Starts here in 15 minutes at 7:00 PM CST...
7:00: David Edelstein - film critic for New York Magazine - is filling in for the vacationing Robert "Bobbie Jo" Osborne, much to my chagrin. Did I just hear him say Ursula Andress came up with the nickname "Tricky Dick"? Edelstein's arcana is formidable. I'd better focus.
7:05: Trippy tribal opening sequence. Pretty sure cinematographer Harry Waxman at least met someone at one point who had experimented with drugs. He seems well steeped in the aesthetic.
7:07: Titties! That was quick.
7:12: So we begin with three gentlemen of varying ages just getting out of the armed forces in 1918 Palestine, where they immediately hit the local belly dancing parlor and commence trawling for skank. If you thought to yourself "wow, that sounds like a ripe formula for a bar brawl!" you'd be absolutely right. Leo (played by John Richardson) follows a belly dancer who looks like a Filipino Eva Longoria into a dark alleyway and gets a sap to the back of the head. He awakens in an ornate chamber and commences to get his Dora the Explorer on.
7:16: Wow, Ursula Andress has a hell of a deadpan. Oh wait, she's just not acting.
7:19: Andress - Ayesha, the titular "She" - implores Leo to go sightseeing in NE African, in an unexplored region that allegedly contains her old digs, lost city Kuma. Leo is totally whipped after two stiff kisses and obediently sets out to convince his companions that it's totally not about the ass in any way, shape or form. After Leo leaves, a shady guy clad in Arabian gear lurches out of the shadows, and the conversation between he and Andress implies that Leo has been identified as someone they were expecting. We may be getting a "chosen one" trope here, but it's still too early to say for sure.
7:25: Professor Holly (Peter Cushing) turns out to be a bit of an armchair archaeologist, who confirms the authenticity of a ring Andress gave Leo. Based on that two second glimpse of the jeweled artifact the prof makes a specious decision that there is absolutely enough evidence to warrant embarking on an arduous, possibly deadly journey into the desert. Without even bothering to top off their supplies they set out immediately.
7:35: Uh oh! Murderous nomads! Time to get some Gunga Din action sequences going here. The melee doesn't last long but Leo takes a bullet in the arm. Leo's been having visions of Ayesha beckoning him, but has the chivalry not to say "bitch, what do you thinking I'm doing out here in the middle of the desert? Peyote trip?"
7:39: The nomads took their camels, so the last several minutes have consisted of long, foreboding shots of the three adventurers wandering the desert. Naturally someone shows up to save the trio the moment they all simultaneously pass out from heat exhaustion. Oh shit, their savior is Filipino Eva Longoria! Leo is not the only one who's whipped, apparently.
7:48: So where's a playa supposed to heal up after having his cap peeled by nomad marauders? Ah, the noble savages populating the desert, of course. The leader of this tribe appears to have encyclopedic knowledge of Ayesha - "She Who Must Be Obeyed" - which is convenient. The tribe actually seems to have an antagonistic relationship toward She's people, and they also herald Leo's appearance as some kind of second coming. Leo, for his part, just acts high and smiles a lot.
7:53: Aborigine mosh pit. Leo's tied up, literally, not metaphorically. There is a lot of percussive music being made entirely on large, hollow objects. I can hear the same thing any Saturday night from the homeless people thumping buckets on Sixth Street. Filipino Eva saves Leo by screaming "NO!!!" right before they Ginsu his ass. Just then some better dressed/whiter people show up and insist on taking the intrepid group to Kuma to answer for the tribe's insolent disobedience of Ayesha's demands, whatever those might be.
8:00: Finally, after a trek through precarious mountain passes and a hella hike through an underground cavern, the travelers arrive at the throne of... Ayesha! Who is inexplicably adorned to look like the Atlanta Falcons mascot. Still deadpanning it though.
8:07: Turns out Ayesha is a 2000 year old hag, and she believes our buddy Leo is the reincarnation of her old boy toy Kallikrates. Through the power of suggestion, Ayesha triggers a brief, to-the-point vision in Leo's head of his lookalike Kallikrates being murdered by Ayesha herself after being caught with another woman. Presumably the other woman was next.
8:17: Ayesha apparently didn't take too kindly to the noble savages trying to off her boy earlier, so she rounds up a bunch of them and throws them into a fiery pit. It's clear from the special effects work in this scene that all of the money for this film went into costumes and set design. Holla!
8:21: And it turns out that Ayesha herself was punished for whacking Leo... er, Kallikrates two millennia ago (by who?) and was banished to the desert, where she built the palatial Kuma, where no one bothered to tell the set designers that the place had supposedly fallen into disarray by 1918. Now we're getting some gobbledygook about Leo needing to wait until some eternal flame turns cold, whereupon he shall walk into it and become immortal along with Ayesha. Man, I've never read H. Rider Haggard but if this film is remotely faithful to the source material the guy was clearly prone to pulling shit out of his ass as he went along.
8:29: Ah hell, Ayesha catches Leo tongue-fucking Filipino Longoria. Burn her once, shame on her; burn her twice, shame on YOU! Actually, she apparently opts to just whack Longoria instead. Leo's the best eggshell-walking pimp I've ever seen.
8:37: Ayesha actually has Kallikrates on ice Sleeping Beauty-style, but torches him using some kind of acid after ensuring Leo's cocksmithing will be at her disposal forever.
8:40: Filipino Longoria was not spared after all. Her pops - the leader of the noble savage tribe - comes to fetch her and is handed a jar of ashes instead. Unfortunately for the Kumans, pops brought all his peeps with him, and gang war immediately ensues. Meanwhile, the eternal flame has grown cold (a blue fireball swoops in like a meteorite and changes it blue also) and Ayesha's head priest attacks Leo in a pique of apparent jealousy. Gonna go ahead and predict both Leo and the savages prevail.
8:45: Whoops, bye bye priest. I didn't see Ayesha take off her earrings but she damn sure cut a bitch.
8:46: Leo finally quits acting like a bitch and steps into the eternal flame with Ayesha, becoming immortal. Unfortunately, the flame seems to have a reverse effect when you try to double dip, and Ayesha rapidly ages 2,000 years before Leo's eyes. Leo is distraught, having lost two quality pieces of ass in a matter of hours.
8:49: And the film ends with Leo deciding to hang around and wait for the eternal flame to go blue once again, as he doesn't want to live forever without She Who Must Be Obeyed dictating his every move. Professor Holly and the fifth wheel who hasn't done much the entire movie try to console Leo but he's just gonna chill in the palace for however many years it takes. Eh.
VERDICT: While not a dull movie by any stretch, She does have the typical Hammer slow, deliberate pacing, neither too long in the tooth nor too brisk, each set piece taking up a similar amount of time onscreen, so the narrative ebbs and flows with the strength of the story. In particular, the movie drags a bit during the desert scenes, picking back up when the group arrive in Kuma, then dragging again while Ayesha patiently woos Leo. Still, there were enough entertaining elements to warrant maybe a B-.
9:00: Robert Osborne is back! Shit, it's only a promo. Apparently this guy has accrued so much PTO he's on vacation through December 1st. Lucky shit.
9:01: Edelstein again to fill my brain with trivial ephemera. Fucker actually just used the term "ur-language". What a dick.
9:02: Ok, this makes sense. Prehistoric Women is kind of Hammer's rip off of the mega-popular One Million Years B.C. from the previous year. In fact, it was filmed on the same sets using leftover costumes from that Raquel Welch helmed classic.
9:04: Prehistoric Women stars Martine Beswick, who was in both From Russia With Love and Thunderball. Apparently Hammer loves them some Bond girls. Interestingly enough, Beswick was also in One Million Years B.C.
9:10: Two white hunters are on safari with a black local guide. They stumble across the symbol of a white rhino etched into a stone, and you know some shit is about to go down because the black guide refuses to go any further. So far the leopard they're after has been the best actor in the film. Shit, they just shot it.
9:12: Immediately after shooting the leopard, the hunter - who has become separated from his compadres - is set upon by a primitive tribe, who object to his poaching on the grounds that it has been forbidden by the mystical white rhino. Homeboy is taken back to camp and the tribe do a vaguely racist ceremonial dance in his honor.
9:18: Homeboy is being sentenced to death in very long-winded fashion by some high priest in a papier mache mask. He appears to somehow stop time by groping their white rhino statue, at which point a crevice opens up in the mountain and a paradisaical, Eden-like jungle shows itself inside. Ok, Wiki wasn't lying, this is fucking weird.
9:25: The hunter, who we might as well go ahead and identify as David Marchant before I run out of synonyms for "homeboy", stumbles across a blonde chick in primitive animal skin garb that appears to be fleeing from someone or something. She takes off again and, in seeking her out, Marchant stumbles across a tribe of dark-haired women who have the same statue of a white rhino that Marchant felt up on the other side of the mountain. He doesn't get a chance to get his grope on a second time, as the tribe literally slaps his hand when he tries to rub its horn. Marchant is taken captive. Menacing insinuations about his future are made.
9:30: The blonde chick (Saria) has been captured and is being kept in the same dungeon cell as Marchant. Saria apparently speaks English, and tells Marchant that her entire tribe is enslaved and under the thrall of Queen Kari, who has apparently taken a shining to Marchant. On learning the plight of Saria's tribe, Marchant's natural inclination is to ask their men aren't there to save them. Gotta love the 60's.
9:34: Jesus Christ, this movie has more choreographed group dances than the "Thriller" video.
9:36: Speaking of Michael Jackson references, now Saria and Kari seem to be recreating the knife fight from "Beat It". Saria loses because she's clearly a bottom bitch.
9:38: ...and Kari celebrates her victory by demanding that the dancing resume. There isn't going to be much of an actual plot here, is there?
9:40: Kari has a massive bed cloaked in the skins of every species of wild cat imaginable. Apparently her tribe has a different interpretation of the white rhino's spiritual preferences.
9:42: Ohhh, this is getting rich. Kari unsuccessfully attempts to seduce Marchant, and upon being rejected she immediately offers Marchant a co-sign on the throne, basically divvying up power equally. All he has to do is throw her a little D. Marchant still refuses, and Kari starts brooding over more elaborate plans for his demise.
9:48: Turns out all the men are toiling away in a slave mine, which Marchant is also sentenced to after being given a night to think about his qualms and still rejecting Kari anyway. Looks like there is going to be some explicitly non-PC inter-gender power games going on here.
9:54: Yeppers. Turns out the male slaves used to be the ruling patriarchal society, with all of their women enslaved, but one day a slave girl - Kari - escaped, rounded up a posse and ousted the phallocracy from power. If there were any real T&A here Prehistoric Women would totally be an S&M flick.
10:00: Right now we're trudging through a drawn out marriage ceremony. One of the slave girls has been picked to wed some monster that lives in the forest and apparently has a connection to the white rhino. Basically you would need to smoke quite a bit of white rhino for any of this to make any sense.
10:06: Marchant and Saria hook up under cover of the night and hatch a plan for a coup. This involves Marchant pretending to go along with being Kari's love slave, so we're back to the sex-as-power machinations. This is starting to seem more like a title Something Weird would have uncovered in a warehouse somewhere rather than an actual Hammer production. Then again, the late 60's / early 70's was the beginning of decline for the once proud studio, and movies like Prehistoric Women give a pretty good indication as to why.
10:08: Seriously? Another dance sequence?
10:11: Dumb ass bitch. Saria, apparently in a fit over seeing Marchant humiliated through taking orders, blurts out their plan, at which point Kari launches into her best Joan Crawford impersonation and - screeching with rage - condemns Marchant back to the dungeon, supposedly for good this time. Supposedly.
10:15: The slaves, whose only task seems to be operating a fanning device to keep the tribe's fire continually burning (a little double entendre, perhaps?), are using the flames to try and burn through their chains. They succeed, but the old timer they pick as their guinea pig dies of burn wounds in the process. The rest of the slaves apparently decide this is a process worth perfecting and decide to press on. Tards.
10:19: ...and just like that the slaves are all unencumbered by chains and set upon the physically inferior women. Marchant rescues Saria from being sacrificed to the man-like creatures (yes, it turns out there are more than one of them) and it's beginning to appear that the masked creatures are somehow related to the savage tribe that Marchant supposedly escaped when he stopped time and slipped through the crevice into Not Eden. Did I just type that?
10:22: As the slaves chase the savages into the forest and wage battle, the actual white rhino itself appears. "Stop!" Kari screams. "It is our God, it will not harm us!" Naturally it gores the fuck out of her. Masta Kari, she dead.
10:25: Finally, some resolution on that opening sequence. Kari now dead, Marchant goes back to the rhino statue and strokes the phallic horn once again, upon which he is immediately teleported back to the sacrificial scene before he stopped time. The white rhino statue crumbles and the tribe (now reanimated) celebrate their freedom from the rhino's tyrannical reign. Another fucking dance sequence, can you believe this shit?
10:28: The black guide who swore he'd go no further earlier in the film has apparently had second thoughts and sneaks into the tribal camp just in time to see the white man save the day without his help. Then another dance scene starts and I'm hoping like hell we're closing in on the final credits.
10:31: Not so fast. We're back in camp with the other hunter who disappeared early in the film. The other hunter's wife is now present (!) and wonders aloud at the "far away look" in Marchant's eyes. A bunch of other travelers in suits show up, and among their group is a chick who - gasp! - looks exactly like Saria! She gives him a knowing leer, they shake hands, and we finally get our closing credits.
VERDICT: This one made She look like Lawrence of Arabia by comparison. I don't know that it's quite so low on the quality scale to qualify as "so bad it's good", but it did have intermittent entertainment value. Most of the appeal stems from the hilariously outdated gender roles, so if that's not your thing you may get no real value out of Prehistoric Women at all. For my money: C+.
We'll be wrapping this up with The Viking Queen, as shown above, but right now TCM is killing time with some completely unrelated filler shorts, so I think I've earned a 20-minute break at this point. Will resume shortly.
11:00: Edelstein's back. Don't tase me, bro.
11:05: Romans vs Celtics. Apparently, if the title is to be believed, Vikings will work their way in here somewhere as well. This is the only movie I've ever seen where a narrator actually reads the crawl text aloud as it scrolls across the screen. Imagine if you popped in Star Wars and heard someone speak aloud "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
11:12: Actually, it's looking like the Viking queen of the title is actually going to be one of the Druids. The historical accuracy of this film is starting to become suspect. According to IMDB this was Hammer's only stab at the peplum genre, and I can only assume the reason for this will unfold over the next 80 minutes.
11:18: Salina - played by surname-free model Carita - takes over as leader of the Druids upon the death of her father, and since her mother was apparently a Viking she is endowed with the moniker "Viking Queen". The Romans are politically squatting on the Druids' land, however, so who is actually ruling the Druids seems to be mostly empty ceremony.
11:20: Don Murray represents the entirety of Viking Queen's star power, a long way from knocking the dust off Marilyn Monroe in Bus Stop. That's cool, I'm in a good mood, I'll let a playa play.
11:29: I guess this probably really happened, but there's something weird about seeing chariots romping through verdant green hillsides.
11:30: Not much going on in the story so far. Aside from Salina taking over, the only real events of note have been Murray's Justinian getting the upper hand in a power struggle with Octavian (Andrew Keir) and a budding flirtation between Justinian and Salina, which climaxes (whoops!) in a makeout session after both of their chariots crash into a dirty pond.
11:35: Looks like this budding romance is going to end in another chauvinistic power struggle, Justinian expecting Salina to forget about all this Queen shit and take her rightful place in his kitchen, Salina wanting to marry and have a son who will unite the Romans and Druids in harmony. Justinian doesn't look like he cares much for this harmony she speaks of.
11:36: Ok, what? The Druids worship Zeus in this movie. Zeus gives them prophecy, foretelling that Salina will crush the Romans. Isn't that a conflict of interest?
11:42: Maybe I was wrong about this marriage. Not only has Salina and Justinian public arm-in-arm now, but Justinian is also pissing off his Roman cohorts by changing laws to favor the Druids. Bottom bitch!
11:48: This fat merchant guy is obviously channeling Charles Laughton's Gracchus from Spartacus.
11:51: Man, I'd love to know the first movie to ever utilize the camera pan along the map trope to underscore a travel montage.
11:53: So what the shit is this? In a dark turn - both in terms of subject matter but also cinematography - the head priest is shown lording over a clandestine execution of Roman soldiers via fire pit. Hammer sure likes their fire pits.
12:00: Ah, the Druids are revolting. Looks like the Romans took offense to the preferential treatment and started cockblocking the Druids in other ways, so now they have a full blown costume battle on their hands. Take that, you yellow bellied extras!
12:02: Justinian has been called away on an extended leave, and after six weeks lacking his protection the Druids are getting their asses handed to them. Salina is experiencing aural visitations from her dead father, but evil priest dude is putting a different bug in her ear: take up the sword and lead her people!
12:05: As expected, Octavian is behind the Roman crackdown. Justinian's absence leaves a perfect power vacuum and Octavian is just the man to fill it.
12:10: Uh oh, shit just got real. Octavian instigates a clash with the Druids, following which Salina's look-alike Talia gets disrobed and lashed. Further revolt. Visible bloodshed, hints at rape, no actual titties. We seem to be backsliding into prudery here.
12:18: Falling tree traps, primitively armed barbarians swarming out of the trees... is this Viking Queen or the Battle of Endor?
12:20: The Druids prevail, as unlikely as that may be considering how easily the Romans have bitchslapped them around up until now. Salina's heart has been hardened and she orders the wholesale destruction of all things Roman, sparing not even Justinian, who is on his way back after a long sojourn.
12:24: Justinian returns. Salina's resolve weakens. Time for a parlay. Unfortunately Justinian realizes that nothing short of surrender will satiate Rome. Salina ain't having that shit. Parlay over.
12:30: Seems the male Druids tend to be poorly dressed and only effective in battle when attacking in large groups on foot, while the regally dressed women man the chariots and get the lion's share of one on one battle with the higher ranking Romans. Again with the male-female power dynamic.
12:32: By and by the Druids start strong but fade in the clutch and are eventually overrun. Salina is brought to her knees in battle and throws herself on her victor's sword after Justinian tries to step in and insist she be brought alive to Rome to stand trial. The End. It really does roll to credits just that quick.
VERDICT: This one is a little harder to judge than the other two, although it's arguably less interesting than either. It''s not as objectively poor in terms of overall filmmaking as Prehistoric Women, but neither does it come anywhere close to the budget, acting or scripting of She either. I'd put this somewhere in the middle at a C.
And that's all She wrote, folks. It's been a long night, I'll say that without hesitation. Didn't suspect I'd be jotting down 4,000+ words when I sat down to kick this off, especially not over three films that most people have never heard of. Nonetheless, if any interesting ideas pop up for further marathon liveblogging this may not be my last hurrah.
Back Monday with more music, though I may bust out a standalone post or two over the weekend as well.
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