Sheena

1984 "Part animal. Part legend. All woman."
4.9| 1h57m| PG| en| More Info
Released: 17 August 1984 Released
Producted By: Columbia Pictures
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

Sheena's parents are killed while on Safari. She is raised by the mystical witch woman of an African tribe. When her foster mother is framed for the murder of a political leader, Sheena and a newsman, Vic Casey, are forced to flee while pursued by the mercenaries hired by the real killer, who hopes to assume power. Sheena's ability to talk to the animals and knowledge of jungle lore give them a chance against the high tech weapons of the mercenaries.

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Director

John Guillermin

Production Companies

Columbia Pictures

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Sheena Audience Reviews

Lawbolisted Powerful
Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.
Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.
Darin One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
Scott LeBrun An adorable blonde moppet is on an African safari with her parents when the two of them perish in a cave-in. The girl is raised by the Zambouli tribe to be a mystical white warrior woman named Sheena (played as an adult by Tanya Roberts). Into Sheenas' life comes a wise ass journalist named Vic Casey (Ted Wass), who's come to Africa to do a story on a royal family member who plays football in America. Unfortunately, the gridiron star / prince (Trevor Thomas) is an evil bastard looking to control the region and the people, and get his greedy mitts on some titanium.If one is looking for an arty, "Oscar bait" type movie, steer clear of this one. But if you're looking for simple, dumb, and deliberately campy fun, "Sheena" does deliver the goods. Based on the "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" comic, it has corn ball dialogue galore, some of it hilariously funny. "Mouths were made for eating. Why did you touch yours to mine?" Wass is a handsome but dorky leading man, with Donovan Scott as his comedy relief sidekick / cameraman. The film is wonderfully shot in widescreen, on location in Kenya, and features a rich, lovely score by Richard Hartley. The animal action is also first rate. But let's not kid ourselves: the main reason "Sheena" the movie exists is to give us some prime eye candy in the form of Roberts, who looks ravishing (and does some nudity, to boot). The fact that she's never been much of an actress won't matter all that much.The action scenes are pretty well done, with lots of people shot with arrows and a number of impressive explosions. The supporting cast isn't memorable but they serve their purpose: Elizabeth of Toro has an effective screen presence as the tribe shaman, and the striking France Zobda is an amusing villainess. Overall, a silly but reasonable diversion.Co-scripted by Lorenzo Semple, Jr., and directed by John Guillermin, who'd both previously worked on the 1976 version of "King Kong".Six out of 10.
utgard14 Fun camp adventure with Tanya Roberts as the blonde female Tarzan clone Sheena. Roberts is AWFUL but damn nice to look at. The slow-mo shots of her riding her zebra are classic. Ted Wass has fun as the reporter who becomes Sheena's love interest. Oliver Hardy-lookalike Donovan Scott plays Wass' comedic sidekick. French (I think?) actress France Zobda makes for a beautiful villainess but doesn't appear nearly enough. Lots of eye candy and plenty of humor, intended and otherwise, make this an entertaining movie of its type. But it's also overlong and lacking much action for long stretches. The climactic flamingos versus helicopter scene is something you just have to see to believe. Surprisingly, this wasn't made by Dino De Laurentiis or Golan-Globus.
madbandit20002000 Unless they're part of an ensemble (the X-Men films notably), female comic book superheroes get no respectful cinematically (must be a gender issue). Case in point, "Sheena", the $25 million flop from 1984, that's based on the character created by Jerry Iger (uncle of current Walt Disney Co. head capo Bob Iger) and Will Eisner ("The Spirit"). The survival member of the duo at that time, Eisner had the common sense to not be credited after seeing it. Iger's estate also followed. Who could blame them? Things start well enough when a married geologist team is killed in an African cave in while trying to find a mineral that has healing properties. Their daughter, Janet, is adopted by the ingenious tribe, the Zambouli, as part of a prophecy. The tribe's shaman (Elizabeth Of Toro, the only adept actor here!) rechristens the girl as Sheena and trains her to be the tribe's protector. After learning how to communicating with animals, swing from vines, ride zebraback (don't ask!) and sling arrows through the years (and by the film's main credits), Sheena's a fully grown woman (Tanya Roberts , "The Beastmaster", "That 70s Show"), a mix between Tarzan and any skin-mag dame, and the adventure starts.It's not much of an engaging one, though. Prince Otwani (Trevor Thomas), the NFL athlete (huh?!) brother of the African king whose nation, the fictional Tigora, houses the Zambouli, hopes to financially exploit the mineral for profit by killing his brother and framing the shaman. However, the sports reporter Vic Casey (Ted Wass of "Soap" and "Blossom") following Otwani gets footage of the truth, putting him and his hapless cameraman (Donovan Scott) in danger. However, they meet Sheena, during a rescue of the shaman, and Vic and Sheena have something of a romance while avoiding Otwani and his mercenaries.If you're not convinced by the whole yarn, barely adequately helmed by John Guillermin ("The Towering Inferno", the 1976 King Kong remake), you're not alone because the film doesn't even live to its' own expectations, being an example of how NOT to make a film. Uninspired action sequences; dated plot points; awkward racial stereotypes (Otwani speaking like a African-American street hustler while being African royalty is cringe-inducing) and leaden dialogue infest the half-baked script of David Newman ("Bonnie and Clyde", the first two Superman films), Leslie Stevens (developer of the original "Outer Limits") and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (developer of the 1960s "Batman" series; "Flash Gordon"). It's also no help that the story doesn't know what it wants to be: a campy tribute to the grade-B ,Saturday matinée serials of the 1930s and 1940s (a la "Star Wars") or a live Playboy centerfold photo session (Tanya shows her mammary glands in bathing sessions), mixed with a Sports Illustrated article. I'm still puzzled how it got a PG rating, let alone green-lighted by an A-level film studio! For a B-film, it has no charm! The actors fare no better, especially Roberts, who's like a topless stripper reading Shakespeare (it has happened!) when being profound and Wass (now a sitcom director), who unbelievably turns from hard-boiled cynic to passionate poet (a bad one, at that) when he's with our hero. Richard Hartley's "Chariots Of Fire"-like score is so pretentious, it's ironic that it fits. Pasqualino De Santis' camera work is the only bright spot here, but if you have the guts to buy/rent the film on DVD, you'll lose out (more than already) because there's only a full screen version.When people complain about too many comic book films today, they should be aware that the storytelling medium has been mistreated and misunderstood in the past. "Sheena" is one of those comic book-based films that came out at a time when filmmakers cared nothing for any fanboys' feelings, let alone any smart moviegoer, since they had no Internet to voice their displeasure. Today, the displeasure's in evident, ten times over.
BA_Harrison When a pair of geologists are killed by a cave-in, their young daughter Janet is adopted by the shaman of the Zambouli tribe of Tigora, who believes the blonde girl to be Sheena, the one who has been prophesied to become protector of her people.As she grows up, Sheena is taught to survive in the wild, and also how to communicate telepathically with animals, a trick which comes in very useful when nasty Prince Otwani assassinates Tigora's king, frames the shaman for his crime, and attempts to exploit the titanium-rich Zambouli lands.Aided by a variety of jungle friends, and a pair of American news reporters (played by Ted Wass and Donovan Scott) who have stumbled upon Otwani's plan, the beautiful wild-woman sets out to free the shaman and stop the evil prince and his army.With an embarrassingly bad script littered with risible dialogue, stereotypical characters, dreadful action scenes (including a laughable flamingo attack on a helicopter!), a horse unconvincingly painted to look like a zebra, and some of the worst acting imaginable, Sheena sounds like an unmissable slice of low-budget, bad B-movie heaven.Nothing could be further from the truth.Based on comic book writer Will Eisner's female version of Tarzan, Sheena was actually a relatively big-budget, major studio release (it cost an estimated $25,000,000). Directed by John Guillermin, the man behind the immensely successful disaster film The Towering Inferno, and the less impressive 1976 remake of King Kong, the film attempts to capture the excitement and sex-appeal of Eisner's jungle heroine, but only succeeds in achieving the latter, resulting in a disappointing and dreary yarn memorable solely for the fact that its star, Charlie's Angels hottie Tanya Roberts, spends the entire film in (and out of) a tiny animal-skin bikini.I give Sheena, Queen of the Jungle 3/10 for Ms. Roberts' incredibly hot bod, and the unintentionally hilarious scene where our heroine carefully clears a patch on the ground in order to illustrate her strategy, draws a single line in the dirt with a stick, and says 'This is the edge of the great forest; we shall wait for them here'. Complicated plan, Sheena—thank heavens you drew it for us in the dirt, or else we may never have understood.