The Perils Of Gwendoline In The Land Of The Yik Yak

It's no secret that I love bad cinema. These aren't even guilty pleasures, I just really get a kick out of watching bad movies. One of my favorites is 1984's The Perils of Gwendoline In The Land Of The Yik Yak.You've got to love that title.

Director Just Jaeckin, the creator of the Emmanuelle series, had the inspiration to do a soft core adventure film, in the mode of Indiana Jones. His inspiration came from an adult themed comic strip series from the 1940's about a sexy female adventurer named Gwendoline.

Gwendoline, Tawny Kitaen, is on a quest to honor her late scientist father. She is searching for a rare butterfly that eluded her dad throughout his life. Aided by a not to bright soldier of fortune named Willard, Brent Huff, and her maid, Zabou, the three discover an underground, all female society known as the Yik Yak. The Queen of the Yik Yak, Bernadette Lafont, imprisons the three with plans of having Willard mate with their strongest warrior before they kill him. It's up to Gwendoline to save the day.

This movie is so bad, but also so much fun. The three leads are actually pretty good in a b movie way. I think they knew that they were in a pretty bad production and were just going with the flow. Kitaen was fresh off her starring role in Bachelor Party and was still a couple of years away from being the girl from the Whitesnake videos. Sam J. Jones from Flash Gordon auditioned for the role of Willard before it went to Huff. There's a great A&E Biography on Kitaen where her and Huff talk about the making of this movie and how bad it was.

There are so many things laughably wrong with this. The film was shot in France, and horribly dubbed in English. The movie uses any excuses to get the female stars naked. One scene has Huff telling the girls to take their tops off to soak up rainwater that they can drink it later. Can't argue with that logic.

I get such a kick out of this movie. It's entertainingly bad, with emphasis on entertaining.

It's on dvd.