Barbarian Queen

The Barbarian Queen is Queen Amethea (Lana Clarkson), whose village is burned by evil warriors on the day of her prospective wedding, after which most of the people are killed or enslaved. She leads a group of rebels in opposition, including some women (like herself) whose forms fit well into the clothing of the day, and eventually leads an uprising by freeing the slaves. Not for its cultural or intellectual value at all, this film is most noteworthy for the women winning the swordfights with men but not faring so well if they are captured and/or enslaved. Nudity and bondage and fondling yes, but I have to say the most memorable scene occurs when Queen Amethea uses a unique method of escape after she has been captured and tied up in the warrior camp and is being fondled by one of her captors. Clear cut--for those who like this stuff yes, otherwise not much to offer.

I had a theory about movies. For every two minutes of Bad movie you need one minute of Nudity to make it watchable. This movie puts that theory to the test, and disproves it with a glorious vigor.

I think most every female in this movie was topless for the majority of it. The story is milk toast, but what I found the most absurd is just how bad the acting was. I mean it was Tommy Wiseau bad. In fact the nudity and acting are so bad there's almost a shamelessness about it. As though it's proud of how bad it is. And for that I would actually recommend it for anyone who wants to see a lot of breasts in a low budget Connan rip off.

For those who are feeling daring I offer the barbarian Queen Drinking game. This requires two teams, Team One is team acting and Team two is Team Boobs. For ever poorly acted line of dialog, team Acting takes a drink, For every set of boobs you see, team Boobs takes a drink. Please keep an EMT handy and sober as most likely more than one person will almost die of alcohol poisoning. You've been warned

(1985) Barbarian Queen ACTION ADVENTURE

Part European production that has Amathea (Lana Clarkson) who is about to get married to Aargon (Frank Zagarino) until her small village become attacked by marauders led by Lord Arrakur (Arman Chapman) taking with them are prisoners. After the invaders assume Amathea had died from the fire, she and her two swords women, Estrild (Katt Shea) and Tiniara (Susana Traverso) then goes on a saving rant, with the first person she saves is her sister Taramis (Dawn Dunlap).

Again, the action is unconvincing, the acting is second rate that looks like it takes a back seat to the nude scenes, which to some can be more entertaining than the movie itself.

41 seconds in and you have a topless woman. Thanks to Shout Factory this glorious entry into the 80's Sword and Sorcery trash cinema along with Amazons was just released on a Blu-ray double bill. All I can say is "Thank you." I remember watching this gem when it first came out, along with every other entry into the genre. Roger Corman, you sir were in integral part of my misspent teens. Is it complete garbage, yep but it's my type of garbage. Every single one of these Sword and Sorcery "films" are cinematic gold. Plain and simple. Scoff if you will but I bet I'm not alone.

Barbarian Queen is one of the cycle of sword and sandal flicks that were popular in the mid 80's. Back then the formula seemed to incorporate lots of sword fights and lots of semi naked girls. This flick certainly adheres to this principle that's for sure, especially the bit about the naked girls. In fact I guess if you were inclined towards political correctness you could label Barbarian Queen as a film that is a little bit sexist. But I myself am quite partial to salacious genre movies and I lapped this one up quite a bit. The story really isn't too important but suffice to say it features a group of Amazonian type women on a quest to get vengeance on a tribe of incredibly misogynistic men who opened up the movie by raping and murdering their people.

There's lots of sex and violence in this one. And for what it's worth, the breast count appeared to be astronomical as well. It's certainly a movie that delivers on its promise and that is certainly not a bad thing. Lana Clarkson plays the titular heroine with some gusto. She's pretty good in the action scenes as well as the nude ones. Of the latter there is a somewhat erotic scene where she is tied up in a torture chamber. Somewhat notably, she escapes from this seemingly doomed situation by defeating her jailer by way of a rather extreme application of the Cleopatra Grip (I'll let you look that one up!). You have to give a film marks for originality for the likes of this, that's for sure.

Barbarian Queen has a story and action that is by-the-numbers really but it gains points for gratuitous excess. They don't really seem to make them like this anymore and that is a bit of a shame.