Sheena
Sheena: Queen of the Jungle

Hot off her breakout supporting turn in 1982's The Beastmaster, in which her skimpy costume wasn't enough to cover her limited acting abilities, former Charlie's Angel Tanya Roberts stars in this goofy but impressively rendered jungle adventure based on the 1940s Sheena, Queen of the Jungle comic strips. Set in the fictional African nation of Tigora, the film tells the tale of a little American girl who tragically loses her geologist parents to a cave-in but is rescued and adopted by the female shaman of the primitive Zambuli tribe. Under the tutelage of her adopted mother (played by Ugandan Bantu princess and fashion model Elizabeth of Tooro), Sheena, like all of cinema's impossibly gorgeous white saviors, grows up to be the long-prophesized protector of the local natives. Sheena can shoot arrows with amazing accuracy, talk to animals telepathically to convince them to do the darnedest things, and sport an impressive figure while showering naked under a pounding waterfall. She beguiles a visiting American reporter named Vic Casey (Ted Wass), who has come to Tigora to do a story on his friend Prince Otwani (Trevor Thomas), an ex-football champion who is conspiring with his brother's fiancée, Countess Zanda (France Zobda), to have the king assassinated so they can exploit the titanium-rich Zambouli land.

Visually, Roberts is perfect for the title role. Her flowing mane of golden hair, ice blue eyes, and impossibly toned and tanned physique look amazing whether she's galloping across the vast open African plains on her zebra, swinging across the jungle Tarzan-style on a vein, gazing intensely at something she does not yet understand, aiming an arrow from a giant bow, or bathing naked in a river. Unfortunately, as an actress, she really falls short. Sitcom star Ted Wass (Soap, Blossom), who had just failed to make his big leap to the big screen as Peter Sellars' replacement in Blake Edwards' Curse of the Pink Panther, comes across like a master thespian in comparison. His cameraman sidekick, Fletch Agronsky (Donovan Scott, who played the overweight cadet Leslie Barbara earlier the same year in Police Academy), isn't the most tedious comic relief but doesn't provide much levity to the proceedings.

The screenplay was penned by no less than David Newman, co-writer of Bonnie And Clyde, What's Up Doc? and Superman, and Lorenzo Semple Jr., co-writer of The Parallax View, Three Days Of The Condor, Flash Gordon, and Never Say Never Again. At the helm is British director John Guillermin, who made Tarzan's Greatest Adventure, The Towering Inferno, Dino De Laurentiis's King Kong, and one of the better all-star Agatha Christine adaptations, Death On The Nile. The breathtaking beauty of the African locations is captured in glorious cinemascope by Oscar-winning Italian cinematographer Pasqualino De Santis, who had previously shot films for the likes of Luchino Visconti, Federico Fellini, Vittorio De Sica, Robert Bresson, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz. The end credits imply that 100 percent of this movie was shot in Kenya, which I can believe. For a silly fantasy movie, Sheena feels grounded in a real place. As with Death On The Nile, it seems like Guillermin even shot his interiors on location. It is also pretty spectacular to watch the actors interacting with the real animals (well-trained ones flown in from Hollywood), sometimes appearing together in beautifully composed and well-edited sequences where they're all facing off against helicopters and giant armored trucks. Watching the movie 40 years after it was made makes one lament how much we lost when real, honest-to-goodness production values like these were abandoned in favor of generic CGI.

Critics of the day savaged Sheena, and you can't really blame them for not being able to see past the sub-par writing and the atrocious acting on the part of a lead actor who feels cast strictly for her sex appeal. Even the reliable horndog Roger Ebert lambasted the picture for being rated PG (which is rather astounding considering that the PG-13 rating was now available). Ebert called Sheena "the only PG-rated movie that will play continuously on the Playboy Channel." The typically less snarky critic Leonard Maltin quipped, "Mother Nature forgot to endow Tanya with a script." But Pauline Kael found nice things to say, calling Sheena a "lighthearted, slightly loony adventure film." All three critics are correct. This is a crazy production that feels like an intentionally goofy excuse to see the star of The Beastmaster doing more of what she did best in that movie. But it's also nicely paced (cut by 2001 editor Ray Lovejoy), gorgeous to look at (not just for Roberts' figure and all the lovely nature shots, but because the widescreen compositions are so well designed), has a catchy, shameless-Vangelis-rip-off score by Richard Hartley, and is pretty darn fun.