I thought I knew about most post-Conan sword flicks out there but this one was completely new to me, as in I’d never even heard of it until a few weeks ago. Amazing what a few minutes research on the web can do, and after a bit of ebaying I had an an out of print DVD in my sweaty palms. I know very little about the film except that given the names of most of the cast and crew, I guess it was shot in Spain. The odd thing is it comes across as more of a Red Sonja rip than Conan, despite beating the former film to the screen by about 2 years. But more on that, and the bizarre reason for it, later.

In typical Conan style the movie opens with a voiceover. The odd-sounding female narration tells us of a tribe of women who left the servitude of the world of men, and now live alone and self-sufficient in the forest. The only time they have any contact with men is when they go on one-night stands for the ‘planting of seeds’ to continue their race. Only girl children are kept, boys are given away. The finest warrior of the tribe is Hundra (Laurene Landon), a typical proto-Xena who “prefers a horse between her legs” than a man. She also has a dog named Beast, a dab hand at leading her horse around in times of danger but otherwise cowardly – something she puts down to him being male.

One day while Hundra is out hunting, a war party of men attacks the village. Despite fighting desperately the women are slaughtered, and Hundra’s young sister is raped for good measure (this made me mildly uncomfortable since it had previously been mentioned that the sister isn’t quite of child-bearing age - though the actress presumably was, given the inevitable top-ripping). On her return Hundra discovers the carnage and is spotted by some of the men. She rides off through the opening credits, hotly pursued by sixteen warriors. Eventually she comes to a halt and in a flurry of swordplay, archery and other action shenanigans, kills all of them. This is closely observed by the leader of the men, watching from nearby.

Hundra goes to visit her tribe’s last elder, who for some reason lives in a cliff dwelling surrounded by dwarves. Chrysoba (Tamara) is this elder, a strange-looking woman prone to making weird squeaky noises when upset – she’s also the narrator. She tells Hundra that she is the last hope for the tribe, and must go to find men to mate with. Hundra is not pleased by the idea, especially when Chrysoba suggests she look in the Land of the Bull, the same place where the attacking forces came from. Hundra reluctantly sets off, having first to fight her way past the king of the mountain dwarf people (Fernando Martinez). Yikes.

Hundra reaches the Land of the Bull, which based on the ethnicity of the locals is presumably meant to be Spain. The first guy she meets turns out to be a mute, abusive jerk, so she beats the crap out of him. Eventually she makes it to a city where women are treated like cattle. The high priest of some unspecified temple, Napatkin (John Ghaffari, a.k.a. Cihangir Gaffari) and his odious aide-de-camp (and I do mean camp) Rothrar (Luis Lorenzo) take young girls from the city and mould them into willing sex slaves for the local war chieftains. In this way Napatkin, who hates women so much he has to wash his hands if they even touch him, can keep the chiefs in line.

After Hundra tangles with several of the temple priests, Napatkin decides she’d make a great addition to his harem – once she’s been broken of that nasty habit of speaking her mind and fighting back and everything. She manages to escape the city guards but in the process finds herself in the home of Pataray (Ramiro Oliveros), the local doctor. She decides he’s a good candidate for mating, and pins him to the wall with her throwing knives. Unfortunately he refuses to be forced, pointing out that it’s rather difficult to rape a guy when he isn’t in the mood (and as he says, pointing to the dagger mere inches from his crotch, “that isn’t helping at all”). Typical bloody woman, they always go for the doctor.

Hundra realises it might be useful to learn womanly ways, so allows herself to be captured by Napatkin’s men. She is introduced at the next orgy of the chieftains, where the warlords pledge money to the temple in return for seeing this feisty woman broken before the next feast. One man who is particularly keen on the idea is Gordoza (Jorge Bosso), the leader of the attack on Hundra’s tribe. The task of teaching the warrior woman falls to Trachima (Maria Casal), head of the harem. Check out Napatkin yelling, “Praise the Bull!” at the start of this scene, it’s hysterical.

Hundra plays along with the teaching, while at the same time showing Trachima a thing or two about kicking male ass. As they become friends, Hundra learns that Trachima has a son hidden in the city, since all male children from the temple are usually taken away by the chieftains. After much comedy grooming, Hundra sneaks out to have sex with Pataray. Once she’s completed her, um, mission, she returns to find Trachima meekly submitting to a rape by some soldiers. With Hundra’s goading, Trachima fights back and thanks to her training, beats the crap out of the soldiers.

Hundra, now pregnant, decides to stay in the city until her child is born, while Trachima hides her condition from the priests. The child is eventually born and Hundra decides she must leave despite her strong feelings for Pataray. When Napatkin finally calls the next orgy, Hundra makes to depart straight away – except that Rothrar has discovered Trachima’s son and used him to force a betrayal. Trachima has no choice but to give Hundra’s daughter over to the priest. With the child’s life at stake, it seems as if our heroine will be compelled to submit to the twisted desires of the chieftains.

Until that is, the timid Trachima throws off her metaphorical shackles, kills Rothrar, rescues the kids and brings Hundra her sword, after which the fierce warrior single-handedly fights all of the chieftains. Napatkin doesn’t escape either; the slave girls, inspired by Hundra’s actions, grab the terrified priest – much to his horror, a particularly cute one sits on his face and wriggles. Gee, what an awful fate. With the bad guys dispatched, Hundra is free to start rebuilding her tribe. In a break from tradition she asks Pataray to go with her, but he chooses to remain and see to his medicinal duties. But at least Hundra found out that not all men are bad, and that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach – with a big freakin’ sword...

Hundra is a curious movie that suffers from not really knowing what it wants to be. On the one hand it’s aiming for a female version of Conan The Barbarian, with several decent fight scenes. But there are large sections concerning the budding romance between Hundra and Pataray and the friendship of Hundra and Trachima that detract from the main story. Plus there are a few too many details of the plot that are never resolved; we never learn why Gordoza and his men wiped out the tribe in the first place, or why Napatkin needs to keep the chieftains in line. The whole thing seems remarkably disjointed. Plus there’s some very odd editing going on during the fight scenes, leaving me to wonder if the DVD I had – made from an old, badly pan & scanned VHS copy, judging from the picture quality – was cut. Writer-director Matt Cimber (razzie-nominated for his awful Pia Zadora vehicle Butterfly) does himself no favours by shooting the entire final fight in slow motion, and apparently did the film no favours either; despite having a distribution contract with Universal he secretly shopped around for a better deal. When this was discovered the studio buried the movie, and his career – he only made one more film after this one, the little-seen western adventure Yellow Hair and the Fortress of Gold, also starring Laurene Landon.

Which is a shame, because the film might have led to bigger and better things for Landon. Her previous movie before Hundra was Airplane II: The Sequel, where she had a small part as shuttle stewardess Testa, though to most B-fans she's probably better known as Theresa Mallory from the Maniac Cop series. Despite some problems with the plodding, disjointed script, Landon is actually rather impressive. She handles most of her owns stunts, is a natural in the saddle (of a horse, ya pervs), looks good swinging a sword and generally makes a decent action heroine.

Now we get to the main reason why Hundra is interesting, and probably the only reason anyone still remembers it. The score was by legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone, who a few years later would also write the music for Red Sonja. It seems that Hundra was so little known that Morricone decided to more or less re-use the same score for the later film. Seriously, we’re talking far more than James Horner style self-plagiarism, the only difference between the themes from Hundra and Red Sonja is the order the notes come in. Everything else - the structure, the tempo - is identical. Both films also underscore their action scenes with remarkably similar 'Carmina Burana' style choral pieces. This is something of a bonus for soundtrack collectors; while the incredibly rare Red Sonja CD changes hands for hundreds of dollars, you can pick up the Hundra score - a reasonable substitute, and one I actually preferred - for a lot less on Ebay. I just ordered one for about $20.

So Hundra ends up being more of a curio than a 'proper' film, but if you're a sword & sorcery completist or a big Laurene Landon fan you might want to check it out. Everyone else can probably give it a miss; watch The Beastmaster instead.

Dave Thomas, 6^th September 2004