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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Red Sonja (1985 film)

1985 American epic sword and sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 24, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Red Sonja is a 1985 American sword-and-sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer, from a screenplay by Clive Exton and George MacDonald Fraser. It is based on Red Sonya of Rogatino by Robert E. Howard. It stars Brigitte Nielsen as the title character and Arnold Schwarzenegger as her companion Lord Kalidor, with Sandahl Bergman, Paul Smith and Ronald Lacey in supporting roles.

Editorial summary

“Red Sonja (1985 film)” enters the record as 1985 American epic sword and sorcery film directed by Richard Fleischer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sonja, film and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1985—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Sonja, film and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Red Sonja (1985 film)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sonja, film and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The first chronological checks are 1985.

Critical limits

Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Red Sonja (1985 film)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Red Sonja (1985 film) primary sources, Red Sonja (1985 film) archive and Sonja research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Red Sonja (1985 film)”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Red Sonja (1985 film)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.