Way back in the days before the World Wide Web and the plethora of porn we enjoy today, people who enjoyed the spectacle of a gorgeous woman bound and tortured had to scrounge through the mainstream media for thrills. The onset of VHS tapes and Video stores certainly helped, and that is how I first stumbled on the now classic BARBARIAN QUEEN.
This sword and sandal adventure certainly wasn’t Academy Award material. B grade would be accurate, and some would say generous. But it did have two redeeming features. Namely the beautiful young Lana Clarkson as the lead, and more significantly the gorgeous Lana in what was for the time a breathtakingly erotic torture sequence with her stripped to her panties, racked, and breast tortured. Also stripped completely naked and sexually assaulted on said rack, if you could find an uncut version (I had to wait decades for that pleasure).
Sadly Lana is no longer with us (fuck you, Phil Spector) but on this 40th anniversary of a memorable outing please share your memories, stories, and tributes to a movie that gave dark and erotic pleasure so many.
Darthsaad wrote: ↑Wed Jun 11, 2025 3:07 am...
HAIL TO THE QUEEN!
IMG_5851.jpeg
IMG_5848.jpeg
Yes! Those sequences in the torture chamber highlighted many nights.
And as foreshadowing, after she bit Arrakur's face and she's kneeling helpless, and Arrakur says "You know where to take her!"
Schwing!
They cast really well, Lana as Amathea. Strong bodied without being overly muscular, very pretty, and great portrayal of defiance in the torture chamber...
Ralphus wrote: ↑Sun Jun 15, 2025 7:03 pmA true modern-day GIMP classic! Don't forget about the lovely Susana Traverso who is tied to a post and threatened with a burning torch.
Indeed. One of the only gimpy drawbacks of this movie is that the delectable Ms Traverso doesn’t get enough naked time.
I remember it like it was yesterday - the first time I saw this at around age 19. Going back to my early teens I had many sadistic fantasies - one in particular involved a beautiful woman in a fantasy setting being stripped naked and tortured on a rack. Interrogation played no role in this fantasy. She was either being tortured to death, or being tortured as a preliminary to execution. In other words, pure sadism. Like many others, I had to hunt through b-movie titles at the local video store, carefully studying the covers for any hint of anything that might fuel my fantasies. Needless to say my search up to that point had been disappointing. I hadn’t come across anything more arousing than Teri McMinn being impaled on a meat hook in Texas Chainsaw Massacre (at least the cover delivered on that one). The one day I came across Barbarian Queen on the shelf. Nice cover art - a beautiful blond warrior babe on the back, and the synopsis said something about invaders “enslaving the men and tormenting and killing the women.” Tormenting women, you say? And it happened to be unrated - so bare boobies likely a possibility. So I decided to check it out. About halfway through - good enough so far. A couple of nice rape scenes, and a bare-breasted captive woman who dies from her ordeal. And then Lana Clarkson’s rack scene came on, and my life was changed forever. When the torturer pulled that lever and made her scream, I was in absolute ecstasy.
Then about a year later, I learned that a sequel had been made, which I only found out from reading some sort of B-movie encyclopedia. My local video stores obviously didn’t carry it, or I certainly would have noticed. So I had to drive a little farther and explore a few more stores until I finally found one that had it. The back cover looked promising - it showed an even-more attractive looking Lana, and one of the stills was of her scantily clad and strung up on an upright rack (kudos to the filmmakers for knowing what sold the first one). And the caption next to that still said “Princess Athalia - captured, tortured , and degraded, remains undaunted in the face of certain death”. Wow, that sounded very close to that original fantasy I mentioned before - even more so than the torture scene in the first film. Nonetheless I was a bit wary. The still showed her clad and not topless, and the film was rated R as opposed to unrated, so I thought it might be a bit more tame. And from the synopsis I could tell it had nothing to do with the original. But my fears were unfounded. Lana was definitely more beautiful and womanly in this one, and I thought the acting and editing were better than the original, even if the budget was less. And when she finally gets captured at the 42 minute mark, I became giddy with anticipation. That scanty top of hers was quickly removed by the torturer, and he cranks that rack four times with nary a question, drawing increasingly agonized screams from her. I couldn’t believe it, but the sequel had outdone the original. And it got even better - just when it looked like she had escaped and the fun had come to an end, she was recaptured and escorted sobbing back to the dungeon, obviously distraught over what was about to be done to her. We cut back to her topless on the rack, in obvious agony after what appears to have been a very long torture session. The villain says that the ruler has given him permission to kill her, and that he plans to do it very slowly. Wow. This pushed all the right buttons for me. The heroine even appears resigned to this horrible fate, telling her tormented that someday someone else will come and defeat him (I.e. not her since she’ll be dead). Lana does such a great job here, going from the sassy, badass babe to the vulnerable, whimpering torture victim. I just wish Barbarian Queen III hadn’t been cancelled, because who know how much farther she could have taken it.
Hofrax1 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 17, 2025 3:43 pm
I remember it like it was yesterday - the first time I saw this at around age 19.
...I just wish Barbarian Queen III hadn’t been cancelled, because who know how much farther she could have taken it.
Thanks much for sharing your experience, it's appreciated.
I was working overseas, and our videolibrary had a copy of Barbarian Queen on VHS.
Needless to say, I checked it out numerous times! If the library clerk knew what was in it (and I'm sure he did), he probably had me pegged for a perv. I wonder if he knew the torture scenes turned me on?
