31 Days of Cheese Day 8 : The Viking Queen

Back in the 50’s and 60’s when Hammer Films wasn’t doing color re-makes of the classic Universal Horror films (Frankenstein, Dracula and the Mummy – some of which are quite good) they were doing some science fiction (Quatermass) and the odd costume drama. Like this one.

As a rule, the British have a respect for history, they can’t help it – everywhere they step things are hundreds if not thousands of years old. I’m always amused in a geeky way that The New Forest was planted by orders of William the Conquer in 1067. So that’s what makes this film so weird to watch.

Not quite as silly as some of the Italian Sword and Sandal epics with some muscle man (not just Steve Reeves) as Hercules it’s pretty silly anyway.

The story of this 1967 film is that of start crossed lovers – Justian the Roman governor of England (Britannia at the time) and Saliana the queen of Icena (?). And as is standard, events prevent them from being together . There are a lot of, well, pretty silly plot twists featuring evil merchants (are there any other kind) and ambitions Roman underlings (again do they come in any other flavors, no not really) and angry Druids. After oppression, torture, whippings and a revolt, there is a big battle and Saliana and just about everybody else in the cast other than the male lead is killed. It’s not an un-entertaining film (and loosely based on a historical event, the revolt of Queen Boadicea (AD 60-61)). It’s just there is a lot that makes you go whaaaaa?

First place there is the title – The Viking Queen. As this is about 60 AD – it was going to be another 650 years or more before the world even heard of the Vikings. These folks were Celts. The guess is it sounded better in the story conference. (“Seriously Ted, Celtic Queen makes me think of a gay Irishman. We need something else”. ).

And there are the cavorting Druids who worship Zeus. Huh? What? Zeus the Greek God? The actor playing the head druid yells Zeus a lot – very loudly while carrying a tree branch and a sickle – it’s fairly silly. While nobody really knows much about the druids who they were or what they believed. It’s doubtful that Zeus was a big part of their belief system. Or Stonehenge for that matter.

And the actress playing Saliana was a Norwegian model Carita (who of course looked smashing in her specially molded armor) who wisely decided not to do any more movies after this – as she’s not a very good actor and has a pretty noticeable Scandinavian accent. As in very noticeable.

And the climactic battle scene has a lot of people yelling and waiting to get run over by chariots – which is how I felt after watching this film. Run over by a chariot.

Enjoy with Lutefish.