Barbarian Queen I / II
Last week I walked into a thrift store looking for some old computer parts and walked out with two new DVDs for my collection: Barbarian Queen, and Barbarian Queen II. I’ve never heard of these movies, none of my friends have ever heard of these movies … in fact, there’s only one reason I now own both of these barbarian chick flicks — $2.98 each, baby.
Each movie is wrapped in those classic fantasy-style paintings, with female barbarians swinging swords, posing in g-strings, and flexing muscles. The discs don’t contain many (read: any, other than trailers) extras, but then again, with almost three hours of barbarian dominatrixes roaming the Earth, who needs a commentary track?
Barbarian Queen begins with the destruction of Amathea’s village — on her wedding day, no less. The evil king’s soldiers capture prince Argan and take him back to their castle. We all know that nothing pisses of a woman more than fucking up her wedding plans, and before long Amathea has teamed up with three other surviving amazon hoochies and devises a plan to rescue Argan and kill the evil king. Armed with swords, horses, lip gloss, hair curlers, eye shadow, and some skimpy barbarian threads, princess Ho-Nan the Barbarian (as my wife dubbed her) and her entourage gallup into the forest to overthrow enemies at large.
By “her entourage”, of course I mean “all of their boobies”, which you get to see throughout the movie. Whether it’s being raped, being attacked, being tortured, or just being stripped, all four barbarian women manage to show their jigglies on screen at least once throughout various points of the movie.
If you’ve ever played Dungeons and Dragons, you will giggle and sigh at the movie’s dialogue. “I’ll be no man’s slave and no man’s whore, and if I can’t kill them all, by the gods they’ll know I’ve tried.” If that line wasn’t dreamt up over a bag of Cheetos and one too many swigs of Dr. Peppers straight from the 2 liter bottle in the middle of an all-night D&D session, I don’t know what was. Wait, sure I do — the rest of the movie’s lines are just as bad.
Do you really want to know the plot? Chicks run around, losing their tops and although occasionally they overpower the manly guards, usually they just end up in whipping racks — topless again, of course. Everything you could ever want to see in a female barbarian movie shows up in Barbarian Queen — which makes the release of Barbarian Queen II even stranger.
Barbarian Queen II has about as much to do with the first film as Halloween III has to do with the rest of the Halloween series. Lana Clarkson reprises her role as Amathea in name only. Instead of an almost-married princess, in #2 Amathea is a noblewoman. After a run in with her brother in which he steals the crown, we soon find the barbarian queen back in the forest, once again rounding up fellow female barbarians in order to restore order to the throne and … yadda yadda yadda.
After some friendly topless mud wrestling, the barbarian queen and her female barbarian followers once again storm the castle. Just like the first movie, things don’t go well, and soon we’re right back to the barbarian queen being captured, tied up, and whipped — you’d almost think she liked it by now.
During their journey to right the wrongs of the world, the girls tops all end up off again somehow. Amathea finds a “sceptre of power” which made me giggle even more with all the other sexual jokes going on, but she is captured and returned to the rack and sentenced to death by torture. Whee! Eventually a knight comes into play and Amathea and the knight head back to the castle to fight evil one last time (this time with her top on … for a while, at least).
Barbarian Queen and Barbarian Queen II aren’t the worst movies I’ve ever seen. In fact, they aren’t even the worst movies I’ve seen this week. But they are pretty bad. If hoochie barbarian women galluping around the country side constantly losing their tops and fighting for what’s right while mumbling poorly written D&D influenced dialogue is your cup of tea (and you happen to run across these movies for $2.98 each), then pick them up I say. If Conan seemed cheezy to you, the Barbarian Queen duo are a big order of steamy nachos with double queso.
Update: Lana Clarkson, the star of Barbarian Queen I and II, was found dead at Phil Spector’s house in February of 2003. I’ve since sold these DVDs on eBay and made a “killer” (ahem) profit. Thanks, Phil!