reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (02/02/85)
I'll bet that, after successively reviewing such prestige
films as "The Cotton Club", "Birdy", "Maria's Lovers", and
"1984", some of you out there think that I am a cinematic eli-
tist, that I only go to high quality films with lots of artistic
credentials. Ha! In truth, I spend just as much, if not more,
time wallowing in the cinematic garbage which weekly washes into
the theaters of LA. I have pretty much given up on mad slasher
films, and have about had it with raunchy, stupid teenage sex
comedies about a bunch of horny high school boys trying to get
laid. But I'm still on hand for every cheap adventure film,
every stupid SF/fantasy film ineptly trying to hide its low budg-
et Italian origins, most nasty revenge dramas (usually starring
Charles Bronson), and even the occasional martial arts picture
that sneaks out of the downtown cinemas which specialize in tri-
ple features and giving drunks a place to sleep it off. (If I
lived closer to the downtown LA area, no doubt I'd be there in
those theaters, practising my best "don't tread on me, I'm prob-
ably crazy" look to scare off the real loonies. I'm a sucker for
a triple feature.) Most of these films suck, to put it in the
most accurate terms, but that doesn't stop me from searching for
the proverbial pony which must be in there somewhere.
Which brings us to "The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of
the Yik Yak". This film has more title than anything else (well,
almost anything: there are an awful lot of mammary glands on
display), but the title is not particularly good. Little enough
in the film is any good. Based on a comic strip of the Fifties,
"The Perils ..." chronicles the adventures of a naive young woman
searching for her father in an unnamed part of the Orient, ap-
parently during the 1930s. She and her faithful friend trick a
smuggler into guiding them into the perilous Yik Yak, where
Gwendoline's father headed in search of a rare butterfly. With
beautiful women and rugged men trekking through exotic locales,
can a hidden civilization be far away?
The formula is rather familiar, but there's still some juice
left in it. Lord knows this movie doesn't squeeze much of it
out. "The Perils..." doesn't have very much going for it. The
sets are pretty good. The photography switches back and forth
between postcard pretty and Playboy pretty. For the heterosexual
males and homosexual women, there's lots of beautiful female
flesh, particularly breasts, revealed, and the hero shows off
much of his body for the rest of the adult audience. The prepu-
bescent set should get a lot of embarrassed giggles out of these
scenes, in the event that misguided parents choose to bring them.
That's it for the good points.
Plenty of bad points: comic book plot construction, stupid
dialog, acting ranging from amateur to atrocious, silly costuming
largely based on bondage motifs, glacial pacing and editing, poor
direction, bad dubbing, and a few bits of utterly gratuitous gore
(I do not see the necessity of showing us a man's ears being
ripped off). Director Just Jaeckin deserves a heaping portion of
the blame, particularly since he also wrote the screenplay.
Jaeckin is best known for "Emmanuelle" and "The Story of O".
Soft core pornography is his forte, not adventure. The ability
to put together a decent action sequence is one of the more com-
mon directorial talents, but Jaeckin doesn't have it. There is
not a moment of real excitement in "The Perils of Gwendoline",
unless it's when heroine Tawny Kitaen is about to lose her
blouse.
Possibly Jaeckin was trying for spoof. Any laughs he gets,
though, are at him and his cast, not with them. Jaeckin has no
more idea how to convey camp than excitement. The script is
largely at fault here. Hero Brent Huff is particularly burdened
with bad lines. Perhaps a better part might have shown some iota
of talent in Huff, but I doubt it. His body and his face are his
only apparent assets.
"The Perils of Gwendoline" has been around for some time, it
seems, and has had some releases in other parts of the US last
year. Poor showings at those engagements are likely to be re-
peated in its current release. I can't recommend this film to
anyone. Those who are fond of seeing attractive young women un-
clothed will enjoy parts of this film, but they would get a much
better value out of an issue of Playboy, which might also have
some worthwhile stories and articles. "The Perils of Gwendoline"
has absolutely nothing for anyone else.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher