“After a man makes love here, he dies!”
This dire warning is screamed out to the hero in the midst of a chariot race in an underground lost city. A chariot race where each cart is pulled by three scantily clad women running semi-pelt. A chariot race where the frequent crashes could easily be avoided if the women simply stopped running.
But no, this is the world of Gwendoline – a world of high-trash cinema that logic forgot. Where people are transported across oceans in packing crates, volcanoes spew diamonds, rainfall brings on emergency stripping, spear waggling tribes shrink from a harsh word, crocodiles are rubber and female warriors fight to the death for the chance to make love to a rare kidnapped man.
Salacious, slick, shoddy and surreal, Gwendoline is an endlessly entertaining 80s perventure classic that redefines the ‘so bad it’s good’ aesthetic – by spinning the taste dial so fast the only response is to sit back and succumb to the dizzying hedonistic sugar rush in all its soft-focus nubile glory.
The titular heroine (Tawny Kitaen) arrives at an unnamed port via cargo crate, searching for her lost father, disappeared while hunting for a butterfly in the mysterious land of the Yik-Yak. She is swiftly kidnapped and sold to a local gangster, before being mistakenly rescued, along with her maid-servant Beth (Zabou), by hunky rogue mercenary-adventurer Willard (Brent Huff).
Naturally, Gwendoline is smitten with the charmless bit of rough and the trio journey to the mystical Pikaho volcano, dodging pirates, river dunkings, desert wastelands, native cannibal tribes, bamboo cages and much childish banter en route. Eventually, they find the butterfly, but also an ancient underground civilisation of women, farming diamonds from the volcano and ornately torturing any who dare escape to lust after men.
Willard is captured to be used as mating stock and Gwendoline must fight to be prime candidate for his seeding, saving his life, defeating the Mad Queen and escaping with last vestiges of clothing (more or less) intact.
Phew, adventures rarely come hornier than this.
This is a cartoon of a movie, combining the wondrous (il)logic of a 13 year old’s adventure fantasy with added sex and violence (or exactly a 13 year old’s fantasy). The childishness of the concept also extends to the execution. It is a movie that manages to be both slick and amateurish in the same lustful breath, a headshaking contradiction from beginning to end.
Terrific set design and costumes (the incredible torture devices of the hidden city populated with spiky leather bikinis; an opening camera shot down a Chinese street to the port) trade equal places with obviously fake props (defiantly rubber crocodile; barely styled cannibal village). Dialogue swings between eye-gougingly crass and hilariously on the nose. Some compositions make stunning use of the anamorphic widescreen while others look like outtakes.
Rampant misogyny trades bants with a weirdly feminist take as Gwendoline becomes suddenly empowered by news of her father’s death, taking charge over Willard’s sexist bullying. Everything may have been made up as it went along, or maybe the ramshackle energy is the reason why this tacky confection has so much charm. It works – precisely because it shouldn’t.
If all this sounds like a perverted ode to old school Boys Own adventure serials with Girls Allowed, then that’s exactly what it is. The blockbuster success of Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) unleashed a slew of cheapo imitations. From Bring Em Back Alive and Tales of the Gold Monkey on TV, through cheapo Italian rips like Treasure of the Four Crowns (1983), to the classier takes of King Solomon’s Mines (1985) and Romancing the Stone (1984), everybody was jumping on the cliffhanger bandwagon.
Step forward Just Jaeckin. The French softcore auteur had landed his zeitgeist moment in the 70s with Sylvia Kristel starring knickerbuster Emmanuelle (1974) and continued to plough the market through to Lady Chatterly’s Lover (1981).
An adult take on popular ripping yarns appeared a no-brainer and the source material of Perils of Paulinesque bondage comic ‘The Perils of Gwendoline’ (by aptly named John Willie) gold waiting to be mined. Unfortunately, the box office was closer to a dribble than a spurt, although the movie found a natural home in VHS rental stores across the globe.
The disappointing reception was perhaps down to the movie’s contradictory nature. It isn’t sexual enough to strike hard with the erotica crowd and way too cheeky to stroke the appeal of mainstream audiences. As such, it falls between two stools, landing firmly in the bargain bin of cultdom. But therein lies the charm.
For all the naughty shenanigans there is a genuine childlike innocence that matches the wide-eyed honesty of the heroine. Talk of true love is hammered relentlessly by the end credits as Gwendoline wins over Willard’s heart, saving the day all round. It is a movie impossible to be offended by, even when it tries so hard.
This is an exploitation movie that (for once) lives up to its overblown tagline – Gwendoline truly is an ‘adventure without shame’, so any guilty pleasures excuse should be discarded before viewing. Loud, proud, silly schlock – contradicting every turn it makes, it is to be treasured as much as any made up butterfly.
And has an unforgettable chariot race eternal teenage fever dreams are made of.
Gwendoline (1984) (r/t 106 min)
aka The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak)
(Tawny Kitaen, Brent Huff, Zabou) (w/d. Just Jaeckin)
“Adventure Without Shame. A Lost, Lost Civilisation where No Man has ever been… and for Good Reason!”
Hove Press 