Don't Call Her Babe

by Christina Zafiris

Barb Wire opens with a prologue scrolling against a desolate, war-ravaged earth of the early 21st century (read: Casablanca meets Star Wars), then quickly moves into an underground sex club with Barb performing, breasts exposed, under a gushing waterfall (read: Flashdance). She kills two men within the first 10 minutes as she saves a Catholic school girl from the grip of these oversexed maniacs by rappelling down the side of a building (read: Batman).

Pamela Lee is Humphrey Bogart with the same grit and worldly savvy, minus the smokes. Tough as nails on the inside and out, she is a superhuman blend of the Terminator, La Femme Nikita, MacGyver and Bruce Lee. She fights the enemy like a gun-wielding ballerina and her high karate kicks come complete with kung fu sound effects. She avoids bone-crushing explosions on her trusty Harley, pulling wheelies against the open horizon like the Lone Ranger on Silver. Then there is her feminine side: bubble baths, plush velvet bedroom, golden rope-like locks, lip liner/callogen, and spike heels.

Barb's ex-lover, played by Tamnera Morrison (Once We Were Warriors), seeks help from Barb to get the freedom fighters to the safe zone in, get this, Canada. Of course, the hope of the free world rides on his wife escaping, something to do with AIDS (I don't remember the details). The opposition is portrayed as the typical pseudo militaristic bad guys (read: Stormtroopers), a big mindless clump of killing robots. The evil Lieutenant, a cross between a Gestapo commander and the Joker, puts up a great fight in the final showdown, hysterically cackling until the bitter end.

The premises, scenes and props in the movie are absolutely unbelievable, even for the genre. The interrogation scenes are right out of a Nine Inch Nails video, with erotic torture devices on naked Japanese girls and high-tech brain stimulators that can pull thoughts from a dead person in an ice bath. When the bad guys kill Barb's blind brother, they hang from the rafters in a crucifix position. When Barb solicits aid from an underground kingpin, he appears as Big Fatso (read: Jabba the Hut), carried in the mouth of a bulldozer through his empire, the local garbage dump. When the dirty bail bondsman comes to her for refuge she tells him to "click your heels together three times" (read: Wizard Of Oz) and sends him to his death. She fights the bad guys with her special assault vehicle that looks like a souped-up ice cream truck (read: Mad Max meets "S.W.A.T").

Some of the best assets of the movie are the settings and wardrobe. After the sexy bath tub scene Siskel and Ebert called "tasteful," Barb remains in her towel and doesn't even change into clothes when the local police break in and trash her bar. Barb usually wears this ridiculously small leather corset over a skin-tight black ensemble that makes her look like a cartoon drawing of Wonderwoman dressed in Mad Max leather. Sometimes she accents her outfit with enough guns and ammunition to weigh down Rambo. She has a barbwire tattoo and wears s&m chain jewelry. And throughout the movie, she repeats the line "Don't call me babe" before blasting them in the gonads. I love it.

And I haven't even mentioned the full-Hollywood style special effects and stunt show. This one is worth the theater price, but don't buy the soundtrack.