Line #38 Film/Sheena


1	[[quoteright:257:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/sheena_movie_poster_5659.jpg]]
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3	''Sheena'' is a 1984 Creator/ColumbiaPictures film starring Creator/TanyaRoberts as Janet Ames.
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5	As a child, Janet came to Africa with her geologist parents, who were killed in a cave-in. She was raised by the shaman of the local Zambuli tribe and named Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. She grows up and has to protect the Zambuli lands from an evil prince who wants to strip mine the tribal lands. She is assisted by an American reporter, Vic Casey, who of course falls madly in love with her.
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7	Based on the comic book ''ComicBook/SheenaQueenOfTheJungle.''
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9	----
10	!!This film contains examples of:
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12	* TheAllegedCar: Vic and Fletch's rented Range Rover tends to stall out, although this is strange given the car's fairly solid reputation as a hardy offroader.
13	* AmoralAfrikaner: The white soldiers, but especially Jorgensen and the helicopter pilot.
14	* AndThisIsFor: When Chief Haromba has Jorgensen at spearpoint near the end.
15	-->'''Jorgensen''': [[JustFollowingOrders I was only following orders]].\
16	'''Haromba''': [''unswayed''] For Z'Kuru! [''kills Jorgensen'']
17	* BaldOfEvil: One of the soldiers, Blau, has a shaved head.
18	* BattleCouple: Sheena and Vic become this near the end.
19	* {{Bookends}}: The movie begins and ends with a healing earth ceremony to cure someone, and both are identical visually: the tribe's wise-woman is overlooking from a nearby hilltop with a leopard pal in both instances, and both times there are newcomers present, whose wind up in the middle of commotion along with their car and are basically ignored by the tribe and allowed to remain as spectators.
20	* BrickJoke: Boto's HouseRules that he beats Fletch at cards with. At the end, Fletch can be seen [[FunnyBackgroundEvent teaching them to Juka]] on the plane.
21	* {{Bulungi}}: There's no such country as Tigora.
22	* CardCarryingVillain: Zanda, who proudly declares herself "the most wicked woman in Tigora."
23	* CluelessAesop: As Sheena says, "Guns are bad!"; they kill people after all. Bows and spears, on the other hand, are good because... they also kill people?
24	* CharacterTitle: Sheena is the main character.
25	* ChasteHero: Sheena, having never experienced any form of romance before, questions why Vic touches his mouth to hers after he kisses her.
26	* DisneyVillainDeath: Zanda, who falls out of the helicopter.
27	* DoesntLikeGuns: Sheena. She flat out says "Guns are bad!" and extorts the virtues of spears and arrows.
28	* TheDragon: Colonel Jorgensen.
29	* DrivenByEnvy: Zanda becomes intensely jealous of Sheena, whose mere mention inspires notable desire in her husband Otwani. For the rest of the film, Zanda is set on killing Sheena.
30	* EarthyBarefootCharacter: Just like her comic book counterpart, Sheena is a nature loving tribal jungle dweller and barefooter, except where they forgot to edit out the Tanya's sandals.
31	* EagleLand: The Americans, particularly Vic. He certainly means well, but tends to come across as condescending.
32	* EyeScream: Happens to the soldiers' helicopter pilot.
33	* TheEvilPrince: Prince Otwani, who wants to strip mine the land of its natural resources.
34	* FatBestFriend: Fletch to Vic.
35	* FauxActionGirl: While Sheena certainly knows how to use a bow and arrow, less emphasis is placed on Sheena's fighting prowess and more on her psychic abilities.
36	* FriendToAllLivingThings: Sheena. ''Every'' animal is her friend, without exception, even normally-vilified snakes.
37	* GreatEscape: When Sheena rescues the Shaman from prison, she goes all out, even to the point of having Chango the elephant push a water tower over onto the prison itself to completely destroy it (after she's safely gotten the Shaman out of course).
38	* HeKnowsTooMuch: Otwani abides by this trope to the letter. He poisons Grizzard because of this, and it's also why he wants to kill Vic.
39	* HellishCopter: The soldiers' helicopter is brought down by a ''flock of killer flamingoes'' who ''peck out the pilot's eyes.''
40	* HeroStoleMyBike: Vic is being escorted in a Land Rover by two {{Mooks}}. He throws them both out, then climbs into the driver's seat in ''while the vehicle is still driving''.
41	* HouseRules: Boto has some pretty strange and confusing rules for the card games he runs.
42	* IncurableCoughOfDeath: Grizzard, likely due to the fact he chain smokes. [[spoiler:Otwani helps him on his way by poisoning his meds.]]
43	* InnocentFanserviceGirl: Sheena, who bathes nude underneath waterfalls and in streams (which would have guaranteed at least PG-13 rating by itself had it been made after 1984). When among her adopted tribe there's no issue; the Zambulis apparently regularly see one another naked due to different cultural values. But when she does it when she's with Vic, he's visibly uncomfortable with it - however Sheena, due to her upbringing, is confused as to why.
44	* JerkJock: Otwani is both a football star, and an amoral, murderous schemer.
45	* JunglePrincess: Sheena is a young woman of European extraction who has been raised in a jungle environment.
46	* JustFollowingOrders: Jorgensen tries to use this to justify his role in the massacre of Z'Kuru, a native village. [[spoiler:It doesn't work.]]
47	* KickTheDog: The helicopter pilot gets angry that Sheena has evaded him, so he vents his frustration by strafing a nearby herd of antelope. [[spoiler:Fortunately it appears he fails to hit anything.]]
48	* MaleFrontalNudity: When the African man is cured of his cancer by being buried up to his neck in the healing earth, he emerges completely nude. The film shows him from the front, not the rear, although it's shot from a sufficient distance. Later, Vic is cured of his third degree burns in the same manner, and is naked when he emerges, too, although the tribesmen put a cloth around his waist, so he's seen naked only briefly.
49	* MightyWhitey: The tribe's prophecy specifically states a "golden god child" will save them. Janet Ames (later Sheena) is a white, blonde American.
50	* MsFanservice: Creator/TanyaRoberts wears a skimpy two-piece throughout the film and has not one, but two, uncensored bathing scenes.
51	* MyCarHatesMe: When Fletch is trying to escape from the soldiers in the Range Rover, it stalls and the engine refuses to turn over.
52	* NativeGuide: Juka (who shows Vic and Fletch around town) and Boto, who serves as Fletch's tracker once he has to venture into the savannah.
53	* NubileSavage: Sheena, who's constantly walking around in a skimpy fursuit, [[FanService filmed with her legs or cleavage in focus]], and even takes a WaterfallShower.
54	* ObfuscatingStupidity: Boto. He pretends to be just a weird middle-aged drunken guy who cheats at cards. In reality he's a ScarilyCompetentTracker.
55	* PragmaticVillainy: Otwani's destruction of the village of Z'Kuru and the massacre of its people is his most evil act in the film, but it isn't without reasons. It has the bonus of boosting morale among his men ("[[BloodKnight A little killing's gonna cheer them up]]."), and he also makes it plain he wants to leave survivors, so they can warn other villages, hoping that the Zambulis, afraid of the coming army, will flee, allowing the soldiers to roll in unopposed.
56	* PrivateMilitaryContractors: Jorgensen's men appear to be this.
57	* RockBeatsLaser: Invoked by Sheena, and criticized by Vic. When Vic asks if the tribe has firearms, Sheena angrily responds, "Never! Guns are bad!" She says her people will use bows and arrows and other such things. "Against machine guns? Against armored cars?" cries Vic, horrified at what he envisions as a slaughter. "You make me wanna cry!" When the battle against the soldiers actually happens, though, this trope is played straight - the natives pretty easily trounce the villains and their advanced weaponry.
58	** Also played literally straight at a few points, at least the rock part - big boulders get rolled down onto the soldiers.
59	* RunningGag: Fletch's weird "water diet."
60	* ScarilyCompetentTracker: Wadman, who at one point is able to deduce from very deep zebra hoofprints that it's carrying two people, and from this figure out it's Sheena and Vic on horseback.
61	** However, he's only as good at his job as the plot requires. At one point, Sheena and Vic have climbed a tree. Wadman is able to find their footprints and even deduce that Vic tripped and fell at one point, but fails to comprehend that the reason the tracks end is because ''they're up in the tree'' right above him. Heck, he can't even answer the question of ''whether or not they kept going past that point''. He basically seems to act as if he believes his prey just vanished into thin air.
62	--->'''Jorgensen''': I asked, did they go on?\
63	'''Wadman''': I already told you. I ain't sure.
64	** Then there's Boto, the seemingly goofy card player who helps Fletch find Vic.
65	** Utterly averted with poor Vic, who mistakes lion pawprints for a zebra's hoofprints.
66	--->'''Vic''': Footprints. Running, I think. Hey, how many toes has a zebra got, if any?\
67	'''Fletch''': [''to himself''] He thinks he's the last of the Mohicans!
68	* SceneryPorn: Besides the score, the film's main saving grace is the stunningly beautiful cinematography showing off the African countryside in all its splendor.
69	* SchmuckBait: How Vic overcomes Blau in the back of the Land Rover. He turns the volume up on his portable radio really loud to annoy him, then when an angry Blau moves to turn it off, Vic jumps him and throws him out.
70	-->'''Vic''': Nice melody, huh?
71	* {{Sidekick}}: Fletch spends a lot of the film spectated from Vic and Sheena, but ultimately fills this role. Interestingly, he doesn't immediately go back to help them, pondering about the severe risk involved, as well as how he could become famous by breaking the story himself, but does do the right thing in the end.
72	** Boto and Juka, who help Fletch throughout the later part of the movie, could be considered sidekicks ''to'' the main sidekick.
73	* StandardHollywoodStrafingProcedure: Done by the helicopter against a herd of deer.
74	* SternChase: Pretty much the entire middle portion of the film can be summed up as "Sheena and Vic race ahead of the bad guys trying to beat them back to Gudjara Mountain."
75	* TemptingFate: Sheena's parents, as they're entering the cave.
76	-->'''Betsy''': The wobblies. Remember what Chief Haromba said.\
77	'''Phillip''': Yeah, these caves can have strange echo effects. But you know as well as I do, Bets; echoes don't kill people.
78	* TooDumbToLive: Sheena's mother, Betsy Ames, ''screams out her daughter's name'' in the middle of an unstable cave, resulting in a massive cave-in that kills her and her husband.
79	** Making it worse is is the fact Chief Haromba warned them about the cave's instability beforehand.
80	* WaterfallShower: Sheena takes two.
81	* WhatTheHellIsThatAccent: The British John Forgeham attempts what seems to be an Afrikaans accent as Jorgensen, but it renders him TheUnintelligible at times. For example, when yelling, "Move, you cretins!" it comes off as "Maul your curtains!"

Context Film / Sheena