FEMALE SLAVES’ REVENGE (1997) * ½

Right from the get-go, you know you’re in for… something.   Director Ted V. Mikels appears on screen to introduce the movie, stating:  “This film is about man’s inhumanity to man!”  Then we get a long scene of wildlife footage superimposed over a globe.  After that, there’s an even longer opening crawl set against some cheesy CGI flames that sets up the premise. 

A slave revolt in an unnamed African nation leads to a decree that says all white plantation owners must flee and relinquish their land to their servants. A white landowner played by Mikels, in what is probably his biggest role, refuses to leave and continues to treat his servants cruelly.  Before long, they capture him and put him on trial (in his living room) for his assorted injustices. 

Female Slaves’ Revenge is thematically similar to Mikels’ The Black Klansman, but it’s sorely lacking the gut punch fun (not to mention basic competency) of that film. There’s so much whipping, bondage, and trampling going on here that you have to wonder if the movie was just an excuse for Mikels to act out his kinky fantasies on film.  The chintzy on-screen titles and crappy camcorder cinematography makes it feel more like a cheap bondage video than a real motion picture.  A cheap bondage video with an anti-apartheid message that caters to the white guilt race play market.  That is one very specific kink.

Mikels also throws in a lot of random cutaways to a torrential downpour that’s occurring around the property.  I don’t know why it’s important to let us know it’s raining every five minutes.  The footage is so gratuitous, it makes me suspect Mikels took an old video of flood damage he made for insurance purposes and edited it into the movie. 

All this goes on for an excruciating 83 minutes.  It might’ve sneaked by with a ** rating, but the long vote-casting scenes when the women decide Mikes’ fate go on forever.  Still, if you’ve sat through as many bad Mikels movies as I have, you might enjoy seeing him being whipped and abused.  

As bad as Female Slaves’ Revenge is, I don’t think anyone else could’ve made it.  It’s distinctly Mikels in just about every way.  If that isn’t a sign of a true auteur filmmaker, I don’t know what is. 

AKA:  Apartheid Slave-Women’s Justice.