{"id":4251,"date":"2024-09-30T03:08:09","date_gmt":"2024-09-30T03:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4251"},"modified":"2024-10-13T18:52:19","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T22:52:19","slug":"barb-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/09\/30\/barb-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Barb Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Barb Wire <\/strong>(1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gramercy\/Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, nudity\/sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Hogan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michel Colombier\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematographer: Rick Bota\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 3, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pamela Anderson Lee, Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Jack Noseworthy, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier, Steve Railsback, Andre Rosey Brown, Nicholas Worth, Clint Howard, Jennifer Banko.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $3.8M (US)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0The makers of Barb Wire<\/strong> missed a golden opportunity by not having star Pamela Anderson Lee say, \u201cI stick my tits out for nobody.\u201d Since it already rips off Casablanca in almost every way, why not reference one of Humphrey Bogart\u2019s most famous lines as well? I mean if you\u2019re going to copy one of finest films ever made, you may as well go all the way.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll say right up front that Barb Wire<\/strong> is a bad movie. It\u2019s bad for a lot of reasons, but the main one is exactly what you think it is. It\u2019s Pamela. She\u2019s a terrible actress with only two things going for her; the one on the left and the one on the right. Granted, they\u2019re pretty big things, but a legit actress they do not make. As the title character, Pamela delivers a performance as plastic as her boobs. She reminds me of a life-size, anatomically correct Barbie Doll albeit one dressed like a dominatrix. I\u2019m NOT a fan. I\u2019ve never seen a single episode of Baywatch. I never even had the slightest desire to tune in. I\u2019m risking forfeiture of my guy card admitting this, but you all deserve to know where I stand on the Pamela issue.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Barb Wire<\/strong> takes place in 2017 (hey, just like Cherry 2000!) during the Second American Civil War. Former soldier Barb Wire owns a nightclub in Steel Harbor, the last free city in the US. The rest of the country is under the control of a totalitarian outfit called \u201cThe Congressional Directorate\u201d. Barb makes it a point to remain neutral in all matters political. She refuses to take sides, choosing instead to focus on running her club. To earn additional money, she has a side gig as a bounty hunter. It gets expensive bribing the local police chief (Berkeley, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and still making payroll each week.<\/p>\n

\u00a0If you don\u2019t have Casablanca as a point of reference, Barb Wire<\/strong> will be convoluted. I\u2019ll do my best to explain. Of all the heavy metal nightclubs in all the towns in all the world, Barb\u2019s ex-lover Axel (Morrison, Once Were Warriors) walks into hers. She\u2019s never forgiven him for leaving her during the war, but it couldn\u2019t be helped. Now he needs her help getting his wife Cora (Rowell, Dumb and Dumber) on a plane to Canada. She\u2019s a former government scientist on the run after helping to create a bioweapon that \u201cwiped out Topeka\u201d. The plan is to get to Canada and go public with the information. To do that, she will need a special pair of contact lenses to get past the retinal scanners at the airport. Like Rick before her, Barb doesn\u2019t want to get involved. We all know how this story ends, right?<\/p>\n

\u00a0The similarities to Casablanca are unmistakable especially the little Peter Lorre type (Howard, Ticks) and the big fat Sydney Greenstreet sleazebag (Brown, Throw Momma from the Train). There\u2019s a resistance group trying to help Axel and Cora. The corrupt police chief who secretly respects Barb is a given. Then there\u2019s the scene where the Directorate stormtroopers led by Colonel Pryzer (Railsback, The Stunt Man) bust up Barb\u2019s joint looking for the lenses. The only thing missing from Barb Wire<\/strong> is a black piano player. He\u2019s replaced by a big black dog who knows a really neat trick. On command, she grabs troublemakers by the crotch and leads them out the door. Aw, such a smart dog.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I feel like I waste a lot of time finding something to say about the performances, writing, directing and other artistic elements in any given movie. Who am I trying to impress by adhering to form? Why don\u2019t I just say what I think of a movie without overthinking it? Barb Wire<\/strong> is bad yet strangely entertaining especially as it progresses. It has some decent action sequences especially the climactic ride to the airport with Pryzer and his goons right on the heroes\u2019 tail. It has shooting, Barb riding a motorcycle and a cool fight on a forklift suspended by a crane. You can\u2019t ask for more than that from a chase scene. I can describe the entirety of the acting, with the exception of Pamela\u2019s \u201cperformance\u201d, in a single word- campy. I get the impression the cast and crew knew they were making junk and just went with it. They give it their all; I can\u2019t fault them for that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll also give David Hogan, a veteran music video director making his first of two feature films (the other is the Keenan Ivory Wayans actioner Most Wanted), props for knowing how to immediately grab the attention of the horny guys in the audience. The opening credits play over a sequence of Pamela stripping on stage while water splashes all over her. The unrated version features many shots of her boobs. Later on, she takes a bubble bath. This scene proves beyond a shadow of a doubt her boobs are fake. They float! Hogan creates genuine atmosphere in and around the club with fights outside and metal blaring inside. If nothing else, Barb Wire<\/strong> has style. Actually, there is nothing else; it\u2019s as empty as movies come. Empty-headed, that is.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was all set to write a negative review of Barb Wire<\/strong>. I hated it when I saw it at the movies way back in \u201996. Now I find it laughable. I\u2019ll also concede it has some nice touches like Big Fatso (yes, that\u2019s the character\u2019s name!) using the shovel of a Caterpillar tractor as a throne. So it all comes down to me being of two minds about Barb Wire<\/strong>. It\u2019s crap, no doubt about it. It\u2019s loud and moronic. At the same time, it has a high energy level and a sense of demented fun. It\u2019s an entertainingly bad movie that could only have been made in the 90s.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barb Wire (1996)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Gramercy\/Sci-Fi-Action\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 100 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, nudity\/sexuality)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David Hogan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Michel Colombier\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematographer: Rick Bota\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: May 3, 1996 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Pamela Anderson Lee, Temuera Morrison, Victoria Rowell, Jack Noseworthy, Xander Berkeley, Udo Kier, Steve Railsback, Andre Rosey Brown, Nicholas Worth, Clint Howard, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4504,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guilty-pleasures"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Barb-Wire-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4506,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4251\/revisions\/4506"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}