Richard Chatten
The title 'Queen of the Amazons' with Patricia Morison led me to hope that Morison (who recently celebrated her 102nd birthday) would be in the title role, but alas no. She's playing Jean Preston, looking for her missing fiancé somewhere in the Dark Continent, where she trades in her fetching forties suits for a fetching pair of jodhpurs and riding boots and her party eventually encounters the amazons promised by the title.In support are veterans J.Edward Bromberg (first seen reciting 'Three Fishers' by Charles Kingsley to his pet monkey) and John Miljan, who serves as the film's narrator. About half the film consists of stock footage (some of which I recognised from Martin & Osa Johnson's 'Simba: King of the Beasts' [1928]), and the film actually does a pretty good job of integrating the actors into the actuality scenes.Ironically it's when we finally meet the tribe of "white she-devils" that the film loses its grip; and despite all their build-up both Jean (having earlier shown herself to be a crack shot with a six-shooter) and Queen Zita (equally deadly with a bow & arrow) both prove disappointingly useless when they actually find themselves confronted with a crisis. The day is instead saved by Zita's blonde handmaiden Sugi (Cay Forester), whose quick thinking in grabbing a blowpipe and killing the villain should have resulted in Zita abdicating in her favour, and instead doing Sugi's hair from now on.
Rainey Dawn
This movie is not exactly what I expected - only partially. I was expecting the group to speak to the Amazon Women's Queen and they did. I was also expecting to see quite a few beautiful Amazon Women throwing spears and things of that nature when the group arrived to find Jean Preston's fiancée Gregg - that didn't happen.The film's focus is more on the group trying to find Gregg and then it flips to scenes with the Amazon Queen and her captive Gregg - very, very little action in a film of this nature which was a little disappointing to me for some reason.It's okay for a one time watch if you happen upon it and it's definitely not a movie to seek out.2/10
unbrokenmetal
If "Queen of the Amazons" is listed among the 10 worst films of the 1940s at IMDb, I suppose it means a lot of films have been lost since then or are watched by nobody anymore. "Queen of the Amazons" is nothing particularly bad, just an average adventure flick that required plenty of archive footage of giraffes, elephants, a sinking ship etc. to fill the 60 minutes running time. "Queen of the Amazons" tells the story of a lady who looks in India for her lost fiancé. She is told "wrong continent!", because he actually went on a safari to Africa. Hey, we all make mistakes! Or maybe it was just because they also had some footage from an unfinished movie about India in the archive? Nevermind, the heroes soon continue the search in Africa, where lions attack oftentimes, but the Amazons the title promises don't matter so much. The script writer tried his best to provide some twists and turns for the story, so in the end, it wasn't as bad as the 2 out of 10 average rating made me expect.
robcat2075
I've noticed several reviewers' exasperation at the "amazon" in the title as if it were a great mistake that the movie is not set in the Amazon Jungle.It should be pointed out that "amazon" is a term from ancient myth which does not originate from the Amazon River in South America. It refers to a legendary tribe of women called "amazons". The river in South America is actually named after that legend, apparently some explore thought he saw some women there who fit that description.But if you like Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan movies, this is not a bad substitute. I especially like the trained crow. After some recent research findings into the intelligence of crows, it's tricks are quite plausible. Maybe more plausible than some of the human performances.
AD
