Please don't spend money on this.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Blistering performances.

Absolutely silly from start to finish, the real problem with this female empowerment adventure is that it goes from episode to episode without really flowing from one plot element to the next. It is a badly written but often funny tale of a group of Viking women (lead by Abby Dalton of "Falcon Crest" and Susan Cabot) who decide to head out onto the Nordic seas to find their missing men and end up finding all sorts of other dangers, often going from one danger to the next without really believable explanation of how they got there. Pretty boy Bradford Jackson, who somehow didn't go off to battle with the Viking men, stows away on the Viking women's ship, and unless I blinked and missed it, went from hiding one moment to being amongst the girls in the next, having been discovered somewhere in between. They fight the winds, swirling sharks, a giant sea serpent who turns their ship over yet somehow they manage to all get to shore. There they come across a Barbaric tribe who place them in further danger, and along th way, Dalton and Jackson are threatened with being burnt to death, face another attack by the sea monster, yet somehow they never manage to look dirty or unshaven or with a hair out of place.Dalton, one of my favorite actors on the long running night time soap opera "Falcon Crest", seems far too modern to be clad in cave women dress, as do most of the other females around her. We are supposed to think that the dark haired men are barbarians simply because they are unshaven, yet they seem to have more of a civilized society than the Nordic looking Viking women and the men they are searching for. The sea serpent is appropriately scary looking, and the effects of its attack on their small but elegant Viking ship are actually pretty good. But the idiotic dialog and weak performances exposes this film for the type of drive-in junk it is where scantily clad females run around like some sort of Amazon women from the moon, but never seem to be really ready for the strenuous adventures they will face. I'm sure that real Viking women were closer to the comic strip character of Helga who was married to Viking Hagar, not the pin-up types presented here. This is worth spending 65 minutes simply for a few good laughs at the expense of the film, but like many early American International films, is quickly forgettable.

Roger Corman has directed over fifty films (and at age ninety is still active as of this writing as a producer,) some of them, recognized classics of the B-movie genre, such as The Little Shop of Horrors, Bloody Mama, The St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and the series of Poe-inspired horror movies featuring Vincent Price, but many others so quickly and cheaply made that they are esteemed as classics of the "so-bad-it's good" genre.This film is firmly in the latter category. Viking Women has to do with a group of Viking women, of course, who set out on a voyage to discover why their husbands haven't returned from their latest expedition: battling sea monsters and a wicked king ensue. Production values are minimal -- I've seen worse, but not often -- the cast members look more like they belong in a 1950s TV ad for vacuum cleaners than in medieval Scandinavia or the Upper Paleolithic, and the acting, if it is no worse than you would expect in a high school play, is not any better. In short, this will appeal to bad movie fans and not to many others.Probably properly a one or two star movie, but give it an extra star for the camp value.

Considering the title and that the film was made by Roger Corman during his "quickie" days (he'd already made something like 679 other films in 1957), this film is about what you'd expect--a very low budget and silly picture. The only decent thing about the movie is the soundtrack--not bad at all. Otherwise, it's pure crap--1950s drive-in movie crap.The film begins with a bunch of scantily-clad blondes in Scandinavia pining for their lost men. Apparently the men had gone off to sea a few years earlier and never returned. So, these ladies decide to go in search of them. In real life, Viking women were amazingly tough ladies, but I just couldn't see this gaggle of skinny ladies putting up much of a rescue effort--and I turned out to be right. After almost being killed by a giant sea monster, the women wash ashore in the land of dark-haired bad actors where they are taken prisoner. There, they discover that their men are slaves to these dark-haired guys. I loved finally seeing the Viking men, as they all looked like extras from a 1960s beach movie--clean shaven, no chest hair and Troy Donahue hair---exactly like the rugged Vikings must have looked!! Eventually, the well-coiffed Vikings escape and the dark-haired jerks get theirs--the end.While there is a bit more to the plot than this, I really don't care to elaborate--it's just not that interesting or important. Instead, let's talk about the worst aspect of the film--the writing. Again and again, characters do things that make no sense at all. Why take the Viking women on a wild boar hunt? Why does the only dark-haired lady in the bunch of Vikings (a sure sign of evil) behave so wildly unpredictably as she does (I suspect really, really bad PMS)? Why does a teeny, tiny sword kill a 6000-foot long sea monster? How did the Vikings expect to keep warm wearing outfits that looked like they were left over from American-International's last caveman or jungle film? And, why didn't the writers include anything that was remotely exciting or interesting? The bottom line is that the film is just barely watchable but why bother unless you are a bad movie fan. Additionally, it seems that Corman must have quickly slapped together this film in anticipation of the soon to be released epic, THE VIKINGS, a film vastly superior in every conceivable way.

Anyone looking for sheer fun with a movie should enjoy this Corman classic. Some of the most unconvincing Viking women ever seen set out on a dangerous voyage to rescue their lost men. Blonde Hollywood starlets like June Kenney and Abby Dalton do their best to portray fierce Viking women. They look great, especially Betsy Jones-Moreland as a stunningly sexy beauty. The always reliable Susan Cabot slinks around amongst the blonde maidens with her unique brand of sexy villainy. She gets to sneer and smirk and raise her eyebrows a lot, and manages to seduce just about any man she meets, with her come-hither eyes and menacing purr. She steals the picture from all the " good girls". In the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 version, one of the robots remarks that : "You can tell she's the bad one, 'cause she's got black hair!"Richard Devon is fairly impressive as the warrior king, though his palace suggests a high school cafeteria with a few strategic wall hangings for atmosphere. Jay Sayer, who was a total creep as one of the gang members in Corman's Teenage Doll, plays another total creep here, as the obnoxious son of the king. Jonathan Haze gets to display plenty of virile vigor, as he continually leaps on the bad guys ,and wrestles everyone in sight. The title sea serpent isn't really that bad, considering the extremely low budget. Overall, this movie is quite enjoyable, if you like Fifties drive-in flicks and Corman movies. The Viking women are a really foxy bunch of gals, too!