Dragonard

Well, yeah, OK, it's overall not that great of a film, but it does have Patrick Warburton, that hunky stud, stripped to the waist for most of the film, and in a peak moment, having his broad back and muscular shoulders mercilessly lashed for what seems to be an hour but is probably only like four or five minutes. Oh, Puddy!

This is an extremely silly and little seen film about slavery in the West Indies and it stars Puddy from the "Seinfeld" show! Patrick Warburton made his film debut in this contrived movie and he's noticeably slimmer here. Oliver Reed got top billing but he's hardly in the film at all. Warburton plays a white slave and its funny to see all the young and horny wives of rich old men bidding on him because they all want to have sex with him. Eartha Kitt plays an owner of a bordello and they're is so much nudity in the film. If its not drunken orgies at the bordello then its the young wives having they're turn with him. Then of course towards the end the slaves revolt and there's the bloody standoff. No real political message like the film "Burn" but just another contrived plot device to move the story along. Incredibly they made a sequel and Warburton and all the rest of the cast came back! I hope they got paid a lot of dough because this first film is pretty bad. The nudity keeps it watchable and Warburton's lack of any accent make it at times laughable. Very bad film but I got to admit that I want to see the sequel.

You don't see many sexplotiation films in which the men are as exploited as the women, but Dragonard is a rare exception. Based on a popular series of bodice-ripper novels of the era, this film spends as much time lovingly displaying the young Patrick Warburton's muscular (and furry) torso as it does advancing its laughable plot.

The plot (what there is of it) deals with the mistreatment and eventual uprising of slaves in Jamaica. The audiences is treated to lots of slaves being whipped (both male and female). Dragonard features every romance novel cliché you can think of. Bright eyed upper class ladies lusting over supple male slaves, whores in powdered and ren-faire style corsetts,etc. Eartha Kitt seems to enjoy growling her way through every scene, and Oliver Reed shows up every once in awhile to shout drunkenly at the other actors.

As for Warburton, his main job in the film seems to be looking pretty, his character is supposed to be Scottish, but he hasn't bothered with an accent. Fortunately for him film is light on dialogue, preferring instead to focus on the sort of fake sex which was the stock and trade of the 1980's softcore T&A movie.

As a lover of trashy movies I was kind of hoping that this one would be a little more exploitive, insead it's not much more than a standard issue romance movie targeted (I think) to bored suburban housewives. If it were remade today Warburton's role would probably be played by Fabio.

I haven't watched this for a long time, and trust me, the 7-star rating is solely for camp value--this movie is awful in a very entertaining way, right up there with "Drum" as far as its genre goes But the only reason I'm posting is to clarify: This is NOT a sequel to "Master of Dragonard Hill." They are exactly the same movie, just under different titles. It's rare that IMBD makes such a big error, but I guess it's a testament to how badly this film flopped, and how little it's been seen since. Anyway, it's a major tasteless hoot if you are into unintentional comedy of a ripped-bodice, forbidden-plantation-desires-as-slaves-revolt type. With terribly overripe or wooden acting down the line, it's not your run-of-the-mill bad movie, but an underappreciated bad-movie classic, practically the "Showgirls" of "Mandingo" knockoffs.

There are no reasons to watch this movie. Should you have won and extreme amount of money and having spent your time discovering life's every pleasure and have come to a point where by chance you are at a loose end and have some time to kill (like that would ever happen) then get this movie from the video shop (if you can find it AND put up with the assistant laughing at you then ask for this movie. Be prepared however for you mind to be invaded by extremely wooden acting by absolutely everyone (in fact the best acting was by the people who said nothing). Oliver Reed tops off his grand career by playing a drunk - go figure. But wait I forgot there is one reason to watch this movie - Claudia Udy showing her chest! Sadly no other reason than that!