Review: War Goddess

A society of Amazon women led by the super-serious Alena Johnston’s Antiope whose disdain for all things male and manly are put to the test on the society’s annual co-mingling with a tribe of male Greek studs, especially the very studly Theseus (Angelo Infanti). You see, it’s this one time of the year that the women will fornicate with the men for the sole purpose of procreation (female children only, of course). Theseus however, would like very much to break down Antiope’s man-hating defences. Luciana Paluzzi turns up as Theseus’ wife Phaedra.

One of the strangest pairings of filmmaker and film is seeing the name of director Terence Young (“Dr. No”, “From Russia With Love”, “Wait Until Dark”) at the helm of this 1973 piece of C-grade (to be charitable) softcore exploitation mythology. The only sign that this was from the director of “Thunderball” was the casting of Luciana Paluzzi. Was Young doing a director-for-hire job here at very short notice and a tight schedule? Blackmailed perhaps? Had child support to pay? ‘Coz his heart’s definitely not in this tedious load of padding. Either that or the film needed to drop ‘serious’ director Young in favour of someone less talented but more adept at making an exploitation picture like a Jesus Franco (“Vampyros Lesbos”) or even Tinto Brass (who helmed the infamous “Caligula”). It’d still likely be shit, but at least it’d be shit with a lot more sex and nudity. Instead, Young gives us lots of dialogue from participants not equipped for such tasks, and a bunch of boring-arse ancient Olympics-style games. What in the hell kind of film did he think he was making?

It starts well, alright. Sure it’s clunky at the outset but at least we get nude rubdowns and oil wrestling. It sets you up for what should be a lot of sleazy fun. I thought to myself that this is exactly what “The Arena” (a fairly decent exploitation film, don’t get me wrong) could’ve been if that film had really gone for broke in the sleaze department. It’s an enjoyable 15 minutes I must say. And that’s where it stops all of that potential, and starts being a lot of boring and no fun, and actually nowhere near as good as even “The Arena” was.

For one thing, the film isn’t as female-centric as one would like, with a good deal too much of the running time devoted to a bunch of wholly uninteresting, uncharismatic male characters. Boo to that entirely. If men are supposedly only needed once a year and solely for copulation, then why are scenes devoted to having them walk and talk? If you love the naked female form as much as I do, you’ll get a lot of that here. However, that and some nice scenery aren’t anywhere near enough to keep me invested for 90 minutes. What we get is mostly an ancient version of “Battle of the Sexes”, and despite only sleeping with men once a year, very few of the women sleep with each other either. We do get a nice catfight 75 minutes in, and you’d think it turning into a lesbian love scene would make things even better. Surprisingly not, as it’s incredibly tame even for 1973. Jesus Franco wouldn’t have let me down on that front. Just sayin’, Terence. The premise of an ancient society where men and women only fornicate once a year for breeding purposes sounded like a Sapphic delight to me. Instead there’s minimal lesbianism, minimal entertainment, and minimal evidence that an actual legit filmmaker is at the helm of this tedious waste of time. What a massive disappointment, even Luciana Paluzzi is far from her best in a tiny role.

This was never going to be a great film, but if handled the right way, it could’ve at least been great sleaze. Instead it’s mostly a chore. Nice scenery, but nup. This ain’t it, Terence. Cheap, stock music score by Riz Ortolani (“Anzio”, “A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die”) is the final nail in the coffin of this snoozer. The terrible script seems to have had a lot of hands involved, which isn’t surprising: Richard Aubrey (“A Town Called Hell”, AKA “A Town Called Bastard” with Telly Savalas and Robert Shaw), Serge de la Roche (who has only one other IMDb screenwriting credit), Massimo De Rita (“The Violent Four”), Robert Graves (Co-writer of TV’s popular “I, Claudius”), Arduino Maiuri (Mario Bava’s “Danger: Diabolik”), and even Young himself. There’s plenty of blame to go ‘round there, though I somewhat doubt Graves wrote much of it. Skip this one.

Rating: C-