EDITOR’S NOTE: Princess Warrior was on USA Up All Night on November 15, 1991; October 17 and November 1, 1992; January 10 and November 6, 1993; April 9 and December 30, 1994; May 6 and November 15, 1995.
Ovule (Sharon Lee Jones, 9 1/2 Ninjas!), a princess from the matriarchal planet Vulkaria, should be queen upon the death of her mother (Cheryl Janecky). However, the power vacuum triggers a vicious coup led by her sister Currette (Dana Fredsti). After a skirmish, Ovule teleports to Earth to escape her sister’s reach. As is standard for the physics of intergalactic travel in this corner of the universe, the teleportation process doesn’t handle clothing well. Ovule lands naked in the vicinity of a seedy nightclub just as a wet T-shirt contest is underway. She manages to snag a “Better When Wet” shirt, ends up winning the contest by default and catches the eye of Bob, the club’s deejay. What follows is a fish-out-of-water chase across town, with Currette and her band of henchwomen — bearing names like Exzema (Lauri Warren), Bulemia (Christina Lucia Peralta-Ramos) and Ricketsia (Diana Karanikas) — in hot pursuit, all while two bumbling detectives turn the entire affair into a series of endless, winding road trips across the city.
You’ll notice the Vulkarian sets are constructed with an eye for the unconventional, as some of the corridor walls appear to be fashioned from giant candy bars. It’s a testament to the limited budget being stretched to its absolute breaking point to build an alien world.
Director Lindsay Norgard also wrote Game of Survival and directed Homeboys, while John Riley also wrote the male stripper TV movie For Ladies Only and The Tower.
There’s a great article by one of the stars of this film, Dana Fredsti, that really goes into the making of the movie. It highlights the absurdities of micro-budget filmmaking, including a $60,000 budget, terrible costumes featuring fishnets and bat-wings, fragile Plexiglas weapons that shattered on contact and a severely truncated shooting schedule for the climactic fight scene. She has some regrets, writing, “I’ve got one bad enough to make having been married to a man who now sports a fake Heidelberg dueling scar on one cheek and wears fangs in public look relatively innocuous.”
You can watch this on Tubi.
