Amazons (1986)
Hi all, Nate here. Amazons! Babes with swords! Done right? Pretty awesome stuff. Done cheaply and with little respect for the source material and a thousand years of shared cultural knowledge of the Amazon legends? Oh, I guess you get our movie. But, hey, boobs!
Our setting is your standard Reagan-era, Conan-inspired, Beastmaster-ripped off, Tolkien-insulting fantasy/sword-and-spear world, nothing new and nothing worth mentioning. I hear they filmed this in tax-friendly Argentina but it could just have well been shot in a city park in Orange County considering the drab, boring landscapes and the familiar pine trees. It also hurts (helps?) that around 70% of the scenes in the movie are shot either in the dark or in murky, under-lit interior rooms.
Oh look, it's a rock quarry. Yay.
So, plot. An evil Warlord and his army of bloodthirsty mercenaries has been sweeping through the “Emerald Lands”, driving everyone before them and sacking towns with glee. The warlord has “lightning hands”, the ability to toss bolts of energy from a distance to blow stuff up and set stuntmen on fire, so no one can stand up to him. The Warlord is so powerful, in fact, that he feels completely confident in wearing fur boas and leather pants in public.
The Warlord enters (R), with his half-blind pool boy (L).
However, there's a legend (yawn) that a super-special sword exists (yawn) that can defeat the Warlord if wielded by the bravest Amazon warrior (yawn). The Amazons in this world are really just a band of bodyguards for the Emerald Queen, and while they are tough and strong, they're really only a tad bit better than the regular rank-and-file foot soldiers of the kingdom. What they have going for them, of course, are boobs. Specifically boobs nearly bursting from leather bras that are clearly two sizes too small for them (don't wash them on hot and line dry only!). Not just insane amounts of cleavage, but also thongs and Whitesnake video levels of hairspray and mousse.
Training camp.
1986!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One of the Amazons, a mallrat blonde named Dyala, is picked by a mirror inside a tree (don't ask) to be the one to travel across the Cursed Lands to retrieve the Magic Sword and save the Empire from the Warlord. She's accompanied by another Amazon named Tashi, who will watch her back and clear her path. She will not, sadly, engage in any lesbian affairs with Dyala along the way, despite my repeated hopes and dreams. The best we get here is a budding friendship and a surprising level of mutual respect. I say surprising because there's bad blood between their two families, Tashi's mom killed Dyala's mom years ago over something (probably a stupid boy, maybe Harry Styles) and forgiveness has been difficult.
Dyala, permed and ready for battle.
Tashi, straight from her Cosmo shoot.
And so we have what is essentially a fantasy-set road trip movie, where our two pretty warrior girls travel from one set-piece action scene to another as they venture closer and closer to their goal. The first thing they do is sharpen their weapons and layer on the chain mail so t...oh, sorry, I mean the first thing they do is strip naked and swim in a leech-infested creek for a while. Just a statement of fact, no commentary needed.
Chilly day in Argentina.
No sooner have they gotten their thongs back on and retied their headbands, a group of brigands attack! These “fierce Amazon warriors” are taken out pretty easy for being “Amazons” and are only saved mid-rape by the fortuitous intervention of a Lioness. This cat is actually a shape-shifter in the employ of the Warlord, sent along to make sure the girls get the Magic Sword so he can steal it from them. Watch as the tame Lioness “attacks” the marauders, after enjoying a nice tummy rub off camera, it's sooooo cute.
Bandit attack! (stop looking at her butt)
Awww, give me a hug!
OMG a snake leaps at them! Because why not! Cut its head off! You can't tell me that this is the first or last time this actress has rolled about in the dirt with a anaconda around her neck...
That's not her hand on top.
A bit down the path they are captured again by bandits (man, these Amazons are wimpy). Tashi is about to be sacrificed to some sort of pulpy tree god, along with a bevy of topless forest nymphs dressed like sorority girls (really), when Dyala goes all discount Steven Seagal on the bad guys and saves the day. This incident helps to solidify the new-found friendship between the two girls, and from here on out they are besties who would totally share their curling irons and probably go to the bathroom together when they're at the mall. I have to admit that the movie gives them just enough time together to make the transition from frenemies to allies to soul sisters somewhat believable. If we didn't have so many useless subplots along the way, we could really get to know these two women better, maybe even feel something when they suffer and one of them dies (shit, spoilers, sorry!).
All the bandits could use some soap.
Nicely written characters (I mean that!).
They finally find the styrofoam cavern with the mail-order sword, but a gray-haired old seer lady tells them that only one will leave the cave alive. Maybe then only one could enter? No? Inside the amazingly well-lit cave, Tashi is quickly killed by the Lioness Shape Shifter, who is then killed herself by Dyala (though she doesn't use the Magical Sword for some reason). Just like the scene before, a massive amount of wasted cutting-room footage and judicious editing cuts make it kinda-sorta seem like that lion is “fighting” that girl, very amusing. Without six months of CGI work or a mo-capped Andy Serkis at your disposal, it's virtually impossible to have an animal-vs-man battle just using old-school editing tricks that doesn't look extraordinarily stupid.
Grab it and run like Indy!
Tashi down,knife to boob.
Dyala mounts a script-provided Magical White Horse and takes a shortcut back to the Emerald Lands by using a LSD-freakout wormhole through space and time (not making that up, totes). She makes it back home just in time to lead her side to righteous victory against the Warlord's army and kill the head bad guy with extreme prejudice. Yay, her. The final fight is actually pretty darn good, even if it's too dark and the edits are too quick to really tell if either of them really know how to swing those swords or deliver those punches. Ok, I just read that the actress playing Dyala was an honest-to-god stuntwoman with martial arts training, I can see that, she didn't seem like the blade was foreign to her now that I watch it more closely.
Is that a unicorn?
The sword has a power-up.
So, sprinkled through the girls' spirit quest were a bunch of subplots, all taking place back at the Amazon's village that was captured by Warlord's army in the movie's first scene. The main subplot is that Tashi's mom is a traitor to the Amazon clan, actively working with (and sexytime boning) the Warlord in an attempt to become Queen. There is zero backstory provided that would explain her motivations or methods, she's just treasonous for the sake of being treasonous, though we really don't have time to delve any deeper into that. She and the Warlord do get the movie's sole love-makin' scene, which is just about as erotic as you'd imagine considering it's filmed in the dark and the male actor has clearly been replaced by a stunt double. But still, backlit/fogmachine boobs! In the end, Dyala discovers her misdeeds and kills the old bag with a falling tree (no joke).
The traitor is among them.
Love that his headboard is covered in skulls.
There are also a bunch of other minor subplots that, taken together, serve only to eat up the running time and distract us from the main plotline with the girls and the sword and their skimpy bras. There's a spy, there's another spy, there's some chick, there's the Queen's court, there's the Warlord's lieutenants and his spell-caster, all of whom have lines and stage directions and casting agents and forgettable stains on their imdb.com resumes, but really do next to nothing to add anything interesting to the experience. I hate it when movies pad out things with meaningless B and C-subplots, so bothersome to watch and review. If it were up to me, all movies would be 40 minutes long and be nothing but A-plot material, but that's probably why I don't own a film studio.
Who the hell are you?
Look at all that damn fur.
Oh, and Kelby thinks that Lioness is super hawt, he told me so. He'd totally do her if he wasn't an old fat schlubby hair-balling drunk with stinky poo and embarrassingly small paws. Kelby hates himself.
The End.
Written in May 2015 by Nathan Decker.
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