Silicone boobs and brass bras

Film director Terence Young (1915-1994) had an undistinguished career in the 1950s British cinema, but fell in with the original perpetrators of the James Bond franchise and soared to international prominence in the 60s. There’s no question that his three most famous pictures will always be Dr. No (1962), From Russia With Love (1963) and Thunderball (1965). Perhaps a falling out with Cubby Broccoli and/or Harry Saltzman, the double-ohs of 007, secured his rather curious fall from Bond: the all-star drug smuggling mediocrity The Poppy is Also a Flower (1966); hitting pay dirt with Audrey Hepburn and Alan Arkin in Wait Until Dark (1967); blundering into David Lean territory with the interminable Mayerling (1968); the nearly surreal Red Sun (1971), samurai Toshirô Mifune saddling up in the Old West with Alain Delon, Charles Bronson, Ursula Andress and Capucine — I shit you not; again with Bronson for The Valachi Papers (1972), when the star was on his commercial roll; from the age of Mandingo, Young braved the southern fried KKK exposé The Klansman (1974), with Lee Marvin, Richard Burton, Cameron Mitchell… and O.J. Simpson “as Garth”; reunited with Audrey Hepburn for Bloodline (1979), streamlined kitsch via Sidney Sheldon; directing the first and only picture produced by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, Inchon (1981), a famous disaster, impeccably cast; and the dry espionage of The Jigsaw Man (1984), Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine and the anti-Sleuth.

    Therefore, in the center of this mishegas, it should come as no surprise to find War Goddess (1973), one of the more fascinating deviations of its time. A throwback to those sweaty, wretchedly dubbed Italian sword-and-sandal/peplum epics from a decade earlier, it takes place in an all-female city of Amazon warriors — the insignia on their flag looks like the Bat Signal — who live under enforced lesbianism save for the one day of the year when the male Greek army piles in to knock ‘em up and propagate the race.

    Its color has faded, the image muted from age, the dubbing sucks, and the version that’s on DVD and Netflix streaming is a full-frame affair, the scope and breadth of some shots now the property of one’s imagination. Still, War Goddess is amazing on so many foul levels, its dialog teetering on What’s Up, Tiger Lily?-style witticisms (“Have you tried Oriental concentration?” “Only on Orientals!”), and an adventure that snakes into enough truly bizarre territories that I wouldn’t be surprised if Herman Mankiewicz wrote it over one feverish night it in the throes of a drunken tear. It’s that good… and bad.

    But the presence of Young’s name in the credits (indeed, it’s on the screen as Terence Young’s War Goddess) serves to underline the tumble from past glories. This is, after all, the guy who made From Russia With Love: what happened? Despite a cast of literally, well, a thousand, mounted and robed and on horseback, and battle scenes that may have impressed on the big screen, War Goddess carries the stink of Poverty Row by way of Cinecittà.

    Young borrows from his famous catfight scene in From Russia With Love, two healthy specimens engaged in nude knock-down, drag-out hot oil rasslin’ that reverberates with the 1950s S/M cheesecake of Irving Klaw. And there’s enough nudity to suggest this is a truncated version minus whatever soft core porn transpired between the statuesque Amazon Queen and the wisecracking King of Greece, a sword-wielding stand-up comic with no shortage of comebacks. No matter how dire the production, there’s never a dull moment.

Netflix streaming