Customer Rating: 
Summary: Get ready for Corman the barbarian
Comment: Most directors would have us believe that film characters were here one minute and there the next - transported instantly from scene to scene as if by magic. Not Roger Corman. Corman exposes this dirty Hollywood secret by showing the least gullible among us what we already suspected - people actually travel from one place to another. This explains all of the walking scenes you will find in virtually every film Corman ever made. Yes, you can actually lose weight by watching a Corman film - that's how much walking there is. No one can accuse Corman of being lazy (with the obvious exception of his monster creations); just look at the man's preferred title for this particular film: The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent. Is that the longest movie title you've ever seen, or what? Forgive me if I refer to the film by its common name: The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent.
What gives here, anyway? Well, basically, you've got a group of Viking women whose men left three years ago for some reason (they probably said they were going to the store for a loaf of bread or something) and have never returned. Deciding enough is enough, they load up and take to the sea in an effort to either find their men or die trying. These Viking women are pretty tough, but don't go thinking this is a cast of Brunhildas or anything - think Swede, with one attractive, dark-haired oddball (Susan Cabot, Corman's future Wasp Woman) on the side. Anyway, their boat runs up on a vortex, and the next thing they know a huge sea serpent is attacking them. The girls wash up on a beach, where they are soon enslaved by Grimolt warriors who, despite the hot, arid conditions, wear thick wool coats all the time (thus sparing us of the horrible possibility of any stray buffalo shots). The good news is that the women find their missing men; the bad news is that all those brave Viking warriors have been easily broken and enslaved by the Grimolts. Since these hardy warriors have turned into major wusses, it's up to the women to free them all and engineer an escape from both the Grimolt warriors (all nine or ten of them) and the dreaded sea serpent (which, in one far-off view, consists of a stage guy's finger with a fin stuck on it). For your amusement, though, Corman also throws in two of the dweebiest male characters in cinema history. First there is Ottar (Jonathan Haze), who makes Will Wheaton look like a Roman gladiator. For three years, Ottar was the only male living in the community of Viking women, and never once did he score. His only consolation is the fact that the young prince of the Grimolt warriors is even more pathetic than he is. Remember Horshack from Welcome Back, Kotter - well, Prince Senja could well be his long-lost, more annoying little brother.
I'll give Corman his due, though - up close, this sea serpent is actually one of his more impressive monsters. He's really not in the film long enough to merit mention in the title, though, so don't expect a lot from the big, scaly dude. As a matter of fact, don't expect much from anyone or anything in this movie. You will find plenty to laugh at, however, and that (plus the cast of buxom blondes) makes The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent fun to watch - and just barely worthy of 3 stars in my book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Early Corman junk approaches sublimity.
Comment: The movie begins with the Viking Women limply throwing spears at a tree to vote whether or not they wish to go search for their men, who went on an excursion and have been missing for two years. There is one man watching, but his presence with them is unexplained. Also unexplained is why he would ever let the group go search for other men. The Viking Women include such B-queens as Sally Todd, Abby Dalton, June Kenney and the Wasp Woman herself, Susan Cabot, looking really good as their "Dark Priestess," the only brunette among them.Questions yet remain, which the script (and budget) have no intention of answering. We know why there are no viking men around, but where are the old vikings? Where are the infant vikings? Where are the ugly vikings? Does the entire society consist only of that small group of chicks? How can I get there?
They "construct" a boat, using "tools" of light plastic, in a montage that plays a little bit like those good-ol' A-Team come-together plans. There are continuity issues within scenes as far as the boat goes; sometimes it appears that they are packed in tightly just to fit. At other times it affords them space to lean back or to hide the lone man from the others. They set sail, and immediately- I mean immediately- lose their rudder. Never fear, though, because the script calls for them to reach the land where their men are being held captive quite simply. They are attacked by "The Beast of the Vortex," which as we all know, is a Viking word, along with "gnarly" and "antidisestablishmentarianism." This Sea Serpent (likely a hand puppet held by someone under water) of the title, accompanied by tossing waves and strong winds, casts them from their ship and they wash ashore, luckily right where they needed to be.
We meet the King of the Grimwalts (not the Griswalds of European Vacation, I soon came to realize), played by Corman regular Richard Devon, looking silly and decidedly un-Scandinavian in his furry hat and costume. He seems to rule over precious few subjects (Die Nibelungen this is not). We are also introduced to a very sparse Great Hall, in which drinking and a dance occur, and we meet his whiny, wimpy son, Prince Jonathan Haze, who is cornered by some footage of a wild boar and rescued during a hunt by Dalton. Eventually the movie gets less deliriously silly and focuses more on melodrama and court intrigue. Will jilted lover Cabot betray them out of jealousy?
A typical, wondrously bad (badly wondrous?) scene is where pig-tailed June Kenney sneaks out of their cell- between the bars- to find and rescue the menfolk. (She is wearing a leather bra, a miniskirt and knee boots with occasionally visible zippers. I've had dreams kind of like this scene.) She drops a rock on the head of a guard, and out the men and she go, only to be shortly thereafter recaptured. Corman, known at this point in his career for padding, had a couple of such lazy tangents in this already only 70-minute film.
Professions of undying love, slow-burning sacrificial fires, religious debates, invocations of Thor, Crimson Pirate-style fisticuffs, death, betrayals, redemptions, changes of heart and vicious tracking dogs follow, as the movie reaches its feverish climax and the Viking Women rush to escape with their men, in longboats conveniently sitting for them at the shore. The Grimwalts give chase, and the Sea Serpent lies in wait...
Maybe you can guess the outcome. Anyway, when "The End" appeared onscreen I was left with this thought: in retrospect, it seemed that the voyage covered so short a distance that the Viking Women could almost have yelled over to the men from their home shore.
Corman made campier movies, but on the whole not too many. I might compare this to Gunslinger, but this is funnier.
In summary, The Viking Women and the Sea Serpent is a must for Corman devotees and for fans of the cast, especially of the ladies. But if Beverly Garland, Bruno VeSota, Dick Miller and Vincent Price had been in this, too... well, it's just best not to think about such things as we can't have.
(Sigh)
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