Archive: Author: Admin

by Stephanie Scaife

*spoilers ahead*

Okay, so let’s not get too pernickety about naming sub-genres here. There are always a lot of grumblings over what’s apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic and dystopian, however one thing is clear regardless – the world has gone to shit and you’re going to have to fight for survival and adapt to your new (and often hazardous) surroundings one way or another. If there is anything I’ve learned from the movies it’s that honing your skills and either becoming a warrior or learning adept skills of warrior evasion are what’s key, regardless of whether you’re living in the aftermath of world war three or in an alternate history dystopian New York City. So as part of Brutal As Hell’s Warrior Week I’m going to explore some of your potential choices for when that time finally comes, so pay close attention and make sure to carefully adhere to my essential survival tips.

5 – Learn to Drive and Start Stockpiling Fuel

If you want to survive in the post-apocalyptic wasteland then you’ll need to a) be able to cover as much ground as possible and b) be able to out run any pursuers. The key to this, clearly, is to be able to drive and drive well. Picking up a few tips from a mechanic could also be useful, especially when modifying your vehicle of choice. You could go for motorbikes adorned with glowing skulls, as favoured by the Bronx Warriors in the far off future of 1990 where the Bronx in NYC has been officially declared no man’s land and is ruled by The Riders, a tough motorcycle gang.

What I wouldn’t recommend however is rollerblades as a mode of transportation, as seen in Prayer of the Rollerboys, where a gang of white supremacists terrorise Corey Haim in a futuristic LA and market an addictive drug that renders non-Caucasian users infertile (and yes, this is a real film).

Now, you could also do a lot worse than the supercharged V-8 Pursuit Special that Max drives in The Road Warrior. A modified version of the car he drives in the first Mad Max with a large gas tank (useful when you never know where you next supply of gas is coming from). But as you can see in the clip below what you really want and what will give you the greatest chance of survival is a giant armoured tanker truck!

4 – Pick a Theme and a Catchy Nickname

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the potential dystopian futures it’s that creativity is never dampened by difficult living situations, it fact in many instances it seems to take precedence. Not only do we develop a greater sense of style (see number 2) but we also get pretty inventive when it comes to names and themes for our warriors. Take The Warriors for example, set in a dystopian vision of New York City where the numerous gangs rule the streets. To succeed at this you need your gang to be distinguishable, this means laying claim to a particular stake of land, a particular style must be uniformly adopted, signature weapons must be wielded and nicknames must be assigned.

Of course we have our titular anti-heroes The Warriors, who wear leather vests with The Warriors logo emblazoned on the back (a winged skull), a knife, Molotov cocktail or just plain good old fashioned fists are their weapons of choice. Their leader Swan may not have a particularly manly name if ever there was one, but I still wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him.

Then we have (my personal favourite) The Baseball Furies. The Furies never speak and clearly they’re a few bases short of a homerun, making them one of the most feared gangs in New York City. They dress in baseball uniforms, leather baseball caps and brandish uniquely painted faces and are more than a little treacherous when it comes to wielding a bat. If you’ve played the videogame then you’ll know that they are lead by a man named Cobb who wields an even deadlier dual-baseball bat that he uses to fire balls at his enemies with deadly accuracy.

The Lizzies are a kick ass all-female gang that inhabit Union Square, they like to keep their look fairly subtle so as not to draw too much attention and to enable them to lure their(predominantly) male victims to the confines of their hangout before pulling guns and knives on their unsuspecting victims. They are led by a tough broad by the name of Starr and these are some ladies that you do not want to go messing with as they are clearly able to hold their own in male dominated gang warfare.

Far less cool are the somewhat inappropriately named The Punks, dressed in dungarees and roller skates these guys really should have reconsidered when coming up with a theme. The whole inbred farmer look isn’t exactly helped by the fact that the members have names like Hog and Lumpy who like to hang around in subway bathrooms late at night.

So get your thinking cap on, round up your toughest friends and get familiar with some easily accessible weaponry, because it’s going to be a tough world out there and if you want to be a warrior you’re going to have to learn how to come out and play.

3 – Kill Kevin Costner Before it’s Too Late…

It will mean pre-empting both The Postman and Waterworld and thus ensuring that neither were prophetic, because really the world of the future would most certainly be a better place without Kevin Costner delivering mail and/or evolving to have webbed feet. I don’t know about you, but that is definitely not the post-apocalypse of my dreams. If the icebergs melt then I’m more than happy to accept Dennis Hopper as my warrior overlord. So let’s just nip this one in the bud right now shall we?

2 – Change Your Style

Jeans and a t-shirt just ain’t gonna cut it after the apocalypse. Especially if you want to be a bad ass. The general rule also appears to be the fewer the clothes the better, so prepare to do a few push-ups along with the day-to-day chore of survival…

Option A (Female)

If there was anything to learn from Doomsday (besides how not to make a movie) then it was that cleavage and face paint is paramount. You’d also better start those leather work classes now and stockpiling nail polish and eye liner if you wish to complete this look – that is unless a few Avon ladies end up getting quarantined in Scotland with you…

Option B (Female)

The Tank Girl look is far more achievable I feel; it’s definitely a more of a scavenged lets-see-what-I-find-lying-around look which will accommodate the lack of free time you’ll have whilst fighting for survival against Malcolm McDowell and Ice-T dressed as a kangaroo…

Option C (Female)

I feel that ultimately the Aunty Entity look is the perhaps best choice for all concerned. I mean just check out those chainmail suspenders! Let’s not worry about how uncomfortable it may be to be dressed entirely in chainmail in the Australian outback and instead focus on how awesome you’d look whilst hosting those gladiatorial battles in the Thunderdome arena…

Option A (Male)

Snake Plissken. Need I say anymore? I don’t think so.

Option B (Male)

Mohawk – check, feathers – check, bondage gear – check… well then, I think you’re all set to lead your warrior motorcycle gang into battle. Just don’t forget Humungus.

Option C (Male)

If I was a dude and I lived in a dystopian future over run with Exterminator warriors then I’d totally dress like this, hell even if I were a dude right now I’d totally dress like this. Seriously guys, this is clearly the way forward.

1 – Consider Becoming a Cannibal

Let’s face it, if you’re going get through the hard times ahead your morals will to have to go on standby. Indefinite standby. Your first option is what I like to call The Opportunist, which is exemplified in the only redeeming scene from the otherwise abysmal Hughes Brothers movie The Book of Eli in which Michael Gambon and Frances de la Tour play an elderly couple having survived by effectively booby trapping their house, keeping a large stash of automatic weapons to hand and pretty much just killing and eating anybody who shows up on their doorstep. Admittedly The Opportunist is a rare breed as they generally fly solo or in small groups.

This is where getting yourself into a gang becomes an option, making you The Savvy Cannibal. In John Hillcoat’s adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road we have a particular breed of Savvy Cannibal – roaming the streets in gangs on armoured trucks rounding up meat, because what the Savvy Cannibal knows is that the key to success is to keep a readily available supply of fresh meat available. There’s little point in killing someone outright when you’d have no way of storing all that precious food, so instead what you do is keep your food supply alive, taking a limb here and a limb there (of course it’s important to cauterise the to avoid that Sunday roast you got planned for the next weekend bleeding out). The Savvy Cannibal also has an appreciation for tender meats, meaning that fertile woman must be impregnated to provide a constant supply of newborn meat, human veal if you will, which if the book is to be believed is best served spit roasted immediately after birth.

My personal favourite cannibal is the The Animal Lover. Imagine you live in a world where you must constantly evade gangs of marauders, warrior mutants known as Screamers, and crazy androids with only your misanthropic, telepathic dog for company, as can be seen in L.Q. Jones’ A Boy and His Dog. You finally meet the girl of your dreams (something rare in a world where women are few and far between) and she wants to take you into a city fashioned underground where everyone wears mime make-up and men are farmed for their semen in a bid to up the population. Then after escaping from the crazy underground city with your girlfriend you find your beloved dog close to starvation – what do you do? The answer of course, is what any sane person would do; you kill your girlfriend so that your dog can eat and in doing so provide my favourite ending to any film ever.

Of course if all of civilization hasn’t completely crumpled and a dystopian utopia is possible, then you might want to consider becoming The Business Cannibal and investing strongly in Soylent Green…

A Labour of love from Annie Riordan and Keri O’Shea

Annie: Summer, 2003. Pirates Of The Caribbean had only been in theaters for a month and I was already sick as shit of Jolly Roger eye patches and “Talk Like A Pirate” day. I mean, sure – it was a cool movie and I’d enjoyed it, but the sudden and inexplicable worship of All Things Pirate which had exploded in its wake had completely passed me by. Pirates just don’t do it for me. If I want to watch a whisper thin guy prance about in knee high boots, puffy shirts, bigass hats and shitloads of jewelry, I’ll watch Flyguy in “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” Pirates do not instill any fear in me. The idea of going up against one threatens me about as much as the thought of being bitchslapped to death by Estelle Getty. 2003 marked the first time I ever won an argument using just one word, when a young coworker – with visions of Johhny Depp unbuckling his swash dancing in her head, no doubt – tried her articulated best to convince me that pirates were the most fearsome badasses ever to circumnavigate the globe. I waited until she’d finished and simply said: “Vikings.”

I saw the realization hit her, saw the mental image of Johnny Depp in his swishy little outfit getting his rum-soaked ass kicked by a seven foot tall Norseman whose beard alone probably outweighed Depp by forty pounds or more. She promptly shut up. Yeah, that’s right. Hammer of the Gods, bitch.

That said however, there is a serious lack of movies about Vikings. Edit: GOOD movies about Vikings. And I don’t even count the ones made before the 80s because Kirk Douglas looks about as much like a fucking Viking as my ass does. Vikings did not have Gillette razors, Brylcreem or shiny pectoral oil, okay? They were hairy and stinky and nobody fucked with them. They could pick you up with one hand and crush you against their mighty foreheads like beer cans. They were not pretty little bitches in foofoo fabrics. When they wanted a new outfit, they plowed up a moose’s ass, ate it from the inside out and just wore it when they were done. Hey, you thought Peter Steele had a big dick? Viking dicks were taller than Peter Steele wearing platform shoes. Vikings were never meant to be portrayed as Sexy or Hawt…but some of them were anyway.

Gunnar, Pathfinder (Clancy Brown)

Keri: Ah, Pathfinder. The fact that I can happily objectify your actors means I can steadfastly ignore the anti-Viking bias in this frankly substance-free, but often picturesque movie. In Pathfinder’s world, y’see, the Norsemen are all degenerate barbarians, closer to orcs than men, and – significantly – they’re the ones speaking a subtitled language here, while the Native Americans they encounter are all jolly nice and speak English to boot. English! But anyway: cartoon strip rendition of Apocalypto this may well be, but I’m about to overlook any bias against the world’s first naval superpower by focusing on Gunnar, played by Clancy Brown. Yeah, I could have gone for main man Karl Urban, the Norse guy brought up by Native Americans, but to be perfectly frank, I’m beyond the time in my life where I can enthuse over beardless novices. He’s just a bit polished-looking for me. Gunnar, on the other hand, is a man you’d want on your side if your society collapsed. Hewn rock with a beard hanging off it. Yes please. (The brick outhouse that is Ralf Möller, otherwise known as the huge German guy in Gladiator, is in this too – playing Ulfar. But I didn’t want to be too greedy, you know?)

Snorri, 1066 (Søren Byder)

Keri: 1066, made for and screened by the UK’s Channel 4, is probably as far as it’s possible to get from Pathfinder whilst simultaneously having anything to do with Vikings. And why? Well, the historical accuracy of 1066 is just a wonder to behold. Although the characters are fictitious, the circumstances enacted here are meticulously researched, and 1066 went as far as hiring actors from the parts of the world where their respective characters hailed – so Snorri here is a bona fide Norseman, Søren Byder, and bloody marvellous he is too. What really comes across in 1066 is a sense of what both the Norwegian and the English armies were fighting for – there’s no demonisation required. Invader, yes, but Snorri is depicted as articulate, loyal and smart (fluent in English, folks) as well as physically strong and brave, with good reasons for deciding to cross the sea. On a far more shallow level, that braid? Hot. Gives me something to hang onto!

Volnard, Severed Ways: the Norse Discovery of America (Fiore Tedesco)

Keri: Oh, my. With the greatest of respect to actor (and also writer, director and producer) Tony Stone, I could look at Fiore Tedesco all day. Severed Ways has had its fair share of detractors, I understand why this is, but I have to say I’m not one of them. This is one bold indie film in my book, and although I was perfectly happy before I’d seen a Viking toilet break in all its glory, I really liked the (other) atmosphere and aesthetics here. And I don’t just mean Volnard, either. Get your minds out of the gutter. When I wasn’t making lewd comments to myself as I sat alone at my laptop, like the sad person I am, I was noticing the beautiful use of natural light (and natural light only), the striking landscapes and the ambient metal soundtrack. Essentially, if you have a place in your cold, kvult hearts for black metal, this is like a scenic postcard crossed with a love letter from that genre of music. That suits me just fine…also, how do you say ‘marry me’ in Old Norse? Just wondering.

Skeld the Superstitious, The 13th Warrior (Richard Bremmer)

Annie: What a badass. Skeld is a fiery redhead, and the twelfth warrior to volunteer to fight alongside Prince Buliwyf (read Beowulf) in the far north. With his heavy duty facial tattoos and icy, unblinking glare, Skeld is not someone you’d be naturally inclined to fuck with. He’s got a nasty temper to back up his intimidating aura, and he not only knows how to use a sword, he knows how to make them too. Skeld is also played by Richard Bremmer, a woefully underrated actor who, once upon a time, played a bad guy named Voldemort in a little movie called Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Way more badass than Ralph Fiennes, just saying.

One Eye, Valhalla Rising (Mads Mikkelsen)

Annie: You might be able to catch a Viking, lock him in a cage and make him do your bidding for a while. But he will never be your bitch. And he WILL find a way to escape. And when I say “escape” I mean “kill everyone who wronged him in the most viciously brutal manner possible and then calmly stroll of into the sunset like the most badass mutherfucker in the world.” That’s pretty much what One Eye does. He never speaks, he never smiles, he never stops fighting. He’s also covered in ink and spends a good lot of the movie stripped to the waist and rolling around in the mud with other guys. Score for Norse Porn! His hair is a mess, his face is fucked up and you just know that the inside of his clothes probably smell like old bacon and ass, but he’s played by Mads Mikkelsen, therefore you’d fuck him no matter what. I even know hetero guys who would fuck him, if only to absorb some of his badassery.

Buliwyf, The 13th Warrior (Vladmimir Kulich)

Annie: Blonds aren’t really my type, but there’s no denying that the six foot four inch tall, wide as a wine cask Prince Buliwyf is Awesome Incarnate. He’s a goddamned Viking prince, swathed in animal skins and wielding a sword bigger than a Redwood tree. He’s grim and serious and cold as stone, yet he’s also wise and compassionate, likes dogs and short walks on the beach. He also knows how to stand in the prow of a longship and yell “Odin!” into the fog like a super boss. He even puts up with Antonio Banderas’s whiny shit longer than most people would have. That, my friends, is supernatural. I think even Thor Himself would have smacked the shit out of Tony much earlier on.

So all you little pirate fangirls – you keep your swaggery little pseudo-sailors, your wimpy Caribbean beaches and your goddamned rum. Me and Keri – aka Norse Whores Inc. – will be drinking mead out of a horn, listening to Ulver and playing “hide the hammer” with some barrel chested badasses beneath a mound of animal skins in the mighty pine forests of Scandinavia. Gå og pul deg selv!

by Ben Bussey

As I think we’ve established by now, the 80s were a boom period for the sword and sorcery genre; indeed, in a way it’s hard to think of the genre existing before that time. But obviously that’s not the case. Tales of gallant knights or otherwise courageous swordsmen doing battle with hissable villains, often with a touch of that old black magic involved, are as old as the written word; and such tales had invariably made their way onto the screen long before Conan the Barbarian showed up. I think what makes the 80s stand apart from that which came before – and most of what has come since – is that they demonstrated that stories like this aren’t just kids’ stuff. The 80s sword and sorcery films took those epic, fantastical, life-or-death adventures and really emphasised the life-or-death element. The tough guys were really tough, and the bad guys were really bad, and they didn’t shy away from showing what happens when a broadsword strikes a body, or what happens when a rugged hero hooks up with a swooning maiden.

Or, to consider the matter in more practical terms: 80s sword and sorcery crafted a formula for popular films which could be made relatively inexpensively and allowed scope for plenty of perverse and gory goings-on. Someone had to take it to the logical extreme; and when you think of it like that, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Lucio Fulci would try the genre on for size.

For better or worse, Conquest can most definitely be said to stand apart in the body of fantasy cinema, for few, if any films have taken such a prosaic set-up for a sword-swinging adventure and produced something so surreal, excessive and unpleasant. But once again, this is Fulci we’re talking about; surrealism, excess and unpleasantness are part and parcel. While it may be an entry in a genre he had not previously worked in and would not revisit, Fulci’s unmistakable claw marks are all over Conquest; like all his most notable works, it’s an extreme film which will inevitably inspire extreme reactions. For one such as myself who appreciates why Fulci is popular but has never quite been on board, Conquest is an unusual viewing experience, as infuriating as it is delightful; but, perhaps most importantly, it is distinctive.

Again, like most Fulci films the plot is hardly the most important thing and does not bear much scrutiny, but what the hell: there’s a young archer named Ilius (Andrea Occhipinti, also in Fulci’s New York Ripper), who seems to be from some ethereal plane of existence, possibly even the land of the gods. Seeking some kind of coming of age/ journey into manhood experience, he enters a particularly messed-up section of the mortal realm, where the cave-dwelling common folk are at the mercy of the evil sorceress Ohkren (Sabrina Siani, credited here as Sabrina Sellers). Ohkren claims to control the rising and setting of the sun, and as such insists that the land would perish without her. This, it seems, is how she justifies sending her army of werewolves to wreak her sadistic wrath on the commoners as of when she feels like it; this includes a spot of cannibalism. Oh, and did I mention that aside from a solid gold mask, a spangly G-string, a big snake and a layer of baby oil, Ohkren is stark bollock naked at all times?

After a suitably gruesome appetiser (and boy is it gruesome), Ohkren goes off into some sort of drug induced trance and has a vision of a man that might be the cause of her doom; an archer, equipped with a magic bow that fires arrows of pure light. Not being too keen on the idea of being killed by a laser beam arrow, she sends out the wolfmen (well, frankly they look more like shaggy dogs) to find the man in question and snuff him. Fitting the description, our young hero Ilius soon finds himself under attack, outnumbered and up shit creek, until help unexpectedly arrives in the sturdy form of Mace (Jorge Rivero), a lone barbarian sporting what seems to be a Flintstones-ish variation on nunchucks. The seasoned warrior and the young wannabe team up, and obviously a confrontation with the big bad Ohkren is in the cards.

Yes, you could take the bare bones of that premise, downplay the druggy cannibal stuff and slap a dress (or at the very least a bra) on Ohkren, and the resulting film could easily have been prime-time family viewing. But, as well we know, that ain’t how Fulci rolls… so on with the splattering heads, torn limbs and spilled guts. By Fulci standards it’s hardly his nastiest work, but for the genre it’s quite the eye-opener. Likewise the sexualisation of the villainous Ohkren; sure, many other sword and sorcery movies boasted plentiful female nudity (take The Warrior and the Sorceress, in which Maria Sorcas is bare-chested for the duration), but here it feels like every other scene features Ohkren writhing on the ground in narcotic/sexual ecstasy, with her oh-so-symbolic snake slithering all over her very-nearly nude form. Given that her unabashed hedonism goes hand in hand with her villainy, by contrast with the honourable bond that forms between Mace and Ilius, and it’s not hard to read a misogynistic and/or homoerotic subtext into Conquest (female sexuality = evil, male bonding = good). However, it’s even easier to sit back in bemusement and wonder what was going on in the minds of all concerned while they made this oddity, not least at some of the astonishingly feeble special effects; as if the piss-poor werewolf make-up wasn’t enough, just look at what they try to pass off as arrows.

With its weird, soft-focus cinematography and a typically throbbing synth score from Claudio Simonetti, Conquest is custom-made midnight movie material, designed to have that hazy dreamlike quality of the intoxicated or otherwise semi-conscious. It’s probably best viewed in that state; in the cold light of day, it may well wind up looking a wee bit silly. But hey, don’t we all…

by Ben Bussey

“I have mastered your god! Accept me! NOW!”

As film fans in the 20teens, just how often nowadays do we truly feel like we’ve made a discovery? Here in the wonderful world of cyberspace – with IMDb, Wikipedia and the proliferation of blogs and fan sites of which your beloved Brutal As Hell is but one – it seems that everyone and his dog can be a movie nerd now. With just a click of a mouse you can find out all there is to know about every weird, silly and obscure film under the sun, from every last plot detail to the names of the best boy and the key grip. Pah! In my day you had to earn your nerdiness! You had to venture out to obscure corners of town in search of musty comic shops and film memorabilia flea markets, where shelves bent under the weight of pirate VHS copies of outlawed European horror films! You had to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with over-or-underweight men riddled with acne and humming with body odour, trawling through magazine racks in search of strange and enticing publications with lurid names and mostly-naked pictures of Brinke Stevens on the cover! None of this new-fangled Google and Netflix malarkey…

Okay, now that I’ve got that ageing geek Luddite diatribe out of my system, back to the point: discovery. That sense that you’ve found something amazing which the masses are not aware of; it’s so pivotal to the cult film experience, and it’s something we seem to be losing nowadays. But hear me, brothers and sisters, it is not gone completely. I can say this with authority, as I have recently had the pleasure of seeing for the first time a film that I hitherto knew nothing about, only to discover one of the most entertaining low-budget fantasy films I’ve seen in a long time; this is a film so gloriously unhinged and outlandish, I’m truly astonished it doesn’t have more of a reputation. I’m talking about writer/director Avi Nesher’s 1982 post-apocalyptic action adventure extraordinaire, She.

(Cue the outcry of umpteen film geeks older and more knowledgeable than I, decrying me as a young pretender for not having seen this film sooner…)

On adding She to my Lovefilm list (alright, so I do Lovefilm, guess I’m not that much of a luddite), all I knew was that it starred Sandahl Bergman – true love of Conan/tyrannical lesbian nemesis of Red Sonja, whose virtues I have already sung here – and that it was said to be a futuristic variation on the classic H. Rider Haggard novel which previously formed the basis of the 1965 Hammer film with Ursula Andress. True enough, Nesher’s film opens with a quote from Haggard and cites the inspiration of the novel in the end credits; however, beyond that the connection is so tenuous, it borders on non-existent. The eponymous She (actually called Ayesha in the novel and the Hammer film) is worshipped as a goddess and is allegedly immortal, the secret of which immortality is bathing in a magical power source, a pillar of fire in the novel, a rock-lined hot tub here (thereby providing the requisite excuse for a nude scene). And… that’s about it. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I’ve read the novel, but I’m buggered if I can see any more of H. Rider Haggard in Nesher’s narrative. And Haggard isn’t the only conspicuous absentee; there’s also the matter of logic, good taste, and restraint…

The plot, such as it is, goes a little something like this: at an unspecified future date, ’23 years after the Cancellation’ apparently, nomad siblings Tom (David Goss), Dick (Harrison Muller) and Hari (Elena Weiderman) – yes, you read those names correctly – find themselves under attack from a tribe of neo-barbarians called the Norks (heheheheheh!), who tend to dress in curious combinations of S&M gear, suits of armour and sports clothing with swastikas drawn on. Hari is promptly stolen away by the Norks (heheheheheh! It doesn’t get old) to their distant kingdom; meanwhile, the shell-shocked Tom and Dick unwittingly drift into the province of She. Naturally, She and her matriarchal military rule with an iron fist, and the daily duties of the populace comprise of standing in what looks like the National Portrait Gallery, bowing and chanting the name of She while chained men in loincloths wait for She herself to emerge and pick one of them as a sacrificial subject. Or something along those lines; I don’t know, it’s never really explained, much as how it’s never explained what The Cancellation was, or why She is venerated as a goddess. Anyway, Tom and Dick cross paths with She and her warrior women, which as you might expect doesn’t work out too well for the boys: Dick gets chained up with the pigs, whilst Tom gets forced to walk blindfolded down a path strewn with big metal spikes, which scratch and stab at his rock-hard abs. However, once they learn that She is the only one who knows the way to the realm of the Norks, they set about abducting her and forcing her to help them rescue Hari. Surprisingly, once She is in their custody they find the goddess/dictator quite forthcoming in offering her assistance, at least in part because it seems she has the hots for Tom. And why not; he’s a beefy, blonde, He-Man-looking kinda guy. Anyway, with She’s right-hand woman Shandra (Quin Kessler) tagging along to make it a foursome, they set off across the wilderness to Norksville.

And what manner of misadventures do they encounter along the way, I hear you ask? Well, there are mutant lepers, vampires, a telekinetic god-king, a Frankenstein robot, and a big burly hairy guy who appears to be a bit gender-confused… and that is to name but a few of the colourful adversaries our heroes encounter. They will do battle, face torture, get magically spun upside down, be imprisoned, don disguises, break free, do battle once more… and so it goes for just over an hour and a half of episodic, swashbuckling, dystopian fun. Most of said action plays out to the sound of early 80s fist-in-the-air hard rock, and synths from none other than the progmeister Rick Wakeman. And from the look of things, it’s all done on a budget slightly less than Kevin Costner’s hairdressing expenses on Waterworld.

No bones about it, She is an extremely silly film; but it’s the greatest, rarest breed of silliness, the kind that, just when you’re sure the film has got as absurd as it’s going to get, it proves you wrong again and again. There’s a madcap, make-it-up-as-we-go-along feel to proceedings that will surely convince many viewers that She is unknowing trash, belonging in the so-bad-it’s-good category at best. Not so, say I. Look at the character names Tom, Dick and Hari. Look at the unrepentant valley girl mannerisms of Quin Kessler, and the goofy antics of Harrison Muller. Take the extravagant theatricality of the supporting cast, from the mutant lepers to the toga-clad romantics to the mad scientists and beyond. Then there’s the laugh-out-loud bridge confrontation that could quite easily have substituted for the Black Knight scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. If anyone sitting down to watch this thinks those involved were unaware of just how ridiculous the whole enterprise is, more fool them.

This, of course, is not to imply that there is nothing here of serious intent. Case in point: Sandahl Bergman. Let no mere mortal question, this woman is 100% serious about KICKING ARSE. If I’ve got the chronology right, she actually made this film before Conan the Barbarian (though it seems to have later been sold on that association, with posters declaring ‘Sandahl Bergman tempted Conan and now she is ready to take on the world!’); prior to this her film work had been primarily as a dancer in All That Jazz and Xanadu (the latter of which featured another notable urban savage, Michael Beck of The Warriors). As such, it was She that really started her on the path to becoming one of the great big screen warrior women. Bergman is one of those rare actresses who truly warrants the description of statuesque, and her dancing background must surely have been a benefit to the fight sequences; check out the early cavern confrontation (embedded below), in which she takes on no less than six opponents single-handed. Sure, the overall treatment is cartoonish, but Bergman clearly means business, leaving even the more (in every sense) cocksure men in the audience in no doubt that she could wipe the floor with them… which is, in itself, rather a turn on. Factor in how scantily-clad she tends to be for the majority of the film, and we’re really onto a winner. Nor was this the last time director Nesher would stir the loins of nerds worldwide, given he went on to douse Drew Barrymore’s boobs with blood in Doppelgänger. (I’m sure other stuff happened in that film as well, but somehow those details slip my mind…)

So, the question remains – why isn’t She a widely acknowledged cult classic? Well, a decent DVD treatment wouldn’t hurt; the 2003 edition from Pegasus is in 4:3 with – if you’ll pardon my technical jargon – really crappy sound and picture quality (you can blame them for how murky these screenshots are), and no extras aside from a negligible image gallery. If Arrow or Shameless could get their hands on She and give it the treatment it deserves, I for one would be very happy. But on the other hand, perhaps the naffness of the sound and picture is part and parcel of the pleasures of a movie like this. It’s a low-rent production with poor photography, creaky sets, cheap-looking costumes; to experience such a film in glorious high definition and crystal clear surround sound might be to lose some of that bargain basement charm.

Either way – if you are as unfamiliar with the unique, exotic and insane delights of She as I was, I urge you to make that pilgrimage, track down that goddess and accept her, NOW! I can’t promise that it will be everyone’s cup of tea, but I should hope we can at least agree that there are very few films quite like it.

by Keri O’Shea

Movies released on the eponymous Indonesian label Rapi Films were nothing if not a pleasing fusion of East meets West; playing with recognisable genres, yet distinctly Indonesian in theme, you could always be sure of a mix between the familiar and the batshit insane. The Warrior is probably one of the best examples of that mix – coming as it does straight out of the golden age of Indonesian cinema, and what’s more, proving that the Far East could be ahead of the curve too: The Warrior made it to screens a year before Conan the Barbarian did, but anticipated some of its themes.

Without further ado, let me introduce you to our hero and the ‘warrior’ of the title. Meet Djaka Semboeng (or indeed Jaka Sembung – the spelling varies). The plot takes us back to some point in the nineteenth century, and to the Dutch occupation of Indonesia: Jaka, alongside many others, has been captured and put to work for his part in an uprising against the foreign invaders. Soul-crushing labour ensues – but you can’t keep a good man down, and Jaka leads yet another rebellion, Dutch muskets be damned. This time, he escapes, and the Dutch put a bounty on his head – Dead or Alive.

…And who should see one of these Wanted posters, but a local hard-nut, shaven-headed wizard? Kobar is the type of man who can breathe fire and wrestle cattle to death, and he fancies his chances at capturing Sembung. He offers to work for the Dutch – Sembung is bloodily victorious – but the Dutch have obviously taken to the idea of hiring black magicians to work for them, and so they engage a couple more (Indonesia obviously has its fair share). Cue resurrections, explosions, showers of boulders, imprecations to Allah, severed limbs, rudimentary transplants, bodily transformations, oh, and more explosions. Not to mention revenge, and lots of it!

What’s obvious from even the most cursory glance over all of that is that Rapi Films saw no problem with encompassing a fair few genres within one genre film. Here we have a blend of historical drama, fantasy and martial arts (though martial arts seem to be a prerequisite in anything from romance to horror in Far Eastern cinema, to be fair). As ‘busy’ a film as it is, though, The Warrior has more than enough about it to hold these elements together. It moves at a good pace, it’s action-packed, and it has a few minutes which are, to be fair, pretty shocking, considering where and when the film was made, let alone the no doubt limited budget. To balance out the copious use of fireworks and dry ice, The Warrior doesn’t flinch from women being violently beaten, eyes being gouged, and torture aplenty.

Of course, one of the film’s strengths for us Western audiences is the fun to be had from culture shock, and The Warrior has a lot to offer on that score. For a start, howsabout the depiction of Westerners themselves? It’s interesting to see how colonialists could be imagined by the local populations they planted flags amongst, and the Dutch here are our unequivocal bad guys. The only European with a heart is the daughter of the evil Commandant, name of Maria (though she’s played by an Indonesian woman, as there are only a handful of real live white folks in this movie). And, Maria’s sympathy for the native people seems to be a tad influenced by the fact that she has her beady eye on a nice bit of Jaka – which doesn’t do her much good in the end. The rest are ugly, hairy (with a few of the actors getting into role by dyeing their hair and beards an unconvincing blond) and of course arrogant. And their religion? “To hell with those Christians!” exclaims one of the (Muslim) rebels, a phrase which would go down like a cup of cold puke in many parts of Europe and America these days, as would the idea of a good Muslim boy as the hero. Whilst, interestingly, black magic seems to co-exist with Islam in The Warrior, it’s those pesky Dutch who employ it against Jaka, and when Jaka needs assistance, he gets his divine intervention from Allah. Invaders, infidels and conspirators, there’s not much good to say about Jaka’s persecutors here. Well, it makes a change for ‘us’ (perhaps unfairly assuming that the majority of BAH readers are American or European) to be the Other, eh?

As for Jaka himself, he’s intriguing, because he’s a folk hero on-screen played by a folk hero off-screen. Barry Prima, star of The Warrior, is a legendary figure in his native country; see all of those mad martial arts skillz? All genuine, after the star developed a fascination with Bruce Lee as a kid and, instead of just thinking ‘I wish I could do that’ like a lot of us might, he actually learned and learned really bloody well, too. His powerful presence was felt in a number of Indonesian genre films made throughout the 1980s (The Devil’s Sword being another stellar example), and part of the reason that the films are so successful is that, like so many genre film actors, he plays his roles completely straight. There’s camp in The Warrior, sure, but never deliberately so, and Prima always maintains a seriousness which means that you can laugh at a fair few things in the film, but not at him.

So where is Prima now? Well, according to the Mondo Macabro release which brought this remastered Warrior to modern audiences and also according to IMDb, he’s recently been back in front of the camera after a decades-long hiatus. He seems to have moved away from the freedom-fighting and into light comedy, but that’s by-the-by; it’s still good to hear that he’s still around and still making movies. And, hey, there’s only so much mass Dutch death you can perpetrate…

An epic film and a love-letter from Indonesia’s gloriously lurid film heyday, The Warrior has to be seen to be believed. On a sadder note, Indonesia’s political situation in recent years has meant a real downturn in their film industry, and current censorship laws would probably prohibit something as OTT as The Warrior being made today – see this film, then, and be grateful that Rapi Films did what they did when they could.