Review: Barbarian Queen

Lana Clarkson and Frank Zagarino are about to be married when their village is invaded, and almost everyone is killed and/or raped by your stock-standard evil henchmen-types. Zagarino is taken prisoner, Clarkson’s sister attacked. Clarkson and a couple of other warrior women (Katt Shea being one of them) survive, and journey to evil Armando Capo’s castle for a little rescue and revenge.

So long as you don’t go into it expecting anything close to a good movie, this 1985 swords ‘n’ tits fantasy from director Hector Olivera (“Wizards of the Lost Kingdom”) and screenwriter Howard R. Cohen (the earlier and similar “Deathstalker”) is a pretty easy watch. However, after quite a fun start it does seem to lack energy and muscle. That’s what you get with a cheapo director at the helm I suppose. I can’t be too harsh on Mr. Olivera however, he gives us tits in the opening minute. In fact, if you like swords and tits, there’s plenty of both in just the opening five minutes alone. That said, the opening five minutes, whilst bloody and full of boobies, are a bit of a mess. Personally I’d go to the Pam Grier-starring “The Arena” for my swords and tits thirst-quenching, and in the overall sword-and-sorcery genre pre-“Lord of the Rings” I tend to gravitate towards “The Beastmaster” and “Ladyhawke”. The likes of this film, “Deathstalker”, “Red Sonja” and the “Conan” films are just OK at best.

Lana Clarkson absolutely did not deserve her terrible, terrible fate, and although she’s a completely incompetent sword-wielder, she looks good and her acting is actually not too bad. Frank Zagarino can’t act to save himself, and Armando Capo essentially played the same role better in the earlier “Deathstalker” as the glowering villain.

Beyond the boobs and blood, the film is actually quite amiable, and it has three female protagonists, so there’s that too. No one will claim this is anywhere near feminist filmmaking, but it deserves to be noted I think (The men are mostly painted as disgusting rapist pigs). However, there’s no doubt that with only 70 minutes to work with, story and characters are wafer-thin, hurting the film in my view. Zagarino’s hunky male character’s relationship with Clarkson is so horribly ill-defined that he ends up just kinda being there on screen from time to time, until it’s time to kiss Clarkson in the most rushed ending in cinematic history.

The only character other than Clarkson’s that stands out is Zohar the creepy pervert torturer, well-played in low-brow fashion by Tony Middleton in the film’s best performance. It also deserves to be noted that it could’ve served to be even raunchier with so many female characters involved. The highlight in that regard comes 44 minutes in with Clarkson on the torture rack, topless and in a G-string. It’s what fans of this sort of thing watch the film for, and on that it delivers. I just would’ve liked some sex to go along with the nudity, torture, and sword-clanging. The music score by two rather reputable names in James Horner (“Aliens”, “Battle Beyond the Stars”) and genre specialist Christopher Young (“A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge”, “Hellraiser”, “Flowers in the Attic”, “Swordfish”) is surprisingly abysmal and cheap-sounding. It sounds like music out of a stock library or something, and unsurprisingly Horner’s contributions were borrowed from his work on Roger Corman’s underrated “Battle Beyond the Stars” and also used in one of the “Star Trek” films if I’m not mistaken. Those films sounded a lot better, so I assume Horner used the weakest parts for this film (Corman is predictably EP on this film, albeit uncredited).

If you can appreciate it for the low-brow trash that it is, this B-movie is pretty tolerable. It only runs about 70 minutes, so it hardly sticks around long enough to be bothersome. It’s not trying to be a good movie, but I will say I could easily see it having been better than it is. It’ll still work for the right audience in the right mood. It nearly worked for me.

Rating: C+