Lurid Tales: The Castle Queen (1996)

Posted on Aug 10, 2005 under Exploitation, Fantasy |

Directed by “Ellen Cabot” (David deCoteau)
Written by Randall Fontana
Starring
- Shannon Dow Smith
- Kim Dawson
- Christi Harris
- Betsy Lynn George
- Mihaela Mihut
Produced by Oana and Vlad Paunescu
Executive produced by Charles Band (uncredited)

It shouldn’t be that hard to make a softcore exploitation flick. Really it shouldn’t. It’s not like the audience is very demanding; a mediocre excuse for a plot, some attractive actors willing to show skin and engage in extended frottage, and a lite jazz soundtrack. Mission accomplished.

So with all of the above (well, it’s more of an “adult contemporary” soundtrack), how could this movie end up so flaccid? Hm, well, I can only hazard a guess, but maybe it’s the fact that Charles Band keeps handing these heterotica assignments to an openly gay director. Even for exploitation fare, your heart’s gotta be in it, you know?

Our opening interlude takes place in that murky arena known as “the past,” where everyone wore a mishmash of historical costumes, lived in castles of indeterminate national character, and spoke with a faint pseudo-British lilt to their voices. In this case, the cheap Romanian locations are standing in for England circa the Puritan uprising, and the Lord and Lady Dorset (the latter is Kim Dawson; I don’t know about the former, as the closing credits list the cast without specifying their roles) enjoy some farewell nookie in a room draped liberally in bearskins and other thick rugs so that no one needs to resort to a bed. (Want to know the main aesthetic difference between softcore nuzzling and triple-X performances, aside from the absence of penetration? The softcore stuff is all about slow-motion and gentle caresses. I think what they were going for here was “languid”; what they actually ended up with, all through the movie, is “tranquilized.”) Lord Dorset’s set to ride out with King Charles to put down that pesky Puritan uprising, and he says “I will return” often enough in their brief conversation that his demise is signed, sealed, and delivered.

“Thanks, but I usually just use coffee to jumpstart my brain.”

Cut to the present, in a (koff) American coffeehouse, where college student Tom (Shannon Dow Smith) puts off his econ paper by reading an old romance novel. (In public. Come on, dude, think of your reputation.) He then engages in some friendly banter with cute server Amy (Christi Harris) about the paper he’s putting off for “History of Economics 321A” — design a business appropriate for one of a selection of historical periods. And yes, “Charles and the Puritans” is one of the choices. I’m guessin that director deCoteau was already bored by this point, because he can’t just leave the camera in one place; it has to be dollying back and forth all through their conversation like a boy-band music video.

Amy suggests he take a break across the very European street at the arcade (or rather, the unassuming European building with “Arcade” on its sign). He finds there an empty set of rooms with mature vamp Sirene (sorry, no credit), who fawns over him and sets him in a chair with a wired headset. “The chair is powered by your body; the journey is fueled by your imagination.” Yes, thank you. She does some little aura-cleansing hand motions in front of his face, a blue light shines on him, and…

He wakes up in the middle of a field in England, near young Miranda Dorset (Betsy Lynn Dorset). She invites him back to the castle, to meet her older sister, the Lady Dorset we met earlier… Wait a second! If Lady Dorset got her title by being married to Lord Dorset, how can her sisters be Dorsets as well? Unless the sexual proclivities of this family are even more “free-spirited” than even the rest of the movie would have us believe. Oh, and Miranda’s other sister is Amy, identical to the Amy who serves at the coffee house, but with the requisite faux-English accent.

And what is Tom’s reaction to this whole bizarre situation? Well, remember when I described the tenor of the movie as “languid/tranquilized”? Yeah. Like that. Instead of being flabbergasted at the reality of the ostensible VR setup, or wondering if he’s dreaming, or treating it all as one big play or act, he’s more like, “Huh. England. Okay.” He’s just kind of along for the ride, going with the flow.

The flow in this case includes a catchup since our introductory interlude: Lord Dorset got killed in the Puritan uprising several years back, Cromwell now runs England, the Dorsets are in danger of losing to Parliament their lands and their fine stables. (They’ve got fine stables. Great horses. Really. They’re just over there. Out of sight of the cameras. You can’t see them from there? Pity. But they’re there, trust me.) Oh, and Lady Dorset’s lonely. Really lonely. Really, really… yeah.

Boy, you’d never know that 17th-century Europeans bathed like once a year, would you?

Once again, we get a lengthy scene of gentle, caress-filled lovemaking, with plenty o’ shoulder-rubbing and neck-nuzzling. In a room with about two hundred lit candles. (How does that work in a manor house? “Hurry, send the maids to start lighting all those damned candles — the Lady’s hoping to be up in the bedroom within three-quarters of an hour!”)

The next morning, the plot gives a false alarm of thickening. The local constable (uncredited, but I recognize him as Claudiu Trandafir from Teen Knight, and that’s just plain sad) comes to confiscate their property by sundown. Lady Dorset, though, trots him into the castle, down the hall, and, um, reaches an understanding (mercifully, entirely off-camera) that leaves them another seven days. In that time, hopefully, they can make some sort of appeal to Parliament.

But in the meantime, Lady Dorset has a favor to ask. It seems that neither of her younger sisters have any experience with men, and since Tom is such a fine and, er, languid lover, he wonders if he would do them the inestimable favor of being their first teacher. Tom’s reaction? “Well, for you…”

Gosh. Not only is he supposed to teach them both, but they come to his room together. What follows is a hilariously inept clash between a supposedly-hot concept (”How ’bout he has both of them at the same time? Yeah, man! That’ll so be in the script!”) and the restrictions on staging such a scene to keep it from being, you know, too risque. So we get the girls undressing, then walking demurely around Tom’s room dressed in only their knee-length bloomers and coquettishly covering their chests, then joining him on the bed, where he goes through the same slow shoulder-kissing routine that worked on their older sister. Thrill as he spends minutes licking — their backs! Enjoy the expression of the sister who isn’t receiving his ministrations at any given moment, trying valiantly to look like she’s still completely involved! Heck, thrill to some more back-licking! (I stopped the movie and asked my wife, “Honey, should I lick your back more often?” Yeah, the expression on her face was priceless.)

Next morning, Lady Dorset rides off (ooh, lookit the fine horseflesh!) to seek favor in Parliament. And with that, the actress rides out of the movie, and the character rides out of the plot. Entirely. Everyone else has to stay behind, including myself as the unlucky audience. When the mayor comes around, trying to undo the understanding reached with the constable, Miranda follows her sisters steps: She first persuades the mayor to undulge in some wine, and then dot dot dot. (Again, mercifully, as the mayor is an old fat guy. We just cut to him smoking a cigar afterward.) After said tryst, the mayor is more than willing to protect them as offering a vital service to the community.

Dig. Those. Bloomers.

Which gives Miranda an idea. Hey, this sex thing could actually be pretty influential, and we might actually make some money with it, to boot! So with Tom acting as the business manager/scheduler/bookkeeper, she starts to “entertain” on a professional basis. Seeing the wisdom of her plan, Amy joins in, as well as the maidservants (who are all young and slender, of course), and soon there’s a line of nobles in the courtyard seeking pleasures forbidden by the Puritan government. And because of a bizarrely twisted male-justifying version of feminism, the women of the castle all feel empowered by their sexual commerce, and just love their jobs to death.

Tom greets all of this as a “sure, yeah” great idea, he’s just happy to be there. This is man who thinks that being the manager of a brothel situated in a noble manor just after the Puritan revolution as a “simple, calm, uncomplicated” life. He also guarantees himself a place in Bad Movie Hell by wryly commenting, “Build it, and they will come!”

At the end of one profitable business day, with the other women entertaining the last few guests, Miranda declares herself “invigorated” (shouldn’t that be “saddle-sore”?) and asks Tom to take her in to town for some food and music. This trip serves no purpose, except a) to show us that the location for the tavern is the same one in which the (koff) American coffeehouse is located, and b) for an unnamed nobleman to recognize Miranda by reputation, bless her, and tell her she’s performing a great service for the people. Yes, this will become important later, or as important as anything can be in this pointless movie. Then Tom and Miranda head back to the ranch for some lovin’ of their own, which entails all of the tropes we’ve come to expect: Shoulder-nuzzling, back-licking, somnabulistic caresses, etc. (Oddly enough, there’s no dialogue centering on the word “chafed.”)

In the morning, though, they learn that two of the Dorset manservants have set out after the last three late-night customers, intent on robbery. Tom rides to intervene, but gets there only in time to see one of the nobles shot dead — and for reasons known only to screenwriter desperation, Tom is fingered by one of the remaining nobles as the ringleader. Next we see, he’s in a prison cell in (koff) London.

They had not yet developed the “two lines, no waiting” model.

Miranda sets out for (koff) London to intercede, but Tom has already been convicted without benefit of a trial, and sentenced to hang at high noon. Miranda is stymied at every turn in seeking Tom, until she runs into the appreciative stranger from the tavern — who turns out to be Oliver Cromwell himself.

That’s right. The leader of the Puritan revolution is a big admirer of uppity women who run an advertised whorehouse in a noble manor. “It is I, and the people, who owe you an apology,” he says. “Your passion makes our country great.” I’m trying to figure out why they didn’t just go ahead and include a kung-fu-fighting Abraham Lincoln in the plot at this point.

Cromwell obligingly writes up a pardon for Tom, and Miranda rides off to deliver it, but just as she reaches the gallows, the trapdoor is sprung, Tom drops…

…And he’s back in the present-day arcade, with Syrene just removing the VR headband. The whole thing took only half an hour. Syrene is of course evasive when asked whether any of it was real or it was all in Tom’s head, and asks only a dollar in payment.

Well, I’d heard that he was “well-hung,” but…

Then Tom goes back to the coffeehouse, enthusiastic about finishing his econ paper. Develop a business plan suitable for the time of Charles I and the Puritan rebellion? Why, a well-ordered brothel, of course! The end.

This is the point of the review at which I normally offer up a summation, a conclusion, and perhaps some witty bon mots. Instead I sit here, feeling like someone just used a pumpkin-carving kit to scrape clean the inside of my skull. At first, I thought this was a movie that just didn’t bother with intimations of quality; by the end, my only working hypothesis was that this movie was deliberately crafted to insult the expectations and intelligence of its viewers. From the yawn-inducing marathon “erotic” scenes, to the utter lack of dramatic tension in the story, to the plot elements that came and left at random intervals, to the implicit assumption that anyone viewing this audience would know bugger-all about history… How far do you have to bury your soul to expect people to pay good money to watch this and not feel cheated?