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 "More thrilling than Raiders...More romance than Romancing the Stone...More
action than the Temple of Doom!" Tawny Kitaen stars in this "delightful and
dazzling science fiction/ pop fantasy." It's touted as being directed by Just
Jaecklin and they recite some of his softcore porn credits (Emmanuelle, The
Story of O, and Lady Chatterley's Lover). The box copy notes the comic-strip
origin of Gwendoline. The movie is about her father disappearing while looking
for a "mythical" butterfly
so she goes off to find him. A "handsome mercenary" named Willard helps her to
"the land of the Yik Yak." "What follows is a fabulous adventure in far-flung
locales." 1984, 87 minutes, VHS
It's another bottom of the barrel Indy Jones rip-off based on a comic-strip
that features a heroine that gets her into all kinds of outlandish and
semi-nude situations. You may recall Jane and the Lost City and the problems we encountered with that film. It promised a lot of good
clean naughty fun and failed to deliver much of anything except Sam Jones with
brown hair instead of the blonde hair we admired in his Flash Gordon days. The Perils of Gwendoline promises similar type activities and actually attempts to deliver on them.
What this means is that you get a bit of gore, lots of topless broads and some
cussing. Not bad for a day's work under normal circumstances. In light of all
that, I have only two questions. Why don't I remember anything that happened
and why did this movie seem to take forever to get done? It runs about an hour
and a half, seems twice as long, and I've been wracking my mind trying to
recall anything significant or interesting that occurred. Maybe we should
start at the beginning. I had a teacher that used to say that. He also had
this advice on how long a paper should be. It should be like a swimming suit,
he'd say with this self-satisfied smirk. It should be long enough to cover the
essentials, but short enough to be interesting. Then he'd kind of hold his
enormous belly and chuckle to himself, probably impressed that he remembered
his little bumper-sticker philosophy well enough to puke it back out to an
under-impressed class. That doesn't really have anything to do with this
movie, except that it somehow was neither of those two things. It didn't
really cover the essentials. Characters, locations, and threats moved in and
out of the film with little explanation or reason. Yes, they had somebody say
something like, okay, if you want to find so and so you'll have to go here,
face this danger, then face that danger, and so on. But the explanations of
groups like the Cheops and these Amazon women and their inter-relationship was
so
sketchy and mumbled so fast by the mush-mouthed hero that I had no idea who
these people were or what there problem was. This movie was also not short
enough to be interesting. I think that probably had to do with the fact that
the main characters were played by laughably bad non-actors who read their
lines like they
were ordering off a Chinese menu.  Let's introduce you to these empty-headed mullets that passed for heroes and
heroines. First you got your title character, Gwendoline. She's played by
Tawny Kitaen, who had a brush with greatness when she co-starred with Tom Hanks
in Bachelor Party. That's the closest she'll ever get to an Oscar. You also
may recall that she then went on, after this movie, to take the "position" as
David Coverdale squeeze and Whitesnake music video girl (remember, she rolled
around on a car in the video for "Here I Go Again," a classic metal ballad to
be sure, but not really what you'd call a "resume-builder"). Kitaen next
surfaced in something more than five people saw when she co-hosted that
worthless show called America's Funniest People or something with the worst
cast member of Full House whose last name wasn't Olsen. Today, Tawny probably
is waiting to be interviewed for the VH1 Behind the Music special on
Coverdale's Zeppelin rip off band, the aforementioned Whitesnake. Anyway, her
character, Gwendoline
has escaped from a convent because she had a dream that her daddy was in great
danger while looking for a rare butterfly. Apparently this dream told her to
box herself up in a crate, Fed Ex her arse to an exotic port city in the Orient
and wait for her friend Beth to unpack her so they can go off and find daddy
(and
his butterfly). Since this is an exotic port city, there are a lot of unsavory
characters milling around the docks, opening up crates looking to steal stuff
like hot babes who just ran away from a convent. These three dudes steal
Gwendoline (and some bibles) and haul her up to some slimy big boss guy where
they attempt to sell her, probably so she could give bible instruction to him
or something. Meanwhile, her worthless best friend Beth, who's main
distinguishing characteristic is her Prince Valiant haircut, follows her.
Things don't look so good for our gals when suddenly, a guy busts into the
joint and starts a big donnybrook with the thugs holding Gwennie. Our hero
engages in some of the worst hand to hand combat you've ever seen since Craig
T. Nelson and Carl Weathers threw down in Action Jackson. This guy is throwing elbows and punches that show more light than the ones
Psycho Sid or Lex Luger used to kiss the air with. This guy also seems pretty
slow, but is smart enough to use
weapons like gigantic knives and a grappling hook against these thugs that I
don't remember being armed with anything other than some stolen bibles.
Eventually he wins and somehow the big boss ends up with a grappling hook in
his head. The movie makes one of its numerous unfortunate stabs (hawhawhaw) at
humor when this guy looks at Gwen and Beth and says, "he owed me $800." Cost
of shipping hot babe in crate to exotic port city: $125. Cost of getting
grappling hook in baby-skull: $800. Cost of abysmal humor substituting for
character development: priceless.  I guess something should be said regarding Brent Huff in this movie. Brent
Huff is the name of the guy who plays Gwendoline's rescuer. Inexplicably, his
character's name is Willard. Willard? What kind of name is that for a hero?
I understand names like Braddock, Rambo, and Indiana Jones, but Willard? It
sounds like the name of a fat kid who wears sweaters to school and pees sitting
down. Another interesting feature that Mr. Huff has invested his character with
is his facial hair. He's got this perfectly manicured five o'clock shadow that
kind of made me think he could have been Sonny Crockett's dim-bulb brother who
hung at a certain leather bar just down the street from my trailer park.
Either grow a beard or don't. This dude also was sweating a lot, but not
regular sweat like most of us 300 pound losers would have, but this kind of
moistness about him that almost seemed like someone was standing off camera
with a spray bottle to cloak him in a fine mist between every scene. Willard
also has a habit of trying to be funny at several inappropriate times with
comments that aren't really that amusing and sometimes they just kind hang in
the air like a stale fart, everyone sensing its presence, but too polite to
comment on how awfully stank it was. Of course, Willard is the reluctant
hero-type that we've all grown tired of. He don't want nothin' to do with Gwen
and her stupid problems (You're dad is missing after chasing a butterfly? Is
he like four years old?) and eventually will only help once she promises to pay
him money. It's all really not that convincing for any number of reasons.
First off, no guy is going to refuse to help a hot looking chick. Second,
Willard has nothing better to do than grope Oriental girls at a card game
(okay, maybe that is a good reason to refuse, especially if you're playing
UNO). Third, Willard reels off this long list of dangers and tribulations they
face on the road to the land of the Yik Yak, Gwendoline offers him $2000 to go
and he says yes. Huh? Two-thousand dollars? I know Jungle Jack Buck did it
all for free in Jane and the Lost City, but he never portrayed himself as a
stubbly Han Solo wannabe. If Willard was really such reluctant hero, would
$2000 get him off his hiney to risk his life?  So Willard, Gwen, and Beth start off on their journey to Yik Yak lands, but
only after they break out jail (apparently the authorities of this particular
exotic port city frown on it when the big crime boss gets a grappling hook in
the head), Gwen steals some "stuff" from Willard to pay for supplies and to pay
Willard (I think we're suppose to assume that this "stuff" is drugs that
Willard is to smuggle for somebody, but like most things in and about the land
of the Yik Yak, the details were a little fuzzy), and they have to fight off a
band of pirates (about six or seven swarthy-looking thugs, who try to hop on
Willard's boat, but get pushed overboard, get knifed in the head, and get their
boat set on fire - all by Willard who obviously has some type of
anger-management problem). They start traipsing through the jungle and the
desert (apparently they are right next to each other) when it suddenly starts
to rain. He tells everyone to take off their shirts and surprisingly this
not-so-subtle line worked. They're taking their shirts off and asking why.
Willard tells them it's so they can catch rain water. I guess using your shoes
or your hat would be silly. Well, they all get topless and I'm suddenly
wondering why Gwendoline is running around with a 12 year old boy named Beth.
Thankfully, the rain stops and Gwen and company resume their trek, soon being
captured by the Cheops or something. These are your basic savages, with loin
clothes, spears, painted faces, and fear of some kind of wind or spider-god
(somehow giant spider webs and sacrifices were involved as well as a poisonous
wind). Gwen, Beth and Willard are thrown in a cell together where they
hopefully await certain death. At this point in time, Gwen decides to drop on
everyone the fact that she's a virgin which prompts Willard to give a long,
detailed description of what (as Bob Eubanks might say) making whoopie entails.
All three get hot and bothered as he talks about licking something or other,
then they all start laughing. Ahhh, good times. Good times. Then they get
serious and break out, escaping into the poison wind and finally ending up in
the land of the Yik Yak. I would be remiss if I did not mention, that way back
before all this crap started, Gwen found out her daddy was in fact dead. She's
now actually not trying to find him, but that dang butterfly nobody but her and
her dead daddy care one dang bit about. The Yik Yak is where this dumb bug's
suppose
to be, so here we are. Once there, they are immediately captured by these
Amazon-type dames who I think may worship this butterfly and have some
connection to the Cheops (all the Cheops that are sacrificed to the wind or
spider thingy are actually taken by these broads and locked up in cages for
some reason). The rest of the movie details the problems they encounter with these Amazons.
These problems include getting captured (is that all they do?), running around
in these ridiculous g-strings (not terribly flattering on Mr. Huff), fighting
to the death for the right to make whoopie to Willard (he's to be killed once
it's done) and a chariot race. The chariot race is such that Ben-Hur hisself
would spin lots of times in his grave. C. Heston is dead, right? Oh, wait,
I'm thinking of his conscience. There is a difference though, because I seemed
to recall that in Chuck's movie, the chariots were drawn by horses and not
topless women, but I guess when in Yik Yak, do as the Yik Yakkians do, right?
There's an evil queen and a eunuch henchman and eventually Gwen manages to win
the Publisher's Clearinghouse Sweepstakes so she gets to do "it" with Willard.
They do and somehow this makes the Yik Yak kingdom crumble. Beth, Gwen, and
Willard all escape and Willie even gets that retarded butterfly. Somehow this
movie managed to make half-naked pony-girls boring, a feat I don't think I'll
ever fathom. I think the music in this movie deserves some mention. It was
this generic synthesizer music like you would hear in Bladerunner or something.
The only thing though besides the music (horribly out of place in an old time
cliffhanger-adventure film) that this movie had in common with Bladerunner is
that Tawny Kitaen's acting, line reading, and vacant facial expressions all
reminded me of a replicant. Other than some boobies, this had absolutely
nothing going for it. The villains were all either ill-defined in motivation or
just plain cardboard cut outs you would have expected to see in one those Flash
Gordon serials from the 1930s (but not the one starring Sam Jones, of course!).
Likewise, the sets looked cheap and flimsy, as if they were a holdover
from fifty years ago, too. When you get down to it, the movie is mush at its
center as well. The whole point of these adventures and risks is because they
are looking for a butterfly. No one else is looking for it. It doesn't matter
to anyone whether they ever find it or not. I mean this isn't the Holy Grail
or the Lost Ark we're in search of. This was such a stupid adventure that even
the Nazis wouldn't sign up for it. Unfortunately, I did.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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