1990 Directed by Greydon Clark
A princess in the Amazon rain forests tries to fight a conglomerate threatening the forests by going to Los Angeles. There she links up with a rich kid who tells her that she must get on television to succeed with her mission. Quick as a wink, the two come up with the idea of winning a lambada dance contest.
Lambada, A Dança Proibida, Lambada, the Forbidden Dance, Lambada El baile prohibido, Lambada – A tiltott tánc, 금지된 춤
USA
Germany12
Germany
USA
****FUN BAD MOVIE ALERT****BAD MOVIE HIDDEN GEM ALERT****
"So when did they start letting your kind in here" - mean ex-girlfriend,
- Daily Horror Hunt #13 (July 2019): boxd.it/3uAuO
Day 16. Watch any horror movie written or directed by Greydon Clark.
Oh... my... God... this... fucking... movie. I'm so glad that I undermined this clue and watched Lambada! The Forbidden Dance.
So, it is 1990, I am 11 years old and I'm going to be left alone because my mom is going out on a date. She and her date went to see Lambada: The Forbidden Dance. I took the name very seriously and was disturbed by the idea that my mom had watched a pornographic film with this new…
'I do not want my son involved with an Indian queen from the jungle!'
Lambada Night continues (see my review of the entirely different movie entitled Lambada for part one of this excursion into forbidden dancing)! To recap: the non-phenomenon of the lambada was captured on celluloid not once but twice (actually, I think there's also a third Brazilian entry, if you can believe it), both of which were released on the exact same day in 1990. Such was the thirst, the insatiable hunger for the lambada. Of course both movies totally tanked. I don't know how anyone could've ever foreseen a different outcome. But despite their financial failure, both of these delightful films bring slightly different but equally delicious vintages of nothing…
I almost want to go back and add half a star to its competitor film Lambada just to distance it further from the stench of The Forbidden Dance. Released on the exact same day in 1990, it’s long been said that Lambada was “the better of the two,” but that didn’t prepare me for the level of awful achieved here. This thing makes Wild Orchid look classy.
The picture is about the princess of an indigenous tribe whose land in the Brazilian Amazon is threatened by deforestation from an American company, so she flies to Los Angeles with the tribe’s witch doctor to get them to stop. When her pleas are ignored, she sets up as a maid in Beverly…
This was my pick for a bad movie night recently — I saw it a lot on TV when I was young, probably because it was sleazy enough to be fascinating to me when I was first interested in things sexy, but innocent enough that they would play it during the day. Anyway, I was glad to see that it held up and folks seemed to dig it. It’s a trashy, dumb delight, with the pleasure of seeing Sid Haig in a wordless role and Laura Harring’s first performance, and a totally nutty/shoehorned in message about saving the rainforest.
The most fascinating thing about this is how hard it sets up an actual story, only to completely disregard it. Laura Harring plays Nisa, a Brazilian tribal princess whose village is attacked by a corporate shark played by Richard Lynch. So she is sent on a journey to Los Angeles with her tribe's "witch doctor" (Sid Haig) to get him to not wreck the village. One run-in with the cops later and her witch doctor friend is thrown into jail, so Nisa gets a job as a maid and then a prostitute, I guess, only to eventually be rescued so she can enter a dance contest. This last piece is their ploy to stop the destruction of her home because…
get outta town - a witch doctor in LA?
The Forbidden Dance is a ~very~ stereotypical native princess love story about the power of DANCE and SAVING THE RAINFOREST or at least respecting indigenous sovereignty. It has all the trappings of the 80s - not just the big collars and miniskirts but the casual racism of the upper crust.
Now, I am personally a believer in the power of dance and was down to clown with a premise as silly as challenging a petroleum exec through some kind of national dance competition. However, save for one sensuous curtain dance, I wasn't really impressed by the dancing. This seems like the minimum bar for the film to clear.
Otherwise, the absurdity…
"Since when did Jason start dating wet bags?"
This is something I would never call good. Don't let the title card about it being for Rainforest preservation fool you, this was mean to solely cash in on the Lamboda craze at the time. The writing is beyond childish and basic, the acting besides from Sid Haig and Richard Lynch is awful, the camera work is static and lazy, and the message is half hearted.
However, the movie is so filled with late 80's/early 90's cheese that I can't help but love it. Without the lovable music and score, this would have been painful. However it has at least been elevated to a guilty pleasure.
Not for everyone and certainly not good. Only for those like me with bizarre tastes in movies.
Had to stay up last night for a friend and there is no more effective way to keep yourself up than to watch Laura Harring dryhump curtains to save the rainforest
Less a cash-in on an obnoxious dance craze than it is an earnest plea to saving the rain forest. An "Indian Jungle Princess" and her tribe's witch doctor (played to shrieking delight by Sid Haig) travel to L.A. to stop a multi-national corporation from leveling their home. All of this sounds great, but the real star is unrepentant, casual racism. It comes out of the most unexpected places and is never not funny.
Another shout-out to Kid Creole and the Coconuts for coming off like chill, anti-corporate dudes.
Kind of a provisional three star rating since I had more fun commenting on it (and reading others' comments) in the chat than i did actually watching the movie itself, but i liked its upbeat positive nature--for a movie that's set in a dance club where you think the princess from the Amazon is gonna end up prostituting herself or something just as bad (For the rain forest!), it's actually a pretty wholesome movie with some very PG/PG-13 rated dancing. Is it a good movie? It was pretty amusing enough throughout, like i don't think the movie ever hits a point where I actively wanted it to end, which believe it or not counts as a factor to the movie's…
This movie was not made to be watched in a living room in 2022. It was made to ride a trend and be a catchy background to teens making out in a theater on a Saturday night for as long as possible. It feels, looks, and sounds like it was partially cobbled together from a rejected pitch to Roger Corman (too expensive) and a nighttime soap opera pilot that CBS passed on, and I just have to love it.
It’s absurd and sloppy, but it also has Sid Haig, Laura Harring and a very awkward environmental conservation message giving 110% to a good beat that you can dance to. It’s more fascinating than fun, but I’m really happy I finally saw it because w o w.
