In the era of “Conan the Barbarian” rip-offs, someone came up with idea that new Conan doesn’t need to be a man by default. Women can also be savage barbarian warriors. And who would take such an idea into realization? Roger Corman production of course. Though, he wasn’t the first. I believe that “Barbarian Queen” is an attempt of making cash-in of “Red Sonja”, despite the fact that both of these movies had been released in 1985.
’80s assumption of men being complete pigs, who wouldn’t accept “No” for an answer is also represented here, on the very start of the movie. We see cute girl sitting by a river, innocently picking flowers (yeah, right). Suddenly, while she was going back to her home through forest, a lasso came out from nowhere and gets tied up around her ankle. On the other end of rope, couple of evil men were pulling young (and pretty sexy) girl to them, in order to fulfill their unholy intentions of raping her. Mission was a complete success (just to mention), after which “Barbarian Queen” title card comes up.
Now we are at nearby peaceful village. Everyone is in the rush. And for reason. There is a wedding to be prepared. And the groom is no one else than Argan (played by Frank Zagarino). Honoring the tradition that it is bad luck if groom sees the bride before the wedding, his future wife Amethea (played by Lana Clarkson) is preparing herself hidden in hut. Amethea is asking her bride-mates if they happen to know where is her sister. One of the bride mates replies to her that her sister went to pick some flowers by the river (sounds familiar?) and hasn’t returned back yet. Still, the show must go on. But, moments before ceremony begun, an arrow comes out of nowhere and hits the priest right in his forehead, at which point bandit raid started. The long bloody battle takes the place, with a lot of raping, casualties on both sides and village burning. However, Amethea and her bride-mates had survived, but not without personal loses. Her bride-mate and future husband had been taken away. There, she decides to get them back.
I used to attend wedding ceremonies but then I took an arrow in the head!!!
Traveling among the river with two more women warriors, Tiniara (Susana Traverso) and Estrild (Katt Shea), Amethea stumbles upon a bandit outpost where another of their girls is being held. Naked of course. Old man with a beard is preparing to rape her. He is famous for his brutal raping, making girls to scream out loud (he probably possesses large tool). But Amethea kills him with her sword through his neck, thus ending his days of raping, while other 2 girls made a decoy for his pals. Soon, it all ended up after a brief sword fight, finding her sister Taramis (played by Dawn Dunlap) in state of shock, with Amethea’s Conan style words “If I can’t kill them all, let the Gods know I have tried”. Whatever.
Love knows no age!
Somewhere along the way, Amethea picked up Dariac (Andrea Scriven), a rebel orphan kid who connects her to underground rebel organization. There we find out that bandits are actually kingdom’s men. Rebels take her to The City, where Argan is being held and forced to fight in gladiator battles. Amethea and other girls who follow her went under disguise into the city, but Tiniara gets captured and raped. Funny thing is that seems that in this town women don’t have a right even to speak, and men are allowed to rape any woman they want. Eventually, all of them got captured when Amethea tried to stop another raping, previously causing a small riot in the city. She had been taken to the leader of raping army himself, evil man Arrakur (Arman Chapman) who wanted to discover location of rebel’s hideout. His interrogation consists of very funny character delivering, demanding that Amethea takes her clothes of and attempts of raping her (well, dough). On the other side of the castle, in much less pleasant torture chamber, Tiniara got killed during her escape attempt.
Interrogation methods.
Meanwhile, Estrild had managed to infiltrate the castle (boudoir section), where she finds Argan enjoying the orgies of women, wine and more women. She informs him about Amethea’s intentions of rescuing him. At first, Argan didn’t sound like he approves that idea (I wonder why), but eventually he agrees to lead the gladiators into rebellion when the time comes (If he manages to take other men away from women and booze, that is). Main gladiator Strymon (Victor Bo) also agrees to help them. While her beloved fiancé enjoys the orgies, Amethea is being tied up to a rape machine. Yeah, that’s right! Fucking rape machine! As if there weren’t enough men to rape around, someone came to idea to hire mad scientist for making such machine. And all of that in the name of science!!! However, after brief period of forced sex, Amethea manages to get free and push the mad scientist into boiling acid! There, she reunites with Estrild and starts planning the final blow, which will happen during gladiators tournament.
Rape machine – only for persons with heavy sexual dysfunction!
Now we all know what happens. When all of them got finally reunited, the big, bloody rebellion took a place. Funny thing is that Argan needed to say only two words in order to convince gladiators into battle (I guess freedom is still more important than wine and women). After 15 minutes of complete chaos, Strymon’s betrayal after which Dariac killed him (no, really), Pope of Perversions (priest who owns boudoir), using a rubber dick as a weapon, it all comes to grand finale when Amethea fights Arrakur. He easily overpowered her, and it looked like that death was certain. But, no. While preparing to strike the final blow, Arragor took 5 minutes to swing a sword, which was enough time for Taramis to come behind and kill him with a dagger. Evil Arragor is dead, wedding from the beginning finally took a place, Amethea becomes the barbarian queen (so, I guess that makes Argan the barbarian king; I wonder if Conan would have something to say about this), everyone is happy and cheering. The end!
Conclusion: I don’t know if this cash-in attempt was successful, but I do know that this is far more feminist than Red Sonja. I really doubt that even in Dark Age men had such power over women. Also, casting for this movie (at least for female roles) couldn’t be worse. During the entire movie Amethea and rest of the chicks, are talking like hotline girls, often with inability to show any emotions. At the best, sometimes they show wrong emotions in a wrong time, for that matter. Choreography is a decent, but leaves the mark of Roger Corman production everywhere (filming at 2-3 remapped locations, over and over). I am just glad that he was sticking to male “Conan the Barbarian” rip-offs afterwards.
Worsemovies 