In a magical land of dragons and fierce warriors, the evil sorcerer Kadar (Richard Lynch) attacks a peaceful group of traveling entertainers, slaughtering the majority of them and kidnapping their queen, Canary (Virginia Bryant).  Canary has a magical ruby that Kadar hopes will increase his power.  Canary also has two sons who are each sold separately into slavery.  Years later, these muscle-bound twins, Kutchek (Peter Paul) and Gore (David Paul), will be reunited and will team up to save their mother, fight a dragon, and free the kingdom from Kadar.

An Italian-American co-production that was directed by Ruggero Deodato and distributed by Cannon, The Barbarians was a starring vehicle for the so-called Barbarian Brothers.  Peter and David Paul were twin bodybuilders who appeared in a handful of films and who are today best-known for getting cut out of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.  (In his director’s commentary, when explaining why their scene didn’t work, Stone said, “It was my fault.”)  Peter and David Paul were not natural-born actors.  They’re both pretty stiff in The Barbarians but their natural chemistry as brothers made up for a lot.  They spend most of their screentime in The Barbarians bickering and yelling at each other and you get the feeling that was something they had a lot of experience with.

The Barbarians starts slow.  It takes a while to get going and the plot has the ramshackle feel of many Cannon productions.  Richard Lynch, as always, is a great villain and familiar faces like Michael Berryman and George Eastman have small roles.  Trying to keep track of who is betraying who can require keeping a scorecard while watching the movie but The Barbarians does a good job of creating its fantasy world (and it looks really good for a film that was probably not made for much money) and once the action finally does get started, there’s enough of it to keep things entertaining.  The Barbarians battle not only Kadar’s sorcery but a dragon as well and they do it all while trash talking each other.  The film feels like a cross between Dungeons and Dragons and a regional wrestling production.  It’s entertainingly dumb.