Le Amazzoni - Donne d'amore e di guerra

"Amazzoni - Donne D'Amore E Di Guerra" aka. "Battle Of The Amazons" of 1973, is hardly a masterpiece, of course, but nevertheless, I find it enjoyable. The peplum genre had its heyday in the 50s and 60s, and while there was a lot less effort put into this in comparison to its earlier counterparts, is is pure exploitation and to compensates for a low budget, bad acting and poor dialoge with lots of nudity, sex and gore.

A tribe of Amazon Warrior Women terrorize the country by kidnapping young men, who are then forced to submit to the disputatious (but pretty hot) ladies, as miners and occasional sex-slaves. Victimized by the Amazons, the inhabitants of a village, including the loyal female villagers, decide to fight back and hire a bunch of robbers to teach them how to instruct them in warfare.

The acting in this movie is not the best, except for Benito Stefanelli, a good actor, whom fans of Spaghetti Westerns should know, and who only has a small role in this, and Riccardo Pizzuti, who is usually seen getting beat up by Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill. The Amazon Tribe consists of about 30 women, most of whom aren't the greatest actresses, but at least they're pretty hot and lovely to look at in their mini-armor. However, it looks like some of these actresses were replaced by male (!) stuntmen in the battle sequences.

Inspite of many weaknesses, "Battle Of The Amazons" is quite enjoyable if you're a B-Movie fan like myself. As mandatory for an exploitation flick like this, there's a lot of sex and violence in it, people are mutilated and speared, limbs are chopped off and the viewer is entertained with battles, whippings, gore, sex orgies and bared breasts. The incredibly cheesy dialoge has unintentional comedy qualities, at times. Not great by any means. But my fellow fans of low-budget B-movies should enjoy it.

In the past numerous films relating to either mythological or scientifically fictional themes have been successfully produced to offer audiences entertainment, amusement, and an opportunity to momentarily escape from daily reality. No matter how scientifically false, or mythologically amusing a film's premise may be, viewers have always discovered hours of relaxation associated with a fine production. Sadly, however, this is not the case with Amazzoni: donne d'amore e di guerra. An actor's (or actress's) ability to act obviously appeared to be a rather low priority with this film. Therefore, actors "acted" as though a primary school instructor held them at bay with a ruler until each child recited his lines for the following day's school play. Furthermore, it was intolerably obvious to those of us who managed to sit somewhat patiently until the conclusion of this film that numerous women's roles (i.e. those parts demanding feats of strength or masculine agility) were most apparently played by men; in other words, little time, thought, and effort were given for the proper and realistic disguise of men (assuming the parts of Amazons) to have them appear somewhat like women. Thirdly, a poorly conceived storyline seemed to have been concocted only to serve as an excuse for provocatively-clad, physically well-built, attractive women to appear on the wide screen. (Yet, I suppose if the acting had been a bit more plausible, and a director interested more in directing than in "misdirecting" had been employed, the plot of this miserably produced film may have actually become more comprehensible and possibly even appreciated.) On a scale of one to ten I gave this film a three merely because certain battle scenes appeared to have some degree of plausibility. Otherwise, I believe most of us might possibly prefer the childish acting of a primary school play; at least children in the elementary school grades are expected to act childish. Childish , horrendous acting on the part of actors (and actresses) in this film is inexcuable.

This is basically yet another variation on the "Magnificent Seven" theme, only here we have (not 7 but) 4 people coming to protect a village and teach the villagers how to defend themselves (not against Mexican bandits but) against an aggressive army of Amazons. The film begins rather well: the grungy, dirty look, the stunts, the Amazons' mean-spiritedness, they all have an air of authenticity. But most of the action sequences occur at night, and it's often hard to see what's going on. And the biggest disappointment of all, during the big climactic battle nearly all the Amazons have their faces covered by white masks, apparently to camouflage the fact that they have been replaced by male stuntmen. Blech. At the end, there is a fierce swordfight between the bravest woman in the village (well played by the profoundly beautiful Paola Tedesco) and the Amazon Queen, but it's a case of "too little, too late". (**)

Craptastic madness that brings the swords and sandals genre into the seventies (i.e just the same only with more nudity and gore) and adds a slightly feminist angle. That's feminist in an Italian sense, where a bunch of strong willed, independent women oppress a bunch of weak willed men, only mostly with their boobs hanging out and some of them being lesbians and what not.

These amazons are being a pain in the arse to all and sundry, and first we see them a bunch of then have captured hunky bandit Zeno making out with one of their own. After cutting off one of their arms, he gets himself enslaved with the added bonus of having to watch his girl get impaled on some spikes during one of the amazonians demented rituals. It's not a surprise that first chance he gets, he throws a scorpion down the back of an amazon's neck and legs it. After nearly dying in the forest, he's saved by a strong headed but fairly conservative village girl whose village is constantly being invaded by these blobstrop-suffering murder-junkies. Of course, Zeno gets roped into teaching the villagers how to fight back, but not before all his mates sexually harass and nearly rape the village girl. Feminism indeed!

These villagers are barely worth saving to be honest. A few of them, including a guy who thinks he's going to marry village girl, don't want to fight the amazons and just want to hide every time they come rolling through the village with their hilarious war cry. They even get the chief of the tribe killed when he tries this approach. Others, mainly women, want to get stuck in and fight back, but even one of them is a planted traitor! Zeno would be better off just heading for the hills and forgetting about it to be honest, but then he has a naked horseback ride with the village girl, in slow motion, and that changes all that.

Even with all the fake sex, amazon murder sprees and subsequent orgies with non-murdered new slaves, endless scenes of training and treachery, the main part of the film is the actual battle. Now, there's some sort of premise about a god the amazons worship that causes them to don masks while heading into battle, but seriously, this is just a ploy to cover for the fact that during the big battle, the amazons are all played by stuntmen! Add to this insanity (they don't even pad the men out) the bonus of everyone jumping at each other from hidden trampolines and screaming in a bizarre voice and you can't help but enjoy it. Well, I did anyway. I'm not sure Julie Burchill would.

Alfonso also stuffs the film full of stupid dialogue just to fill the atmosphere with more crapness. I wonder why they bothered having Frank Bana there? He just kind of stood around.

This film could have been better, but if you are willing to overlook it's many flaws then it's not unbearable. The amazons being depicted as villains was pretty much the norm prior to Xena. I like inter-gender fights to the death as much as any guy but please, PLEASE have the women involved actually be women. Most of the fighting involved male stunt doubles wearing masks and bad wigs, as well as being photographed from behind using a blue filter to suggest nighttime or dusk (note all of the sharp shadows during "night" sequences).The fights where women actually were used were badly choreographed. The male actors acted as if they were holding back, and the women acted like they were afraid to break a nail. And what was with all of the hidden springboards?

However the worst aspect of the film was the groan-inducing dialogue. As was typical of many films from the 70's everyone seemed to be trying to sound biblical. All in all, an OK but cheesy film.