Review: Warrior Queen

Set in Pompeii 79AD, Sybil Danning plays a well-respected queen who is secretly trying to help female slaves escape. Meanwhile, a volcano looms in the background. Tally Chanel is essentially our protagonist, slave Vespa. Donald Pleasence plays a randy local official, whilst “Deathstalker” co-star Rick Hill is a gladiator hunk named Marcus.

Essentially an attempt by producers Joe D’Amato (director of “Black Cobra Woman”, and several of the ‘other’ “Emanuelle” exploitation pics) and Harry Alan Towers (Essentially the British Dino De Laurentiis) to do another “Caligula” but far tamer. This 1987 skin flick from director Chuck Vincent (a prolific director of both hardcore and softcore film ventures) is actually not terrible. In fact, it’s a far easier watch than “Caligula” because although far less explicit, it’s also far less overly indulgent in the sex scenes. I’m not saying this is a well-scripted, well-plotted character drama or anything – it’s an exploitation flick alright – and it doesn’t have a good central performance like “Caligula” did with Malcolm McDowell. However, a little of “Caligula” went not all that far. It got boring and repetitive awfully quickly with all that debauchery, and droned on forever. It was also incredibly unpleasant and not especially erotic, despite Bob Guccione’s name attached to it. This is slightly more watchable, albeit more flimsy and lower-budget in its technical aspects, especially the underdone script. The latter shouldn’t be terribly surprising if you’re aware of the pedigree of Vincent, D’Amato, and Towers. None of those guys were especially concerned with technically proficient filmmaking, let’s be honest.

Poorly scripted by Rick Marx (“Gor”, “Platoon Leader” and lots of porn) and an uncredited S.C. Dacy (a frequent collaborator of actress Sybil Danning in various capacities), if you view this as “Deathstalker” does Pompeii, you might find it diverting enough to pass the time, whilst others might be lured in by the prospect of seeing Sybil Danning and Donald Pleasence in a film together. I must admit it’s part of what reeled me in, having wanted to see the film for decades. The promise of nudity and Sapphic action didn’t hurt, either. The result on the latter front is a bit of a mixed bag. There’s lots of nudity, but the most explicit action is random background sex not featuring the principal cast. It’s pretty racy for a film from 1987 featuring a few familiar actors, but still quite poorly choreographed and shot rumpy-pumpy in my view. I’m not going to come close to calling it a good film, but it really only gives you just enough of what you came for to make it a fairly easy exploitation movie watch. That might be just fine for you, in the right mood. In fact, I’ll go on record as saying that critics at the time were slightly too harsh on this one. It’s not bottom of the barrel.

Aside from a deadshit boring gladiatorial competition and the strange lack of dialogue throughout, the only thing that really bothered me was that there was too much emphasis on boring male characters at the expense of the far more interesting female characters. Danning in particular ends up a bit wasted, and you feel there’s a much more exciting story to be told with her closer to the helm. She’s not going to compete with Meryl Streep or anything, but for this sort of thing, she’s the kind of actress you really want front and centre. Instead, she (in a rare non-villain role) barely says a word in the first half of the film. In fact, even the lead actress really only speaks for an extended period after 30 minutes. It’s bizarre. Was there originally more dialogue but deemed worthless by the cast who refused to utter it? Our female lead is Tally Chanel’s virginal Vespa, and whilst she looks absolutely outstanding naked, she’s very clearly not an actress of any kind whatsoever. So perhaps the silence may have had a purpose. By far the best performer in the cast is unsurprisingly Donald Pleasence, the one male here I didn’t mind getting screen time ‘coz with Pleasence you know he’s gonna either do his damn best or his damn hammiest, and I’m perfectly OK with either one. He gives us the latter, in case you were wondering, playing Pompeii consul Clodius. He certainly looks to be having fun, even if part of you thinks this sort of thing should be beneath him. The film is lucky to have him. The film is also lucky to have the volcano climax, as it livens things up a bit. I won’t even complain that the footage was pilfered from 1959’s “The Last Days of Pompeii”, partly because I had to read about it afterwards. It gets the job done, stock footage or not.

Cheap, softcore “Caligula” wannabe features a whole lotta nudity and the presence of known faces Donald Pleasence and Sybil Danning. It’s not a good movie, I didn’t expect it to be, but the lack of good plotting and decent character depth ultimately gets a middling grade from the critical reviewer side of my brain. There’s some undeniable fun here and there though if you’re into this kind of trashy thing, but don’t go fooling yourself into thinking it’s anything substantial. But it does feature a character named Veneria, and how can you hate a film that will sink that low? (I know, it’s spelled differently, but c’mon…it’s intentional, surely). Helluva poster, too.

Rating: C+