borgspot

Please don't force me to watch the movie! Wasn't it enough that I acted in it?

Conan the Barbarian hacked and slashed his way across cinemas in 1982, and it did not take long before a loathsome stench emerged in his wake. It was the reek of a beast that had laid dormant for the past twenty years, the great and powerful monster of Sword-and-sandal (roar!). Hoping to cash in on Conan’s success, these movies came in their hundreds, trying to lure audiences with titles such as Barbarian Master, The Invisible Barbarian and Ator, the Fighting Eagle. Having barely any money to spend on art direction…or a decent script, tolerable actors, and so on, and so on, they tried to compensate for their numerous shortcomings by upping the gore and nudity.

Barbarian Queen may not technically be a sword-and-sandal movie as it’s an American-Argentinian production, but whatever. It certainly looks and feels like most of the Italian movies of the era… the cinematic equivalence of feverishly crawling into the bathroom with gastroenteritis, not knowing whether to sit on the toilet or stick your head in it because it’s running from both ends.

Anyway, our story takes place during the height of the Roman Empire, and men’s biggest pleasure – correction: their only pleasure – appears to be fighting and raping women. We first see a woman picking flowers by a river. She stands up, takes a few steps and walks right into a snare. A couple of men rush forward and starts pulling her clothes off, laughing. Cut to a village. Naturally, everyone in it is leading Disney-happy lives. A man who apparently is the king is preparing for his wedding. He smiles like an all-too eager salesman while strolling next to his buddy, getting well-wishes and good-lucks by every passer-by. His friend tells him a bad joke and they guffaw so exaggeratedly you begin to wonder if they’ve ever laughed before.

Thankfully, this mindless – almost disturbing – bliss soon vanishes, for the Romans have come and they’re not fans of smiles or laughter, always on the lookout for new carefree people to rape and kill. And not always in that order. They so want to rape someone they can’t even contain themselves until the fighting is over. Every now and then a soldier tosses a woman to the ground and start ripping her clothes off, but it doesn’t take long before a barbarian shows up and thrusts something sharp and long deep into the astonished attacker’s body. Kind of makes you wonder what instructions their commander gave them before the battle, or what their overall strategy was.

“Any suggestions on how to take the village, general?”

“Oh, just throw in all we have. Don’t mind formation and such boring formalities. Have fun, rape a little while you’re at it!”

“But…”

“ALL WE HAVE AT THE SAME TIME! And rape a girl or two, for gods’ sake. Before the battle’s over, understand?”

During the battle we see that the barbarian queen, Amathea, is a true warrior, ruthlessly hacking down countless men who don’t dare to swing their swords too fast or hard in fear of hurting the actress. She’s so lethal she only needs to gently kick one person in the stomach to kill two people! It’s somewhat reminiscent of the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when the knight dashes through the castle, chopping down wedding guests left and right.

Her talent is not enough to save the day, though. Eventually the Romans win and the few barbarians who aren’t dead are taken as slaves. There are two exceptions: Amathea and her best friend… eh… Estrild?… who apparently had gone to find that flower-picking-snare-stepping girl (who we learn is Amathea’s sister). So how did Amathea escape the Romans? By running into a house and setting it on fire. Yeah. So, the Romans line up outside, waiting for her to emerge from the hellish flames like some wildly flailing, shrieking human torch. It doesn’t happen, however. After a while they sit down and grill some hot dogs, then they realize it was several hours ago since they raped someone last, so they gather the survivors and leave.

How exactly did Amathea survive the fire, you ask? She simply LAY DOWN ON THE FLOOR. So remember kids: If there’s a fire, just lie down on the floor and wait until the building has burned to the ground. Then you can calmly get up and walk away.

Amathea and… Estrild?… head to the river to get themselves cleaned up, when suddenly they hear a horse approaching. The rider is their good friend… uh, that third barbarian woman.

“I thought they captured you!” Amathea says.

“Just one. I killed him,” that third barbarian woman replies and the three laugh heartily, despite the fact that their village has been destroyed and about every single person they’ve ever known has either been killed or raped or both. They become somewhat more grim when they realize that, and decide that they must free the remaining survivors.

What I’ve described thus far is only the first ten minutes of the film, but I think it’s enough in order to understand where the film has set the bar… about three feet underground, so no one can accidentally trip on it.

It could have been an at least decent action movie, had the script, the director, the costumes, the make-up, the choreography, etc. been brought up a few (thousand) notches. After all, Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto has a similar set-up, but then, his film has actors that can talk and laugh in a natural way, while those in Barbarian Queen seem like they recently graduated from the porn academy. Actually, that was rather rude. There are a few porn actors who can act (or so I’ve heard, ahem).

The only reason your pulse increases in the action scenes is because you laugh at how poorly made they are. It seems like they just drove to the various locations, threw up the camera somewhere and yelled “Action!” without giving anyone instructions, other than possibly a “Fight each other”. The actors awkwardly wag or poke their obvious prop weapons a little and occasionally someone collapses, even though he or she hasn’t been hit by anything.

Later in the movie they cut between two different fights in a way that almost gave me a seizure. Two are fighting in the water, CUT: two are fighting on land, CUT: water, CUT: land, CUT: water, CUT, CUT, CUT… how it all ends is one of the film’s unintentionally funny highlights. We see Amathea swing her sword, then hear the man’s excessive death rattle, but what they do next is the real masterstroke: They cut to the man’s face and you can clearly see that her sword isn’t even touching his throat, while he’s looking like his grandma is performing a striptease just out of shot. What’s truly genius is that his death rattle continues, although his lips are barely parted and don’t move (see picture below). Cut and… battle over! Perfection.

Ed Wood would have been proud. Or perhaps not. I’m going to try using my psychic ability to contact the other side and ask him what he thinks of this movie.

Testing, testing, one, two three, do you read me? Hello? Ed Wood? Ed Wood, are you there?

No response. Though perhaps the silence is an answer of sorts.

The barbarian king is learning how to laugh. Ha-ha-ha! he tries woodenly, with strongly accentuated H:s.

Before I die... I want to know how that arrow could hit me straight in the forehead when I had that hut just in front of me. Uggghhh... (click picture)

The barbarian king unleashes his war face, but instead of fleeing everyone turns against him, eager to remove that face.

Amathea and... Estrild?... show that you can have fun only minutes after your hometown has burnt to the ground and everyone you ever loved is either dead or enslaved.

He died hardest... by getting the sword thrust into that fragile place between his beard and neck.

Uugggghuuuhuhhhh... I'm dead.

So... if that's what you're usually wearing, what does your bathing suit look like?