Gunan, King of the Barbarians – Franco Prosperi, 1982

Gunan, King of the Barbarians (O.V. Gunan il Guerriero)

Italy, 1982

Director: Franco Prosperi

Script: Piero Regnoli

Cast: Pietro Torrisi (Gunan), Malisa Longo (Marga), Emilio Messina (Nuriak), Sabrina Siani (Lenni)

Music: Roberto Pregadio

Story

In a remote and dark age, lost in the mists of time, the council of elders of a warrior tribe determined after consulting the stars that a Chosen One was about to be born, a charismatic leader destined to confront the evil forces in order to establish an era of peace and prosperity. According to the prophecy, this Chosen One was to be named Gunan; and he would be born as the son of tribal chief Mevian on a battlefield.

Mina, Mevian’s wife, is about to give birth. At the same time, the village is invaded by the hordes of the fierce Nuriak and his bloodthirsty henchmen, who knife-handle the villagers in an atrocious spiral of extermination.

To Mevian’s surprise, there are two babies that his wife gives birth to and not one as the prophecies predicted. Before Nuriak’s hordes arrive at her hut, the village chief hands the newborns over to the midwife to escape to safety. Also a sacred medallion, which the Chosen One must wear as proof and symbol of his power.

After this, Mevian intervenes in the struggle to defend his people and falls heroically in the heat of the fighting. The evil Nantuk reaches Mina, convalescing from the birth. The cruel invader pierces her with his sword. But he realizes that the woman has just become a mother, and Nuriak knows the prophecy: He knows that it was Gunan, the Chosen One, the baby that Mevian’s wife was carrying in her womb. So he orders his henchmen to find the child at all costs and eliminate it. Nuriak, a servant of the Forces of Evil, must prevent Gunan from growing, triumphing and restoring the Golden Age.

In the meantime, the old midwife has led the two twins to a beach, where she falls faint. Soon after, some warrior women find the children, next to the body of the old woman and the medallion. The Kunias tribe, a kind of vestal amazons, adopts the two babies. They raise them and train them until the brothers become two robust men, one blond and the other brown, skilled in fighting and swordplay.

But only one of them could be Gunan, the Chosen One. “The spirit of Gunan wandered bewildered, debating between two human forms,” that conflict reverberated on a cosmic level unleashing the fury of the elements and provoking virulent cataclysms.

The Kunias must submit the two brothers to a test, to establish which of the two is the true Gunan, the one who will have to face the Forces of Evil incarnated by Nuriak. After a race, first on foot and then on horseback, and a hand-to-hand combat with weapons, the dark-blond man is the winner. His defeated brother is magnanimously spared.

Gunan, now one man and one spirit, returns to the Kunias. Marga, the high priestess of the tribe, gives him the medallion and the Magic Sword, which has “the strength of the stars”. Marga shows Gunan on the surface of the water the image of the perfidious Nuriak, the enemy he must kill to avenge his lineage and re-establish cosmic order. The priestess also explains to him that the reason why two were conceived instead of one is due to an infidelity that his mother had, since only he is the son of Median, the other is the fruit of an adulterous relationship; that was what altered the prophecy (?!).

The other brother, the “nameless”, watches over Gunan and prepares to leave before him to have the privilege of eliminating Nantuk – but with the intention of taking his place as the representative of Evil on earth. For the other is the negative side of Gunan, his opposite pole, his antithesis, his nemesis. Thus, the defeated brother steals Gunan’s medallion and begins the search for Nantuk and its armies.

At dawn, the real Gunan sets off. Nantuk continues the search for Gunan after so many years, interrogating the people who fall into its clutches and then killing them without mercy. The false Gunan comes to meet him and challenges him, but quickly dies during the confrontation and is decapitated. Now Nantuk is sure of his victory, convinced that he has eliminated the Chosen One. He does not know that the real Gunan, who arrives there shortly after finding his brother’s body, is on his trail and will not rest until he puts an end to his reign of terror…

At the same time, the Kunias have raided a village, capturing several girls. These young girls are destined to perpetuate the Amazon-Vestal tribe, conceiving with slaves daughters who will become future Kunias. One of these imprisoned girls is the beautiful Lena. When Gunan returns wounded to the Kunia village after his first battle against Nuriak, he sees Lena and falls instantly in love with her… This will arouse the jealousy of the priestess Marga, who was always attracted to the handsome Gunan. Such jealousy could have unpredictable and dire consequences…

Commentary

Franco Prosperi’s Gunan, a film camouflaged as a mediocre B movie of sword and sorcery, enters (voluntarily or not) in the field of legend and myth, in the fascinating world of the collective unconscious, following the patterns that are repeated in the sagas of many peoples of antiquity. Gunan is “the Chosen One”, a redeeming figure who takes human form; like the Kalki Avatar of Hinduism, the Maitreya Buddha, the Islamic Imam Mahdi or the Judeo-Christian Messiah; and who arrives as a Saviour at the end of an era to inaugurate a new cycle. The film reflects the perennial and eternal struggle between Good and Evil, a dichotomy of clear Gnostic reminiscences that permeates the traditions of those peoples who have not lost their ties to the transcendent. All of this goes unnoticed by the superficial viewer, who only thinks this is an Italian cheesy barbarian-exploitation mess.

Because of the errors of men, of the “original sin” (in the concrete case of the film it is the mother’s adultery), the cosmic order has been outraged and the “Chosen One” incarnates in duplicate, with a brother-clone, which is his malignant and antagonistic version. The archetype of the “two brothers” takes us back to Cain and Abel, or to Romulus and Remus. Only one must prevail. Gunan has in his “twin” brother a crude copy, a grotesque imitation; the “false messiah” (“The Antichrist”).

“Gunan the Warrior” begins with the voice-over of a narrator who goes into much more mystical and philosophical ramblings than the previously stated ones, including a peroration on the planetary genesis through “the millennia and the illuminations” (with images of dinosaur fights included!).

Like other barbarian-exploitation films that tried to build on the success of Milius’ Conan, “Gunan the Warrior” lacks a worthy budget and despite the interesting approach, the script is disastrously developed, presenting many inconsistencies and absurd situations throughout the film. For example, when the two brothers fight each other at the behest of the Amazons, the priestess Marga says to them: “Don’t be stupid, you mustn’t fight each other!” – When they are supposed to compete in a test to clarify which of the two is the “Chosen One” (fighting each other is their obligation).

The gigantic “Magic Sword” that Gunan carries on his back looks like made of cardboard, and during combat (which for some unknown reason we always see slowed down) it bounces ridiculously off the bodies of the opponents.

It is also worth mentioning the absurdity of the twins that Gunan’s mother brings into the world being each from a different father (although in mythological accounts one often finds analogous “gestational nonsense”, such as the birth of Athena/Minerva from the head of Zeus/Jupiter).

The overwhelming scarcity of budget is particularly noticeable in the scene of the “torture” to which Nuriak subjects the hero and his girl, both lying and embracing on a stone table with the stakes increasingly driven into their flesh: the rudimentary nature of this “fearsome mortal device” (of which it is possible to see a complete shot) will provoke the viewer’s hilarity and mockery.

Gunan is played by Pietro Torrisi a.k.a. “Peter McCoy”, the quintessential Italo-barbarian, who stars in “Sangraal la spada di fuoco” a.k.a. “Krotar’s Wild Sword” (Michele Massimo Tarantini, 1982) and in “Throne of Fire” also directed by Franco Prosperi in 1982.

Lena is embodied by Sabrina Siani, the most emblematic actress of the 80s barbarian-movie wave from Italy. This time Sabrina has, fortunately, a much higher screen share than in “Sangraal” (where her appearance is very short) or in Fulci’s “Conquest”, where we only see her in a metal mask. The beautiful young woman, for whose love Gunan does not hesitate to confront the forces of the abyss, we can see her naked in several sequences throughout the second half.

It is interesting to note that the central theme of “Gunan” revolves around the antagonism between two brothers, one of whom is a “copy” of the other, a “genetic plagiarism” of the real one… For the film itself, “Gunan the Warrior”, is also a “copy”, an imitation of the blockbuster “Conan the Barbarian”: Gunan is Conan’s “younger brother”. And just as Gunan’s younger brother arrived first at his confrontation with the villain, “Gunan il guerriero” arrived in Italian cinemas a day before “Conan the Barbarian” was released – curious coincidences.

A few years later, in 1987, the idea of two brothers in the world of sword and sorcery would be taken up again by Ruggero Deodato (“Cannibal Holocaust”) in his inferior “The Barbarians”, with the body-building brothers David and Peter Paul.

“Gunan il guerriero”, superior in many aspects to Sangraal/Krotar (except for the soundtrack), and who has the “privilege” of being the first of the rip-offs of Milius’ Cimmerian, will not disappoint the fans of the endearing Italian sub-genre of neo-peplum barbarians.

Get Sword and sorcery in cinema: Conan and other barbarians: A filmic guide HERE!