Imagine, if you can, a film based on a Dungeons & Dragons campaign run by a gamesmaster whose favourite book is Beowulf and has just watched Zulu and the Seven Samurai.
That will give you some idea of the brilliant, OTT, wackiness of The 13th Warrior; the tale of an Arabian ambassador who teams up with some Viking warriors to fight "an ancient evil" which is plaguing an isolated village.
Based on Michael Crichton's The Eaters of The Dead, which itself is based on Beowulf, this tries to set the ancient mythical tale in a historical context by "explaining" the various creatures in "real" terms.
The village is being assaulted by the Wendol, flesh-eating creatures that attack in the night, out of the mist, and carry off the heads of their victims.
Ahmad (Antonio Banderas) and the dozen, mumbling, heavily-accented Northmen try to fend them off - then take the attack back to the Wendol's underground lair before provoking one, final attack by the beastmen on the village.
The story is all about the power of myth and being frightened of what you don't understand - the Wendol's main strength coming from their prey's belief that they are supernatural creatures.
The 13th Warrior is muddy, bloody and slightly bewildering as Ahmad's reasons for staying with the Vikings, who he has only just met, are never really made clear and one antagonist, in the form of the king's treacherous son Wigliff (Anders T. Andersen) vanishes from the story completely about half-way through the action!
The story suffers from the flawed internal logic of many Dungeons & Dragons' adventures - such as why is the village/kingdom of Hrothgar (Sven Wollter) located right next door to the Wendol's mountain base?
It's obvious, from the excellent expedition into the mountain sequence, that the beastmen have been there for a long time... that's a lot of heads they've collected! So why haven't the villagers just moved?
Much of the early fight sequences, because of the Wendol's night time tactics, are shot in the dark as well, which, while atmospheric, adds to the air of confusion and the general fog of war. Not necessarily a bad thing, but certainly something you need to be prepared for when sitting down to watch this.