09/24/06 Gwendoline

Gwendoline (1984), directed by Just Jaeckin

watched w/ Jason; DVD (Jason's copy) @ Jason & Sabrina's house (Pinehurst, NC)

You have to know that you are in for a campy sci-fi treat when you have these two key elements. One: a title so long and ridiculous sounding that the marketing ploy for the advertisements must be shortened for simplicity/clarity of the B-movie budget and focusing the title solely on the sexy siren lead character to carry said campy sci-fi plot to its entirety (see original title being "The Perils Of Gwendoline In The Land Of Yik Yak" truncated to just "Gwendoline"). Two: Casting your aforementioned sexy siren lead character of titular renaming as the one & only Tawny Kitaen (foreshadowing of her famed notoriety from three major events in her own personal life). One: laying spread eagle on the hood of a sports car in the classc Whitesnake video "Here I Go Again." Two: being charged with domestic abuse for kicking pro-baseballer husband Chuck Finley with her high heels. Three: ending up shamelessly and sadly as a drug-addled & fallen idol on the VH1 series "Surreal Life" in all her post-op plastic surgery misfortune. And those factors are supposed to sell the movie, well...at least make it entertaining enough to watch. Oh it is entertaining to watch! It doesn't hurt either that the director's name can be a verb, noun or adjective (his name is Just Jaeckin)...to add to the outlandishness of circumstances. So, what we have here is an erotic adaptation from a French comic strip, based on the exploits of one Gwendoline who arrives in China shipped in a large crate...finds a weird friend in quirky Beth, a chiseled mercenary man-friend in Willard, and all kinds of bad guys to battle in her search for her father and a butterfly? Yeah, it's not worth trying to follow the plot...just follow the erotic S&M scantily clad (or nude) Yik Yak kingdom of women. That's all anyone watching this wants to see (bless you Jason for being visionary enough to buy this film and show it to me)...and anyone named Just Jaeckin would want to produce. C'mon, even his name sounds dirty. The dominant Amazonian women of this futuristic world will stop at nothing to spawn a race of their own female warrior kind...unless Tawny, I mean Gwendoline, can jump on the hood of a spacecraft listening to Whitesnake and save the day with her breast implants. If that doesn't work, she can always kick them in the head with her high heels...she seems to be good at that.

3 out of 5 stars