Ruggero Deodata made a name for himself by giving the world Cannibal Holocaust, a movie so realistically violent that Deodata found himself in court accused of making a snuff film. With additional films like Last Cannibal World, Cut and Run, and House by the Edge of the Park, it's safe to say that Deodata was not a kiddie film director, though there are one or two thrown in somewhere amid all the sleaze to pay the bills. When director Slobodan Sijan left the set of an upcoming barbarian movie called, creatively, The Barbarians, trend-hopping exploitation mainstays Golan and Globus, whose filmography as crap film producers is far too extensive to list here but contains many fine Chuck Norris films, looked to Ruggero Deodata to fill the vacant post, probably because he'd do it for cheap. As a result, Deodata found himself in possession of a $4 million budget and two steroid-enhanced, talent-deficient stars: Peter and David Paul. Just to ice their beefcake, Peter and David were also identical twins.

Barbarians told the story of two twins raised by a troupe of vastly annoying wandering performers in the usual "time of wizards, magic, and warriors." Sick of this gang of motley garbed vaudeville performers having free passage through the kingdoms of the world, a vicious warlord played by genre film staple Richard Lynch attacks them in order to steal their precious magic ruby, which grants them the powers of clowning, juggling, and probably hackey sack. Truth be told, it's hard to hate a warlord who rids the world of a bunch of people whose main contribution to the future of society would evolve into the "Yes, we have no bananas" skit. Peter and David are kidnapped and raised separately; both trained to be great warriors. Why you would train your enemies to be great warriors is a mystery. Thulsa Doom did it to Conan, and now they do it here, too. Obviously, the two will unite and fight for the honor of jugglers everywhere.

Taking a page from the book of Sword and the Sorcerer, Deodata is wise enough to disarm the stupidity of his film by injecting a healthy dose of humor into the proceedings. While there is violence, and while there is the requisite collection of breast shots, Barbarians is peculiarly light-hearted, not to mention fast-paced and fairly fun. Peter and David Paul carry themselves with a sense of self-deprecating humor. They may not know they are horrible actors, but Deodata knows they are horrible actors, and so they become far more comic than their muscles suggest. In addition to all that, you get cult movie mainstay Michael Berryman as "The Dirtmaster." It's a curious title since the duties he performs in the film have precious little to do with a mastery of soil. How one becomes a Dirtmaster is something of a mystery. Sure, there are openings in the field of soil management, but just as there are no scenes involving Berryman bossing around dirt, neither are there scenes of him collecting valuable pH level information. It would have been a very interesting movie if they'd gone down this avenue.