Based on a 1940s comic book heroine, directed by the man behind The Towering Inferno, and starring former Charlie’s Angels star Tanya Roberts, Sheena hit cinemas in 1984 like an over-ripe tomato into a brick wall. Critics largely mocked it, audiences stayed well away, and by 2026 it is only ever really enjoyed as a “so-bad-it’s-good” exercise in cult film.

This is usually the point in a review where I will turn around and vigorously defend Sheena as some kind of under-rated gem. It is not. It is about as close to an objectively terrible film as one could make: ridiculous, unbelievable, inconsistent, and weirdly cheap-looking while also visibly having had quite a lot of money spent on it. Director John Guillermin had previously made the 1976 remake of King Kong, and that is actually a better measure for Sheena than The Towering Inferno. Both films were probably bad ideas, and both combined decent execution of some elements and cripplingly poor ones of others. The difference is in degrees. Guillermin’s Kong is at least broadly watchable, whereas Sheena is only there to be laughed at.

It is a shame that nobody told Tanya Roberts, who first came to fame co-starring in the final season of Charlie’s Angels before playing Kiri in cult fantasy film The Beastmaster (1982). While the rest of Sheena‘s cast treat the film as campy schlock, variously over-and-under-acting their thinly-drawn roles, Roberts treats her role with a bizarre Method-like gravitas. Clearly it was her first lead role, and she was not going to waste the opportunity, but there is something oddly hypnotic about her performance here. It is so carefully composed, and seriously expressed, despite her spending much of the film either naked, posing in a chamois bikini, or riding around on a bored horse that’s been painting to look like a zebra.

Roberts isn’t helped by the film’s very colonialist presence, in which an orphaned white girl is adopted by an isolated African tribe and made their super-powered leader. The underlying racism is visible from orbit, and even in 1984 the production does not bother to critique or alleviate the problem in any way. The most prominent African role in the film, the village Shaman, does not even get a name – despite a spirited performance by Princess Elizabeth of Tooro. In a film littered with weird ideas and bizarre moments, the casting of a literal African princess to be subservient to a blonde American is perhaps the most egregious part.

The second most egregious is almost definitely a mass flamingo assault on an assault helicopter, filmed with angry puppets. I hesitate to mention the scene, because it honestly make Sheena out to be a more interesting film than it is.

France Zobda and Trevor Thomas know the tone of the film and exaggerate their villainy appropriately. Co-star Ted Wass as good as sleepwalks through the thing, and Donovan Scott deserved better material as his sidekick. The film was shot on location in Kenya, and so in many scenes the backgrounds look incredible; pity the foregrounds look like farce. Richard Hartley’s score cribs extensively, and obviously, from the Vangelis score to Chariots of Fire.

This is a weird, poorly-made film. Watching it can certainly be entertaining, however the film itself is anything but enjoyable. A must-see for anyone that likes to rubberneck bad cinema like a car crash. For everyone else it is best forgotten.