The Barbarians

The Barbarians is a 1987 fantasy adventure about twin brothers, Kutchek and Gore, who are separated from their tribe as children after the tyrant Kadar attacks it. Kadar seizes the tribe's queen, Canary, but fails to take the magical ruby she guards. The brothers are raised as gladiators and, once grown, escape and set out to recover the stone and free their queen.

Ruggero Deodato directed, working from a screenplay by James R. Silke, and the film was produced by Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus for Cannon Group and its associated companies, with a budget of four million dollars. It followed Deodato's Cut and Run (1985) in his filmography. The twin leads, Peter Paul and David Paul, play Kutchek and Gore, with Richard Lynch as Kadar, Eva LaRue as Kara and Ismene, Virginia Bryant as Canary, and Sheeba Alahani as China. The credited cast numbers 26. This Italian-American co-production runs 87 minutes and mixes action, adventure and fantasy.

On TMDB it holds a rating of 5.4 out of 10 from 158 votes, a modest score suggesting limited enthusiasm among those who have logged it. The film's main draw is the pairing of the Paul brothers as the physically imposing twins, set against Lynch's villain in a sword-and-sorcery story built around a quest, a captive queen and a stolen jewel.