The 14 Amazons ( 1972 )
Better late than never? This was suppose to have been watched last week in honor of wrapping up the Wonder Woman films. The 14 Amazons is a film that should have a higher profile than it currently has. And not just remembered as the film where the good guys build a human bridge to cross a chasm. An epic production with some of the best writing and acting of any 70s martial arts film. The Yang family has for generations fought for the empire. The film opens with the entire Yang army wiped out in a battle with an invading kingdom, leaving behind just the women of the Yang family and the single surviving male child who was too young to join his father in battle. The Yang matriarch wants revenge, but the Emperor's advisor has talked him into allowing the neighboring kingdom to keep the land they sized rather than send the reserve army in to retake it. Determined to kill the invading king for revenge, the women of the Yang family decide to raise their own army of volunteers and all act as the generals in a direct attack against the invading kingdom. Hopelessly outnumbered, they come up with a plan to sneak into the kingdom from the back and attack the king's stronghold directly.
The Erotic Adventures of Zorro ( a.k.a. The Sexcapades of Don Diego ( 1972 )
Another film I meant to watch prior to this weekend. One of the rules I have with collecting live act superhero films is that porn doesn't count. For one thing thousands of porn parody of superheroes are probably out there. Another, no reliable list of every American pornographic film exists, so I have no idea how many exist. And I would rather not have a collection that is 90% shot on video movies where the thin plot is some naked guy in a cape walks into a room and f#@ks some villainess who offers him sex if he doesn't arrested her. So why is this in my collection? Unfortunately, it isn't entirely porn.
So called softcore porn managed to earn no worse than an R rating due to not actually showing penetration and avoiding showing male genitalia. ( Showing vaginas was still okay as long as it was covered by bush. ) To further distance themselves from a dreaded X rating, some sort of plot was introduced that dominated 80% of the running time. This movie was a combo of soft porn and Mel Brooks style comedy, so avoided the X rating. Although it was promoted as "the first film to be Rated Z", a rating the film makers completely made up. Eventually films like Deep Throat ( also 1972 ) began to blur the lines between hardcore and softcore porn, and the MPAA began getting much stricter with their ratings. This killed off the softcore genre. If you are going to get the X rating no matter what, then you may as well go hardcore so porn theaters would be more likely to book it. Softcore would eventually reemerge in the art film genre. The Erotic Adventures of Zorro was among the last of the original wave of softcore porn.
Since this film is technically a comedy then it sadly counts as a mainstream superhero film. And since I was collecting all the American Zorro films released on DVD or Blu-ray, would need to collect this as well. My original plan was to watch it as a double feature with Zorro: The Gay Blade and get rid of both comedies the same weekend. ( Also, because the writers of ZTGB have been accused of stealing material from this film. ) But there was a seller who said he had it in stock, but didn't really, which wasted a month of my time. Then I reordered it on Cyber Monday and Amazon took two months to deliver it. I would have rather ended watch the Zorro films with the superior Fairbanks silents. Instead I am ending on this.
So let's get to it.
PLOT: similar to all the past Zorro films. Only this time Don Diego becomes Zorro mostly to rescue sex slaves. Remove the sex scenes and comedy, then you have a decent low budget Zorro film with bad acting.
COMEDY: didn't laugh at a single thing. Didn't even smirk. It was definitely in the same style of a Mel Brooks comedy, but made well before his huge hits. At least the comedy wasn't horrible. Example of this films comedy: Zorro carves his Z in the rear end of the general who he was fighting. He then looks at the camera and says: "This Zorro is getting to be a pain in my ass."
PORN: I didn't find anything arousing, so a failure on that front as well. Of course, it doesn't help that the first sex scene is five minutes of a peasant girl getting raped shortly after her father is shot to death for not paying his taxes. But the sex scenes are simply not well done. Even a scene where two women have sex didn't do anything for me. One could probably argue that it was a bad idea to mix softcore porn with comedy, but the movie Sirens successful pulled it off. Plus, I can think of dozens of comedies with scenes that gave me erections.
ACTION SCENES: surprisingly good..... for the early 70s. The sword fighting was actually decently choreographed.
Overall, not really a bad film, just very dull whenever the characters stopped to strip and have sex for 5 to 10 minutes.
Like I said, this concludes the Zorro films. Two more exist, both television pilot films. But neither was released on home video. There are also a hell of a lot of foreign made Zorro films, but since I am only collecting American superhero made films, I am not going to worry about unsanctioned foreign Zorro films.
Topic: What was the last movie you watched? (Read 1788453 times)
