‘Casablanca for perverts': Why Pamela Anderson's Barb Wire bombed

Telegraph

28-02-2025

Pamela Anderson has attracted the best reviews of her career for her starring role in
But in truth, Anderson may feel an even greater sense of vindication than Moore did for her comeback in The Substance. For years, Anderson was little more than a punchline for jokes revolving around breast enhancements and
If you've seen films with titles like Naked Souls and Raw Justice, it is unlikely that you were watching them for their intricately constructed storylines or sparkling dialogue. It says much for
But all her other regrettable pictures pale in comparison to what was intended to be her very own Citizen Kane, the 1996 superhero film Barb Wire. It saw Anderson play the tough-as-nails Barbara Kopetski, nicknamed 'Barb Wire' and given a would-be iconic catchphrase: 'Don't call me babe'.
Nobody would ever mistake the basic premise of Barb Wire for anything resembling high art, which is ironic, as its storyline is remarkably similar to the classic picture Casablanca. Rather than Humphrey Bogart dispensing world-weary wisdom from Rick's Bar, however, Anderson's Barb is a nightclub owner and bounty hunter in 2017's Steel City, caught in the midst of the Second American Civil War. (It is one of the film's many unintentionally amusing failings that nobody seems very clear as to what happened in the First American Civil War.)
She is reunited at her nightclub Hammerhead with her former lover, the splendidly named Axel Hood, who is a sketchily depicted 'freedom fighter' attempting to stop a deadly virus being distributed by the fascist Congressional Directorate and thereby wiping out half the country. He and Barb find themselves attempting, in classic mid-90s action-pic fashion, to stop the various villains while fighting, driving motorcycles very fast and spitting out would-be tough-guy one-liners which land with all the gravity of an overcooked pancake.
Barb Wire could never be mistaken for a good film – or even an effective one on the low-grade ambitions that it sets for itself. Roger Ebert gave it one of the kinder reviews it received when he wrote, 'Movies like this stir a certain affection in my heart. The filmmakers must have known they were not making a good movie, but they didn't use that as an excuse to be boring and lazy.'
Boring it isn't, exactly, but Ebert was too kind – it is phenomenally lazy filmmaking. It stands or falls not on the embarrassed-looking supporting cast, or the cheap special effects, or even on its derivative plot. Instead, the only appeal that it ever had lies entirely in the casting of Anderson, and the film's financial and critical failure ended any serious hope that she had of being regarded as a bankable movie star. Her newfound standing as a serious indie actress would take three decades to arrive.
Anderson's pin-up career had begun with appearances in Playboy in the late Eighties and early Nineties, which she had parlayed into her best-known role as the lifeguard C J Parker on the television show Baywatch, which required her to look good in a red one-piece swimsuit and run around a lot. This, alternating with further Playboy appearances, had made her a star.
By the time Barb Wire was announced at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, Anderson was one of the most famous women in the world. She had married Lee three months before, after having known him for a matter of a few days, and had turned from a subject of prurient interest into an object of tabloid obsession in the process. The maelstrom of attention that surrounded her was not favourable to the film.
Its original director Adam Rifkin, who is probably best known for writing the Gore Verbinski comedy Mouse Hunt, was fired shortly after his hiring was announced and replaced by David Hogan, an untested filmmaker who was best known for having been second unit director on Alien 3 and Batman Forever. The costume designer Rosanna Norton dared to hint that this was a bad idea, saying 'Adam had a surrealistic vision and a very interesting view about where he wanted to take this picture. Now we're doing more of a music video thing, a more commercial picture and it will be very interesting to see how those two visions will match up.'
It was, indeed, interesting. But the odds were against the picture from the start. The subject matter was a relatively obscure comic book, written by Chris Warner, and was unknown to anyone apart from true obsessives of the genre. (He subsequently commented, tactfully, that 'I never envisioned [Barb] as oozing this kind of bombshell quality, but when Pamela walks across the screen it definitely adds another level to the character.') The budget was set at a tiny $9 million, which was a fraction of most would-be blockbusters of the era, and, without wishing to disrespect a supporting cast that includes Once Were Warriors' Temuera Morrison and the great oddball Udo Kier, it was not a film that anyone would be likely to see for any other reason than its star.
There was a vast amount riding on Anderson's first headlining vehicle, and, unsurprisingly, she felt uneasy from the outset. As she later told Premiere, 'There was the first director, then the second director, then I had some medical problems on the set and I got married just before the movie, which is probably really bad timing. I said, 'Well, I hope this chaos adds to the whole vibe of the movie' because this movie is chaos and I think that in the end it will be great.'
This was optimistic, to put it mildly. The 2017 Pam + Tommy miniseries suggests that Anderson took on the role because she believed it would be an opportunity to break out in a Jane Fonda-esque part; after all, years before Fonda had been taken seriously as an actress, she had made her name in her former husband Roger Vadim's campy sci-fi space opera Barbarella.
She may have been ridiculed for perceived naivety at the time, but in Anderson's defence, she had parlayed what was usually a short-lived opportunity brought about by Playboy exposure into a significant career already. Taking the next step up seemed a real possibility. She wished to define herself not just as Lee's wife, or as CJ from Baywatch, but as a figure in her own right – a laudable ambition, just pursued with the wrong vehicle.
The star saw Barb Wire as a considerable opportunity. Her manager had dismissed the role as that of a cartoon character, but, as Anderson confided to Premiere, 'I was asking about it, 'Who's that character she rides a motorcycle, shoots guns and is an action hero? I want to do it.' I got the comics and said this is me. Nobody else can play this role [it] has everything that I want to do.' Even if the film was coming out at a nadir for comic book characters – Batman Forever had been a hit the previous year, but the 1995 Sylvester Stallone version of Judge Dredd and the female-led flop Tank Girl very much had not been – the belief was that Anderson would draw a certain level of interest, even if it was largely prurient.
Unfortunately, its star's much-documented Playboy history– to say nothing of her leaked sex tape – meant that its putative audience would have expected nudity, and so the film had to deliver on that front. Still, at least the opening scene attempts to have some fun with its obligations. The film begins with a lengthy, apparently irrelevant scene in which Barb does a strip tease while dressed in her signature leather outfit in front of an audience of lecherous men. When one punter demands that she go further, imploring her 'Come on, babe!', she throws her stiletto heel at him, embedding it in his forehead, before hissing her catchphrase for the first time. As a piece of cynical 'have your cake and eat it' opportunism, it is hard to beat. The scene shows Anderson topless and being hosed down with water in slow motion, but also attempts to present her as an iconic action heroine and strong woman.
Oddly enough, it almost works, managing to subvert its essential tackiness. Unfortunately, Anderson lacked the thespian range to be convincing as a tough and misanthropic loner; the (Canadian) actress was perceived as chirpy, all-American Pammy, the personification of perkiness. Despite her own personal troubles (the marriage with Lee soon curdled, and they would separate in 1998), she was caught between her own persona and the demands of the role. As would-be hard-bitten voiceover declares 'It was the middle of the second American Civil War, the world had gone to hell. It was 2 the worst year of my life', it is impossible to buy her as the ass-kicking, name-taking heroine the film needs, meaning that it is doomed from the outset.
To Anderson's credit, she certainly committed to the part. In her 2023 memoir Love, Pamela, she wrote: 'The schedule was taxing. It was my first introduction to such long, long hours, involving exciting and dangerous stunts. Learning to ride a motorcycle. Kickboxing in a tiny, restrictive corset. Rolling around while shooting guns like Desert Eagles and assembling at hyperspeed MP5K fully automatics.'
She was also obliged to fulfil the filmmaker's – and audiences' – expectations. The ridiculously figure-hugging leather outfit that she sports throughout the film reportedly gave her a 17-inch waist, to her extreme discomfort. But her commitment to the role was such that she had her character's signature tattoo – naturally, a piece of barbed wire – permanently inked on her torso. She would only have it removed in 2014, long after the film had faded from collective memory.
In any case, the filming was a miserable experience for Anderson, who had suffered a miscarriage shortly before it began. The script was rewritten constantly during production – as one crew member put it, 'One day they want the ramp at the back of the truck to drop down, the next day they don't. There's something new every day'. The pervasive sense that the quality of the film was irrelevant, too, meant that by the time that it was released in May 1996, there was a desperate hope that Anderson's tabloid star power – or notoriety – would still be enough to lure in curious audiences.
Alas, it did not. The reviews were predictably dismal. Empire described the film as 'mainly… an excuse to see Pam change her clothes and show her cleavage'. Anderson also 'won' Worst New Star at the Razzies the following year – a ceremony at which she was also nominated for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Couple (for her and her 'impressive enhancements'). Barb Wire became a running joke on late night chat shows, as well as a box office flop, making a mere $3.8 million. Predictably, it was a bigger hit on video, where the leery could make considerable use of the pause and rewind buttons.
There have been occasional attempts to re-evaluate the film, and Anderson's performance in it, as both politically prescient satire and a precursor to the female-led superhero likes of Black Widow and Wonder Woman. However, if it has a spiritual sequel, it is the equally dire 2004 Halle Berry farrago Catwoman, another winner at the Razzies. Barb Wire is as far away from the subtle dramatics of The Last Showgirl as might be imagined, and watched today, it is a time capsule of all the ugliness and noise and casual sexism that typified mid-Nineties male-oriented cinema, a cover of a men's magazine come to unlovely life.
It would be nice to be able to make a case for the film's defence – whether as a guilty pleasure, an underappreciated action romp or simply a so-bad-it's-good farce – but in fact it's none of these things. The action scenes, clearly executed on a tight budget, are unmemorable and blurrily edited, meaning that Anderson's fighting and kicking skills are impossible to discern. The dialogue is rote – 'Don't call me babe' is the only halfway memorable line, and that's because it's bad – and the rip-offs of Casablanca are enough to make you want to watch that rather than this.
A more adept filmmaker might have played into the camp and ridiculous aspects of the storyline, which Anderson seems prepared to do. But, somewhat bizarrely, it's all taken too seriously to be the riot it should be. If Pammie had been given outrageous dialogue and fight scenes, this might have been a cult midnight movie, but as it is, it's just a deserved flop. As Den of Geek aptly remarked, it's 'a post-apocalyptic rip-off of Casablanca starring Pamela Anderson made for an imagined mob of unambitious perverts'.
Still, with The Last Showgirl finally ensuring that Anderson receives her due as a serious actress rather than a bulbously enhanced prop, she can now look back on this career low with wry amusement. Just for heaven's sake – don't call her babe.
The Last Showgirl is in cinemas now