Warrior Women In Paperback

  Hello and welcome back. Sorry I haven't been around for a while but I had other stuff to do and if I don't take a break from blogging once in a while then it stops being fun.
 And I refuse to do things that aren't fun if I don't have to.

  Anyway, what I need to do now is think of something that will get a quick return for as little effort as possible.

  I think I have the very thing. 

A while back I decided to indulge my weird fascination with sword-swinging women by sharing a  selection of book covers. I've been meaning to do another batch for some time so here you go.  We shall start with some fierce lady pirates.  

    You weren't expecting so many clothes were you?  

Maybe I'll get some chainmail bikinis in later. 

  Is it me or does the bloke behind her look downright worried? 

That's an "Uh-Oh" face if ever I saw one. 

  I heartily recommend this book. Believe me, Pirate Queen Black Sheba  lives up to the cover.

A remarkably heavily armed romantic heroine. 

One of the many sassy ladies following in Anita Blake's footsteps.

Haven't read the book but come on, you can just tell.

(I would still read this book btw. Just saying.)

 Behind you!

 It's a shame that nobody on this cover looks terribly Arabian. 

Swords and UFOs - not a common combination.

Memo to self: Add this one to the Ebay search list. 

See. We've managed to get all this way down the page and still retained some semblance of taste. 

  Questions. So many questions.

Why is she fighting bugs waving sticks?

Why is her sword sucking in lightning?

And what happened to the bottom half of her pajamas?

Fun fact: Robert e Howard didn't create chainmail-bikini wearing hellcat Red Sonja.

He did create a Ukrainian swordswoman called Red Sonya. 

This isn't actually her. I just thought I'd mention it.  

Since I have a couple more left where the heroine is wearing trousers, let's finish with those. 

  This would be a perfectly sensible adventuring outfit if there wasn't a big hole across her torso. 

The expression on her face suggest that our permed warrior is aware of this and not over-thrilled.

Armour with Boob Window! 

I should be irate but really, I'm more impressed by the fact that

this fiery redhead has just killed a giant wolf-troll twice her size.

Then clearly decided that getting her sword back was too much hard work.

You know what, I'll save the chainmail bikinis for tomorrow  

but to keep you going till then, will a minidress do?

I found a lot these at https://pulpcovers.com/  and https://secure.flickr.com/groups/heroicfantasy/

That's all folks.See you in a day or so for more of the same.  

Film: The Archer And The Sorceress (1981)

AKA: The Archer: Fugitive From the Empire

Starring 

A guy way too old to be playing a Stripling prince.

A guy who insists on calling the guy above "Child" 

despite obvious evidence that he's on the wrong side of 30.

A guy with some majorly dramatic sidewhiskers.

Belinda Bauer in a fetching chamois leather halter top and miniskirt

A guy in black armour and a mask.

Some Mutant Turtles gone bad.

Another guy in black armour and a mask.

Yet another guy in black wearing a mask. No armour this time.

Synthy noodling in lieu of a proper score. 

George Kennedy wondering what the fuck his agent got him into. 

Maybe he had a parking fine that needed paying.  

The Story: An evil empire is about to roll over some freedom loving barbarians in furry vests. The brave chieftain Brakus (George Kennedy in a Pippi Longstocking wig) is trying to put together an aliance.

 (Personally I'm not sure why he bothered. His entire tribe could fit into the back of a minisbus. It's that low-budget.)

   Meanwhile his son Prince Toran (Lane Caudell) chases a panther into a forbidden tomb where a beautiful woman called Estra (Belinda Bauer ) first tries to kill him then changes her mind because she has a vision or something.

   Her undead mother is a bit hacked off because she wanted Toran to die horribly because his grandad is responsible for her current state of not being alive.  Estra promises that somebody will die but not right now. 

 In other developments Sandros, Brakus's weasel of a nephew (Marc Alaimo) is making a deal with the evil empire's No1 legbreaker Gar, Master Of the Lizardmen (Kabir Bedi), confirming that he's stupid as well as treacherous.  

 (You're talkmg to a guy that has pet Lizardmen, mate, his concept of honour is inevitably going to be so flexible you could use it to tie two live eels together.) 

 Sandros frames Toran for murdering Brakus so the young (hah!) prince and his personal tutor Mak (George Innes)do a runner. With his dying breath Brakus told his son to seek out legendary sorceror Lazar-sa you see. 

(You never see anybody say "Put pressure on there to stop the bloodflow and is there a medic handy?" in these things, do you.) 

  Mak has a nifty magic bow that shoot exploding arrows but can only be used by people the bow likes. When he gets too ill to carry on, he passes the bow over to Toran and then dies.  

 Toran gives him a  proper heroic funeral, complete with blood-oath, and this gives Gar and his snakemen time to catch up. (Pillock) Since this also gives our princeling chance to try out his new toy and blow up some green-skinned badguys, I suppose that's a win for the audience.

   On the banks of the Burning River, the fleeing prince meets gambler, rogue and obvious comic foil Slant (Victor Campos in a horrible hat.) who helps him escape. In the process Gar gets an exploding arrow in the face but since he's not a mook, he survives, albeit badly hurt and mightily peeved.

 That night Slant is about to steal Toran's bow - possibly sticking a knife in his ribs in the process - when he's dissuaded by a loud voice from thin air that tells both men to head to the city of Kamal where they will find Lazar-Sa. 

 Toran is understandably pissed off at the attempted robbery so when Slant tries to make nice, Toran tells him to do one and stomps off in a fit of pique. 

 Now might be a good time to mention that while all this was going on, Estra was sat in the bushes keeping an eye on Toran. Since she's also been looking for Lazar-Sa, she heads for Kamal too. 

 I should also mention that while Toran wants Lazar-Sa's help, Estra wants his bollocks for earrings. Him being the one that told Toran's grandad to kill her mother and all that. 

 Everybody eventually arrives in the grand city of Kamal (a small handful of building sets left over from something else.)  where everybody else seems to be leaving in haste. 

 Moments later, Lazar-sa makes his convenient arrival, blows some shit up with exploding spears, nearly kills both Toran and Estra and then sods off again, leaving the notion that he might be a good guy in the dust of his passage.

 Our heroes stick around long enough to get fed - and in Slant's case, pick up some shiny objects - before heading off to Lazar-sa's lair.  

 Hot behind them is a furious Gar and his Lizardmen, intent on hurting somebody.   

  The good guys fight their way through Lazar-sa's undead minions and because the mighty wizard is stupid enough to leave the source of his power unguarded and in plain sight, deprive him of his power and his life.

 Except it's not Lazar-Sa, just some bloke that got some magic lessons from him and decided to branch out on his own career of being a magical dick. 

  He dies too. Nobody cares.

  Gar arrives for the climactic punchup which involves lots of slo-mo to make up for the fact that nobody knows what they're doing and the fight choreographer just told them to wing it. 

 (Belinda Bauer may be lovely but watching her try and swordfight was worse than watching Brigitte Neilsen try to act. Yes, I'm still pissed off about the Red Sonja movie) 

  Lazar-sa's hideout goes bang, good guys escape, Gar's health status is left unclear for the next installment..

Hang on... next installment? 

  Yeah, turns out that The Archer and The Sorceress was a TV movie pilot for a series that never happened.   So we're left with Estra promising to see  Toran again and the whole rest of the storyline hanging in the air like a stale kebab fart haunting the khazi.

  I hate when that happens. 

Summing up: The Archer And The Sorceress is mediocre at best, without even the entertaining cheese factor of  the Italian S&S stuff of the 80s. I'm struggling to say anything positive beyond "Belinda Bauer did look good in her Chamois leather outfit" (Athough if you're a comoisseur of fantasy bikinis, check out Sabrina Siani's getup in "Throne Of Fire " instead.)

So there you go. The one thing this movie has going for it, another terrible movie did better anyway.  

Screenshot time.

I don't want to be in this movie anymore. 

Toren meets Estra.

And decides to try and cop a feel. 

Now you've done it, dumbass. 

It wasn't until Estra got out of her mum's place that she realised why she always had back problems. 

Let's play a game of "Spot The Evil Bastard"

Have you found him yet? Do you need a clue?

He's wearing black.

I'm sorry, Slant old buddy, but putting a knife-sheath somewhere where a fumble could lose you an eye seems a bit silly.

Still not the oddest thing in this scene though.  

John Candy had a brother. 

Who was a cow. 

Ouch. 

Let's have another pic of Nestra to make up for all the horrible stuff.

Hey, how'd that picture of Sabrina Siani get in there?
She's not even in this movie.

(reblogged from http://thebsidebarbarians.blogspot.co.uk/)

That's all folks. 

Cheapo DVD Review: Triads, Yardies and Onion Bhajees (2003)

 East End gangster Mad Dave (Dave Courtney essentially playing himself) plans a job with Chacha, head of Indian gangsters The Holy Smokes: Intercept a huge cash payment coming into Heathrow, split the money and everybody goes away happy.
 What neither Dave nor Chacha know is that the 3 young Holy Smokes pulling off the job have their own plans.

  I have to admit that I bought this one for the title. Granted, it is a blatant attempt to ride on the coattails of "Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels". but some on, how many other films have Onion Bhajee in the title?

 I also wanted to see how a London Gangster film worked with Asians in the driving seat.

 The end result is an attempt to mash up Cockney Gangster movie with, Hip-Hop "Hood" movie with a side order of Arty Indie flick, and it's not a great success.

Despite using every trick in the book to look stylish (Weird colour filter, matrix trenchcoats, UK rap soundtrack, lots of guys pointing guns at each other while posturing.)  "Triads.." is a bit dull. Sorry but it is.
  It doesn't help that the acting is average at best which just makes the dialogue look even more leaden, which in turn makes sure that there's no real tension. Nobody seems particularly excited over events so why should I be?

  There's other things I could take issue with, in particular the unexpected comedy segment 3/4 of the way in. At least I'm hoping the were trying to be funny otherwise that was just weird. 

 The ending was pretentious too.

 I lost interest very quickly and ended up forcing myself to watch the rest. That's not my idea of a good movie experience.

How much did I pay for this: 50p
Was it worth it? Nope.  Full marks for trying something different but file under "Nice Idea - Shame About the Film."

Cheapo DVD Reviews: Jack Said (2009)

 Jack Adleth (Simon Philips) is an undercover cop trying to work his way into the organisation of mysterious mobster The Guv'Nor.  When Nathan (Danny Dyer),  his link to the mob. has to hurriedly disappear after a double-cross goes wrong, Jack finds himself in the unfortunate position of being caught in the middle. On the one hand there's Nathan's pretty sister Erin (Rita Ramani), on the other there's The Guv'Nor's psychotic daughter Natalie (Ashlie Walker) and looming over both is the fact of him being a copper with a job to do, surrounded by violent people who really don't like The Bill.  

  There's two small points I'd like to bring up prior to actually talking about this film.

1. Before getting to the film I had to sit through not one, not two, but three trailers for films about soccer hooligans.  This seemed a little excessive. 

2. Danny Dyer is the main feature of the DVD cover by large margin but while he's the biggest star and Nathan is a pivotal character he's not in the film that much. I wouldn't blame Simon Phillips and Ashlie Walker for being a bit peeved. Poor Rita Ramani doesn't even show up in the background.

  So, the film.... 

It's not that great. 

  "Jack Said" doesn't have a lot going for it. The hero is difficult to root for and for all the laboured dialogue about Jack going into the darkness and not being able to find his way back, he doesn't come across as especially tortured.More like a grumpy drunk complaining. 

  Meanwhile the story is trying to be clever but isn't. At one point it seems to hinge quite heavily on somebody not finding something in his jacket pocket for at least two days. Then there's the McGuffin everybody seems to be after but which is never explained.   

 Telling the story in flashback isn't a crime, but flashing forward to the present didn't work as well as everybody thought it would - that just breaks up the flow. 

  I also thought it mildly amusing that a critical shootout comes down to heavily armed villains pinning the heroes down behind a stack of pallets. If one of the shooters had thought to stroll four feet to one side, the whole damn film would have been over.

  The biggest problem is that "Jack Said" is just dull. Watching this film was hard work and not in a good way. The occasional outbreak of violence doesn't make up for the lumbering pace and the weak dialogue that isn't as clever as it wants to be. 

  On the plus side, if you like watching Danny Dyer doing his patented Cocker-nee Geeza routine he is as watchable as ever and the main cast acquit themselves well. (Some of the others...not so much.)

  And that's about it. I honestly have nothing else. 

How much did I pay for this DVD: 50p

Was it worth it? No. Not even close. 

Heavy Metal Cover Girls: Sexy Silhouettes

This is the seventh and final post in this series and believe me, I've barely scratched the surface of Cover girl artwork.  I reckon I could probably do two posts just on close ups of butt-cheeks.  Maybe one day...

  In the meantime, before I go back to writing snarky things about bad movies, I'll share with you a small selection of coves that celebrate the female form in the purest sense.

 Please note that I'm using a very loose definition of "Metal" here. Expect to see Hair Metal, Hard Rock and AOR  showing up on this page. Hey, I can remember the days when "Eye of The Tiger" was classed as a Heavy Metal single!

 Stonelake - Marching On Timeless Tales (Sweden 2011)

I think weird extradimensional shit is about to happen but at least one person is looking forward to it.