Barbarian Queen (1985)

Swords and Sandals flicks can be extremely entertaining. Hell, Conan the Barbarian proved that way back in ’82. Yet, the ones that fail, fail hard. Barbarian Queen proves that. In a film with as much violence and nudity as Barbarian Queen gives the audience, the last thing on viewers’ minds is that they’ll be bored, but, that’s exactly what this reviewer dealt with (fighting to stay awake).

Rating:

Since the review’s epically short, here’s the final battle in it’s entirety.

The story is pretty simple. A small village is getting ready for a marriage between Argan (Frank Zagarino) and Amethea (Lana Clarkson). As the wedding rapidly approaches, the village is set upon by outside invaders. Half the village is brutally murdered and most of the rest are taken away to be slaves. A handful of women, including Amethea, manage to escape death and capture. A plot is hatched and the women sneak into the city where the army is located that attacked their village. They meet up with a group of rebels and put a plan into action to recapture what was taken, and bring freedom to any other captives.

Right off the bat we’re given three sets of breasts, a rape, and a village razed to the ground. From there the nudity continues, pretty much for the rest of the film. Each woman ends up in some form of skimpy outfit, then topless, and back to the skimpy outfit moments later. There’s a scene, much later in the film, when Amethea is being tortured with only underwear on (yeah, they had thongs back then apparently) and the mad scientist has a metallic hand, complete with pointy fingernails, just above her nipples. I still have no idea what the purpose of the metal device was, but it was pretty damned funny. He then attempts to have sex with her, but she squeezes her legs together and starts crushing his manhood until he unties her. This is followed by the captor falling backwards into a vat of boiling acid.

The violence, when it actually happens, is pretty cool. The problem is there are HUGE gaps of time where no action takes place. This is where the real problems of the film come into view. The story is as generic as they come (yet, that’s to be expected). The real problem is that the story is extremely boring. It drags incredibly in between action sequences. Even the nudity is not enough to bring the film up to a decent popcorn flick.

I will give credit where credit’s due. The movie is hilariously bad. I haven’t laughed this hard in along time. Yet, with dialogue like this, you can’t really expect anything but comedy gold:

Amethea: I’ll be no man’s slave and no man’s whore, and if I can’t kill them all, by the gods they’ll know I’ve tried.

You don’t get Oscar-worthy lines like that very often. The characters do the dumbest things possible, and every scene is set up for a sex scene and/or a terribly written dialogue sequence.

Overall, Barbarian Queen is a terrible film that should only be watched if you’re a true swords and sandals fan, or you’ve gone through countless horror films and want to see your naked women in a new light. For everyone else, give this one a pass.

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