Review by Louis Fowler | Available from Severin Video | Buy at Amazon.com
Growing up, when I was probably 7 or 8, I had my first real celebrity crushes: Susanna Hoffs (of the Bangles) and, after I stayed up late and caught a viewing of GWENDOLINE on HBO – naughty, naughty – Tawny Kitaen. And to this day, I still have that crush on Hoffs – even at 40 she’s still the cat’s pajamas.
But Kitaen today, ummm... not so much.
Probably best known as the “chick from the Whitesnake videos”, she actually had a pretty good career, starring in flicks like BACHELOR PARTY, WITCHBOARD and this 1984 French erotic-ish take on the INDIANA JONES-style adventure based on a French comic that I’m sure many oui lads have spanked it to. From what I understand, the whole point of the comic was that accident-prone Gwendoline just fell into one predicament after another that always seemed to end in her getting naked.
Luckily, it’s a formula the movie follows in spades.
The at the time smoking hot Kitaen is the titular Gwendoline, and true to form, she’s always falling into one semi-nude, S and M tinged circumstance after another, beginning in a dirty Asian seaport, where, after almost being sold into white slavery (the best slavery, if you ask me!) with her über-annoying sidekick Beth (the über-annoyingly monikered Zabou), is rescued by a rough adventurer-type who loves to treat women like shit. This intrigues the innocent Gwennie and leads to piles of sexual tension.
They travel by boat, take of their shirts in the jungle – they needed to collect water, natch – and it all cumulates in the crew taking on an army of naked Amazonian warriors who kingdom seems to be comprised of nothing but various devices meant to erotically torture. To quote Marge Simpson, this leads to many “sexy results.”
But, there’s really no way around it: GWENDOLINE is pure, blushing fun from start to finish. It’s never as explicit as director Just Jaeckin’s previous films EMMANUELLE or THE STORY OF O, but, instead (and much true to it’s sadistic nature) is happy to just consistently tease, like a domme tickling your member with a feather. Spicy!
But what’s even more pleasurable is that the movie is unabashedly and unrepentantly silly. Sure, I bet that’s not what Jaeckin was going for – I can only imagine his grandeur as he talked this up as an erotic Indiana Jones – but, what else can you say about a movie like this without, over time, playing up it’s outlandishly goofy set-pieces and predicaments? He may have wanted art, but instead he made something entirely more lasting – a camp comedy that’s way more enjoyable than anyone could have imagined.
Why else would new reissue company Severin be putting this out, in a super-special edition, no less, if they didn’t see that glimmer of pomp in its eye?
As for Kitaen, time hasn’t treated her well. As viewers of the 'Surreal Life' have learned, she’s quite possibly batshit insane, and sadly, instead of becoming a fiery MILF, she kind of looks like that torn-down chick who hangs in front of the liquor store counting pennies on the sidewalk, trying to see if she has the requisite $1.99 to get that pint of rotgut.
But with the release of GWENDOLINE, now she’ll always be, the way she was always meant to be, that smoking-hot girl of my dreams that set my 8-year-old boy heart aflutter and my 8-year-old boy loins afire.
Now if only someone will re-release THE ALL-NIGHTER!
