There's no way I can keep myself from writing about the most awesomely bad film I've seen in years. And given that there are actually people who read this blog on occasion, hopefully this means that one or two of you will take the time to find a copy and watch it too, because I swear that you won't believe a word I write until you too have witnessed it for yourself.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force!

OK. Tell me, honestly: you walked into a video store and saw that on the shelf. How could you not want to take it home and watch it?? But just in case the cover art of the gorgeous Kathleen Kinmont (she's the leather-clad one holding the sword) and Elizabeth Kaitan (the girl in white who's about to burst out of her top) wasn't enough to entice you, you could always check the back to find out the plot.

Wait, plot? What plot? This is an 80s film about good looking women roller-skating through the desert of an apocalyptic future and fighting off evil-doers. What the hell else do you need to know?

Fine, fine. I guess it won't be much of a blog post if I don't do a bit more to entice you. So here's the deal: Kathleen Kinmont plays Karin Crosse, a warrior nun of the "Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade" who has been given a mission to escort the psychic seer, Gretchen Hope (Elizabeth Kaitan), across the wasteland and back to her convent so that Hope can use her gifts to usher in a new age of peace and wonderment. Or something. Unfortunately, Crosse is knocked unconscious by a group of slavers and Hope is kidnapped by this same group to be fed to their pet mutant that runs the ore processing equipment which has kept the town in business all these years by providing material to trade to other settlements in the wasteland, and it's up to Crosse to get her back. Yeah, "Fallout 3" it ain't. If it sounds too confusing, don't worry, the script goes in about ten different directions and shifts around a lot following different characters for its 90-minute duration. Women on roller skates kill people who don't have enough sense to run off the road into the sand and rocks that would offer them complete protection from the wheel-clad amazons...what more do you need?

The film's narration is provided by Rory Calhoun, a man who was previously known for appearing in all kinds of TV westerns back in the 50s and 60s. He also has some on-screen time later in the movie, but we'll get to that in a minute. In fact, why don't we watch the intro right now!

Notice the costumes the two women are wearing? Those are the "habits" of the Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade. They last for all of about 5 minutes of film time until both Crosse and Hope doff them for the costumes that show off more skin and, I guess, allow greater mobility (or at least keep the audience from confusing them with a pair of technicolour Klansmen).

The best thing about this film is that it's impossible for me to tell if it was supposed to take itself seriously or not. Both Kinmont and Kaitan are dead serious about the roles they are playing: Kaitan knows she's supposed to save the wasteland, and Kinmont knows she's supposed to be protecting her. Their scenes together are convincing enough and their dialogues about friendship and happiness so cute that you find yourself believing them and wishing the two would just lez out already and get that part of their relationship out in the open (SPOILERS: Alas, they never do). Rory Calhoun's character "Old Turkel" is also playing it straight: he knows Kinmont is going to come and kick his ass because he's been dreaming it every night now for weeks, and his fight with her, while short, is well staged. Everybody else seems like they just showed up for the week it took to film it, collected their salaries, and went home. This makes it impossible for me to classify it as total schlock or simple camp comedy, and actually makes me like it even more than I already should. Is it serious? Funny? Or just serious fun? Who can say?

The director was clearly still learning the ropes here. Scenes begin and end with little to no warning, sometimes even cutting out when a character is still talking, and the scene transition effects look like something lifted straight out of Windows Movie Maker (though this predates amateur video editing software by a good decade). Fight scenes, for what they're worth, are pretty poorly choreographed though it's not hard to imagine why: consider trying to keep your balance on a pair of roller skates when you're flailing a sword around and trying really hard not to actually hit the actor you're "fighting". There's a little blood and one fairly good looking stomach incision death effect though, and the finale of the film includes a pretty prolonged full-body burn stunt, so at least some of the film's budget got spent on special effects. The same can't be said of the mutant creature which, alas, looks like somebody tossed a giant shag carpet rug over some poor guy's frame and said, "Stagger in that direction." In the film the mutant is blind, which probably came about due to the actor's inability to see out of the costume as opposed to any reasons necessitated by the story. Additionally, towards the end of the movie, Crosse is shown a giant "well" of caustic waste-product produced by the mutant-run factory. We know it's caustic, because the guy who shows it to her tosses in his hat to make a point and prove it. Now, if this were any other horror/action movie, you know that that pit is exactly where the bad guy would get his ultimate comeuppance, because you just don't put awesome things like toxic acid pits into a movie without somebody doing an involuntary swan-dive into them. You just don't. Toxic acid pits were made for dumping people into them, and everybody knows this. Sadly, this pit only gets to devour a white stetson. Poor toxic acid pit. :(

The script and dialogue are pretty mediocre, except when there are moments of sheer brilliance that had me almost rolling on the floor laughing at how awesome they are. Much of the dialogue seems to have been re-recorded in post-production and dubbed in later (if not ad-libbed entirely), so lip sync is almost always a problem. There's a full scene where one guy's lines don't match up with his mouth at all, and since the whole thing takes place as a close-up of him talking, it's kind of impossible to miss it. A few other scenes are impossible to understand because the actor(s) in question are mumbling lines. None of the other warrior nuns are doing anything besides phoning it in when it comes to delivery, and even the main bad guy waffles back and forth between seriously playing a villain and just doing some moustache twirling for the camera. That doesn't stop screenwriter Randall Frakes from including a couple of just completely badass lines though. When a second group of warrior nuns is introduced, the voice-over narrator informs us that "[...]they skate the path of rightousness, making it hard for evil-doers...to have a nice day." But the best line of the entire movie comes when a pair of the nuns stumble across the corpse of one of their sisters who had been killed by a roving band of slavers. "Vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord," the first one mutters. "But sometimes," replies the other, grasping the hilt of her sword, "She subcontracts."

I haven't laughed so hard in weeks.

As the movie closed, I almost found myself wishing that this movie had found the same sort of cult following enjoyed by "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure". My guess is that "Go forth and skate the path of righteousness!" just wasn't as catchy as "Be excellent unto each other" or "Party on, dudes!"

Maybe that's for the best. But that doesn't mean I can't share it with the rest of you Retro-maniacs.