Welcome to yet another B-Movie Enema review!

Now, if you’ve been around this year, and you really should because what else do you really have to read while sitting on the toilet taking a morning shit, you might notice something I’ve kind of said a few times over the past few months. A big part of my plan for 2024 was to start knocking off stacks of movies obtained at conventions or through online sales on Vinegar Syndrome or Severin, and basically get through the backlog. This week, I’m pulling form the “bought this many years ago, planned to do it, never did, and now it’s time” pile. Oh yes, it is 1996’s Barb Wire starring Pamela Anderson.

Honestly, I bought this movie on DVD for, like, less than a buck back when Amazon used to do those incredibly low-cost Marketplace sales on things, particularly movies. I remember buying a used copy of something for a penny, paying the $3.99 shipping cost, and being happier than one of Pam Anderson’s boobs in a bustier. That’s something you just don’t see anymore on Amazon. I… I mean the practice on Amazon, not Anderson’s boobs in a bustier. Anyway, the reason why you don’t see those super inexpensive Marketplace listings anymore is likely due to a crackdown on the seller’s part to prevent too many items from being sold for less than Amazon’s actual cost for something. I doubt I paid more than a buck for this movie if I’m being honest.

And I should be honest because even back in 1996 when I was 19 and full of a lot of male hormones that led to a lot of bad thoughts and choices, I never really had any interest in seeing this movie. Pam Anderson was not someone who really represented my tastes in a woman. She’s pretty, sure, but I wasn’t as ga-ga over her as many people my age were. Plus, I was more of a superhero fan when it came to comic books. Aside from the Crow and a passing interest in Spawn when the HBO animated series ran, I liked the heroes from Marvel and DC. I wasn’t that much of an indie guy. No, I bought this movie because, for a while, I was trying to get all the movies that were being covered on the Earwolf podcast How Did This Get Made.

Maybe this is as good a time as ever to talk about this. I’ve mentioned HDTGM in the years since this blog started. Before B-Movie Enema was a thing, I was a blogger for a now long-gone comic book site. I mostly did reviews of new comics and I also had a mini-series of reflective posts about something that was part of the fiber of my being as a geeky guy who liked pop culture shit. I got to attend a couple of conventions in Chicago with press badges and interviewed folks from time to time. It was fun.

When it came to movies, I loved going to movies when I was a kid, and I still do. Back then I particularly frequented the theater in the summer while school was out. As a kid, I’d watch Siskel & Ebert (hell I still watch those guys today on old recordings uploaded to YouTube). Central Indiana had Sammy Terry as a horror host on the weekends who I liked watching. Mystery Science Theater 3000, Joe Bob Briggs, and USA’s Up All Night or Saturday Nightmares were often on my TV when I had no other place to be in the 90s. By the 2000s, I found inspiration in my blogging from the likes of James Rolfe or RedLetterMedia. I liked using Rolfe’s appreciation for what he grew up with to help with some emotional expression of something I liked. I would also use his Angry Video Game Nerd character or RLM’s Mr. Plinkett characters to try to lend a little snark or express disappointment when I wrote about something.

But in the background, there was Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael, and Jason Mantzoukas on How Did This Get Made. Not long after that series began, a friend of mine introduced it to me. He was a fan of Earwolf stuff and knew I’d get a kick out of the funny deep dives into movies that just weren’t that good. I listened for almost 200 episodes religiously. Early on, I felt like it might be fun to watch the movies they watched. Then, also try to get my hands on the movies they advertised doing in the off weeks to prep for the new episodes. I didn’t end up getting too many as it turned out to be kind of cost-prohibitive. I would eventually cool on HDTGM only because it got to the point that I found these three comedians quite funny, but as I started getting more involved with movie discussions, it kind of felt like they would often go for the joke more than actually properly representing what was going on in the movie. I’m not exactly saying they are bad faith, but at times, they’d say something for a laugh, but I sharply disagreed with their take and realized it was to get the laugh, particularly when they did live shows.

Holy shit, I’m way off track here. Let’s get back to Barb Wire. My point was that I got this movie on DVD more than a dozen years ago because of HDTGM and it’s time to cover it for B-Movie Enema. The character of Barb Kopetski was originally published by third-party publisher Dark Horse Comics beginning in 1993. Barb was the kind of character that was in high demand in the early 90s thanks to a few factors. The first was the popularity of grittier characters since the publication of DC’s Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns and the rise of popularity of Marvel’s The Punisher in the late 80s. Comic readers were getting a little older and more keen on reading adventures of anti-heroes who dealt with things in a much more mature sort of way. Next, Dark Horse had been around for a bit by the time they picked up the Barb character for a brief stint of issues, but the formation of Image Comics increased the visibility and following of a lot of other indie publishers like Dark Horse. Thirdly, there was this strong opinion that the typical comic book reader was male, in his teens or 20s, and was really really lonely, and therefore very horny. This led to a lot of male fantasy characters. Those darker anti-heroes? All male fantasy types for the most part. The women in comics of this era? They were big-breasted with tiny waists and outfits that made no damn sense in terms of functionality when it came to bustin’ bad guy chops.

So it wasn’t a surprise that morally gray characters like Spawn would be willing to kill bad guys when those bad guys were doing some pretty reprehensible shit, or the scantily clad female characters from Chaos! Comics, or Barb Wire would be popular. The thing about a lot of these indie books was they were either very short-lived for whatever reason or they were simply constantly late with months and months and months in between issues. The one thing you can always say about Marvel and DC is that they had a structure where things had to be on a schedule or no one would ever get any work done otherwise and no comics would be in the spinner racks at the local drug store. Say what you will about those mainstream publishers, they always had something released on time every month.

I’ll be brief on this only because I don’t have any history with Barb Wire as a comic character. But from what I understand, the comic version of this was not called “Barb Wire” but Steel Harbor as part of a larger anthology series by Dark Horse. Now, there are some sci-fi elements that set up the world of Steel Harbor, the city Barb and her brother Charlie are from. But ultimately, those sci-fi elements are part of the background, but really, it ends up becoming a story about cops and bad guys and Barb is a hard-boiled character through it all. I know I’m being very reductive probably, but that’s the gist of what I saw in the Wikipedia page about the original comics.

I know for certain, though, that this movie does not go that route and that will be discussed during the review.

As for our lead, Pamela Anderson, she was born in British Columbia, Canada in 1967. Her modeling career happened kind of accidentally. She was at a Canadian Football League game wearing a Labatt’s beer shirt. She was on the jumbotron, and Labatt’s hired her as a spokesmodel for a little bit. Not long after that, she was a Playboy Playmate centerfold. Over the course of 22 years, Anderson appeared on more covers for the magazine. In fact, no one has ever appeared on more covers of Playboy than Anderson. Her looks and her popularity from those modeling opportunities of course led to her appearing on TV and in movies. From 1992 to 1997, Anderson was on Baywatch which made both her and the series itself even more popular than either were already. It was during this time that Barb Wire came calling.

While Barb Wire is not Anderson’s first film, it was easily the biggest budget and highest profile vehicle. However, like the comic, the movie is still kind of more along the lines of an independent film. It came from PolyGram Films in cooperation with Dark Horse Comics but distributed by Gramercy Pictures. That’s not a major production company or distribution studio. Even 1997’s Spawn was made and released by New Line Cinema with a budget of about 5 times higher than Barb Wire. So we have to take into consideration there is a budget restraint here. But let’s try not to hold that against Barb, cool? Instead, let’s see what this movie has for us.

The year is 2017, and America is in the midst of a second Civil War. Basically, a tyrannical group calling themselves the Congressional Directorate has taken over the country. Every city in America is under martial law except for Steel Harbor. Basically, it’s on a secluded island and loaded with crime. As the credits then play, we get to watch Pam Anderson dancing while being sprayed with water and you don’t even get through the credits before you see nipples.

Why waste time, right?

If I do say so myself, this sequence is badly shot. I guess Barb is dancing in a showclub where guys are hollering at her to take off her clothes while she whips around and a guy sprays her with a fire hose. But… Is it sanitary to have a hose like that in a club? I really don’t know. I’m sure that stage is a breeding ground for bacteria and, I dunno, yeast infections. But I think the stage Barb is dancing on is like a black box-style stage, but the film is slowed down and there is a backlight that comes off as a strobe light in the quick edits. It’s shot like a Playboy video and ends up making the movie look cheap and kind of sleazy.

“But… Geoff! Aren’t you a purveyor of sleaze and exploitation?”

Well, yeah, but what I’m getting at is this could be so much more artistic than it is. It’s water and hair whipping around and slow motion and a guy yelling at her to take her clothes off and “Word Up” blaring until your ears bleed. It’s sensory overload. Imagine walking into a General Cinema or Loew’s Theater and sitting down with your popcorn, drink, and candy and you are literally blasted in the face with this opening sequence. It’s too much. That doesn’t mean you throw this idea of having Pam Anderson do something you want Pam Anderson to do in your film away. Instead, how about building to this? It’s like we’re blowing our load way too early. I want to take a nap… not watch the rest of his movie.

At least the scene ends with Barb dealing with the rowdy guy in the crowd by whipping her stripper heel at him and the heel lodges itself into his head. I guess it serves as a way to say that Barb is dangerous and has a certain set of skills at her disposal. But it feels like shorthand. I’d rather not have the movie screaming at me with a poorly shot and edited striptease with an added fire hose. This could have happened with the second scene instead and it would have been fine. I just feel disoriented from that previously mentioned sensory overload.

Part of the problem Barb has is she doesn’t like being called “Babe”. Call Barb “Babe” and you’re in for a world of hurt. Barb is not a full-time dancer at this club. That performance was her first for the place. The whole reason why she is here is that the owner of the club has kidnapped and is holding a young girl to likely sell into white slavery. While Barb is well-endowed, her trade is as a mercenary. She was there on purpose and hired by the girl’s parents.

The parents of the girl attempt to stiff Barb for the agreed upon bounty they promised her. She takes what money they had and also their fancy classic car. Okay, so yeah, Barb is tough and she has voiceover that talks about how 2017 is the worst year of her life and Steel Harbor is a shithole. It’s a bunch of generic tough talk from someone who isn’t really all that well-equipped to speak the lines. Everything Anderson says sounds like something that a movie parodying film noir characters would have in it. It’s like Anderson is speaking the lines, but placing the wrong emphasis on the wrong words. I don’t know how to explain it. It makes the movie seem cheesier than it really is.

But what isn’t cheesy is the torture table that the Congressional Directorate has. On this table is a woman they are torturing to get information about a Dr. Corrina Devonshire, also known as Cora D. This girl is on this table with what looks like a bunch of Borg implants stuck to her. This headpiece has a crude way of finding memories and projecting them onto a monitor. She eventually gives up the information that Cora D got plastic surgery to not be recognized and ran off to Steel Harbor with the plans to then be smuggled to Canada.

Cora D was developing a bioweapon called Red Ribbon. This was originally for the Congressional Directorate, but she’s trying to run away from them. She’s being smuggled by a freedom fighter named Axel Hood. Axel is played by Temuera Morrison who, since 1997, has been Boba Fett in the Star Wars films. He also voiced and was the physical appearance of Bob’s father Jango Fett and all the clone troopers used during the Clone Wars era of stuff.

This movie has a lot of recognizable folks from other movies and, specifically, B-Movie Enema alums. Playing the man you speak to in order to get to Barb is Udo Kier. Kier has made a career out of appearing in peculiar and memorable roles. He doesn’t always have a big role, but he will likely be someone to remember if he’s in the movie you’re watching. The main bad guy, the guy who tortured that girl in the earlier scene, is Colonel Pryzer. He’s played by Steve Railsback who previously appeared in Turkey Shoot. As the Chief of Police, Willis, is Xander Berkeley. Berkeley previously appeared on this blog as the creepy art professor with the hots for Alyssa Milano (as anyone would) in Poison Ivy 2: Lily. Clint Howard is also in this. Of course, we know Howard to be the guy who has appeared in every single movie ever made. I am not even kidding. Look for him, he’s there somewhere!

In one part of Steel Harbor, we have Barb running her bar. That’s where Udo Kier works and it’s also where her younger brother, Charlie, hangs out, tries picking up women, and drinks himself silly. It’s notable that Charlie is blind. He lost his sight during the war. While the bar is packed and it seems Barb is well-paid for being a mercenary and bounty hunter, she explains she has to do a little moonlighting as a hooker to keep the bar running.

In another part of Steel Harbor, it’s raining pretty heavily and Axel is having all sorts of problems with getting Cora D into Steel Harbor. He was being transported with the scientist by members of the underground resistance, but they were stopped and attacked by the customs cops. They go on the run only to have to fight off some more cops. Axel needs to get Cora D to a guy named Krebs.

This Krebs guy is important because Barb is also looking for him. She specifically picked up a guy for some hookerin’ to get next to where Krebs is currently hiding out. She blows up a wall and has to fight off a couple guys to get to Krebs. Krebs is a bail jumper. She turns him over to Clint Howard. Another thing that begins to intertwine Barb and Axel’s plotlines together happens when Barb’s bar gets raided by Chief Willis. Willis tells her there was a double homicide downtown and he believes it was resistance related.

In just 60 seconds, I have to say that Xander Berkeley is my favorite thing about this movie. He knows how to play a scummy cop. Frankly, he’s made a career out of skeezes. He knows what he’s doing. His smarmy way of talking about the things going on in and around Steel Harbor is spot-on for a noir film. I’m guessing he got the script and someone just said to him he’s playing a crooked cop and he responded, “Say no more… Xander Berkeley is on the case.” And that was it. He’s perfect.

I hate to harp on this, but Anderson isn’t good in this. Physically, I have no issues with her. She’s built to play an indie comic heroine. However, she’s not doing a good job delivering the lines. Berkeley oozes the attitude of a guy who knows how many shades of gray there are out there on the streets of Steel Harbor. He knows how to deliver the lines that would have been heard in the time of Bogart or Mitchum. He’s an experienced actor who can embody this. However, for Anderson, she’s saying the lines. Technically, there’s nothing wrong with pronunciation or whatever, but she just comes off as obviously play-acting. She either says things too rough or too soft. She never lands in the sweet spot in the middle. I already said it’s like she’s reading the script and placing emphasis in the wrong place.

It reminds me of how comic books are written. Comics do this thing where they will bold words meant to be emphasized or stand out in the dialog. When you read it in your head, it makes sense. However, more often than not, reading that out loud and placing the emphasis makes it wonky and weird. It’s especially that way if you read aloud something that Frank Miller wrote. And that’s how Anderson’s coming off. She either isn’t really comprehending what she’s reading for these specific moments in which she needs to come across as a hard-edged femme fatale or she’s thinking too much about hitting the hard edge instead of just embodying it. At best, she’s inconsistent.

And it’s made worse when she’s surrounded here by a lot of really good character actors like Berkeley, Kier, or Clint Howard who all know how to slip into these roles like they were born to be these characters.

Alright, so Pryzer is coming to Barb’s bar to meet with Willis. Of course, Pryzer and his goons dressed like Nazis. Pryzer is pissed that he has to be in Steel Harbor (gee, a fascistic head of a militarized police outfit pissed about being in a city that prides itself on being “free”? Get outta here!). He expected Willis to have delivered both Krebs and Cora D to the Congressionals but Cora D has slipped through that customs check and is in the wind.

So, I guess this is as good of a time as any to explain something about this movie. Barb Wire is not a direct adaptation of the comics. It takes the characters and boils them down to their core essences. Barb Wire is a hot chick who does a lot of badass things and sometimes has to do unsavory things to survive but she is always in command of whatever scenario she’s in. Steel Harbor is the town she lives in, but it was not a refuge operating outside the jurisdiction of a fascist government during a civil war. It was just a town full of “bad” guys. I guess, if I were to recall Frank Miller here again, you can say it has some similarities to Sin City. The bad guys are bad, but Barb is badder.

The movie kept a lot of that essence. However, what they did was they placed these characters into a whole new scenario of the Second American Civil War. They made Steel Harbor a town that is deteriorating under the buckling pressure of being a totally free city where crimes were few, but over-policed. They made Barb a former freedom fighter who was a combatant in the war and she now runs a bar that stands as basically neutral ground. Everyone knows who she is and she is relatively cool under pressure.

Screenwriters Chuck Pfarrer and Irene Chaiken remade one of the all-time greats, Casablanca, using these characters to fit the proper roles from that film. Yeah. That’s absolutely true and everyone knew it upon release. Critics like my boy Roger Ebert immediately picked up on that and while still not giving a positive review, he did appreciate that it was going for something more fun and high-energy. I see that too. I’m roughly halfway through this movie currently. I don’t love it but it’s not without something. In fact, my disappointment in Anderson’s verbal performance has sunk this movie, but everything else about this movie is damn near perfect. After a rough start to just show as much of a striptease from Anderson in a poorly shot and edited opening sequence as possible, the movie is not without some fun or positive things to say about it.

So, anyway, back to Steve Railsback being an out-and-out Nazi.

Railsback threatens Willis by saying that if Cora D escapes, he will personally rip Willis’ heart out of his ass and shove it back down his throat. Then, as if God itself wrote and directed this film, Berkeley says, “Well that’s not very sanitary is it? heh…” Fucking Xander Berkeley is so good in this. See? Everything that doesn’t do with Barb Wire in the movie Barb Wire is interesting and they know what they are making here.

Pryzer attempts to hire Barb Wire to find Cora D. They give her pictures of what she looked like before the surgery to change her appearance. However, before she can give Pryzer an answer, Curly (Udo Kier), calls her away by saying there’s trouble in the kitchen. Shortly after this attempt to hire Barb, Cora D and Axel arrive at the bar to talk to Charlie so he can find Barb. Axel needs Barb’s connections to help him get Cora D out of the country. However, Axel and Barb used to be lovers but something went south in Seattle during the war and she wants nothing to do with him. In fact, the moment she sees Axel, she punches him pretty hard before even saying a word to him.

What’s kind of interesting is that this movie has three different angles the movie is operating with. Temuera Morrison is carrying the entirety of the dramatic part of the movie. While he has a couple “action guy” lines, his whole part of the movie is the Ingrid Bergman role from Casablanca. It’s fairly humorless. Not that that’s bad, mind you, but he’s carrying the role of the guy who has a very important thing he must do and is not jovial. The more jovial stuff is from the bad guys. I think I’ve said enough about Xander Berkeley by now, but also Steve Railsback looks to be loving his role as the heavy in this. These guys are having fun and leaning into it. Then, Pam Anderson represents the source material – the comic book this is based on. She’s here, like I said, looking like an indie comic book heroine lept off the page and onto celluloid. And she can kind of traverse in and out of the humorless and the more fun elements of the plot as needed.

It makes for an interesting movie that is uneven but not necessarily in a bad way all the time. I actually think it is the best possible way to adapt the Barb Wire character from the comics. It wants to take itself seriously as an action film, but it also winks at the audience a little bit to say, “Yeah, we know this is from the funny books so we’re gonna have some fun too.” Not only were comics a weird thing in the 90s, but movie adaptations of comics were a weird thing in the 90s. It certainly isn’t the Marvel method of minimal mucking about with the core of the characters and trying to bring the characters to life in costumes very closely resembling the pages of the books that we see today.

It’s almost like producers of movies based on a comic book property back then wanted to keep the comics as far away from the film as if to label the source material as a lower form of art. Yet, still wouldn’t dare try to take the movie they were producing seriously. But what Barb Wire opted to do was a little bit of both while still not treating the audiences of the movie and the comic like idiots for liking either. This uneven compromise actually works in the movie’s favor.

Anyway, so Charlie helped Axel and Cora D to get connected with a hideout for the resistance. Krebs had in his possession a pair of contact lenses that would have allowed Cora D to pass as a different identity when she crossed the border. The problem is that he’s dead, and his eyeballs are missing. The last person who had Krebs was Schmitz (Clint Howard). He must have the contact lenses because of what they could be worth on the black market. Schmitz is missing. The resistance needs Schmitz and Pryzer wants Schmitz to get to Krebs. The resistance crew tells Axel that Barb is the only one with the connections that could locate Schmitz, but she will not do anything for free. Of course, Axel knows she won’t do anything for him.

When Schmitz discovered the contacts, he realized he’s now in possession of something that is very valuable… and something that could land him in a lot of hot water. Plus, he’s Clint Howard. I’m not going to lay any money down that he can survive this. He goes to Barb hoping she can find him a buyer. Barb says the contacts belong to the resistance and he needs to give them back to them. He says that if he does that, they will kill him. Plus, the Congressionals raided his place and killed all his guys. So he’s got groups on both sides trying to kill him.

Schmitz wants to deal the contacts to Barb for safe passage to escape to Canada. She is pissed at him for double-crossing her previously but thinks she could sell the contacts for enough money to go to Europe and then buy the operation to restore Charlie’s sight. She refuses and he says she will regret not dealing with him.

Using their memory machine, Pryzer sees Barb Wire in the memories of one of the guys who worked for Schmitz. Because of this, he orders Willis to issue an arrest warrant for Barb. His only reason is that she’s mixed up in this in some way. Of course, she technically isn’t, but it just seems like her life leads to being mixed up in unsavory things. Willis is not loving this interference from the Congressionals. It’s messing with how he does things because he’s Xander Berkeley. He doesn’t want to kill people. He just wants to be kinda sleazy. That’s all. This Pryzer prick is a bloodthirsty fascist. Ehhhh even the sleazy people don’t like fascists.

So… what is Red Ribbon exactly? It’s a derivative of HIV, but it works extremely fast. It will kill someone in 12 hours. Cora D helped create it, yes, but when she realized that Topeka, Kansas was a testing ground and the plan was, after successful tests, to unleash the bioweapon in all the free zones like Steel Harbor and any other places that the Congressional Directorate doesn’t rule, Cora D noped out of that whole deal and defected to the resistance. Axel helped her escape Washington, D.C. and they’ve been on the run ever since.

Axel begs Barb to help them. She has the antidote to Red Ribbon and if she can get to Canada, they can tell the “Truth Commission” what Red Ribbon is and she has the antidote to stop it. Just then, Pryzer and his goons invade Barb’s bar to search for evidence of the murders of those customs cops. Oh, and Pryzer’s looking for some kind of connection to the resistance. So they bust the place up and shoot all the barrels of booze.

When Schmitz tried to convince Barb to help him, he stashed the lenses under the food prep table at the bar. Charlie heard this and retrieved them before the Congressionals came and busted up the joint. He wants Barb to give them back to the resistance because he still believes in what’s right. Barb only believes in money. She wants to sell them to someone so they can go to Europe.

Earlier, I mentioned that there are three sides to this movie. Technically, this is the convergence point for the movie’s themes. When the thumb of a fascistic regime is tilting the scales of power and opportunity, you have the ideologues who will try to save the world by swinging the pendulum back in the other direction toward freedom. However, ideas alone will not save the world from a reign of terror. To fight a revolution, you gotta have some people like Barb who aren’t true believers, but have resources and connections that can help the revolutionaries wage their fight.

But here’s the thing. People who are already rich will cede some of their power to the centralized government run by the fascists as long as it doesn’t affect their wealth. That wealth is a major potential problem for the fascists so they will make sure to keep the rich and elite satisfied to not begin using their money to help anyone who might oppose the government. Any resistance is likely going to begin poor and have to scrape together some way to buy resources or information or whatever will help them continue to operate under the noses of the government. That’s where you have people like Barb or your scoundrels who don’t really have allegiance to anything but currency. Few of them will be true believers of either side, but one thing is very likely going to be true… The resistance will need them far more than the government with all their resources at their disposal. Their help can be bought. As long as you don’t sell them out to the fascists who will most certainly kill them for directly assisting, or being sympathetic to, the cause of the resistance, they’ll get you your money’s worth.

While all these mercenaries will always be on their own side and never truly throw in with the cruel fascists or the ideology of the resistance, they all need the same thing. They all need money to be able to survive in this system. The more money they have, the more insulated from the struggle of a civil war or the rule of a fascist regime they will be. But some, like what we are seeing from Barb Wire herself, will simply not take a side. They dislike both sides for their own reasons straight down the line and, if they can figure out a way to make enough dough to run away to someplace that has neither of these sides pushing and pulling against one another, they will take it.

All I’m saying is, I sure hope when this happens next year with this Project 2025 that I can just be Big Fatso.

Look at that fuckin’ king, my dudes. He’s got some goons of his own. He lives in a junkyard. He gets carted around by a guy driving a bulldozer. He’s got one of those giant turkey legs I only ever see on the morning of the Indianapolis 500 when I used to go and they had all the food vendors outside the gates. This guy’s got it fuckin’ made.

Plus, I like eating and have gained some weight over the past few years, so I can roll with a fuckin’ mu mu.

Barb comes to visit Big Fatso. She’s got a business proposition for him. He’s already aware of her possession of the contact lenses. He got that from Schmitz before Big Fatso had him killed. See??? A guy like Big Fatso already trumps a Clint Howard, so that’s something. Meanwhile, Charlie goes to speak with the resistance only to discover that the group’s been wiped out by Pryzer’s men. Pryzer tortures Charlie to get the location of the lenses, but he doesn’t give up the info.

Barb makes a deal with Big Fatso for money and transport to the airport where she plans to leave for Canada. When Curly tells Barb that Charlie went to see a friend, she discovers Charlie’s been killed by Pryzer. Alex and Cora arrive and ask Barb one last time for help since the plane leaves for Canada in 90 minutes. Barb arms herself and travels by battletruck to meet Big Fatso to make good on their deal.

However, Big Fatso has doublecrossed Barb to Pryzer. See? Big Fatso felt his safety was better off with the fascist guy than scoundrel Barb. She threatened his insulation from the regime. Pryzer orders the arrest of Barb, Axel, and Cora. Instead of cuffing Barb, Willis slips her a grenade. She uses it to blow Big Fatso to shit… I… I mean it. He explodes and I’m betting he’s mostly made of shit so… he got blown to shit. She, Axel, Cora, and now Willis get into the battletruck and head out toward the airport to catch that plane to Canada. Barb and Axel fight off Pryzer and his goons while Willis escorts Cora to the airport. During the big showdown between Pryzer and Barb, Steve Railsback just cackling like a cartoon villain is everything.

There is some good action here. We have Barb and Pryzer in a battle where she’s trapped on a forklift while Pryzer drives around like a madman and it is fun. Then, what we’ve got going on with Axel and one of Pryzer’s goons is exciting with it being a fistfight atop another industrial machine that leads to Axel kickin’ that guy off to his death. Then everything gets escalated a notch when Axel uses a crane to lift Barb and Pryzer high off the ground and they have to fight on the forklift that is a couple hundred feet up.

Sadly, the final moment of Pryzer telling Barb this is just like his favorite song, “I Got You Babe”, and Barb doing the “Don’t call me Babe” thing kind of sucks. It’s a very bad line that is shoe-horned in to get that “Babe” thing so Barb can finally be done with the bad guy. But anyway, she disconnects the forklift and crane causing Pryzer to fall to his death. Barb reveals she was wearing the contacts this whole time and gives them to Cora to board the plane. Again, I feel like when have a sanitation issue here, but whatever. Axel boards after her and looks back at Barb one last time.

On the tarmac, Willis asks Barb where she will go. She reveals she snatched the debit card that had the money for the lenses from Big Fatso and says she hears Paris is nice this time of year. And the movie ends in the best way possible. Willis tells Barb he believes he’s falling in love with her. She tells him to get in line and smash cut to credits.

I feel like I illustrated a ton of what worked and what didn’t in Barb Wire. I want to also be fair to Ms. Anderson. In 1996, she was ABSOLUTELY the correct choice to play the character. The vision of her in this movie is undeniable. She is a sexy woman. She is capable of making Barb’s mostly leather or sexy dresses work on screen. It is absolutely the right casting. I feel like the movie was limited in some ways. It certainly had limitations in budget which likely also meant it was limited with time.

The movie was directed by David Hogan. Up to 1996, and mostly afterward too, he was a music video director. He had some very popular music videos to his credit. Seriously, look at his IMDb page sometime. The music videos he directed seem to almost act as a Greatest Hits of the 1990s in both pop and pop country music videos. He is hired to give the movie energy like a music video would have. That’s fine. I understand the choice. However, he’s lucky in some ways that he had character actors like Railsback and Berkeley who knew what they were doing going in. He’s lucky that producers likely wanted him to shoot Anderson in a way that would have been similar to shooting attractive women in music videos. He knew how to do that. What he didn’t know how to do was direct her. She’s still somewhat limited as an actress at this point. She would have been cast more for her looks than her talent. On Baywatch, she wouldn’t have to act tough or like a femme fatale like she did in this movie. Her limitations aren’t just hers, but from the director’s chair too. A more seasoned director, or just a better director, would have worked with her or seen fit that she needed a dialogue coach to help her sell the noir bits more.

While I have great disappointment in Barb as the character and Anderson in not being able to live up to carrying this film as she should have been expected to, it’s not 100% her fault and it does not really sink this movie. While I will still say I don’t love the movie, it’s got some things going for it. Again, that cast of supporting character actors is top-notch. They knew what they were doing and what they could bring to their parts. The general look of the film seems well adapted from the source material. The idea to make this into a remake of Casablanca is perfect. And it also serves as a good look at what comic book adaptations were like in the 90s. Kind of keeping that source material at arms’ length but also winking to the audience that everyone is in on the fun and it should be viewed that way.

Next week, we feature, for the first time on this blog, a movie directed by the great John Carpenter. Join me as I take a look at and review Carpenter’s final film as director, 2010’s The Ward. Before we do that next Friday, join me tomorrow for a new episode of B-Movie Enema: The Series. This week, it’s the film noir classic Private Hell 36 starring Ida Lupino. You can watch that on the B-Movie Enema YouTube and Vimeo channels, or you can watch right here on the website, or you can tune into the free Roku channel OtherWorlds TV to watch. Links for everything is to your right on the screen. Of course, following B-Movie Enema on Facebook, Threads, Bluesky, or Instagram will also keep you in the know when new stuff drops.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta prepare my bulldozer for my eventual transformation into Big Fatso when the world goes to shit.

Oh! Oh… Oh no. I sure hope that’s not how it ends for Big Geoffso!