What we got here is a Robert Lippert production from 1947 called Queen of the Amazons, and it being a Lippert production, I assumed it would contain super-imposed shots of iguanas passed off as dinosaurs and an erupting volcano. I guess 1947 was a little early for these treats, because although they became de rigueur in Lippert's 1950s output, Queen of the Amazons doesn't feature either of them, though it does contain plenty of stock footage of natives and various African animals.

The low-grade Sheena plot pretty much writes itself. It's the old story of a white woman (or in this case, a tribe of white women) who live in the jungles of Africa and are worshiped like vengeful goddesses. An expedition of other white people eventually finds them, and then there's a small shoot out with a fat guy over some ivory smuggling, and that's about that.

The best part of this film is probably the confrontation between the titular Queen of the Amazons, who speaks like a Ukrainian immigrant for some reason, and the woman who mounts an expedition in search of her fiance, who disappeared during a previous expedition and later turns up as having become more or less de facto king of the Amazons, since even in the jungle, a tribe of women are waiting for a white guy to boss them around. The queen insists that the guy loves her and wants to leave his fiance, and if the fiance stands in the way, the queen will kill her. The fiance's response to this, after having just given some other guy a speech about how her fiance is the only man in the whole world she could ever imagine loving, is just to shrug and say, "Well, okay. No reason we can't be friends. I'm gonna go get that other guy." And then she gets with the guy she gave that speech to.

This is a great movie for anyone who likes stock footage of natives or lengthy scenes of people walking through fake jungles or sitting around in fake jungles. Also, if you like to watch dull monkey antics, you're in luck. I didn't think monkey antics could ever be dull, but this movie proved me wrong.

Labels: Set: Sci-Fi Classics