Indonesian beauty Laura Gemser (Black Cobra Woman) stars as the oft-naked Emanuelle, Queen of the Desert. Except she doesn’t really play Emmanuelle as she has many a time, but rather a generic hussy going by the exotic name of Sheila. I understand the title switcheroo, as Sheila, Queen of the Desert sounds about as marketable as, say, Marcy, Ace Groundskeeper.
As the film’s story begins, Emanuelle Sheila is washing her breasts at a river when she’s approached by a scruffy guerilla soldier named Victor, who asks, “Have you ever screwed a guy you just met?”
She says, “Yes,” so he promptly jumps atop her. But she says if he wants “free pussy,” he has to work for it, so off she runs into the mountains. Victor angrily gives chase, eventually threatening to kill her with his knife if she doesn’t put out. Being crafty, she distracts him with her body so that Victor loses his footing and accidentally stabs himself in the gut as he rolls down the mountain to his death.
And that, ladies and gentleman, is how you get to be Queen of the Desert.
Soon, his buddies discover his blue-balled body and go looking for his murderer, although they’re already lost and don’t realize that the woman who’s just offered to be their guide is also responsible for his doom. Before long, she’s using her feminine wiles to get them to turn on one another.
What begins as sleazy fun then becomes a sleazy depressant, with rape, murder and gratuitous fruit-eating. The only thing more ludicrous than its claim that it was based on a novel is that … well, no, that covers it, really. —Rod Lott
In his directorial debut, Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA distills what’s so enjoyable about 1970s kung-fu films into one spectacular, outlandish romp — a greatest-hits collection of Black Belt Theater fare. In turn, story is secondary to the all-out circus of slaughter, if not incidental altogether. Revenge is the name of 
That’s far more setup than the film needs. With all the chess pieces in place — and they number many more — RZA delights in having them knock each other down with feet and fists of fury, and specially crafted weapons that make the 
On the scale of action heroes, a huge leeway is given for personal charisma. Talent hopefully plays a part, but personality carries the day. So, in the top tier, we find such charismatic ass-kickers as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood and Dwayne Johnson: men with widely varying degrees of acting skill, but there’s no denying they have the goods.
Hollywood set decorator Charles B. Pierce ventured into the directing/producing game with 
With a poetic lilt that sounds like he should be reciting Rod McKuen verse, Vern Stierman narrates the movie, driving what little story there is: that a monster from the Texarkana swamps roams free. Typical of his voice-over: “Excitement in the community reached a peak when a farmer named O.H. Kennedy discovered these strange, three-toed footsteps in Willie Smith’s bean field.”
Nine months later, John awakes from his coma and tries to piece together the tattered strands of his life — not an easy task when a sleeper-agent soldier in plumber disguise (UFC fighter Andrei Arlovski) is activated to kill you. (Their post-car-chase tussle in a sporting goods store proves a highlight.) Meanwhile, Deveraux leads an underground movement to “free” these soldiers of their government-implanted memories. That’s a rather dull-sounding subplot, which could be why Hyams has cooked it up in a weirdo marinade flavored with liberal scrubs of