Barbarian Queen II: The Empress Strikes Back - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Athalia (Clarkson) is a proud and beautiful princess in a troubled realm. One day, news reaches her that her father, the king, has disappeared in battle and is presumed dead. Athalia's treacherous brother Ankaris, aided by his sadistic second-in-command Hofrax, wastes no time in claiming the crown (and the magic scepter which is the source of the kingdom's power) for himself, much to Athalia's protests. He has Athalia sentenced to death by hanging unless she reveals the magic spell of the scepter to him.

Athalia escapes and flees to the countryside, where she encounters a group of all-female rebels. After defeating their leader in hand-to-hand combat that leaves both women covered in mud and nearly naked, Athalia gains their trust and begins building an army to overthrow her brother. She proves herself a capable leader, and more than a match for any man in battle. She leads the rebels to a decisive victory over Hofrax and his troops, and Athalia has Hofrax stripped, bound, and sent home in disgrace on horseback.

The rebel army's successes grow, as does Athalia's legend. Ankaris and Hofrax, fearing imminent defeat, come up with a plan to trap Athalia, drawing her out into the open by threatening to execute innocent peasants in the castle courtyard. Athalia successfully assaults the castle, rescues the peasants, and valiantly slays many enemy soldiers. The trap, however, proves successful, as she is finally overpowered and captured by Hofrax on a rampart, where her army is unable to aid her.

Eager to take revenge against Athalia, Hofrax decides to subject her to sexual degradation and painful torture. Hofrax humiliates her by ripping her top off, exposing her large breasts. He then tortures her on a vertical stretching rack. The bare-breasted blonde writhes in her bonds and screams in pain as the rack tightens her flesh. Tamis, Ankaris' daughter (played by then-14 year-old Mexican child actress Cecilia Tijerina), enters the chamber to observe Athalia's torture, and she looks on with excitement as Athalia's cries of agony echo through the dungeon. It is thus that Athalia learns that Tamis enjoys torturing her subjects and has plans to become queen once Athalia is dead. In a bid to break Athalia, and to further demonstrate the rack's capabilities to Tamis, Hofrax tilts the rack's table forward, suspending Athalia over a bed of spikes. He then leaves her there, hanging topless over the pointed tips, to contemplate her fate.

Alone in the dungeon, Athalia manages to work her hands loose and escape from the rack (surprisingly without impaling herself on the spikes beneath her), and flees to the guarded chamber where the scepter is stored. She is soon recaptured when she refuses to utter the spell necessary to work the scepter's magic power, since it will result in the king dying in the off chance he is still alive. Because she won't use the scepter's magic to save herself, Ankaris knows that she will never surrender it to him, and she is turned back over to Hofrax to be put to death.

When we next see Athalia, she has been stripped completely naked and again bound to the upright torture rack. It appears that she has been tortured for a very long time, as her nude body has been stretched painfully taut and her beautiful face is contorted in agony. Hofrax, taking great pleasure in Athalia's suffering, tells her that he plans to kill her very slowly. The helpless heroine quietly moans in her bonds, utterly consumed by agony and seemingly resigned to a painful and humiliating end. Before Hofrax resumes torturing her to death, the naked blond beauty offers a final defiant retort, thrusting out her bare breasts and gasping that someday, someone else will take her place and defeat him.