Battle Queen 2020 (2001)

Absolutely Fantastic

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Julie Strain gets star treatment as a "mistress" over prostitutes, culled from "the underground" to "service" the "elite", those chosen few who are able to live above the not so pleasant confines containing the less fortunate. You see the earth has become afflicted with another Ice Age thanks in part to a meteor, and so those fortunate enough to have all the money and power live above ground in a lavish compound while most are burdened with underground rat-and-filth-infested prisons and grimy corridors.Strain is madam who trains "new recruits", girls lifted from the underground to provide pleasure to those with power, providing them a comfort and refuge from poverty, sickness, and starvation. She is in love with Jeff Wincott(..who plays Spencer), the head honcho of the upper-ground establishment, who is actually much older than he appears, his youth kept vital through "rejuvenation" experiments, thanks to scumbag doctor, Braxton(Bill Baker)who extracts blood from the underground youth. Spencer's twin brother is withering away and dying because he will not take the blood of innocents. Brian Frank is Manson, another "elite" whose soldiers are dwindling in number thanks to arch enemy, Joad(Paul Rapovski), a former "elite" who decided to rebel when he discovered how the rejuvenation process worked, forming a coalition of underground resistant fighters sickened of being governed under such tyrannical rule. Soon Strain will join them after finding Braxton attempting to remove blood from a young girl under her care. Along with the girl(..who, as an adult, narrates the film), Strain will join forces with Joad, hoping to overthrow Manson and Braxton, who have relinquished command of upper-ground from Spencer. Eva Nemeth is Priscilla, Manson's female "muscle", clad in dominatrix outfit, wielding mean knun-chux, and defending him when he calls on her.Being a Corman production(..under his New Concorde label), you can tell that old sets were probably used from other past movies(..also depending on some cheap computer graphics and matte artwork for background work). Strain is often naked(..she certainly rarely keeps her breasts under wraps), either bathing her bare flesh or getting all cozy with Wincott. She also gets to go female warrior on her foes, using martial arts to combat her enemies. Too bad Strain never faces off with Nemeth, who instead engages in a battle with Rapovski's Joad. Rapovski is another who is often engaged in combat with Manson's henchmen, most of the time with little trouble in wiping them out. BattleQueen 2020 seemed to have footage excised so that it could get a R-rating, particularly soft-core sexual situations which are cut short. I was indeed hoping to see more action between Strain and a protégé under her tutelage..

Well, I suppose it could have been worse. Not sure how, exactly, don't care to think. Don't you love it when they try to add softcore to sci-fi, and don't get either? What were they thinking? I wonder if it actually made any money.

In the movie, we have the elite, the underground and the opposition. The elite are brutal and violent. The underground is treated very poorly yet submissive. The opposition is out there but that is about all we know about them. It is not clear how it all fits together. I guess I was hoping the story would improve but instead the story was just too predictable, typical and violent to be entertaining.There are plenty of pretty women but except for Julie Strain we are only teased by the other women, as if Julie Strain was jealous of the younger women and did not want them to get more attention. For those that would prefer to not see bare breasts, there is enough of Julie Strain to be distracting.

I went in seeing this movie hoping to see some very hot scenes of Julie Strain and all the girls in this movie. My wish if you can say that was not fulfilled, and instead every time something started happening another scene would pop up. I think that there is a unrated version of this movie out there, but I only found an "R" rated version. My vote of a "9" was because of Julie Strain's scenes and some of the other girls. The other reason that I gave it such a high score is because it is almost perfect, with the rest that had either been cut altogether or is in the unrated version would make it a "10". The movie was a very good look at another aspect of Julie, so rent but be forewarned I think it is still lacking enough erotic feel.