Le gladiatrici

Both the Italian ("Le Gladiatrici") and the American ("Thor And The Amazon Women") titles sound like they can't miss, but they do. This film does deserve credit for being one of the earliest films featuring female gladiators, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. The entire premise doesn't make much sense: why would this matriarchical society purposely kill off so many of its finest female warriors? Might be of interest to some: Harry Baird's impressive muscle display in one scene. * out of 4.

Having just viewed this god awful movie I cannot go on without a comment. As a long term fan of sword and sandal movies I try to hunt down just about everything from that era, however this is the first time I have had to watch it bit by bit, yes it's so bad it's hilarious. Our hero Thor, a real bad acting performance from British actor Joe Robinson see's him up against Amazonian women who rule the land with an iron fist enslaving men and even having their own female gladiators to kill each other in the arena. From the very start it is quite clear that the writers of this nonsense must have came straight from a school play. Our hero Thor lives in a neat little underground cave with his black "servant", homo erotic overtones by the score when he gives his master an err...massage to sort his bad shoulder you know you are in for some fun, the servant...what ever his name is!, is portrayed as a bungling oaf and with the silly music that accompany's him is all there to see just how degrading it is, I will refrain from going over the plot but you really must see some of these scene's for yourselves, the first one is when Thor is discovered by the Amazon women and the line is "we are here to capture you Thor and take you back" or when his servant is captured by the queen who is luckily for him is also black puts him on a revolving pedestal and tells him to flex his muscles all over his body, she is so smitten by him in an instant he has some sort of African garb on and is to be her husband and king, the ensuing fight between him and Thor who is trying to change his mind on this is utterly hilarious.

This movie makes greats like Santa Clause Conquers The Martians and Plan 9 From Outer Space like cinema masterpieces!.

This is another film which I have just watched but it has already slipped my mind quite completely! Indeed, the peplum genre – especially in its lowest form, and this is easily among the least I have watched! – has a curious tendency to be instantly forgettable.

The fact that this features no recognizable cast members certainly did not help and, though I purposely scheduled it to be viewed right after the brand-new Marvel/Kenneth Branagh blockbuster THOR (2011), unsurprisingly the film has nothing at all to do with that superhero figure despite featuring a character by that name in the English-dubbed version I watched. Rather, as can be gleaned from the title, it awkwardly blends mild feminist attitudes with the vaguest whiff of Scandinavian mythology (I guess the film-makers could not get the rights to Hercules, Maciste or any of those other muscle-bound characters!); incidentally, it was originally released as, simply, LE GLADIATRICI – that is to say, making no reference whatsoever to the dime-a-dozen he-man hero (here played by the generically-named Joe Robinson)!

However I rack my brain to try to recall the plot details, I cannot come up with anything substantial…and the same goes for the rest of the protagonists, be it friends or foes! I can only surmise that the people involved kept the script handy in order to get from Point A to Point B during the shooting stage of this type of unassuming (read: invincibly low-brow) fare – but it does feel odd that, having gone through 86 minutes of it, there is nothing tangible to talk about after only a couple of days! Actually, there is a 10-page dissection of the film available online…but I will be damned if I am going to read it to jog my memory of it all…but, from the accompanying stills, I hazily recall: Thor fighting a caged ape; his having a colored sidekick; the villainous Queen of Babylos {sic} having a fluffy white cat for a pet; and her gladiatress minions not only getting to don Smurf-like head-gear but forever prone to breaking into the hilarious war-cry of "Elt! Elt! Elt!" WTF?!

Only reason I watched this today (on a tape from one of the usual online sources) was that I expected it might be a movie I remembered from my youth. And, by "youth," I mean when I was about 7 or 8. The movie is a pretty standard "strong-man" film, although the man appears in very few scenes. Mostly, it's about a bizarre society of "amazon" women (who, I suspect, have none of them ever been on the same continent as the eponymous river) who enslave other women and force them to participate in gladiatorial combat. The slaves wear delightfully short skirts and lots of facial make-up. I have this creepy feeling that this film may have set my notions of what "sexy" means for the 35 years that have followed my seeing it, as I _still_ think thighs and mascara are pretty neat. But, also, I have always remembered a couple of scenes in particular, especially a climactic tug-of-war between Thor and 100 of the amazons. Perhaps it must be conceded as some indicator of quality that, unseen by me again in all that time, I _still_ remembered this movie. (On the other hand, if I had remembered it better, I'd have saved my money and not bought the tape. Make of those facts what you will.)

Italian muscle movie of the 'sixties with it's brains in its gluteus maximus muscles. Aggressive amazons are enslaving men; to the rescue come the mighty Thor and his black sidekick, Ubaratutu (spelling?). I was convulsed with laughter both times that I saw this flick but many will simply accept it for what it is: a knuckle-headed spinoff of the Hercules series. I haven't seen it listed on TV in more than three decades, either because it's considered too stupid to show (why would that stop them?) or, more likely, because it's just too politically incorrect for our "sensitive" times: Ubaratutu is portrayed as dim-witted and cowardly and always refers to Thor as "master." If you watch this with people who are tuned-in to "camp," it may destroy you, as it did me. I laughed so hard that I cried, but don't say you weren't warned.