Some movies are so bad that they will never, ever get a DVD release. One such film is Lionman II: The Witchqueen (1983), a film so inept that it alters your perception of reality. This is some serious life-changing idiocy right here. It's been 20 years since I first saw this catastrophe on VHS, and I still haven't recovered from the experience.
The Witchqueen of the title is Rheasilvia (Dee Taylor), a leggy blond who spends the entire film in a die-cast metal bikini. So far, so good. She is given a magic ring by her father, a supposedly powerful wizard who wears a hooded robe, faces away from the camera and basically refuses to actually be in the movie. Smart boy. Daddy tells Rheasilvia to go to the kingdom of Thracia and kill Lionman, the hero of the film, for no other reason than that's what bad guys do. He also admits that Lionman is destined to defeat her. I would have left that part out.
Rheasilvia arrives at a tavern in Thracia, where cliché dictates that she must be accosted by creeps and have her virtue defended by the hero. Sure enough, a table full of drunken toughs notices the Witchqueen's lack of clothing, and their leader approaches her. Can't a half-naked sorceress enjoy a beer in peace? The scene is rendered surreal, however, by two factors:
1. The drunken lout who comes on to her is wearing a pink, fluffy bathrobe and has a tea cozy on his head. This is not an exaggeration; that's his outfit. I guess the guy was supposed to be wearing furs, but he presumably only had five minutes to put his costume together out of stuff he had in his apartment.
2. He is completely unable to make any genuinely rude suggestions, resorting to “Would you do us the honour of joining our table?” Every time Little Miss Bikini Witch says “no” the guys laugh robotically, ha-ha-ha-ha, and ask again, even more politely.
Finally, a badly dubbed “Leave the woman alone!” floats across the tavern, and we get our first glimpse of Lionman himself (Frank Morgan) rising from a nearby table. Resplendent in his fitted white vinyl renaissance fair vest and blond pageboy haircut, Lionman lowers his fists into the steel boxing gloves dangling from his belt, and with an audible click, he’s ready for combat. The bathrobe brigade is swiftly defeated, and Lionman swaggers away victorious into the night, leaving Rheasilvia to quiz the innkeeper about her saviour's identity. “His name is Lionman” drones the innkeeper, who goes on to report the hero's entire backstory in the single most wooden bit of narration ever captured on film. We learn that Lionman, the rightful heir to the throne of Thracia, was lost in the forest and raised by lions as an infant. He grew up mighty and strong, and killed Antoine, the vicious tyrant who had seized the throne after murdering Lionman's father, King Solomon. During the uprising, Lionman's hands were burned by acid, but he put newly forged metal claws over his useless stumps and kept on fighting. Now he's the king.
Rheasilvia, impressed with this ridiculous story, uses her magic ring to kill a guy, thus using up the film's entire special-effects budget in two seconds. Then she runs off to find Antoine's evil brother Belisarius, marries him, teaches him the secret of gunpowder, and then the two of them start plotting to fuck Lionman's shit up. Meanwhile, Lionman is brooding over how much it sucks being the king and decides to go back to the forest to live with the lions. The evil newlyweds decide to kill him anyway, because, otherwise, there would be no movie. A tedious procession of ambushes, magic spells and dull fight scenes rolls past our glazed eyes, with the only high points coming from the hilariously bad acting, ridiculous costumes and the would-be touching scene in which Lionman's brother gets blown up. Oh, and at one point, Rheasilvia has to run up several flights of stairs in her hubcap bikini.
For many years, Lionman II: The Witchqueen was not only the worst film I had ever seen, it was the worst film I could imagine existing. It's so inept, viewers can barely believe their own eyes. I watched many, many terrible movies afterwards, curious to see if anything could even approach it. Few films could. Years later, out of morbid curiosity, I picked up the original Lion Man (1975) starring Turkish superstar Cuneyt Arkin, which ironically turned out to be the most awesome movie ever made... but that is a different story.
