Return of the Ghost of the Son of the 31 Days of Cheese - Day 7 - Sheena

To make a truly memorable bad film – you need more than lack of skill, budget and acting ability, one needs a special something – something to pull yourself away from standard and boring hackwork like Jesse James meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, you need something else – a special touch like individual vision of Ed Wood or Harold P. Warren the director writer and producer of Manos the hands of fate or have the picture mean something about something.

Case in point is today’s 1984 Sheena the Queen of the Jungle – in addition to offering Tanya Roberts to us naked a couple of times, or riding a zebra (actually a horse painted like a zebra – Zebras are rather stocky and bad tempered and not easily domesticated) while her breast bob up and down in slow motion while chariots of fire sort of synthesizer sounds wash in the background, this picture is earnestly about something.

However I am not sure exactly what it is, at best a sort of early leave nature and those who live in harmony with it alone message but it’s not clear, not really.

Sheena the title character is the daughter of two scientists who visit the Zambuli tribe and as the want of these films; they die in a rather unpleasant manner (a cave in this case). The Tribes Shaman picks up little Sheena and says the prophecy has come true the mountain has given birth to a blond girl (Sheena was hanging about the cave entrance with the bad news went down) who will be the tribes defender in the days to come.  There is shouting and then a montage where Sheena learns the secrets of the jungle and the veldt and the ability to summon Animals a. la Aqua man summoning fish by putting her fist to her forehead and shutting her eyes – its’ dumb even by the prevailing standards of dumb.

As Sheena matures all is not well in the kingdom – his brother who is apparently a kicker for a professional football team – the Cougars – who has recently kicked a 68 yard field goal and is now the talk of the NFL or whatever to the point where  a camera crew has been invited over to cove some royal function or whatever with him as the guest of honor – and boys and girls not even Adam Vinatieri  was that lauded – even with him kicking the winning super bowl  field goal Brady got the MVP for getting him close enough to do that – it’s a weird conceit of the movie but it gets weirder as it goes on.

As noted the Brother is a place kicker and not happy with his place in the world – he wants his bothers’ job and his bothers fiancé (play with scenery chewing gusto by France Zobda who’s pretty much as rotten as he is.

And it seems the Zambulli’s sacred mountain is mostly made of titanium – which the bother wants.

Tossed into the mix are sports reporter Vic Casey and his new york chubby comic relief guy cameraman. As they cover the dinner the king is killed and Sheena’s shaman guardian is framed for the crime –

The meeting between VC and Sheena takes place with Sheena along with an elephant, her aforementioned zebra and two chimps break the shaman out jail. This violent action, things blowing up, elephant kicking things over and the like has as background music the same gentle almost new age synth wash and violins as the opening credits. Sheena’s rescue alas is not really in time to save the Shaman’s life. It is her time she says and dies.

VC and camera man who have accidently shot footage proving that the king was not killed by the shaman take off into the jungle after her, pursued by the Brother now king, the dragon lady fiancé, a band of mostly white mercenaries led by a very very white looking guy with white hair (I suspect this was done to leaven the racial balance between the good guys and the bad guys to a more acceptable ratio. I could of course be way off base as well.)

Anyway VC and comic relief run into Sheena who has just buried the Shaman – there is one of many skirmishes with the Brother and the band of merchs – followed by The comic relief leaving the picture to the relief of many and VC and Sheena off into the jungle followed by The Brother and the rest.

There is a moment where Sheena is naked bathing much to VC’s discomfort (a bit of the message about the purity of nature here I think) who of course can’t admit how much he wants Sheena – still later we have the standard embarrassing what is kiss scene – really the girl’s been living in the jungle and the veldt and nature since she was 6 or so – she knows damn well what sex is and about or realistically should.

The film has VC and Sheena getting to know each other  - with Sheena’s dialogue either showing her deep connection to nature or that she is very stoned, while avoiding the bother the evil queen and the merchs.  They bond but are captured by the means of shooting animals – which are Sheena’s charges from helicopter – VC makes a deal trading Sheena’s life for a the tape showing the King's Killing – this is after a pointless rant by VC at the bother about how all the fame all the glory wasn’t enough – again we had a heavy message moment but dude he’s a place kicker – of course VC is to be killed once they get the tape.

Meantime it seems brother is rather taken with Sheena  much to the annoyance of the evil queen who the instant she can takes off with Sheena in a helicopter to push her out form a great height in front of her people – Sheena summons a flock of flamingos – who swarm the helicopter , evil queen ends up flying out of the chopper suffering the fate she had in mind for Sheena and the copter crashes – taking we don’t know how many flamingos along with them – Sheena seems a bit too willing to toss her animal friends under the bus when her own life is at stake.

After this is the final confrontation – which ends up killing everybody bad and almost killing VC who is then cured by the healing earth the muggfin that started the film. VC realizes that if he lets the world know about Sheena it will destroy her and her land (again the message) so they end up parting  (he does not say ‘the problems of two small people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world’ but oh does want to.) So he leaves to show his love – not without an exchange of body fluids and more clunky dialogue.

It is – as hoot worth a lot of this is – a rather sweet film at its heart so you can’t really get too angry at its horse painted as zebra attempts to be meaningful

Enjoy with a salad or Locust Bean Cakes.