Gwendoline (1984) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Tuna's notes

Gwendoline is a cult masterpiece by Just Jaeckin, who also brought us Emmanuelle. It is based on an adult comic strip called The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline, which was created by John Coutts and appeared in Bizarre magazine between 1948 and 1959. Think "Perils of Pauline," but with a large helping of bondage fetishism. The film was widely released, and played in the US as The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak. It was once available in the USA on video tape, but those copies have become collectable, and the only DVD is an Italian one for Region 2, which offers either French dialogue with Italian sub-titles, or dubbed Italian dialogue. I had previously worn out two VHS copies of the film, and therefore wasn't bothered by the language problem on this DVD because I knew it by heart.

Gwendoline's father has gone missing while searching for a rumored rare black butterfly in the The Land of the Yik Yak, somewhere in China. She hears that her father has died, but hopes to discover the butterfly herself, and name it after him, so Gwendoline (Tawny Kitaen) and her maid (Zabou) ship themselves to China in a packing crate. While the maid is out stealing food, Gwendoline is discovered by criminals, and sold to a whorehouse owner. That facilitates her meeting with Williard (Brent Huff), a daring adventurer she will eventually bribe into helping her.

Thus begins my favorite sequence of scenes in the film. Rather than Willard, we see his grappling hook enter the room where Gwendoline is being held captive, right into the neck of the head bad guy.

In the ensuing melee, Williard throws a really nasty sword and skewers another bad guy.

He makes short work of a ninja with nunchucks, then takes the money he came for, cuts Gwendoline loose, and leaves. The crooks who kidnapped Gwendoline in the first place finally return, but they assume she has murdered everyone, so they flee in terror. Gwendoline and her maid next encounter Willard gambling. He fights over her with a police chief, and all three are jailed. Then comes the choicest bit of violence ever filmed. Williard roughly grabs her and kisses her, expecting her to scream, but she just wants more, so he has to slaps her ass roughly. The guard comes running, and Williard grabs his hair, pulling his head through the bars, and leaving his ears stuck to the bars.

Gwendoline and her maid hide on Willard's boat. After throwing them into the water a couple of times, he takes them with him on a smuggling mission and an encounter with river pirates. Finally, Gwedoline bribes him to take them to Yik Yak. Along the way, they encounter many difficulties, but eventually find that the storied Yik Yak is an underground world run entirely by women in bondage outfits.

All three must fight constantly to survive. The film builds to a formal battle in which the most eligible women, including Gwendoline, battle to the death for the right to screw Willard and then kill him. After defeating the other women, Gwendoline is nervous about losing her virginity, but her maid points out that, after killing other women in hand-to-hand combat, screwing is easy.

Scoop's notes

Gwendoline's storyline and dialogue can be fun as well, so I have no quarrel with Tuna's affection for this film. The script even includes one of the greatest lines of all time: "It's raining, take your clothes off." In fairness, however, we might point out a few flaws:

1. The acting is just dreadful. Jaecklin seemed to ignore acting in most of his movies. He liked the kind of leading lady who seemed like a childish and nearly mindless bimbo, someone who could feign wide-eyed innocence and seem younger than her years. His favorite leading lady was Sylvia Kristel, who was actually reputed to be exceptionally brilliant and sophisticated, but whose screen persona seemed especially dense and immature. Kristel was too old to be playing the virginal naïf in this film, but if Jaecklin was looking around for an American actress who was as much like Sylvia Kristel as possible, he hit the jackpot in Tawny Kitaen. Kitaen's line readings were a bit rough around the edges, but she seemed like Helen Hayes compared to Brent Huff, who was in his first major movie role - and it showed. He was 23 when he made this film, and he was just too young and immature to be playing the crusty world-weary adventurer ala Indiana Jones. He read his lines like, and generally seemed like, a high school kid - albeit a very handsome and buff one. Kitaen eventually became a self-parody and was not able to sustain a real acting career, but Huff did manage to hang in there, and still works regularly, now usually typecast as an authority figure. His characters often have a military rank or titles like "agent," and "officer." He almost always works in films you never heard of, but he does work! It actually took him quite a while to establish his B-list career. Immediately after Gwendoline, the best he could come up with was Nine Deaths of the Ninja, a film rated a sterling 1.6 at IMDb. His "sorted by rating" list at IMDb looks like this:

1. (6.38) - Girls' Night (1998)
2. (5.09) - Falling from Grace (1992)
3. (4.86) - Oblivion 2: Backlash (1996)
4. (4.72) - Hollywood Confidential (1997) (TV)
5. (4.59) - I Spy Returns (1994) (TV)
6. (4.48) - Beautiful (2000)
7. (4.37) - Dead Tides (1997)
8. (4.22) - More Mercy (2003) (V)
9. (4.16) - Gwendoline (1984)
10. (4.15) - Hitman's Run (1999)
11. (4.12) - Coach (1978)
12. (4.03) - Armed Response (1986)
13. (3.96) - Hijack (1999)
14. (3.89) - Scorpio One (1997)
15. (3.82) - The Bad Pack (1998)
16. (3.55) - Hot Boyz (1999)
17. (3.35) - Submerged (2000)
18. (3.33) - Final Examination (2003) (V)
19. (2.99) - Glass Trap (2005)
20. (1.97) - Nine Deaths of the Ninja (1985)

As you can see, he had no rated films between 1986 and 1992, by which time he was 31 and, I suppose, had grown into his "Agent Taylor" roles.

2. There is virtually no nudity in the first 42 minutes of Gwendoline, and there is absolutely none from the stars during that period. That's a long time to wait for the two leading ladies to get out of their shirts because of the rain. To be balanced, however, one must note that the last 40 minutes, the portion in the land of the Yik-Yak, presents virtually wall-to-wall breasts, and thong-clad bums, and that includes Kitaen and Zabou as well as the evil queen's anonymous henchwomen and minions.