“I think fear would not run so deep in you if you were not a male.”

Justin’s rating: “Swipe right” meant a lot more when you had a sword in your hand

Justin’s review: Do you ever encounter a movie where the setup that’s briefly mentioned in voiceover or text crawl seems a vastly more interesting plot than what actually comes after? Screenwriters seem to squander great ideas on throwaway lines, let me tell you. Well, this is certainly the case for Hundra, an Italian-Spanish Conan wannabe that makes me think we’re in for an off-brand car commercial.

“Buy a Hundra! It gets 100 acres to the hectolitre! Act fast, and we’ll throw in a free pig carrier!”

Anyway, Hundra tells us that there were a bunch of women in a primitive society who got sick of being mistreated by men. They broke away, somehow, to form an Amazonian-style tribe, returning to the rest of civilization to get pregnant in the hopes of making more little girl babies (the boy babies, we’re told, were returned to sender). Now that? That’s a movie I wouldn’t mind seeing.

But what we get is the less-exciting aftermath, where the grumpy guys — looking like knock-off Vikings — return to slaughter or capture all of the women. The only survivor of the tribe’s massacre is Hundra (Laurene Landon), their greatest warrior and fashion model. She gets some revenge, sure, but she also feels compelled to find a man to get pregnant and start up her own tribe.

This is the part I don’t get. At the beginning of the film, Hundra outright says that being pregnant isn’t for her. So with everyone dead, why does she feel this responsibility to become a baby factory? It’s not like she can repopulate the full tribe by herself unless she has litters. And she doesn’t even like men, which makes a potential romance even more difficult.

It’s like someone’s setting you up for a forced marriage, and that someone is you. I mean… you could just not? Go find a nice quiet island somewhere and retire while grunting at suspicious-looking trees?

But no, Hundra keeps throwing herself into the barbaric dating scene, where many a bedroom encounter ends in whips, stabbings, and semi-humorous slapstick. She does have a backbone, though, and even when she does find a promising mate, it’s not as if she suddenly turns sappy and soft.

This is an overtly feminist tale — from 1983, no less — and while it doesn’t say anything profound with the material, Hundra does remain faithful and consistent with the theme of strong women encountering the world on their terms. And it’s kind of fun to see this confident woman figuring that the best way to make a man your own is by pinning him to a door by throwing knives.

Really, I don’t know why I subject myself to these sword-and-sorcery flicks. I rarely like them, and this one in particular just dragged on and on. Sure, there are occasional spots of fascinating weirdness — such as this movie’s obsession with burping or a little person attacking Hundra with a pitchfork — but it’s not so gonzo odd that it becomes entertaining like Deathstalker II. There’s some decent action, although too much of it is close up and in slow motion to cover the sub-$1M budget for my liking. Maybe I’ve been out of the dating world for too long at this point to understand the appeal?

Intermission!

• Did she just insult the dog for being male?
• Dog on a horse
• Knocking aside a spear in midair is pretty hardcore
• This music is really excited that everyone’s getting slaughtered
• If you’re already impaled by a spear, you might as well throw yourself on someone to impale them as well
• Nobody’s worth chasing for an entire night on horseback
• Whole lot of screaming in this movie
• Hundra stopping the guy from braining her with one hand is pretty terrific
• Red-and-blue facepaint isn’t doing you any favors
• Pitchfork to the leg
• Your horse isn’t a boat. Don’t ride it into the ocean.
• To make a fishmonger’s daughter palpable, you bathe her in lemon water
• Hundra sympathetically grabs her own crotch when she tosses a bad guy by his
• “Did you make that child?” “No.” “Good. Because you’re going to make girls.”
• Foreplay via throwing knives?
• “She’s not docile!”
• “You would know much about fear, it is the coward’s strongest emotion.”
• Y’all are worshipping a bull? You could do better.
• MAKEOVER MONTAGE!