Thor and the Amazon Women (1963)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Strong and Moving!

From my favorite movies..

Best movie ever!

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.

This movie is confused and misleading. At the very beginning you are treated to a little ditty about "the God of Thunder, Mighty Thor"! The song was actually Thor's theme song in an early attempt to animate the old Marvel comic book characters. They were shown on TV after school back in the '60's! How it wound up attached to this mess is beyond me, but it does illustrate how misleading the movie is. The Thor in this picture is NOT the God of Thunder. He's just some steroid junkie with blonde hair and the name. At no point during this flick is any attempt made to connect him to the old Norse legends. He's just a strong guy. A strong, mostly incompetent guy. Now, seeing as the title of the movie has Thor in it, you might expect that the story would be about him, but you'd be wrong! As has been pointed out in some of the other reviews, Thor actually has little screen time. The film is mostly concerned with the trials and tribulations of Tamar, who has been captured by the Amazons and will soon have to fight for her life in the arena. So, right from the outset, this movie misleads you twice. I doubt this was an accident. What to say about this flick? considering that the Italians invented this film genre you would expect it to be much better than it is. The men are portrayed as buffoons while the women are basically ruthless and brutal. There's really not much of a storyline and so, in order to pad out the film to its 84 minute length, the director treats us to lots of clumsily staged battles- to-the- death between the slave women. There is a lot of killing in this movie. Some of the slave girls choose to disembowel themselves rather than slay one of their comrades. At one point we're shown a shot of a pile of dead slave girls, all of whom were slain in the arena in one afternoon of sport! As you might surmise, this movie is actually kind of dark for a 60's sword and sandal flick, which makes the scenes with Thor and his African companion all the more incongruous. Many of their scenes are played for laughs in a broad slapstick manner. One minute a slave girl is running herself through with a sword, and the next Thor and Ramalamatutu, or whatever his name is, are doing schtick! I was wondering if they were going to break into "Who's On First" sometimes. The movie delivers all of the girl fights you could possibly desire, but if you're looking for the ultra-buff hero to pull down a temple or toss giant statues around like they were made of cardboard, you're going to be very disappointed. The only feat of strength that Thor pulls off in the whole film is beating 101 Amazons in a game of tug-of-war. Somehow this is all that is required to bring the Amazon Empire crashing down. Oh brother!I downloaded this movie off of one of the free public domain movie websites. As I state in the title of this review, there's a reason why nobody has held on to the rights to this flick. By today's standards it has the potential to be seen as extremely offensive. Thor's black chum spends most of his time addressing him as "master". I'm surprised he doesn't play the banjo too. The worst offense, however, is contained in the working premise of the story. you see, The Amazons are bad because they want to subjugate men. Tamar and the good women in the film all realize that women are supposed to be subservient to men. As Tamar herself explains, that's how Nature wants it to be. Given how goofy the men act in this little cowpile of a film it's kind of surprising that she didn't go over to the Amazon queen's way of thinking.

Or should the summary be delightfully dreadful drek?I would recommend this with certain caveats. Seen years ago with the local Sci-Fi group on Bad Movie Night, this sophomoric effort of a jaw dropping galacticly gaping yawn of a YAHM (Yet Another Hercules Movie) was astoundingly amusing due to the rapid fire quips, comments, puns, & imaginative invented subtext. The script/dialog & plot are entirely forgettable which, juxtaposed (w/a nod at T&A) by minimal female costuming along with burgeoning beefcake exposure, results in any attempt at good, much less excellent, acting a forlorn forgone conclusion. The rough low budget charm of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and the wondrously sad editing (police car leaving station at night cutting to completely different police car in rapid transit down road in daylight cutting to original police car arriving at destination at night) and props (wiggling of cardboard "head stone" in graveyard as cape brushes over it) of Plan 9 from Outer Space are entirely missing. Missing also is any value as a stream of consciousness Psych and Sociology Prof Fodder audience endurance test such as Erasurehead. The entirely forgettable character of Uber-Tattoo (de pain, de pain)… er... Uber-Tanto (heap bad medicine, Kimosabi)… er... Ubaratutu has no real redeeming character traits or anything of value to support interest or this movie. Just further evidence of a lack of any talent or skill by the writer(s) of this sad effort totally negating any scope or expanse for an actor to work completely hobbling the characters.Unless in a very open and receptive frame of mind with a view toward enjoying the obvious lack of energy between characters, you will leave the video store upon returning the movie muttering, "What was my motivation?" (which I would imagine the actors would echo once the project was over, they saw the completed product, and they received their paycheck).Further comment would be redundant given previous reviews so would rather recommend viewing this schlock w/a group forewarned and ready for fun. Solo viewing isn't recommended unless in the proper frame of mind (out of body?).

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.)