"Hundra" - The (Female) Barbarian

[Andrew]

I finally broke out my DVD of "Hundra" and watched it.  Been meaning to see this flick for a long time and I have probably owned the DVD for over a year.  There is a new special edition coming out, so I wanted to give my present DVD (pan and scan - the quality is acceptable, but not what you would expect of a DVD) a view.

First off, why did I wait so long to watch this movie?  Hundra is a blonde barbarian woman, a warrior for a tribe of feminists that live in the snowy forests of her native land.  The entire tribe is female.  After the women reach child bearing age, they go into the world of men and make it until they are with child.  They then return to the tribe to give birth.  Girl babies are raised as part of the tribe, but boys are taken back to the lands of man-dominated kingdoms and given away.

One day, warriors from a realm that worships the bull find and pillage Hundra's village.  She is the only one who survives.  There are lots of scenes of women fighting, then being sliced open across the stomach or impaled while carrying a younger girl on their back.  The evil men appear to only rape one girl, who was Hundra's younger sister.  I guess they kill her afterwards, because she just disappears after we see the rape start.

If you did not notice, whoever wrote this script might hate men.  The view is so skewed as to be funny, but I do not think that the person who wrote it was joking.

Hundra does kick some serious butt when she meets up with the invaders (she was out on a scouting mission when the attack happened).  The warrior woman takes on a dozen or so men, killing some with her bow before finishing the rest with thrown daggers and her sword.  She then goes to visit the feminist version of Gandhi, who sits on a throne in a desert valley guarded by "Braveheart" midgets (Wow!) and appears to be constipated when she talks.  The old woman tells Hundra that she must get pregnant and save the tribe from extinction.  Hundra departs, but has to fight a mounted midget on her way out.

There are some well-trained animals in the movie.  Hundra's dog, whose name is Beast, can ride with her on the horse and leads the horse by its reins at times.  The horse is also interesting.  At one point, after the battle with the midget, I thought the horse was really hurt.  It is limping and staggering as she rides it into the ocean and later emerges totally healed.  Anyway, I watched that scene a few times and think that the horse was trained to act injured.  I am not certain that the stunt person riding the horse during the fall (during the midget fight) was not hurt - it looked like they got their leg trapped and could have been seriously injured.

Hundra finds a man of the bull-worshiping civilization to breed with.  He is a sexy dude, let me tell you.  If the script does not have him farting, then he is belching and trying to keep all of his food or drink in his mouth.  He starts to mount Hundra doggy-style, but hurts her (I think he bites her butt hard) and she beats him senseless.

After that failed attempt, Hundra enters a city, the hub of the bull-worshiping religion.  She is captured, trained as a sex slave for the next gathering of chieftains, but secretly falls in love with a doctor and has a baby by him.  In the end, Hundra fights for the freedom of all women against the gathered chieftains.  Lots of swelling "this is an epic battle" music ensues.  She chops them to pieces.  The high priest of the temple is killed when the female slaves hold him down and one concubine sits on his face until he smothers!

I have got to review this movie when the special edition DVD comes out.


EDIT:  Added (Female) to the subject line.

[Kester Pelagius]

I've always wanted to see Hundra.  Sadly, last I checked, there weren't any R1 releases of it, but that was ages ago.  Though, oddly enough, it does pop up on eBay with spotty regularity.

Where'd you get your DVD from?  Was it worth every penny, farthing, drachma, or whatever you paid for it?

[Mr_Vindictive]

Hundra is one that I've read about in the past and have wanted to see for a while.  I keep meaning to pick it up but seem to forget when I go on one of my video binges.  I'm gonna have to write this down.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I actually put this on my Amazon list after I read Andrews review.

Special Edition somes out Feb. 27.

[Andrew]

The DVD I have is a R1 and by AIP Productions.  It is of fair to medium quality.  The new special edition that is due out Feb 27 is from Subversive Cinema and is anamorphic widescreen - it looks like it should be much higher quality.  I already have it on preorder, because I intend to fast track a review once it comes out.

Here is the Amazon.com page:
Hundra SE

(That link does give me credit if you buy it.  If you'd rather give it to someone else, just click through to Amazon from that site and search for "Hundra" under DVD - it pops right up.)

[Kester Pelagius]

Went to the Subversive site to look for more information and found a wonderful teaser trailer.  If you haven't checked it out yet do.

Also check out my Blog.  I found a site with cover art.  A bit comic book cheezy but cheezy in a good way.

[Neville]

Whoever wrote this maybe hated men, true, but I don't think feminists will like it either. I saw this one a year ago, on a a bad quality VHS. It's very silly, but loads of fun. Hundra is hot, and the issue of sex war has never been reflected so hilariously. Well, there's "Tank Girl", but this one is earlier.

If it only had more nudity it would be an instant classic. And yes, the music was terrible. Didn't the composer know the film was tongue in cheek?

[Andrew]

If it only had more nudity it would be an instant classic. And yes, the music was terrible. Didn't the composer know the film was tongue in cheek?

I think that it having little nudity was strange, because of the type of movie it is, but the lack of nudity fits right in with the movie as a whole.  Adds to the overall experience, if you know what I mean.  "Faster p***ycat!  Kill!  Kill!" struck me in the same manner.

For some reason, I think that I read that the first 5000 copies of the new "Hundra" SE DVD will have a CD of the soundtrack.  Cannot remember where I saw that information, so I cannot confirm it.  It had to be on one of the DVD news sites.

[Neville]

What really struck me of this movie is how it mixes serious, even emotional moments (the beginning, the ending) with tongue in cheek scenes, like the gender wars stuff or the chase scene around the city. It's one of those B-movie moments, you can't tell if the filmmakers were actually good at what they were doing or just plain lucky.

[peter johnson]

Re.  Stunt Animals --
I have not seen this, but am certain that Andrew is bang-on re. the horse trained to appear injured.
Out here in Colorado there are a number of farms/ranches that produce animals of all kinds -- Tigers, Emus, Wolves, etc. -- and not just horses for action films. 
What you probably have here is called a "Falling Horse", even though this one is appearing to limp and not particularly falling.  Horses are trained to fall at a canter -- looks like they've been shot or hit by cannon fire, etc. -- with the cuts making it look as if they were going much faster, or they can fall in place -- Mongo punching the horse in "Blazing Saddles" is the best single example of this -- or they can feign injury -- Many of the horses used in the Lord of the Rings were "Falling Horses" from New Zealand farms.
In all, a very highly specialized and fascinating sub-genre of film effects.
peter whinny/denny sugar-cubes

[Torgo]

Cool beans!  I'll have to pick this up.  Hundra is a fun little B movie that I haven't seen in a while.

[Just Plain Horse]

Sounds like it belongs in the "slantedcinima" category (when someone makes a movie in an attempt to put a viewpoint across that may be a little um... unbbalanced?). I'm sure there's plenty of unintentional comedy gold in it though...

[Andrew]

What really struck me of this movie is how it mixes serious, even emotional moments (the beginning, the ending) with tongue in cheek scenes, like the gender wars stuff or the chase scene around the city. It's one of those B-movie moments, you can't tell if the filmmakers were actually good at what they were doing or just plain lucky.

You mean the end, where they try to say that the only reason women were finally granted the right to vote and become equal members of society was that Hundra was successful in her quest to restore her tribe?  As if Susan B. Anthony and other pioneering women have Hundra's genes running through their veins.

[Andrew]

I finally received the new widescreen DVD from Subversive Cinema.  The quality of this release is heads and tails above the older one.  It is an amazing difference.  I did not note any extra footage, but there are a number of extras (including a soundtrack CD). 

I've started working on a review.  It is time that people learned of the conquests of Hundra!

[Shadow]

Just got mine, too. Gonna give it a look this weekend. The soundtrack CD was an unexpected bonus, though the comic book was a little phony.