Sheena

Summer of 1984.

A lot of memorable movies came out that year.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom...

Ghostbusters...

Gremlins...

The Karate Kid...

The Never-Ending Story...

But that summer, the movie that affected me most profoundly...?

Fucking SHEENA.


The luscious Tanya Roberts riding a horse painted to look like a zebra.

Lord, how I still love that epic theme song... they don't produce sweeping themes like that anymore...

Yes, it was a remarkably cheesy movie in hindsight.

It was also one of the most thrilling experiences I'd had at the movies up to that point.

I was 8 years old. In the exciting world of day-camp, where anything could happen. In the last days before "Temple of Doom" helped create the "PG-13" rating. Watching a PG-rated movie that featured an astounding amount of nudity and violence. In a theater full of my intellectual peers, without any parental supervision.

Oh, not "brief nudity", either...


Full. Frontal. Tanya. Roberts.

This was, of course, decades before the internet made pornography easily accessible to all children. Back in those days, nudity was harder to come by. I think we appreciated it more back then.

My folks were fucking Puritans when they took me to the movies as a kid, forcing me to cover my eyes during any naughty bits. So I remember getting positively DRUNK on "Sheena" when I saw it in the theater that summer. To quote the late, great poet Robert Palmer, it gave me feelings that I never felt before.

They really don't make movies like this anymore. And that is a shame.