• Reviews

• All
• Music
• DVDs
• Live
• Cinema
• TV
• Books
• Comic Books
• Video Games

Apr 22, 2019 Web Exclusive By Austin Trunick

After accidentally collapsing a cave on her parents while a toddler on a family trip to remote Africa, young Janet is adopted by the nearby Zambouli tribe and raised as their own. Prophecy has foretold that a white child would come to them and become the eventual savior of their lands, protecting them from villains who would try to take their sacred grounds away from the tribe. They re-christen her “Sheena,” and teach her how to psychically communicate with animals.

Sheena grows to adulthood before the prophecy’s second shoe drops. The villains foretold arrive in the form of the Zambouli king’s evil brother, who happens to be the NFL’s most-celebrated place kicker. He assassinates the king, and then pins the murder on the Zambouli priestess who was Sheena’s adoptive mother. It’s now up to Sheena and a suave ESPN reporter (Blossom’s Ted Wass) to clear her name and stop the bad guys from strip-mining their tribe’s sacred mountains.

From the moment adult Sheena (Tanya Roberts of Charlie’s Angels) rides onto screen on a horse painted up to look like a zebra and wearing a two-piece leather bikini, you know you’re in for a goofy treat. Nominated for 1984’s Worst Picture Razzie and losing to arguably the decade’s most Razzie-deserving feature—Bo Derek’s Bolero—Sheena will be greatly appreciated by any fan of big-budget studio b-movies.

In most cases, movies become b-movies when lacking a budget to match their ambitions, or through off- or on-camera incompetence. Sheena is so entertainingly watchable because neither of those cases are true here. Sheena was made by Columbia Pictures, and so had the financial backing to set its production values apart from a film by a more shallow-pocketed studio like Cannon or Empire. Its director, John Guillermin, was a four-decade veteran whose career included semi-recent blockbusters like The Towering Inferno (1974) and the King Kong remake (1976.) Italian cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis had won an Oscar for Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet (1968) and been a collaborator of Visconti, Fellini, De Sica and Bresson. Even the movie’s two stars make the most from the material they’re given. Sheena’s biggest stumbling block may be that its core ideas look as absurd on-screen as they sound on paper. Repeatedly watching Sheena bring her hand to her forehead to magically summon elephants, lions, or other African wildlife never stops eliciting laughs. Still, it’s a wonder that someone attempted this film, given the remote shooting locations (which look incredible) and the plentiful use of real animals in scenes that no doubt made the production exponentially more difficult. Everyone involved should be applauded for even trying.

Somehow Sheena escaped the MPAA with only a PG rating despite a not insignificant amount of female nudity. The filmmakers had desired to make a family-friendly adventure film and create a superhero character for young girls to look up to, yet cast Playboy’s Miss October 1982 and shoot her as if they were filming late-night Cinemax programming. This weird dichotomy certainly contributes to Sheena’s cult appeal.

Mill Creek’s Blu-ray edition has a strong picture and fun, VHS-themed packaging. There are no extra features, which is too bad: the full story behind Sheena, if and when it’s eventually told, will no doubt be fascinating.

(www.millcreekent.com/sheena-retro-vhs-look-blu-ray.html)