Warrioress

In Warrioress, two warrior women in skimpy outfits chase after a McGuffin, sorry, super important twin swords, and take turns dishing out beatdowns to fulfill a prophecy.

Right off the bat, there's an arena fight of "the best of their generation", though judging by these clowns, that generation must've been a total bust. And the "arena" is just a glorified 15-foot-wide circle with maybe 10 spectators sitting on tree trunks. Yeah, it all looks pretty pathetic.

Warrior Boudiccu defeats significantly bigger, bulkier dudes and gets chosen to wield the twin swords, which were definitely ordered off Wish. As the "Chosen One," she's supposed to embark on a quest and compete in more dumb arena fights - except she immediately loses the rusty katanas along the way. Yikes.

The other warrior, White Arrow, also hits the road and kicks major ass along the way. The women in this film go all out in the fight scenes. The punches and kicks look skilled and powerful, with acrobatic flips and all the bells and whistles. The men? Just cannon fodder.

What else do we get? Wehrmacht gear, random musical numbers, assassins, wannabe ninjas, and one guy seriously waving around a Bat'leth. A nice piece of fantasy post-apocalyptic trash to cleanse your brain in between.

Sporting a total film budget of £48, it truly shows in many of the outdoor scenes. Simple trope dialogue, and unusually sloppy camera angles and cuts. Perhaps they found a local university compsci dept for the few laughable special effects.

Some of the acrobatic stunts and moves by Cecilia Fay are entertaining enough - have to remember that she is 4'8".

I read elsewhere that this film was a good watch for simple entertainment, however about halfway through I was forcing myself to reach the end to see if there was some kind of sensible and believable conclusion to give this film some merit. Turns out that there is none.

You have to go into this with low expectations. It's not a great movie by any stretch of imagination. It's a low-budget B movie with an unoriginal story and pretentious dialogue. The acting looks bad mostly due to the fact that it's hard to pull off this kind of dialogue without looking silly.

While fighting in most B movies is usually ridiculous, it actually looks real and functional here. Sometimes you can see the actors are too obviously avoiding hurting one another, but for the most part, it looks good. The little warrioress Cecily Fay (143 cm) certainly knows how to move around and fight. And that's what this is all about. The whole movie is just an excuse to see Cecily fight, and fortunately there's quite a lot of that in the movie.

I won't get into the story, because there's really nothing new there. A warrioress, a quest, an ancient prophecy, blah, blah... It's all a bit silly and predictable.

If you want to watch a good movie, skip this one. But if you like fantasy, medieval-ish setting, and fighting with swords, and if you know what you can expect, it's not too bad.

Set in a post apocalyptic era, Warrioress is a largely enjoyable low-budget British fantasy movie. I say largely because the director Ross Boyask & writer and star Cecily Fay fall into the trap of padding out the movie with way too much meandering dialogue that isn't well written enough or well performed enough to be interesting. I'm sure it was John Milius who said when he was faced with writing 'Conan the Barbarian' he knew he'd be dealing with a cast who weren't trained actors, so he kept the dialogue to a minimum for Arnold, Sandahl & company. These rules should apply to all movies of the fantasy genre unless there is the genuine acting talent available. Now the negatives are out of the way, though Cecily Fay and her cast may be weak actors, the same cannot be said about the energy they all put into the many action sequences in the movie. Cecily Fay who plays Boudicca, is tiny, under five feet tall, but is a trained martial artist and dancer and uses these skills effectively as she lays waste to hordes of enemies. Aided by the bigger, butch Joelle Simpson who plays White Arrow, the two women are deadly, but it is Fay who steals the show with her very convincing skills. She moves gracefully and powerfully with absolutely no wires or CGI, scampering from one killing to another like a human black widow. One favourite sequence is where she is between two enemies, so she leaps over and behind one, grabs his sword holding arm, propels him forward so the sword impales the other then hurls him to the ground where she snaps his neck and bounces up to seek her next victim! Though her character Boudicca is a heroine, she is brutal & sadistic, thinking nothing about hurling a knife into the back of a terrified fleeing opponent or driving a dagger through a downed and already defeated foe. Another plus of Warrioress for fans of female action is no guy shows up to protect the heroine or hog the action, something - that used to happen nearly all Cynthia Rothrock's American movies. Apart from Boudicca's love interest, the men of Warrioress exist only to be punched, kicked, thrown, stabbed, clubbed or neck-snapped!

The rest of the cast including Zara Phythian in a small cameo & Fay's main nemesis Helen Steinway Bailey also display genuine skill and grace as they pound each other mercilessly. Kudos must also go to the legion of Ms Fay's victims who also bring plenty of enthusiasm to their roles. The only gripe would be the amount of yelping and shouting that goes on as the women fight which does get a little annoying. Due to the tedium of the non-action portions of movie, Warrioress is no Conan the Barbarian or Mad Max, but sits nicely alongside movies like 'Ator', 'SHE' & 'The Beastmaster' that followed them. Both Cecily Fay and Ross Boyask should look at where their strengths lay & capitalise on them. Cecily Fay despite her lack of inches and real acting ability has a lot of charisma and could easily be the British Cynthia Rothrock,- but less speaking and shrieking! As for Boyask he needs to work harder at getting his actors to deliver their lines more naturally though there are no complaints about the action. The picture quality of the DVD was a little grainy, but on he whole Warrioress is pretty entertaining! Its pleasing to see a low budget British feature that isn't plain awful!

Pros: The fight scenes are good and the actors actually know martial arts. The story line and concept are really good. Shes short and probably would beat you in a fight, makes for a unique character.

Cons: The acting is sometimes bad and laughable which still provides entertainment. The budget is low and it often shows, but a bit of imagination holds it together. Better establishing shots could be used for the scene with CGI at the evil dudes base. Also, wheres the ending? Did the budget run out or a sequel was planned but not made?