In the early ‘80s, sword and sandal flicks and post-apocalyptic actioners ruled the drive-ins and video stores. By the time The Sisterhood was released, demand for the genres were dwindling and as a result, less and less of them were being produced. Leave it to a guy like Cirio H. (Silk) Santiago to combine the two.
“The Sisterhood” are a duo of warrior women with psychic powers who ride through the wasteland getting into skirmishes with scumbag men. Meanwhile, Lynn-Holly (For Your Eyes Only) Johnson lives in a post-nuke community where everyone looks upon her as a witch because of her psychic abilities. Her brother is killed when the local warlord sacks her village, so Johnson goes to join up with The Sisterhood to get revenge.
I like the fact that some guys are dressed like they came out of an ‘80s sword and sandal movie while others have the standard football-pads-and-face-paint attire befitting a post-apocalypse action flick. To spice things up, there are dudes that wear sunglasses and Dodgers baseball caps, which probably meant the wardrobe budget had started to run out.
The action is your standard pillaging and swordfights that you’d see in a post-Conan flick mixed in with the typical modified dune buggy and dilapidated sportscar chases consistent with a Mad Max rip-off. Johnson has a hawk for a pet and guys that look like WCW rejects give rousing speeches to their minions.
The only real novel touch occurs in the third act when the Sisters hide out inside a fallout shelter where they stumble upon a tank, which they use to stick it to the bad guys. As is usually the case with a Santiago picture, there’s a little T & A tossed in there too (but not a lot). The synthesizer-heavy score is good for a laugh though as it alternates between sounding like a Breaking News Report and Super Mario Bros.
Okay, I acknowledge this is starting to sound more like a grocery list of things that happen than an actual review, but that’s kind of how The Sisterhood is. It plays like a grocery list of ideas for a sword and sorcery/post-nuke action flick than an actual film. That’s OK, if you’re a fan of either genre. If you love those kinds of movies, you’re not absolutely guaranteed to like this one, but you’ll undoubtedly find something here to enjoy, even if it comes up short overall.
AKA: Caged Women.
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