Le gladiatrici

In THOR AND THE AMAZON WOMEN, the men have been enslaved by the females of the title. A prophecy tells of a mighty testosterone-filled warrior who will arise to free these subjugated males.

Enter Thor (Joe Robinson), who, at first, refuses to engage this estrogenic army, and is nearly captured. Luckily, a fellow burly man, named Ubaratutu (Harry Baird) rescues him, so that they can hang out in Ubaratutu's cave home and chat in their colorful, polyblend loincloths.

In the meantime, Thor's girlfriend and her son are captured instead. While she is inducted into the Amazon's school of gladiatrixes, her son becomes a slave.

About this time we must ask TWO QUESTIONS: #1- How do all of these warriors keep their hair so soft, manageable, and oil-free? #2- Is there going to be any actual action in this movie? If this were a Hercules movie, many men, women, trees, boulders, etc., would have been flying around like Frisbees by now!

Meanwhile, Thor and Ubaratutu chat on.

Oh no!

Ubaratutu is caught by the fiendish, Smurf-hatted females, and forced to flex his muscles while rotating before their queen! Oh! The humanity! Can Thor deliver him, and every red-blooded man, before further indignities ensue?

Amazingly, though a lot seems to be going on, this movie still manages to be quite dull. Even the final, obligatory "test of strength" is no more rigorous than a "challenge" found on some survival game show! The big revolt also turns out to be less than exciting.

INTERESTING FACT: When men are enslaved by Amazon women, they all sleep together in huge, sweaty piles...

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.

In this unusual sci fi/ancient warriors flick, it is the women who dominate the Kingdom, enslaving the men and any women who disagree with their tyranny. Queen Nera is searching for the man destined to overthrow her if he outshines 101 Amazon warriors in a contest of sheer strength, who turns out to be Thor (Joe Robinson), accompanied by his sidekick, black slave Ubaratutu (Harry Baird). Both are muscle hunks. Lovely Tamar (Susie Anderson), whose father was the rightful ruler of the kingdom but like others was overrun and killed by the queen and her Amazon warriors, is seeking to restore his throne to her adolescent brother.

Women who disagree with the queen must fight each other as gladiatrices, while the men join Amazon warriors as guards or are kept dehumanizingly in caves. Tamar and her brother are captured, while Thor and Ubaratutu come to the rescue. The queen has her men as temporary husbands before disposing of them nastily when she is tired of them, and she seduces Ubaratutu after he is captured. We are treated to some amusing muscle displays by Ubarututu before the black queen (she reminds one of Eartha Kitt) preceding the sudden appearance of Thor, who insists to Ubaratutu that he should not trust her. Both are taken prisoner. The queen declares it is women who should rule, but a chief henchwomen confides privately to prisoner Tamar that she agrees with Tamar that rule and force are for men, that they deprive women of their softer side. It is up to Tamar and Thor to save the day.

Phew, such a plot could only be in an Italian-made movie! The visuals are excellent, with nice scenic backdrop, and the story does not drag. The acting may not be great, but the actors have only the wooden characters of the genre to put anything into. Despite the title, it is Tamar rather than Thor who is the chief protagonist, and she is a commanding presence throughout. Women don't have to feel cheated by the theme: to each his or her place, but the women become more human again. Fun to watch, not to be taken seriously.

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?!

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!.