The Celtic Queen

The Viking Queen (1967)

The ninth movie from the Hammer Collection is again a rewrite in history. The movie has absolutely nothing to do with the Vikings, no matter what the title says, it's about the Celts and the Romans. And losely based on history would be an overstatement in this one, it's just exploitation set in some historic scenery. It's badly made, badly acted and the script is ridiculous, but it's still somewhat fun. Funny enough this movie is most known for a scene where a Roman soldier is wearing a wristwatch, that says a lot about the quality of the movie. Though I've seen the movie twice now, I still haven't spotted the watch myself. But I guess it has to be there as everyone says that it is. Or then it's just a prank by Hammer, they make the audience focus on looking for the watch and thus make them not see how crappy the start of the movie is and when the action starts towards the end they are bored of looking for the watch and just enjoy the best moments the movie has to offer. That's how I watched it. The acting is bad, the "Viking Queen" is played by Carita Järvinen, a Finnish actress in a role that ended up being her last. Sure she looks great, but can't act more than your average tree. The movie has some camp values worth the watch but really not much of them either. Funniest thing there was that the movie presents about twenty scenes where bare breasts could have been shown, but it shows none. Kind of a nice little tease for what ever that's worth. Anyway the first half of the movie is utter crap but the second half is somewhat enjoyable campy action flick. As a whole though it's more on the crappy side of it. The picture quality on the DVD was not great and there were no subtitles and only a trailer as an extra.
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