Oh, Happy Day! Another Roger Corman Conan knock-off, though I suppose this is more of a Red Sonja knock-off. In fact it’s probably a knock-off of Corman’s own production Barbarian Queen, making this a knock-off of a knock-off. At this point I wish someone would knock me off, or at least out. By now Roger had done his bit to humiliate the barbarian genre into an early death, but since the sets from Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen were still kicking around in Argentina, he obviously thought he might as well use them to rake in a few last cents before everyone started spending their video rental cash on Terminator rip-offs instead.

Amazons is treading in very familiar territory to anyone who’s seen Barbarian Queen; hot badass warrior woman fights evil warlord, stopping occasionally to be raped by enemy soldiers or go swimming naked. I’ll try and summarise the plot, but to be honest I’ve got so little sleep over the last few days that I’m writing in a sort of exhausted, nonsensical fever dream - which is handy, because that’s a lot like the feeling I had watching the movie.

So there’s this lovely peaceful kingdom where Amazon warriors and everyone else get along, and the powerful fighting women in their battle thongs train to defend against Evil. Evil, as it turns out, lives just around the corner; this is the usual dark overlord type Kalungo (Joseph Whipp), a wizard bent on conquering his peaceful neighbours. Using his crappy SFX lightning bolts, Kalungo is able to breach the good guys’ defences. Dyala (Ty Randolph), the most badass of the Amazons, wants to stay and fight, but she and her superior Tshingi (Danitza Kingsley) are ordered to leave by the leader of the good guys (sorry, I didn’t catch his name). “Tshingi,” he solemnly intones, “get the Spirit Stone to Shinnar! Tell the Queen what’s happening, the Emerald Land depends on you!” Eh? This thing is set in Ireland? I guess there’s quite a lot of evidence that the writers had imbibed plenty of Guinness during the scripting stage, but that’s about as Irish as it gets.

Kalungo’s army moves into the city, complete with a couple of evil henchmen; Halfhead (Santiago Mallo), a guy with an 80s punk Mohawk and one eye covered with a really bad prosthetic; and Arban, played by good old Marcos Woinsky, the weaselly guard from Deathstalker and Barbarian Queen. For henchmen they don’t get to do much in the way of henching, in fact I have no idea what happens to either of them - they just disappear after a couple of early scenes. First though Halfhead shows us how evil he is, by kicking a corpse in the head. Sure would have been nastier if the ‘corpse’ had remembered to keep his eyes closed...

Dyala and the other Amazons take the Spirit Stone back to Shinnar, stopping on the way to stare at a bunch of trees that apparently show them their inner Amazon spirit or some such guff. In her tree Dyala sees a mystical weapon, the Sword of Azundati. This blade, once wielded by a great Amazon warrior five hundred years previously, is the only thing that can stop Kalungo. Arriving at Shinnar, which appears to be the Amazon stronghold, the Emerald Queen (Annie Larronde) is surprised to learn of Dyala’s vision. The Queen orders her to go and seek the sword, which apparently lies somewhere in a cave “Beyond the Pegash Forest.” To help on the quest a young Amazon named Tashi (Penelope Reed) is sent along. Tashi is the daughter of Tshingi, who once feuded with Dyala’s mother over a man - the man who went on to become Dyala’s father in fact. Not surprisingly there’s treachery afoot, with Tshingi (who killed Dyala’s parents it turns out) ordering Tashi to kill Dyala once they have the sword.

It’s all because Tshingi wants to be the new Emerald Queen, and Kalungo’s promised to give her the job once he’s taken over the rest of the world. But you don’t get to be a generic evil sorcerer in a Corman flick by being dumb (it’s actually something felonious actors agree to in court to avoid prison time), so Kalungo decides to send backup. He transforms his pet lioness into a naked cutie named Akam (Fabiana Smith).This sequence put me in mind of the scene in Willow where the eponymous hero is trying to transform the old sorceress back into human form but succeeds in changing her into a series of animals instead. This is exactly the same, except that instead of using fledgling CGI technology they employed quick dissolves between a series of unbelievably shitty papier-mâché masks. Oh, and if the old sorceress had been a hot blonde in a collar. And naked. So anyway, lion chick is sent to kill both Dyala and Tashi and bring the Sword straight back to Kalungo.

If, like me, you’re a veteran of Corman’s barbarian movies you’re probably thinking that a quest through the countryside sounds like the ideal opportunity to go skinny-dipping, and that’s just what Dyala and Tashi do. Note the remarkable medical skills of The Ancient Amazons, who seem to have mastered breast implants centuries before anaesthetics, proper surgical tools or Beverly Hills. You may also be thinking, hey, they said this was supposed to be bandit country, and surely no Corman flick would be complete without a rape scene. Yup, a gang of thugs is waiting in the bushes to attack our heroes, who have been considerate enough to put their tops back on just so that the thugs can rip them off again. Perhaps I’m being unfair, since Dyala and Tashi fight back rather more effectively than most women in these scenes. Don’t get fooled into thinking that this is in some way empowering though, since Dyala’s exposed boobs fly around almost as much as her fists. Oh, and the lioness chick (now a lioness again) attacks one of the goons in an obviously shot-elsewhere bit of footage, then runs away. Neither Dyala or Tashi find this odd.

The duo make it to the Pegash forest, which is inhabited by these spaced out drug-abusing wood nymphs. Unfortunately it’s also inhabited by the Pegash, who are odd sort of Neanderthal types in even more crappy papier-mâché masks who shout “Pegash!” a lot. These guys like to capture the timid nymphs to sacrifice to their God, a fake tree with eyes (no, seriously). In their latest attack Tashi gets captured as well. Dyala stages a daring rescue involving some elaborate booby-traps (no pun intended), though she spends so long making the damn things that several nymphs are sacrificed before she’s ready. Still, Tashi is rescued so it’s OK, and the young Amazon starts to feel bad about her treacherous mission.

They meet an extremely friendly white horse, who is most certainly not Shadowfax. The horse leads them to a cabin where a mystical wise woman spins them a lot of mumbo-jumbo about the sword. Travelling on they find the exceedingly temporary-looking Styrofoam cave that houses the Sword. Unfortunately it’s on the far side of a gorge that changes in size depending on which camera angle you’re looking at it from, something presumably caused by the same magical force that transforms Dyala’s hastily gathered length of vine into an actual rope. The gorge then shrinks quite a lot, enough to allow Lioness Chick to jump over it.

Dyala finds the sword and Tashi moves to kill her, but dang - she just can’t do it. Anyway, Dyala claims she was on to the girl the whole time, and knew she wouldn’t be able to. But their sudden love-in is cut short when Lioness Chick attacks, killing Tashi and mauling Dyala. But the powerful Amazon prevails, killing Lioness Chick before heading back to the wise woman’s cave. And it turns out the wise woman is actually Azundati, whose penance for owning the powerful Sword is live forever in the little hut she calls home. Geez, if that’s what you get for just owning a Sword I wonder what she did that was so bad it got her stuck in this movie?

Somehow Dyala needs to get back to the city in time to stop Kolungo’s invading forces, but luckily Azundati’s horse (the one, you recall, that isn’t Shadowfax) knows a shortcut through the Paths of the Dea... er, I mean the WereWays. Unfortunately in the WereWays you might be attacked by trick or treaters mistaken by the film crew for ghouls. You might also be menaced by Kolungo’s evil god Balgur (Frank Cocza), who will do such diabolically godlike things as jump on the back of your horse and can only be thwarted with the dangerous exorcism technique of elbowing him in the gut.

Back at Shinnar, Dyala uses the Sword’s crappy lightning bolts to counteract Kolungo’s crappy lightning bolts. Robbed of his powers (and apparently unable to defeat Dyala with his half-hearted mastery of The Force) he has to engage her in real combat. Dyala quickly gets the upper hand, using a variation on the Hong Kong backflip-and-multiple-kick gambit only with much worse editing. Honestly, it looks like it was edited with scissors - held by a chimp. On speed.

With Kolungo dead, things are looking up until Dyala starts writing in pain: no, she hasn’t seen an early cut of the movie, Tshingi is cutting down her soul tree. Dyala manages to writhe the couple of miles to the clearing to engage Tshingi in battle, but the tree falls down, killing the evil Amazon. You might think this would mean the end for Dyala too, but her discomfort seems to have worn off. Hmm, maybe it was just wind or something...

Hoo boy, Amazons is hard going. The production values on this movie suck even for one of Corman’s barbarian flicks. I’ve seen school plays with better makeup than this thing has. Also the Patent Corman Wooden Swords are very much in evidence, and while the great Sword of Azundati is at least made of metal the metal in question appears to be tinfoil.

The action scenes don’t help matters. Ty Randolph is apparently a karate expert and did her own stunts, but this only serves to highlight that a good martial artist does not necessarily make a good screen fighter. It certainly doesn’t help that the fight choreographer was that editing chimp with the scissors on his days off. On the other hand the acting - relative to the other Corman movies of course - isn’t that bad. Randolph is at least as good as Lana Clarkson in the lead role, and Joseph Whipp as the bad guy actually almost acts once or twice.

I must admit though that I’m getting seriously burnt out on these Corman things. Some are better than others but there’s only so long you can laugh the shortcomings of very similar movies. I have a feeling that something might ‘accidentally’ happen to my copies of the Deathstalker sequels so I can skip straight ahead to Kull The Conqueror.

I’ll probably still watch Barbarian Queen II though, that’s bound to have tits in it.

Dave Thomas, 5^th October 2004