Sheena

Plot synopsis:
While investigating rumors of a mystical "healing earth" whose powers are said to flow forth from the sacred Gudjara Mountain, geologists Philip and Betsy Ames (Michael Shannon and Nancy Paul) are killed in a cave-in, leaving their young daughter Janet an orphan.
Janet is adopted by Shaman, a woman of the native Zambouli tribe (Princess Elizabeth of Toro), and because of a prophecy about the cave-in ("when the sacred mountain cries out") she is viewed as a child of the gods and renamed Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
As she grows up, Sheena (Tanya Roberts) learns much from Shaman about the lore of the jungle and the ways of all its creatures. She is even entrusted with the secret of telepathic communication with the animals. Outsiders rarely disturb their territory, since that part of Tigora is under the special protection of King Jabalani (Clifton Jones).
But trouble is brewing in Tigora; the King's ex-football champion younger brother Prince Otwani (Trevor Thomas) is conspiring with his brother's fiancée, Countess Zanda (France Zobda), to have Jabalani assassinated so that they can exploit the titanium-rich Zambouli land. (This may or may not have something to do with the healing properties of the soil, but this is never explained).
Experiencing a vision foretelling the death of the King, the Shaman hastens to Tigora's capital of Azan to try to warn him, but is arrested by corrupt police officers working for Zanda.
Otwani's old "friend", reporter Vic Casey (Ted Wass), and his cameraman Fletch Agronsky (Donovan Scott) are in Tigora to do a story on the former football player. When King Jabalani is killed and the Shaman is framed for it, Vic and Fletch realize they are on to a much bigger story than they had anticipated.
Heading to a remote prison compound to interview the Shaman, they bear witness to her rescue by Sheena and her animal friends: "Chango", an elephant; "Marika", a zebra; and "Tiki", a chimpanzee. As they escape back into the jungle after destroying the prison, Vic and Fletch follow. Soon after however, Shaman dies of injuries.
Otwani obtains the services of Colonel Jorgensen (John Forgeham) and his small army of soldier mercenaries, the Black Berets. Their mission is to eradicate the Zambouli people so their territory will be open for strip-mining. Vic must join forces with Sheena to stop the evil Prince and his army, and along the way, Vic and Sheena fall in love.
The climax of the film takes place on the African serengetti, where Sheena leads her people against the mercenaries and Otwani. Vic gets wounded during a shootout in which he succeeds in killing Otwani. Vic is healed with the earth, and wants to stay with Sheena, but realizes if he tells his story to the outside world, then other corporations will destroy Sheena's home. Vic and his cameraman Fletch leave on an airplane back to New York. Before leaving, Sheena records a farewell message on his tape recorder, wishing him a safe journey.

Tags: good versus evil

Review:
Tanya Roberts was sooo worth watching in BEASTMASTER that the big wigs at the studio thought they'd give her another film to "show off" more of her special talents.
no ERA stuff for her!), big city reporter (reference to his view of the Towers), mystical shaman (imdb has the actress having a pretty interesting backstory), and Sheena (talk to me in words I understand!) all are fun.Commenting on Tanya Roberts' acting skills is a bit redundant.
"Sheena" shares the same orb as "Wonder Woman," "Supergirl," Emma Peel of "The Avengers," "Le Femme Nikita," and most obviously, "Xena."  This is a family adventure film that is most of all fun where the children seem to enjoy it equally as well as the adults.
Children like things that are pretty, and this includes people, so Tanya Robert's natural beauty is appealing to children too on a more simpler level.
Tanya Roberts certainly got the best part of her career (alongside the Roger Moore Bond movie, of course) in "Sheena".
My favorite actress in the role of Sheena is Irish McCalla, but I've enjoyed Tanya Roberts and Gina Lee Nolan too.
Just compare "Sheena" with other so-called jungle movies from the early eighties : "Tarzan the Ape Man" with Bo Derek, one the true worst movies of all time or the two abysmal Allan Quartermain movies starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone.Sheena comes off quite nicely.I gave it 7/10..
Although Sheena (Tanya Roberts) is sexy and scantily clad, the film is about a young girl, brought up by native Africans, who has special kinetic powers and can communicate with animals.I don't feel that this film has ever really been seen on a wide scale, and although it isn't perfect, it is worth a watch.
This movie is a classic Tanya Roberts , I feel she was so natural in the role instead of fake acting, she is also very magnetic in all her attractions.Shenna is truly the Queen of the jungle , also the villains are superb in there ability to make you hate them for there dirty deeds.
British viewers will be intrigued by actor John Forgeham (who plays the evil Colonel Jorgensen) - he's a dead ringer for ageing DJ Jimmy Saville (of "Jim'll Fix It" fame).Rather amusingly, critic Pauline Kael, ruthless scourge of many films better than this, actually liked "Sheena"!.
There is only one reason to see "Sheena", and that is to appreciate Tanya Roberts, very striking, and not a bad actress at all.
I could watch the wonderfully appealing Tanya Roberts all day in slow motion riding that horse Ah I mean zebra and swinging through the jungle.
Other than Roberts being pretty much eye-candy, the stunning Kenya locations managed to give the film a sense of place with Pasqualino De Santis' handsome widescreen photography being smoothly protracted.
Really pretty, well-chosen children, but very surprising, all that nudity, not that I myself see anything wrong with that, quite the opposite, it is healthy and natural, BUT WE ALL KNOW HOW PEOPLE ARE, and I suppose there were at least some outcry in the Puritanical regions.) Then, gloriously, Tanya Roberts, all golden mane and long legs and curves everywhere, one stunning example of young maidenhood, and now fully exposed on equally glorious DVD!
Tanya Roberts is, by all accounts, a difficult actress to work with, and she really got canned for A VIEW TO A KILL, but the initial haughtiness of her Sheena really made the character all the more tangible.The theme music during the opening credits, and the dramatic climactic showdown, deserves special mention.
Otherwise it's a Saturday-morning action film for kids and guys who like to look at gorgeous women (Tanya Roberts and France Zorda).
I give 10 points mainly because of the animals .I must say that this is film about kind of a lady jungle hero.I would recommend this film to children if there were no savage scenes such as shooting,bombing and killing both innocent people and animals.Sheena (Tanya Roberts) is a sexy young girl who brought up by native Africans, has special kinetic powers and can communicate with animals.First of all it is not a boring movie.Landscape is amazing.
This film had the beautiful actress Tanya Roberts and its thanks.
Alas, she's also a pretty dire actress (as anyone who saw A View to a Kill can testify), so if you don't find her beautiful then you might struggle to make it all the way through this movie.The story is about an American journalist (Ted Wass) and his cameraman (Donovan Scott) who are covering events in the African interior.
She is fighting to save her tribe and land from various nasty types, like gunrunners and political tyrants, and before they know it Wass and Scott are helping her in her struggle.The movie is full of laughable moments, like the unpersuasive scene in which flamingoes attack a helicopter, and the truly bizarre moment where Sheena holds her head as if concentrating really hard and manages to telekentically communicate with a zebra.
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'.
This is another film I recall being released in my childhood but have taken over twenty years to catch up with – not that it was a priority for me, knowing of its dismal reputation (SHEENA having been a nominee of five Razzies back in the day); that said, having just watched the even more maligned TARZAN, THE APE MAN (1981), I thought I might as well get to that jungle character’s female counterpart (who originated in a comic-strip)...The result is perhaps even worse than the notorious John Derek film: if anything, the fact that the character is a household name makes the Tarzan outing a more desirable commodity – besides, even if Tanya Roberts as Sheena does get a couple of gratuitous nude bathing scenes, she’s not really a match for Bo Derek’s Jane!
The latter is jailed, but she’s apparently able to communicate telepathically with Sheena (who promptly sets out to rescue her); the scantily-clad, tree-hopping jungle-girl was raised by the shaman ever since the childhood trauma of watching her explorer parents die in a cave-in; the young woman’s gift also allows her to talk to the animals (apparently, all that’s needed is to rub one’s forehead...only it looks more as if the subject’s suffering from migraines!) and, on many an occasion during the course of the film, they come to her aid.
Also involved in the narrative are wimpish reporter Ted Wass (who eventually teams up with – and falls for – Sheena), his comic-relief cameraman, and a band of mercenaries in the new king’s employ (unrealistically, he and his bride tag along to their ultimate regret) who sets out in pursuit of our heroes because Wass has unwittingly filmed the assassination.The film is not unwatchable per se, but it’s not very rewarding either outside of some undeniable campiness – despite the involvement of interesting talent behind the camera: director Guillermin, for one, wasn’t new to the jungle habitat – having directed a couple of the 1960s Tarzan films, SHAFT IN Africa (1973), and the 1976 version of KING KONG (with its lamentable 1986 sequel following SHEENA itself)!; story and (bad) script come courtesy of David Newman (the SUPERMAN films), Leslie Stevens (THE OUTER LIMITS TV series) and Lorenzo Semple Jr.
Campy Fun. Fun camp adventure with Tanya Roberts as the blonde female Tarzan clone Sheena.
The second is the striking good looks of its heroine Tanya Roberts which were clearly the reason why she was cast in the part.
I'm betting the casting of Tanya Roberts in this movie was primarily dome because someone said "We need a chick that looks good in leather and who has worked with animals" and someone else said "How about that girl from that movie about some animal master a couple of years ago?" Apart from being dire in the extreme, this movie has a similar plot to Beastmaster.
Between the obvious blue-screen and the truly muppet-like flamingo puppets, your biggest fear will be trying to breathe through the laughter to the end of the scene.A really crap movie, but worth watching for laughs (and there are plenty)..
There is really only one reason to watch this movie, and that reason has a name: Tanya Roberts.
Anyway, Sheena is obviously in the narrative tradition of Tarzan, with a very simple, kind-of-silly-but-still-charming story about greedy rascals being thwarted by a benevolent, jungle-dwelling white person who also happens to be amazingly attractive in every way.
Tanya Roberts is not a great actress either, but she has real screen presence and so Sheena's scenes don't feel awkward for the most part.
It's no surprise, therefore, that the movie "Sheena," aka "Sheena, Queen of the Jungle" (1984) plays like a comic book on screen.
Everyone knows going in that the plot, dialog and acting of a film like this will be of the comic book variety with a similar tone to Tarzan flicks or Indiana Jones.
What's magnificent, awe-inspiring and "A" level are the African locations (Kenya), the entertaining array of animals, the grand score and Tanya Roberts in the titular role.As far as the African locations go, if you're bored with your every-day locale, this movie is the perfect antidote.
I never concern myself with ratings when watching films, but I couldn't help but be a little surprised by the PG rating here because Sheena (Roberts) is shown TOTALLY nude on a few occasions and prances around throughout the flick in a ridiculously skimpy leather bikini (Zanda is also shown nude getting a massage).
For this reason I don't feel the movie is inappropriate for kids, despite the nudity.While Siskel & Ebert laughed at "Sheena" on their show in 1984 and wrote it off as a "bad movie," it's very effective for what it is: a comic-based flick about a beautiful, but formidable jungle woman, a journalist she meets (Ted Wass) and their fight against evil oppressors.
My appraisal reflects the happy medium between the Grade B plot, dialog & acting and the Grade A African locations, animals, score and Ms. Roberts.The film runs 117 minutes.GRADE: B.
Even worse is the scene where the bad guys are chasing after Sheena and her ally/sort of love interest, Vic. She's the jungle girl, right?
Sheena's paramour ought to be an African guide or someone familiar with the area, and not some displaced New Yorker who tries to tempt Sheena to come with him by describing the sight of Wall Street!And finally, Tanya Roberts, while impressive in her costume in publicity stills (but what the heck happened to the leopard skin?) is simply terrible, giving us a preview of her even worse performance the next year as the worst Bond girl of all time in "A View To A Kill".
And when she goes into one of her trances to summon the animals she looks more like a poster for an Excedrin commercial."Sheena" is the kind of concept that deserves a better treatment than this.
The girl is raised by the Zambouli tribe to be a mystical white warrior woman named Sheena (played as an adult by Tanya Roberts).
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).
As many other movies based in popular culture characters, this is an "Origins story" of the female hero of the title which updates and upgrades the ancient archetype -and male fantasy with racist overtones- of a blonde amazon who rules a savage land, however, this movie succeeds in a more respectful portrayal of the natives and their millenarian wisdom, depicted as rather peaceful people living in balance with nature, properly turned into fierce warriors in order to assume the defense of their land from evil and greedy visitors.Beautiful starlet Tanya Roberts brings charm and brightness to the leading role, despite her odd outfit that underlines an adequate sense of campiness (just like, let's say, a horse painted as a zebra), which delivers the magic (some people would like to call it suspension of disbelief) this story deserves.
Breath-taking African scenery and Tanya Roberts, one of the most beautiful women ever to appear on a movie screen, provide lots of lovely things to look at but don't QUITE distract one from the central truth of this movie, which is that it stinks.
The movie was filmed in Kenya and has some spectacularly beautiful photography of African plains and wildlife.Even in a movie with modest aspirations, though, it is surely a bad sign when the best acting is done by animals.
In a movie which tries to combine adventure, romance, and humor, he has no toughness, charm, or wit.And a cautionary note to anyone who thinks the comic book heritage of this film and its PG rating might make it a good choice for children.
So my wife and I watched as Ms. Roberts, clad only in a leather bikini-like garment, went about her adventures in the jungles of darkest Africa.Then, out of nowhere, there's a scene where she stops by a lake to bathe.
Ted Wass actually does act in the first scene and in the last, both shot on the same airplane, leading me to suspect that those were filmed before he met his co-star, the truly inept Tanya Roberts.
Tanya Roberts may have been good looking but her acting range is limited to one expression where she screws her face up in an effort to look like she is concentrating (I thought she might just have been constipated throughout the filming since that is what her one facial expression suggested to me).
The biggest reason is that while it is a bad movie, the production values are amazingly good and it looks pretty nice.
In fact, movies like BLONDE SAVAGE and DAUGHTER OF THE JUNGLE are very cheap films but they manage to provide decent B-movie entertainment--and are an awful lot like SHEENA, an A-picture in almost every way.
I assume that no one actually saw the film since it was pretty goofy and didn't notice the two very striking nude scenes with its star, Tanya Roberts.
Oddly, after all this (and almost 20 minutes of film), the credits now roll.Later, time has passed and Sheena is now a buxom babe--sort of like a combination of Tarzan and a Playboy cover model cavorting about the jungle and talking with animals...and taking her clothes off now and then.
Also, too much of the dialog sounds like it came from an old movie serial--which is great for kids (who are often less demanding) but for a skin-flick, this makes no sense.Another problem is simply that much of the film isn't that interesting.
You KNOW that in the end Sheena and the forces of good will win, so there is no real sense of uncertainty.As for Miss Roberts, she wasn't THAT bad...but she wasn't particularly believable.
The 'zebra' that Sheena rides throughout the film is clearly not a zebra but a horse painted like one.
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.
She e na is a bad movie, but Sheena is a hot girl, nooooow.
Too bad that image is very early in the movie and the rest is all "love the animals, peace be with everyone." Tanya Roberts, while fully equipped to be naked, is not so equipped to be in a serious film which this misguided movie tries to masquerade as.
To watch the horrible "silly natives" sequences that these movies always have coupled with lazy film-making that a twelve year could improve on, more than negates the pleasant sight of Tanya Roberts' moist breasts.