VividSimon Simply Perfect

Platicsco Good story, Not enough for a whole film

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

Leofwine_draca This sequel to TAUR THE MIGHTY is such a hilariously cheesy movie with so much fun stuff going on in it that it's impossible not to like. Sure, the film was obviously made on the cheap and has dated badly what with its stereotypical (not to mention racist!) depiction of race - and women come to think of it - but for fans of cheese or camp then this film is a must see! Nowhere else would you find two male heroes (who live together in a cave) with such a close relationship which includes massaging each other and engaging in some fun fisticuffs. The homoerotic aspect is just one of the many enjoyable things that this movie has to offer.The main thrust of the plot (as the re-titling would suggest) concerns a female tribe of Amazons who live in a quarry and enslave men in the local grottos (filmed in Yugoslavia). The evil Queen Nera takes delight in raiding local villages in the vicinity and enslaving the men, whilst training the captured women into becoming female gladiators. The women must then fight to the death on homemade platforms while the spectators watch. Now, the sight of watching sweaty women battle to the death might sound like a lot of fun (!) until you realise that firstly, the majority of them don't bother shaving their armpits (!), and secondly, the actresses involved clearly have no weapons skills whatsoever so their fighting attempts are pitiful (and poorly-edited to boot).Now, lurking around in the background is Taur and his black friend Ubaratutu (although we surprisingly see little of them - whoever re-titled this film for UK release obviously had the right idea) who manage to get themselves captured and manage to escape again before inevitably creating an uprising. The incredibly cheesy and hilariously funny ending sees Taur engaging in a tug-of-war match with 101 women (!), and a flaming pit of fire waiting for him if he fails. Of course he wins out in the end, and there's a huge battle involving lots of writhing bodies before the evil Queen is inevitably speared to a wall, an event surprisingly common in these times (or at least as these films would have you believe).The above description only skims the surface of the film really and there is a lot more to enjoy besides. Subplots include two gratuitously irritating children for no particular reason, although particularly grating is the fact that the obnoxious young blond-haired boy ends up becoming a king! There are lots of silly costumes and cheap sets to enjoy plus an almost endless display of naked flesh (mostly from the men here). The film has a surprisingly high death toll as we see the bodies piling up after the gladiator battles and numerous women get stabbed, speared, or shot in various mean-spirited ways. The film really does push the gruesome boundaries with repeated shots of a rotting hanged body and a scene of mild rack torture which results in the victim's death.The film is packed with bad actors and actresses dubbed badly for extra amusement. The women are hopelessly unconvincing in their roles with the exception of the actress playing Queen Nera, who is pretty good at making evil eyes at people while sitting on her throne and stroking her white cat like a certain Blofeld. Harry Baird - a regular in British movies - plays Taur's black sidekick and is portrayed as an absolutely stupid, posing idiot who mainly acts as the film's unintentional comic relief. I guess that means this film isn't for those with strong politically correct values. Joe Robinson plays the Tarzan-like lead (I believe he was originally meant to be Tarzan before the Burroughs estate threatened to sue) and is as wooden as you can get for a strongman, but I couldn't help liking his good-naturedly dumb performance anyway. WOMEN GLADIATORS is an action-packed tale of fighting women and half-naked men engaging in unbelievable antics. It has never won any awards for realism or production values but then again it doesn't need to. As a pure example of the bad film at its best, WOMEN GLADIATORS offers endless amusement and a lot of fun from all the weird stuff going on in it. See to believe.

zardoz-13 "Thor and the Amazon Women" exemplifies the kind of moronic muscle man movie that gives peplum a bad name. In this poorly scripted and staged potboiler set in ancient times, a matriarchal society enslaves helpless males to toil in its salt mines and imprisons captive females to train as gladiators. Enrolled in a gladiator school, these gals must wear twenty-one rings on one arm. The rings account for the number of battles that each must fight to acquire their freedom. Anyway, when Queen Nera's (Diana Ross look-a-like Jannin Hendy of "Mole Men Vs. the Son of Hercules") beautiful blond Barbie doll-type soothsayer who wanders around a grotto prophesies that a strongman will dismantle her distaff empire with his bare hands, the Queen proclaims that anybody who can identify such a dude will receive a reward of a hundred male slaves if she can reveal his whereabouts. Nera dispatches an expedition to find a man called Thor and bring him back alive. They march into Thor's homeland and try to catch him with a set of bolas, an array of ropes attached to spiked balls whose thorny points have been dipped in a drug designed to incapacitate its victim. They hurl this weapon at Thor as he backs away from them. You see, Thor refuses to fight women. Entwining his ankles, the bolas topple our brawny protagonist so that he falls backwards off a cliff and lands atop of his servant, Ubaratutu (African-American beef-cake specimen Harry Baird of "Tarzan the Magnificent"), who hides him from the Amazons. These nubile chicks wear headdresses that resemble something a smurf would sport. Since they cannot take Thor back to Nera, the Amazon women abduct a princess-in-exile, Tamar (shapely blond beauty Susy Andersen of "Black Sabbath") and her younger brother. Tamar and her brother Homolke—it seems—belonged to the royal patriarchal family that once ruled the kingdom over which Nera presides. Marauders attacked Tamar's village, burned their houses, and dragged their dad behind their horses until he died. They escaped with their lives and have lived in exile ever since. Okay, Thor recuperates in a cave under the watchful eye of Ubaratutu. The fall from the mountain disjointed Thor's shoulder, so Ubaratutu refuses to let him track down Tamar's abductors until he is well enough to travel.Clocking in at 85 minutes, this lackluster,battle of the sexes saga spends more time on the Amazon women than our mesomorphic hero. In fact, Thor doesn't reach the Amazon camp until about 49 minutes have elapsed, and he botches his initial act of heroism to save a man from execution. If you rank your muscle man movies by the feats that the hero performs to vanquish his opponents, nothing here appears remotely impressive. Meanwhile, simple-minded Ubaratutu follows Thor into the land of Amazon women, but this comic black sidekick wants nothing to do with Thor's shenanigans. While Thor is trying to figure out what is going on in this Amazon camp where the men have no desire to revolt because they are inadequately fed, Ubaratutu becomes the apple of Queen Nera's eye. She ogles him like a voyeur from a secret room and asks him to assume a variety of poses as he stands on a lazy Susan platform to show off his strength. Eventually, Nera crowns Ubaratutu as her king, that is, until she grows tired of him.The irony about the politically incorrect "Thor and the Amazon Women" is that in the land of the white man, Ubaratutu is a slave, while in the land of the Amazon women (most are Caucasian), the queen is black. Furthermore, Queen Nera totes around a white cat as a symbol of her authority. Eventually, they capture Thor and bring him before her. Our eponymous hero and she engage in a philosophical argument that constitutes the high point of the film. Quoting Nera, she proclaims: "But we after a long period of slavery under the rule of men realized that women were superior to men. They (women) procreate children, they are internally stronger than men, they know how to resist physical and moral pain." Not surprisingly, Thor calls her "cruel." She maintains power over the men sweating for her in the mines, because they have lost their rebellious spirit. Before this confrontation, Tamar converses with Yamad (Maria Fiore of "Rambo's Revenge"), Queen Nera's Captain-General of the Army. The captain-general has grown disillusioned with their matriarchal society and secretly serves as the architect of a conspiracy to overthrow Nera. Quoting her, Yamad says to Tamar: "The rule of women was the most frightful and horrible form of government." Yamad adds, "A woman cannot deprive herself of every human sentiment in the name of the superiority that nature never meant to assign to them." This is about as good as the dialogue gets that scenarists Fabio Piccione of "The Glass Sphinx," Maria Sofia Scandurra and director Antonio Leonviola contrived for this half-baked hokum.In the last ten minutes, Thor is put atop a platform and forced to compete in a massive tug of war match with 101 female warriors. If he loses, he will plunge from the platform into a blazing fire, while at the same time the princess Tamar must battle an unscrupulous brunette to the death in a triangular-shaped area with spikes on the edges. British actor Joe Robinson isn't given nearly enough either to do or say in this anti-feminist 85 minute yawner. Robinson later appeared as a villain in the 007 movie "Diamonds Are Forever" and slugged it out with Sean Connery in the claustropobhic confines of an elevator. Actually, the women do a lot more fighting than Thor, and his victory over them in the tug of war is nothing memorable. Of course, in an era that probably didn't have cosmetics and apparel as depicted here, the women are all gorgeous and perfectly made up with red lipstick and blue eye-shadow.

pro_crustes Only reason I watched this today (on a tape from one of the usual online sources) was that I expected it might be a movie I remembered from my youth. And, by "youth," I mean when I was about 7 or 8. The movie is a pretty standard "strong-man" film, although the man appears in very few scenes. Mostly, it's about a bizarre society of "amazon" women (who, I suspect, have none of them ever been on the same continent as the eponymous river) who enslave other women and force them to participate in gladiatorial combat. The slaves wear delightfully short skirts and lots of facial make-up. I have this creepy feeling that this film may have set my notions of what "sexy" means for the 35 years that have followed my seeing it, as I _still_ think thighs and mascara are pretty neat. But, also, I have always remembered a couple of scenes in particular, especially a climactic tug-of-war between Thor and 100 of the amazons. Perhaps it must be conceded as some indicator of quality that, unseen by me again in all that time, I _still_ remembered this movie. (On the other hand, if I had remembered it better, I'd have saved my money and not bought the tape. Make of those facts what you will.)

Kakueke 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.