Cocaine Wars

Cocaine Wars

United States/Argentina – 1985

Director – Hector Olivera

Media Home Entertainment, 1986, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 22 minutes

Readers familiar with the Corman library of skullduggery will no doubt recall the heady days of Conan, when the master of low-budget was cranking out the knockoff fantasy barbarian franchises like they were going out of style. Which they were, very quickly. Although the Deathstalker series would continue into a fourth film and the stylin’ 90’s, it was the longest running franchise at a mere seven years. Shorter and possibly lower budget (it’s a tight race) films like Barbarian Queen and Wizards of the Lost Kingdom were churned out too and are notable primarily for their even more addled plots. These were the days when Corman was farming out production overseas to the Philippines, Mexico and even Argentina where the first of the Barbarian Queen and Wizards films were made. One man was responsible for directing both of those bungling and silly indulgences, Hector Olivera. Some might not wish to ever tread the Olivera path again (especially after Wizards) but I’m stubborn, and I find it all quite fascinating. The plot thickened perceptibly when I discovered Cocaine Wars.

1985 would appear to have been a good year for our intrepid Argentinian who helmed not one, not two, but all three of his Corman productions. It was still a few years until the Latin American Drug Cartel action films would have to make way for Inner-City Drug Gang films in the 90’s and Corman was going to try his hand before they moved back home. Hiring one of the Duke Bro.’s (John Schneider to be exact) as his “Name,” he passed the reins to Olivera who crafted a bungling and silly yarn about an undercover DEA agent (Schneider) and his investigative reporter wife (Kathryn Witt) who are after the same Kingpin. Kidnappings and intrigue follow in typical though clumsy and meandering fashion, and all resolves itself somehow. To be honest, by the time I got to the end of Cocaine Wars I was no longer paying much attention, there was little to elicit it.

Still, there was something memorable about the film. What lingers with me is the VHS box art. It’s a vision of saccharine machismo that calls forth memories of some of the finest in men’s pulp magazines and makes me ache for Reagan-era cinema. Like the cover of Equalizer 2000 (also Corman produced) over which I waxed poetic last month, Cocaine War’s rippling bare-chested hero and vulnerably draped female token are quite literally iconic. Those were the terminal days of Communism and drug’s synonymity, when USAmerica still needed cowboys to protect the womenfolk and defend the frontier. Corman and his directors didn’t always hit the target, but a look at the poster/box art for any of the films I’ve mentioned here and there can be no question that they knew what they were aiming at.

Our friends over at Comeuppance Reviews have a thing or two to say about Cocaine Wars.

Bimbo Movie Bash

Bimbo Movie Bash

United States - 1996

Director - various

Cult Video, 1996, VHS

Run Time -1 hour, 30 minutes

Not really a movie in its own right, just a compilation of clips from various low budget T&A flicks of the Corman/Olen Ray school. Unfortunately, or not depending on your point of view, this copy was trashed and unwatchable.

Black Mama, White Mama

Black Mama, White Mama

Philippines/US - 1972

Direstor - Eddie Romero

Orion Home Video, 1996, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 26 minutes

This is a personal favorite of mine because it is one of the first Corman/Philippine exploitation movies I saw. It's a favorite of many people apparently, across many genres. Oftentimes it is classified among the Blaxploitation and Women In Prison genres. I can see elements of both, (more of the latter) but I would call it more of a Caper movie. It doesn't really matter though because it is awesome, and written by Jonathan Demme!

Last Embrace

Last Embrace

United States - 1979

Director - Jonathan Demme

Key Video, 1986, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 41 minutes

Ohhhh, there's one of those sexy Key Video boxes I was talking about last Monday. Nice rainbow pattern and unobtrusive color scheme centered around the red bordered box.

And directed by Roger Corman protege Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs, Rachel Getting Married) no less. This sucker has been sitting on my shelf for about six months, I better get to it. But why does this box make me think of Sylvester Stallone?

Poster from IMPAwards does justice to the original artwork by an artist I do not know.

John Solie

John Solie is another name that exploitation film fans should know, except that a lot of us don't, we're too young. Solie is no longer in the movie poster business because the movie poster business is no longer into art. Solie first went to work for Columbia pictures in the early 1960's despite his best efforts not to get the job. He kept increasing his demands but he got the job anyway and it turned out he loved it. He continued illustrating movie posters for the next thirty years, for major and independent studios including Roger Corman's New World Pictures.









In an interview in "What It Is... What It Was", Solie says that it was one of the funnest jobs he has had, with total freedom to come up with whatever he wanted, sometimes a sketch on a cocktail napkin  was the only draft he submitted. Most of the posters you can find online by searching for Solie are for either blaxploitation films or Corman productions. Solie did over 200 movie poster images, but I have only been able to confirm those I've listed or scanned here.  but by the 1980's posters with art were starting to disappear.

Once there was no longer a market for illustration in movie posters, Solie moved on to do romance book covers but these too became the realm of computers and he did work for TV Guide magazine which you can see at his website HERE. In addition he has done a number of fine art pieces with western and war themes as well as commissions for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).


It is surprisingly hard to find the names of many of the movies Solie did posters for, much less the artwork itself. Below is a list of all the posters collected at IMPAwards as well as anything that readily turned up in an image search engine. The images I've included here are those not included in the first two categories. I would appreciate any confirmable contributions to this list if you come across them.

John Solie dot com

Big Bad Mama
Candy Stripe Nurses
Capone and Capone 2
Challenge to White Fang
City on Fire
Grand Theft Auto
Last Days of Man on Earth
Lili
Moving Violations
Piranha
Raid on Entebbe
Ryan's Daughter
Savage!
Shaft In Africa
Shaft's Big Score
Smokey and the Bandit
Soylent Green
Starcrash
Strange Brew
Street Girls
Summer School Teachers
Swashbuckler
Tarzan
Tender Loving Care
The Invisible Boy
The Swinging Barmaids
Tidal Wave
TNT Jackson

Solie's painting of the last cavalry charge in U.S. military history, commissioned by the U.S. Army.

 John Solie with a painting he did for the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Oregon.

A Solie painting of the Hubble Telescope.

Alien Terminator

Alien Terminator

United States – 1995

Director – Dave Payne

New Horizons Home Video, 1995, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 35 minutes

The first thing that occurred to me as I began to watch Alien Terminator was its total intellectual poverty. But let’s be honest, the decade that spawned it, the 1990’s, science fiction-wise was little more stimulating cinematically than this, and Alien Terminator gives a beautiful cross-section of the aesthetic wasteland that was capped off with two of its most popular films, Star Wars: Episode 1 and The Matrix. Despite their pretty digital images and absolutely brilliant dialogue though, both are blatantly pro-Christian narratives masquerading behind aliens and black vinyl.

These films were a product of the decade that spawned them, a time of exasperated posturing as the dominant culture was beginning to eat itself for lack of source material, combining totally ad-hoc elements in the hope that somehow they could magically become cool. Consider the phenomena of goatees, page-boy haircuts and single strapped overalls in combination with the flash-in-the-pan awesomeness that was computer hacking and virtual reality. Such awkward and dissonant combinations are surely a symptom of the terrifying possibility that we were culturally bankrupt. But let’s be perfectly honest here, in the thick of all this profound self analysis, who among us could tell that we were all full of shit?

I would argue that environmentalism, the hottest new marketing trend of the 90’s was a perfect example of this because at its root was a deep personal introspection combined with pop marketing techniques. The popularity of toxic waste themes in television, cinema, toys and even music of the time is demonstrative. We could spend a lot of money consuming environmentally progressive products while ignoring the fact that mass-consumerism was the problem. (Still working on that one last time I checked.) Just such a greenwashed publicity stunt serves as the inspiration for Alien Terminator which conjures the still fresh carcass of Biosphere 2 for a “set” and a perfect metaphor for the sublime vanity of self-analysis as conspicuous consumption. To study the effects of human isolation a group of people (don’t ask me how the logic behind that one works) have been locked in the Earthtek BioCom facility. It is here, on the last day of their two year “isolation” that we meet our intrepid protagonists, frozen so to speak like butterflies in a bell jar, dusty specimens from a puzzling premillennial age.


Newton is a Corey Feldman look-alike geneticist who uses some cutting-edgy virtual reality to accidentally invent killer viruses between bong rips. On this particular day, the final one, he accidentally invents a virus which he ceremoniously names the Alien Intruder Virus which “increases strength, decreases moral inhibition and triggers a state of perpetual violence.” It makes perfect sense then to inject it into his pet rat Galileo. For the rest of the film Galileo, violently uninhibited and horribly mutated into something resembling a guy in hairy sweatpants, will menace the actors whose response to lifethreatening peril is repeated arguments about self-identity. It is wonderfully appropriate that Corman stable regulars Maria Ford and Emile Levisetti both appear here (they doubled up again in '96 for Strip for Action). Wearing a totally appropriate science outfit, Ford goes head to head with Billy-Ray Cyrus look alike Taylor who’s trying to get in her pants by repeatedly insulting her. We'll see how that works. Ford’s usual eagerness to reveal her perky acting talents is subdued in Alien Terminator to allow Levisetti to wallow in the unnatural bouancy of his girlfriend Rachel (Lisa Boyle). It’s nice to see Levisetti in action again, the throat-stab inducing smugness and assholery he brings to his performances really endears him as a sympathetic protagonist in Alien Terminator. As if all the snappy pacing of defending ones ego against hirsute suitors or suckling your sutured silicone sweetheart on the last-day in the bunker scenario wasn't enough to keep us entertained, a cataclysmic computer shutdown set-up will surely  keep it entertaining.

Whether or not I’m generalizing my own experience of the decade, you have to admit, all of these people flawlessly capture the bluster and pure snottyness of the time. If the decade and its cinematic output could be thrown in a big pot and boiled for several hours, Alien Terminator would be a healthy portion of the head-cheese that resulted. Even if it does resort to a cheap millennium-bug gag to forward the plot, at least it's not a gazillion dollar Bible story with assault rifles.

This awesome Japanese VHS cover comes courtesy of the excellent Japanese VHS Hell, go there.

Strip For Action

Strip For Action

A.K.A. - Hot Ticket

United States – 1996

Director – Lev L. Spiro

New Horizons Home Video, 1999, VHS

Run Time – 1 hour, 17 minutes

There are many amusements on offer when occasionally watching one of these stripper oddities from the Corman studio. One of the most awkward, particularly in mixed company is contemplating and discussing the extent of plastic surgery that the principals have undergone to achieve their current shape. In fact I think if you watched enough of these you could probably watch them transform over the course of their careers.
But hey, we are talking about the stripper microgenre invented by actress Katt Shea with Stripped to Kill (1987). It was to be the first of a slew of successful films revolving around the trials and tribulations of strippers. The very nature of the work demands that you repeatedly perform stripteases, in both the scenes taking place in the stripclub, as well as the scenes in which you do it with your late-90’s mushroom haircut boyfriend. Instead of an actress willing to strip, the job requires a stripper willing to act, which is exactly the standard set by Shea.

The name alone, Strip for Action, holds tremendous menace. The combination and context of the words possess an imminent but still ethereal threat. But backed up by that killer tagline, it really drives it home for me. The insinuation of stripping doesn’t convey anything explicitly filthy, but the addition of action suggests that that action, whatever it is can only take place when naked. The nature of the action itself remains in question, and this is where the threat lies, shrouded in mystery.

The Strip For Action box art is phenomenal. For over a year as this movie sat on my shelf waiting to be screened. Browsing the unwatched tapes I would occasionally pull it out and contemplate it. Each time I would stare at the cover for a while thinking to myself, “She looks uncomfortable, do I really want to watch this?” Let’s be honest, I was intimidated, hung up on the possibility of impending emotional darkness if I followed through. So for all that time the box art looked awkward, but I was too cowed to pay much heed.

But when I woke this morning, I realized that the decision had already been made, Strip For Action was the movie I was going to watch tonight. So when the time came, the idea of this film was no longer threatening, and perhaps that’s why I was able to see the box art with uncluttered eyes. It was then that I realized the fact that the gun is obviously and poorly Photoshopped into her hand after the fact. Not only that, as I was inspecting that digital handiwork, I realized that her bra was also an ad hoc addition. I wish I could tell you that this suggests some deep metaphor for the meaning of the film itself, some kind of prophecy. But it is as straightforward and honest as a picture worth an hour and 15 minutes can get. No, what Strip For Action boils down to is a soap-opera spiked with lap-dances and cursing. The box, with all its bluster and false modesty, is an explicit reflection of the film contained within, a sort of a Bizarro-world version of the emperor’s new clothes.

You girls stay in the car while we exchange hair styling tips.

The Brain Eaters

The Brain Eaters
United States - 1958
Director - Bruno VeSota

A personal favorite poster image.
Makes the people look like they're eating each other's brains when in fact the monsters are just tiny rubber things. Producer Roger Corman was sued for plagiarism by author Robert Heinlein when the film came out. I have been unable to find any information about an artist for the poster art. Considering the time it came out that is no big surprise, but if you have any ideas. please let me know, this is good stuff.
I had a roommate who asked me to move this poster from the wall because it creeped her out whenever she passed it.

Ellen Burstyn

While dawdling over an Umberto Lenzi war flick at IMDB last night I noticed in their Born Today section that Pearl Harbor Day is also the birthday of actress Ellen Burstyn, not only a talented but also beautiful actress who's been in a number of great genre films. She strikes me as one of those actresses/actors who you never realize how good they are until you take the time to do a little research and find out that they were crucial to some of your favorite films.



I'm not a particularly big fan of occult or religious horror, but I do like The Exorcist (1973). You'd have to try pretty damn hard not to. Ellen plays Regan's mother Chris with an alarmingly natural mix of hysteria and calm, some of which came from a spinal injury she received on set and which remained in the film. Along with star Linda Blair, Ellen very nearly wasn't in this film at all. The Exorcist may be her best known genre film, but she has another 119 titles to her credit at IMDB.
Also check out the Exorcist Soundtrack at Illogical Contraption.


Just a couple of years earlier Ellen had a supporting role (one of her first outside TV) in the low budget car crashing exploitation flick Pit Stop (1969). This is one of the only racing movies I like, but that's not surprising, it's old and it was directed by Jack Hill, a protege of Roger Corman who basically wrote and/or directed an unending string of classic exploitation films like Spider Baby, Switchblade Sisters and Coffy to name just a few. It also stars exploitation powerhouse Sid Haig who some may know better or more recently as Captain Spaulding.


And finally, this is the movie that put the name to the face of Ellen Burstyn for me, Darren Aronofsky's 2000 masterpiece of drug horror Requiem For A Dream. I think it's safe to say that it changed everyone's perception of just about every actor who was in it, Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans (especially), Jennifer Connely, Keith David etc.... I know I feel more than a little bit soiled after every time I watch it. Ellen Burstyn plays Leto's lonely older mother, a woman hounded by memories of a sad and unfulfilling life. Her portrayal of a diet-pill addict earned her an Oscar nomination (her 6th), but she also won numerous awards for her awesome portrayal of Sarah Goldfarb.
I shudder just thinking about it as I write this, and agree with my own mother's assessment of this film; "They should get rid of the DARE Program and just show this movie to schoolkids."

There ya go, if ya haven't seen 'em do it if for no other reason than to see Ellen at work or to get your gross on. Since I've only seen a couple of her other roles I'll get to work seeing some of those.

To Sleep With A Vampire

To Sleep With A Vampire
United States – 1992
Director – Adam Frieman
New Concorde Home Video, 2002, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour, 21 min.

As you now know, there are few things I find more despicable than a vampire. I am however a shallow bastard and this film stars Charlie Spradling (Ski School,Wild At Heart.) It was also executive produced by Roger Corman. According to Beverly Gray in her book Roger Corman: An Unauthorized Life there was a period when cheap skin flicks were being filmed at Corman studios during the night on the same sets as other films. For these reasons I had to see for myself, so it was worth the 2 dollar price tag.

Jacob (Scott Valentine) is the perfect example of douchey vampire, he seems to think that exaggerated frowning counts as emoting his inner sorrow. His tragedy is that he looks so much like a low-rent John Cusack that no one takes him seriously. He hates his hunger for blood so he starves himself as long as he can until he has no other choice. On top of this he longs to experience the world of the day. Talk about a snobby tragedy, pick the one thing you can’t have and covet it. Isn’t that a version of the Oedipus complex?

So to solve this problem Jacob wanders around in the slums, looking for people more pitiful than himself, people that no one will miss since no one matters but him. So logically, he seeks his next victim in a woman of the night, someone whose pain he can sense. Nina (Spradling) a stripper at a club, that despite its location in the ghetto is fully crewed and patronized exclusively by white people. Jacob’s attraction to Nina goes beyond her physical attributes though, he’s into that suffering that he sensed. More specifically, her tequila swilling, pill popping, suicidal, homeless unfit-mother suffering. This is the purest undiluted essence of modern tragedy.


But it’s clear that Jacob is interested only in what he can get from her which to him apparently is a lot. This guy is the epitome of snarky stuck up asshole. He acts like a victim and then threatens everybody around him when he doesn’t get his way. Like a schoolyard bully he’ll do whatever it takes to get what he wants whether its friendly passivity or violence. Jacob is just like the jerks I knew in highschool who had really hot girlfriends. One minute he’s giving her the puppy-dog and flowers act and the next he’s dragging her somewhere by the back of the neck. Just like those girls Nina gets the picture pretty quick and plays along to avoid the throttlings. She tries to lift his spirits with tales of her own mortal sufferings and a fake sunbath under the spotlights at the beach. For this he strips his all-black stirrup-pants vampire outfit to reveal a cornea rupturing leopard speedo.


When tooth-grinding Nosfericidal restraint in the face of his sleazy undergarments still isn’t enough to shut his whining up, Nina gives Jacob a private package-deal performance at the strip club. But he can’t drop the victim act and just doesn’t give a shit about anyone else. She’ll “never understand the emptiness of living forever,” so he throws yet another hissy fit to draw attention off of her sturdy rack and back onto himself.

In the end, Jacob gets what he needed from the first baby-frown moment, a helping hand into the great oblivion. Nina tires him out in horizontal fashion, and sends him into the great beyond, all purple sparkles and writhing; melodramatic and weepy spoiled bitch to the bitter end.

The Lawless Land

Lawless Land
United States – 1988
Director – Jon Hess
MGM/UA Home Video, 1989, VHS
Run Time – 1 hour, 21 min.

I love post-apocalypse movies mostly because I enjoy seeing how others envision the surviving social order and infrastructure after a nuclear (or some other) holocaust. However, if The Lawless Land is supposed to be post apocalyptic, or as the box claims “after the inferno of WWIII”, then color me disappointed. As much as I like explosions and well rendered watercolors, this cover art is just dumb. It cries out in the faces of the two characters: Here is this explosion/bike/car thing and I’m trying hard, but am I supposed to care? The single sentence of narration that opens the film; “the Southern continent, after the collapse,” may be the only on screen clue that there was any kind of apocalypse at all, whatever it was.

OK, I will assume that there was some kind of apocalypse, that it was an “inferno”, and this is after it. Strangely, this post-apocalypse is quite remarkable in its complete lack of visual post-apocalyptic cues. What quickly becomes obvious is that it is in fact simply a colonized South American country, and judging by the climate, southern Peru/northern Chile. The indigenous population, referred to as “Inca” at several points are subjected to poverty, toil and degradation in some kind of mine operated by the ruthless white elite.

In fact the more I think about it, this movie right down to the title is a barely subtle indictment of the US and corporate backed Chilean military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Consider for a moment the brutal repression that the people of that country suffered. It’s not a far stretch of the imagination to think that the CIA sponsored collapse of a hard won people’s democracy might be considered apocalyptic by the people who suffered under it. By that logic it follows that the subsequent 16-year fascist rule would fit the post apocalyptic bill.

All of this doesn’t make the movie any less flat because it's quickly stepped over. The protagonist Inca by the name of Falco, shacks up with the daughter of the Chairman Oppressor, Diana (Amanda Peterson of Explorers). Her dad is seriously pissed at the threat of a shitty Romeo and Juliet ripoff and hires a bounty hunter played by "Leon", an actor named with as much commitment as this movie has to a message.

I'll wake you up when its over.

Here the film gets plenty of mileage out of the remarkably authentic sets to be found in Chile. First it’s into the streets where Falco and Diana flee from ready-made curfews, roadblocks and a heavy police presence that minimizes the cost of hiring extras (crucial when your movie is produced by Roger Corman.) Then into prison where Falco’s nipples are hooked up to a car battery while the Chairman watches without satisfaction. And finally when our new-wave hero escapes, out into the desert where the film drifts to a lazy end. A mixed bag of confusing temporal cues and secondary characters have passed by with little mention. Like Falco’s namesake, a telekinetic falcon that pops up for a scene iliciting short lived anticipation. But ultimately it too goes the way of the films commitment to its initial metaphor; ineffectual, ignored and quickly forgotten.

A poster from MTC Europa Video

Deathstalkers

Deathstalker

Argentina/USA - 1983

Director - John Watson

Vestron Video, 1984, VHS

Run time - 1 hour, 20 min.

The first is always the best, if not the weirdest. The box features a great tagline and art that seems distinctly He-Man-ish to me. The film features Rick Hill as the titular character, as well as the late Lana Clarkson who went on to become the Barbarian Queen. Hill appeared again in the unbelievably terrible Warrior Queen with Sybil Danning and again in the fourth Deathstalker.

Deathstalker II

Argentina/USA - 1987

Director - Jim Wynorski

Vestron Video, 1987, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Probably the goofiest and perhaps dumbest of the series Deathstalker II stars Wynorski (whom I've talked about more elsewhere) regular John Terlesky (Naked Cage) as Stalker, and the series only appearance of zombies and goofy cartoon sound effects for almost everything. Monique Gabrielle is the love interest, she went on to do film a slew of B-movies and adult movies. Although I'm pretty sure the Deathstalkers were all backed by Roger Corman during his brief Argentina/Mexico phase, this is the first that bears evidence on the video sleeve in the form of his production company New Horizons.

Deathstalker III: The Warriors From Hell

Mexico/US - 1988

Director - Alfonso Corona

Vestron Video, 1989, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

It's been years since I watched this one. It was the most difficult to get on VHS. I tried four times to order it online and only got it on the last try about 6 months ago. I don't remember much of what happens, but the cover art is what first drew me to all of these films. 10 years ago my good friend Regis and I decided we were going to rent all the films with rippling sweaty-dude paintings on the cover, so we did, it was awesome, end of story. All of these paintings and many more 80's Dungeons and Dragons fantasy art featuring epic mullets and impractical clothing were done by Boris Valejo.

Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans

US - 1990

Director - Howard R. Cohen

New Horizons Home Video, 1992, VHS

Run Time - 1 hour, 25 min.

Finally the man who wrote the entire series gets to sit in the directors chair and let me tell you, does it ever pay off. Many of the sequels have used recycled footage, particularly in the setup, but as I recall this one uses a lot of it. However, my recollection is that many of the names in the credits sounded eastern European, and I definitely remember copious breasts (exceeding the high bar set by the first three films) so I've always held that it was filmed in a former Soviet satellite state where people would do almost anything for American dollars, including bathe each other for the camera. Oh yeah, Rick Hill is back as Stalker and Corman workhorse Maria Ford appears as the love interest. She drew her bread and butter from her chest and Corman's payroll for years.

So, thanks for sticking with me on this brief quest through Deathstalker.In any case it fits with my effort to preserve lost VHS (the Deathstalker/Deathstalker 2 DVD is way out of print last I checked) and the role VHS box art played in drawing me into the exploitation fold. In that sense for me Deathstalker was a case in point. I was inspired by my friend at The Scandy Factory to post some of my old VHS boxes since this is probably all the "review" these films will ever get from me. Check out his blog for loads of great VHS scans, and here for some vintage pics of several of the lady stars.

Barbarian Queen

It’s been over six years as of this writing, but not until this week did I find out that actress Lana Clarkson was murdered. When I heard about her murderers conviction I made a quick internet search and discovered that it was in fact the same Lana Clarkson I thought. Perhaps it’s Lana’s apparent modesty; she was working in a restaurant when she was killed. Or the fact that she was even more attractive at 40 and just looked like a nice person. For some reason I find this whole thing quite depressing.

One of Lana’s first major roles was in 1983’s unforgettable Roger Corman produced Deathstalker, but probably her best known were in Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen II (also from Corman). In celebration of her killer’s conviction, I’m posting my older (but slightly re-worked) reviews of the latter two classic barbariansploitation films.


Barbarian Queen
United States/Argentina-1985
Director – Hector Olivera
New Concorde, 2003, DVD

In a happy grass hut village, a bunch of happy forest people are celebrating the wedding of the prince, Argan (B-movie fireplug Frank Zagarino) and Princess Amathea (Lana Clarkson). While the princess’s sister is off gathering flowers, she is kidnapped and the village is raided by leather hat wearing thugs who kill a bunch of them and take the rest prisoner. What they don’t do is take care of Amathea, who struggling to raise her overly heavy visibly dull sword above her head, vows revenge.

She soon discovers several other refugees from the hairspray tribe of Hollywood. They team up, leap in some convenient canoes and paddle to a nearby outpost. There they clumsily knock a bunch of the badguys on the head and rescue Amathea’s sister. From there the journey toward anti-climax continues.
Soon, they run into a group of rebels led by a one-eyed, one-armed purple-clad rebel leader, and a poorly dubbed daughter. (filmed in Argentina with local actors) The rebel gang maintains a hideout underneath the very spray-foam and chickenwire castle village from which the evil leather hat guys oppress their empire. Enforcing a cruel pastel-fabrics only law, the evil king intends to hold the empire in a perpetual state of commercialized Easter. Bucking the advice of the on-site expert villagers, Amathea spontaneously decides to free Argan. She is caught of course, and strapped topless to a torture rack by the nerdy weasely dungeon master. The demographic has been secured sire.


She escapes and rejoins the rebels, now allied with enslaved gladiators led by Argan. Just as they are about to begin their revolt a bunch of the gladiators betray them, but no sweat, Argan and Amathea manage to pull it off anyway, and in a one minute battle, free the entire kingdom by killing all 10 soldiers who garrison the flimsy castle.

Barbarian Queen only serves as a vehicle for Clarkson’s assets, but manages to heap enough low budget ineptitude around that premise to keep it propped up and entertaining. Despite a façade of feminism, knowing Roger Corman, it’s incidental to making a film starring women. But he did make a sequel.