OK, one more ill-advised barbarian movie D&D tie-in and then we can go back to pretending none of this ever happened. This is Red Sonja Unconquered, from 1986, which is presumably a tie-in to the 1985 Red Sonja movie, despite Brigitte Nielsen not rating a photo on the cover. Which I suppose makes sense in terms of the cheesecake, as Nielsen wears far more clothing in the film than the scale mail bikini made famous by the comic book character.

Like the Conan modules, this uses pre-generated characters. It is feels much more on rails than the others (which is saying something), resembling more a group choose-your-own-adventure than a D&D module. David Cook’s rules tweaks are still present. Clyde Caldwell handled the art and it is fine (though I really hate this period, when TSR printed color paintings as black and white illustrations). I also have a pretty low tolerance for chainmail bikinis, and this the chainmail bikiniest. Er. Scale mail bikinis. You know what I mean.

Red Sonja is sort of a Robert E. Howard character. Red SONYA appeared in one story, “The Shadow of the Vulture.” She doesn’t bear much resemblance to our modern idea of the character – she was a swashbuckling hero of the Renaissance era who presumably wore more clothes. The chainmail bikini turned up when she was reworked for Marvel’s Conan comics, and the design is credited to Esteban Maroto, whose subjects often wore a lot less, so Sonja should probably count herself lucky in that regard.

Fun fact: Sandahl Bergman, who plays the villainous sorceress Queen Gedren in Red Sonja was the same actress who played Valeria in Conan the Barbarian and it took me decades to realize that.