad, as we aren't likely to see any more of these any time soon.Energetic, humorous, and full of action (though not without some issues), a solid sword and sorcery flick.7/10

funkyfry Some films are mediocre, some films are bad, but still other films are so misconceived and poorly executed that the film-makers should be embarrassed of themselves. "Kull" is exactly that film, and it's more fun to laugh at its unintentional idiocy than to make any attempt to take it seriously as fantasy. At any rate the film-makers also took care of that possibility by filling the sorry affair with so much contemporary humor in a pathetic attempt to imitate the formula of the "Hercules" TV show that starred the same "actor" who appears in this film, Kevin Sorbo.It didn't have to be this way. King Kull is one of the more interesting characters created by the legendary 1930s pulp writer Robert E. Howard, famous for Conan. Howard's writing has been mostly insulted and degraded by these film versions -- but this one is so awful it makes "Conan the Destroyer" look like "Lord of the Rings." It makes "Red Sonja" look like "Jason and the Argonauts." And it makes "Conan the Barbarian" look like "Citizen Kane." I actually paid to see this in the theater because I'm such a big Robert Howard fan. It was so disappointing that I had to give it a spin on DVD just to see if it could really be as bad as I remembered it. It's far worse than any memory can convey. Right away, you have probably the worst music I've ever heard in a film, a combination of mock-Wagner and mock-Megadeth. Electric guitars on the soundtrack are an especially poor harbinger for a film supposedly set in ancient history. Then you start to notice that all the characters look like roadies for Spinal Tap, and the main villain dude has a mullet that would make Billy Ray Cyrus jealous. So maybe it all makes sense in a twisted way... apparently this was a demographic they were shooting for; perhaps they even advertised this film on WWF smack-down.There's no getting around what limits the movie the most -- basically the entire cast is wrong and incompetent. Kevin Sorbo always seems like a nice guy, and little else. He's all wrong to play a sadistic barbarian, but the film-makers have solved that problem by removing all traces of Kull's personality and all signs that he was created by Robert Howard, or you could say all signs that he was created by anyone other than a market research survey group. He's polite, soft-spoken, respectful of women, and he wants to free all the slaves. He's a hero -- a character who has no business in a Robert Howard story. Just once I'd like to see this great writer's stories rendered in a way that isn't just to turn all the characters into generic knights in shining armor. Doing that to his world and his characters is like making a Disney movie about the Donner Party. I can understand why a lot of people look down on writing like his, because they assume it's actually junk like this movie.It doesn't stop there, but I get too tired of thinking about it to go on. Sorbo is the least of our worries in the cast actually, considering that Harvey Fierstein is painfully hammy (and his character seems modeled on a dull character from the TV show), and the director seems to have thought it was a good idea to give all the heavy acting scenes to Tia Carrere. Her misbegotten performance lends the movie most of its laugh factor. This movie is cheap and ugly looking -- I would guess that they spent more money on the lame "Merlin" miniseries in the 90s than they did on this movie which was foisted on theater audiences. Not only that, but the director has no taste and no talent for cinema at all. Everything is shot in a bland and generic way so that none of it seems infused with any kind of power or majesty. Whatever the faults of Milius' original Conan film, and there are many, at the very least he attempted to get the dark atmosphere of Howard's world right and to convey some fraction of the characters' fatalism. Unless the new "Solomon Kane" film is a huge surprise, it will be the only example of somebody even attempting something different of this type in a fantasy movie for a long time.