Viking Women and the Sea Serpent

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Perhaps one may know this better by its other long, drawn out name, "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent". Either way you name it, it's still another hilariously bad piece of the Roger Corman collection. This movie made me laugh so many times, but often for the wrong reasons. There's a sort of over-the-top hilarity to it all in that it's trying to be a step forward for women, but it's really taking two steps back. After all, this was still 1957.

The film features a group of Viking women whose men have gone on some kind of venture, and haven't returned. It opens with the women deciding on whether they go out looking for their men by throwing spears at a tree. How anything is really decided here, I have no idea, but it's al null and void once their leader, Desir (Abby Dalton) makes the decision for them. They head out, along with the only dude left on the island, Ottar (Jonathan Haze), who insists he goes with them because they're women and need a man to go along. You instantly question what he's even doing there while all the other men left, and the movie makes it sad but clear.

Anyway, the women (and Ottar) decide to depart on a kind of lousy boat, which is eventually attacked by a sea serpent, and they soon find themselves stranded somewhere that just so happens to be the same place their men are. A race of savage, but very well-spoken men called the Grimaults find them, and take them all captive. Lead by the ruthless Stark (Richard Devon), the women are shown that their men have since become slaves, working for the Grimaults in the mines. Soon this all leads to an escape plot, with Desir and her man, Vedric (Brad Jackson) at the wheel.

So, needless to say, this is an extremely dated movie. There seems to be some sort of effort for the time in giving women a voice - but their voice is written by Roger Corman. About the best this does is show that women can do what men can do... like row a boat. It carries with it, the old fashioned thinking of a woman needing a man in order to, not only be happy, but honestly live. For comparison, look at 'Wonder Woman' and the land of Themyscira - that's a society of women who just plain don't need men, and they're doing great on their own. Here, though, the women go looking for their men as a sort of "need" - especially when it comes to going unloved.

The sad truth is that a lot of that old age thinking is in a lot of the dialogue, and I couldn't help but laugh at so much of it. There's even one dude who keeps whipping people, but the amount of randomized times he does it makes for an honest to God running gag. Everything about this movie that's hilarious is a bad thing, be it abuse, overall treatment of women in the script, or how guys spoke about women. To make things perfectly clear though, it's funny in the context that it's such ridiculousness to even consider nowadays. This isn't like watching a movie from the 80s where it gets awkward because of some of the terms used. This is a bit more like... 'Reefer Madness' in that the context is so crazy, it's funny.

So, in my humble opinion, this is really quite worthy of landing on anyone's eventual long list of films that are "so bad, they're good". Even though there's nothing particularly good about this movie, I still had a great time watching it. I think there may come a time on this site of mine that I will have to squeeze in a Roger Corman special, because I'm slowly learning how fun his movies actually are. For those curious, one can find it, absolutely free on YouTube. It just might be under its original title.

2/5

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