What if we saw Barb Wire, the 1996 comic book movie with Pamela Anderson?
The former alert secretary at Malibu was shooting in 1996 a nice B series which will be stifled by the scandal of the sex tape.
Once upon a time in Hollywood, a new story to tell before going to bed: that of Barb Wirethe film that ended the acting career of Pamela Anderson. Not necessarily a great story to tell, but a sympathetic memory of the 90s while the actress is back in the cinema this year with a film at the The Wrestlera drama that sounds both as an epilogue and a rebirth, The Last Showgirl. A year before the thirty of the cinema outing Barb Wireand its big flop in theaters: less than $ 4 million in revenue for 9 million budgets.
Barb Wireit’s what ? This is the adaptation of a Dark Horse comic book (the editor of Hellboy Or Sin City), which counted nine issues only from 1993 to 1994. The (briefs) adventures of a badass and well -gauled investigator in America of the future, which proudly proclaimed on the coverage of the first issue: “DON’T CALL Me BABE!” A grip that the film will reproduce in large on a Billboard to promote the film, and a slogan all found to say that Pamela Anderson is not only good to slow down on the beach ofMalibu alert (The series was launched in 1992).
But at the time of the film’s release, Pamela Anderson is still called Pamela Anderson Lee, as the credits indicate, as the wife of the drummer of Mötley Crüe Tommy Lee. Their couple is at the heart of a media storm, because of the famous case of their stolen sex tape – which will be put online on the Internet in 1997. The scandal would have apparently prevented Anderson from playing the luxury call girl lynn braCken in The Confidential (Once upon a time in Hollywood, indeed), a role that earned the Oscar in Kim Basinger.
And therefore, Barb WireIt’s good ? We are not going to lie, it’s not terrible: it’s a B series, very B. But it is not a shameful nanar either. It happens in 2017, after “the Second Civil War” which saw the victory of a band of Nazillons who took the opportunity to shave the White House and wear pseudo-SS uniforms with pride. In the last free enclave of the USA, named Steel Harbor, Barb Wire is an old resistance fighter who has become a private detective in tight leather, wearing stilettos and armed with a big desert eagle.
The scenario is rather simplistic: after an intro where she dances lasciviously under waded water in a striptease bar (but it was an infiltration mission), she must help the woman of her ex (she carries her remedy to heal a super-AIDS) to join the free country of Canada.
It is even shot with a very honest know-how by the director David Hogan who led the second team of Batman Forever Or Alien 3but above all had a big experience in the musical clip (All I WANNA DO From Sheryl Crow in 1994, it’s him).
Like the comic book movies of the late 80s and the early 90s, the influence of the film Noir (and the Ridley and Tony Scott brothers of course) is very present, with neon reflections on puddles of water and interiors playing on strong contrasts between shadows and lights. Barb Wire did not age too badly thanks, paradoxically, at its small budget: it is SF but very low tech, we see a retinal scanner and a technology capable of reading the brain to extract memories but that’s all.
Of course, it takes a certain love – and a little nostalgia – for this kind of SF 90S pleasure that is stored between Judge Dredd With Stallone and Screaming planet by Christian Duguay. The pleasure is above all to see Pamela Anderson to do everything possible to kick asses and swing venery replicas in the midst of objectively very ugly men (except tumuera Morrison with hair and udo kier in bald butler): the palm returns to Steve Railsback, colonel American-Nazi whose title of glory is to have embodied Charles Manson in the famous TV Helter Skelter In 1979. Once upon a time in Hollywood, we tell you.
But in fact, the hidden star of the film is her screenwriter, Ilene Chaiken: then scribbling with the king of the Soap of the 90s Aaron Spelling after a visit to the team of Prince of Bel-Airshe is not yet the future creator of the series The L World (2004) nor the producer of The Handmaid’s Tale. We think about it in front of the Hammerhead scenes, the bar/nightclub held by Barb Wire, the local Rick’s Café where women dance with other women.
Anderson, she will not return to the cinema until 2002, playing her own role in the live action version of Scooby-doo (written by James Gunn, and yes). We throw it like that: someone volunteers to turn Rocky Balboa Or John Rambo A Barbara Kopetski – The real name of Barb Wire – With the Pamela Anderson today? It will be for one there was once in imaginary Hollywood – if there is a real one.
Barb Wire is available for rental on Apple TV, Filmo TV, Amazon and Microsoft Store. After a DVD passage in 2005, the film was published in Blu-ray in 2011 and is still in the trade.
