This movie raises several important questions such as: What is going on? Why am I watching this? How do movies like this get made? The underlying theme is gender conflict and the overall feeling seems modeled after contemporary classics like Casino Royal.
Sounds interesting? Well, hear me out before you commit yourself. Most of the cast and the script seem lifted from an adjoining surfing movie set and displaced to various exotic locations to be filmed in random acts later strung together in search of a plot. Avalon makes a few random cameos and then becomes the main character in the last third of the film. And he's the class of the acting talent. Even as a comedy, this film fails - relying on chauvinism and tired stereotypes where satirical opportunities could have been exploited.
The basic concept of this film might have made it interesting had the script been written before the shooting began and had the female characters been permitted to have personalities.
The film was shot in Italy, China, and various other places, and has an "international" cast. At one point, I was starting to wonder whether the production team bothered with translators.
I just finished watching it in its MST3K treatment from the first season of MST3K, and I can not answer these questions any better than I could in the beginning. The movie seems to be about a secret society of women lead by Sumuru, who are gaining control of all of the major economies, military forces and political powers (through men of course). It is never made clear how and why this is happening.
Most of the action centers around the main male character - Nader - who has an amazing repertoire of bad one-liners and irritating pickup lines. This character is so poorly developed in the script and so horribly under-acted that I never particularly cared what happened to him, nor did I even attempt to understand why he offered no apparent resistance to Sumuru's demands. Add the improbability of Avalon teaming up with the Chinese secret service to rescue Nader from the clutches (and lips) of Sumuru's amazon army, and you've got the makings of ... well... I'll spare you the witticisms... ... a really bad film.
I was intrigued by the early appearance of the amazing Klaus Kinski, but his role though satisfactorily bizarre is barely a cameo. Considering the vast limitations of the material, the acting and cinematography are OK. This is one of the best season 1 MST3K episodes, as Joel and the bots are absolutely hilarious in their treatment of this film.
Sounds interesting? Well, hear me out before you commit yourself. Most of the cast and the script seem lifted from an adjoining surfing movie set and displaced to various exotic locations to be filmed in random acts later strung together in search of a plot. Avalon makes a few random cameos and then becomes the main character in the last third of the film. And he's the class of the acting talent. Even as a comedy, this film fails - relying on chauvinism and tired stereotypes where satirical opportunities could have been exploited.
The basic concept of this film might have made it interesting had the script been written before the shooting began and had the female characters been permitted to have personalities.
The film was shot in Italy, China, and various other places, and has an "international" cast. At one point, I was starting to wonder whether the production team bothered with translators.
I just finished watching it in its MST3K treatment from the first season of MST3K, and I can not answer these questions any better than I could in the beginning. The movie seems to be about a secret society of women lead by Sumuru, who are gaining control of all of the major economies, military forces and political powers (through men of course). It is never made clear how and why this is happening.
Most of the action centers around the main male character - Nader - who has an amazing repertoire of bad one-liners and irritating pickup lines. This character is so poorly developed in the script and so horribly under-acted that I never particularly cared what happened to him, nor did I even attempt to understand why he offered no apparent resistance to Sumuru's demands. Add the improbability of Avalon teaming up with the Chinese secret service to rescue Nader from the clutches (and lips) of Sumuru's amazon army, and you've got the makings of ... well... I'll spare you the witticisms... ... a really bad film.
I was intrigued by the early appearance of the amazing Klaus Kinski, but his role though satisfactorily bizarre is barely a cameo. Considering the vast limitations of the material, the acting and cinematography are OK. This is one of the best season 1 MST3K episodes, as Joel and the bots are absolutely hilarious in their treatment of this film.