The solitary thing that straight-to-video brainfreeze Battle Queen 2020 is able to accomplish in one of the longest 79 minutes you will ever spend is to communicate to the audience that the end of the world will be horrible beyond all imagining. So many post-apocalypse movies glamorize the destruction of civilization with spectacular effects, suspense, plot twists, characters you root for, and all manner of mutants, cannibals, bikers, and regular old monsters. Battle Queen 2020 opts for a much more horrifying combination of primitive special effects, softcore porn, and hardcore boredom.
The little girl who star Julie Strain meets up half way through the film serves as the narrator. The narrator in a film like this is usually used as a shortcut to explain all the stuff that wouldn’t make any sense if the action just unfolded on its on. Battle Queen 2020 though is an exception in that even as it was being explained to me, I had no idea what was happening or why. The end of the world is brought about by your standard issue massive asteroid strike, which ushers in a new ice age. Everything that happens after this (the other 75 minutes) is a confusing blur of fake breasts, fast forwarded sex scenes, bad guys bickering, and a couple of terrible fight scenes that somehow do not involve Jeff Wincott.
And Jeff Wincott is probably the biggest disappointment in a movie that abounds with such things. As all Wincotties know, Jeff headlined a bunch of cheap action movies that showcased his martial arts abilities, but generally demanded very little else from him. Unbelievably, with such a talent available, Battle Queen 2020 just had Jeff hanging out in his fancy house, lounging around with lingerie-clad women. Great for Jeff, not so great for the audience. Only his starring role in the legendary mass cinema extinction event called Future Fear prevents Battle Queen 2020 from assuming the mantle of “Worst Wincott Ever”.
The karate fighting is thus left to former Penthouse Pet Julie Strain. Do you know what is less sexy than Julie Strain romping around half naked in this movie? Julie Strain trying to unleash her kung fu moves on guys who have to stand around and make it look believable. Do you know what is less sexy than Julie’s fight scenes in this movie? Every single other frame of this movie.
But how is it that an asteroid hit, caused an ice age and thus precipitated a civilization built on unknown martial arts stars and adult magazine vets? Are you really that unprepared for the chilly holocaust that is no doubt hurtling toward us right now in the form of a big space rock our government is not telling us about? Once it gets really cold, what is left of humanity splits into two factions: the Elites who live on the surface in luxury and the Dwellers who live underground in tunnels without anything.
You could easily spend 2 or 3 times as long as the movie itself breaking down all the ways none of this made sense, but why do that when Battle Queen 2020 isn’t wasting any time worrying it about and is instead rushing breathlessly to the even more doltish plot development that the Elites have found the secret to eternal life!
While civilization as we know has been destroyed, the Elites still managed to conduct scientific research (and not just on boob jobs!) and discovered that you can use the pituitary gland to rejuvenate people. The only stumbling block is that you have to have a matching donor and the donor does not survive the procedure. The Elites get around this by taking Dwellers and using them.
There is also a third group mucking around on this nightmarishly nonsensical world, the Rebels. A former Elite leads them and wants to take everyone to a new city since the ice is ready to destroy the current city. Julie joins the Rebels, but almost dies of hypothermia in the process. Survival tip from the movie: hypothermia is treated by pouring hot water over the tight tank top that Julie wears. Additionally, per the film, you should sleep off your hypothermia buck naked!
A couple of Elites fight it out with Julie and the rebel leader while Jeff manages to get shot to bring all the ice age idiocy to a close. There is clearly an action shortage in this scary future world, but if you like to watch snowmobiles drive around, you’ll be pleased. But what if you love people talking and walking around in the same three sets, including some of those future tunnels that all these cheap sci-fi movies seem to have? Plenty of that, too! This frozen fiasco left me almost snowblind and with a near fatal dose of brain frostbite!
© 2017 MonsterHunter
