Barb Wire (1996)

Over the course of a few decades, both Marvel and DC Comics developed their own "shared universes," which allows their characters to co-exist in the same world and justify the occasional crossover. Marvel and DC's universes occurred naturally over a span of several years, but when the comic speculator market reached its peak during the mid-'90s, other publishers tried creating their own universes from scratch. Image Comics attempted this, as did Dark Horse Comics, through their short-lived "Comics' Greatest World" imprint. The CGW imprint was less than successful, lasting only a few years before being phased out and eventually forgotten altogether.

Oddly enough, one of the characters introduced during Dark Horse's CGW experiment actually got their own movie. That character was Barb Wire, a stereotypical "bad girl" created by writer Chris Warner in 1993. And just like the comic book that inspired it, the movie has practically faded into obscurity. Unfortunately, I knew of its existence, and I was dumb enough to actually watch it on HBO recently so I could write a review of it. I must be all kinds of stupid, because Barb Wire sucks hard.

In the distant, far-away year of 2017, the United States is embroiled in its second civil war. A Nazi-like faction called the "Congressional Directorate" has overthrown the government, and declared martial law in every city in the country. The only free city left is Steel Harbor, a lawless island city called home by Barb Wire (Pamela Anderson), owner and proprietor of a popular bar called "the Hammerhead." And in order to bring in a little extra cash on the side, Barb hires herself out as a mercenary and bounty hunter.

It isn't too long into the movie before Barb finds herself caught smack in the middle of some big trouble. Dr. Corrina Devonshire (Victoria Rowell), a defecting government scientist in possession of some crucial intelligence that would benefit those who oppose the Congressional Directorate, arrives at the Hammerhead asking for Barb's help in sneaking across the border into Canada. This would be no big deal, but Corrina's husband, resistance fighter Axel Hood (Temuera Morrison), is a former flame of Barb's whom she's never forgiven for their rather nasty breakup. When the contraband Axel and Corrina need to leave the country comes into Barb's possession, she's torn between her own desires and helping those who've asked for her aid.

Let's just cut to the chase: Barb Wire sucks. Anyone who tries making a serious argument that it's anything other than horrible is an idiot. The acting is awful, the direction is generic, and the writers probably weren't even trying. Actually, I could say that the entire movie isn't trying. It's like nobody wanted to even bother making a movie that wasn't terrible. Maybe they were trying to make a bad movie on purpose? I mean, there's no way they could have watched the production dailies and thought, "Yeah, there's no way this movie can fail. It's gonna be awesome." There's no way that happened.

Of all the movie's flaws, its most-cited is the fact that it rips off Casablanca. I don't just mean certain elements, I mean they took the whole plot, changed the location and the time period, and added some action sequences. That, and they gender-swapped some of the characters. Barb Wire replaces Rick, while Axel and Cora stand in for Ilsa and Victor Laszlo respectively. And what gets me is that nobody involved with Casablanca is acknowledged. The credits state that Barb Wire was written by Chuck Pfarrer and Ilene Chaiken from a story by Chaiken, which has to mean that either "Ilene Chaikin" is a group pseudonym for Casablanca's writers or they just stole the plot and didn't care about any sort of originality.

What's worse is that Pfarrer and Chaiken don't even steal Casablanca all that well. Their script is unflinchingly bad, filled with crappy dialogue and thoroughly unlikable characters. But I guess that makes sense, since a lot of independent comic books were full of the same thing at the time the movie was made. That doesn't change the fact, though, that the script is just dreadful.

David Hogan's direction doesn't help matters any, thanks to how generic and derivative it is. It looks like every other low-budget, B-grade action movie from the mid-'90s, and a second-rate one at that. He doesn't do anything memorable beyond the opening credits, and it feels like he's just going through the motions of making a movie. It actually gets kinda boring after a while.

Then again, you'll only be bored when you're not irritated by how bad the acting is. The worst offender is the star, Pamela Anderson. Barb Wire was supposed to be the project that turned her from a Baywatch babe into a full-fledged movie star. But what the makers of Barb Wire failed to realize is that Anderson is an awful actress. She's terrible beyond belief, and her attempts at being a sexy bad girl are really more skanky than sexy. And the dialogue is bad enough, but watching her try to deliver such poorly-written drivel made my brain want to shut down completely. But I guess crappy actresses like Anderson don't need talent when they have oversized fake breasts. Her chest is really the only reason she was hired to do the movie at all, so I guess the producers figured her rack would make up for how bad the movie and her acting were. But they don't.

The rest of the cast doesn't fare too better either, despite Anderson's lack of talent overshadowing everyone. Jack Noseworthy, who plays Barb's blind brother, is annoying, while Temuera Morrison and Victoria Rowell are lame if not forgettable. I also didn't think that Steve Railsback didn't make that much of an impression as the movie's primary villain. But it's not all bad, though. I did like Xander Berkley as Steel Harbor's crooked yet goodhearted police chief, and I really enjoyed Udo Kier and Clint Howard in their small and very thankless roles. But then again, I'm always happy to see Kier and Howard in any movie, even bad ones like this.

The '90s weren't a very good decade for movies based on comic books, and Barb Wire is proof enough of that. It's boring, uninteresting, pretentious at times, and poorly made, to be blunt about it. There's no reason for Barb Wire to even exist, let alone for anyone to actually watch it. So if you're looking for my rating, Barb Wire gets one and a half stars out of five. As I said in the introduction, the Barb Wire comics are about as close to obscure as you can get, and here's hoping the movie stays the same way.

Final Rating: *½