Warrioress

Cecily Fay leads a cast of hugely talented UK martial arts performers on a Roger Corman-esque low-budget fantasy adventure shot on the gorgeous island of Guernsey. The fight scenes are exciting, fast-paced and plentiful. Cecily also provides the compelling score to the film.

Downloaded and watched this last night - in a hurry and couldn't find anything better.Read the IMDb reviews first so had an idea what to expect.I don't mind this sort of film usually - the trick is to lower your expectations and try to meet it on its own level.There will always be something to enjoy - some interesting scenery,amusing dialogue,a very pretty girl,a good bit of action or a story which holds the attention but oh dear what a dog's breakfast. Rotten dialogue,unintelligible plot,primary school nativity play acting,seedy production and direction.I just managed the first half and spent the rest of the evening staring at the wall and enjoying the relief.Cecily Fay is a champion in the Indonesian martial art of Pencak Silat and she was 35 when this film was shot.She "wrote" it as well and obviously it was designed to be a vehicle for her to show off her skills and nothing else (and to be fair there was nothing else so it succeeded on that front and for that reason I gave it a 3) Surely people in the film industry (and presumably there must have been one involved in this debacle) must by now realise that you cannot make a medieval/fantasy/martial art type film with a molecular budget- it is never going to work.This is a film that should never have been made.

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!

My quick rating - 3,8/10. The women that fought in this movie were actually quite good, especially Cecily Fay, but beyond that, it wasn't a movie. They attempted to piece together a plot but to no avail. It was more of a showcase of what I can only assume was a group of people, mostly women, that trained at a martial arts dojo of some skill and decided to make a movie. If there was a tiny budget, and some written story, the actresses (i do not mention actors, the men in this were horrid) could have pulled it off. Remember her name though, she should get some work at some point for a good look with well rounded fighting skills.