Barb Wire is without a doubt one of the worst movies ever made. This is essentially Casablanca with Boobs, Guns and Explosions. Unfortunately, it doesn't help hide such a weak ass plot, or what is thinly veiled as one. The obvious reason why I bought the Unrated Version back when this first came out shouldn't come as a shock to anyone. As bad as the movie is, Pamela Anderson has never looked better. But beyond the eye candy appeal, it offers nothing much else. The writing, especially the dialogue is amateurish at best. Embarrassing. I would NEVER want to put my name on anything as bad as this. Skip this turd if you're looking for something entertaining. Rent if you want to see Pam doing her 'Rain Dance' that opens up the movie, which is the only reason why I'm giving this 1 1/2 Stars out of 5. It's been 12 years since I last saw this, now I remember why I never went back to it until tonight. eBay, here I come.

There was a great How Did This Get Made about this one (which you should listen to, it's a scream), and how shockingly weird it was that for a movie with Pamela Anderson as the star, she never gets naked or screws or anything.  What was the point, then?

Yeah, but... outside of a shadow or something I don't think we even see anything, which is real weird b/c she's shown it all in other films and photo shoots and so on.  That HDTGM threw out the idea of a naked gunfight and I'm like "yeah, why the heck didn't we have THAT?"

Or failing that, remember that boob torture thingie from the first act?  How did they come up with that design and NOT think "shouldn't we put this on the lead actress who's known for having a giant chest?"

OR if they were so insistent about dressing her as a dominatrix all the time, why not have that be a sequence... remember that whip and sword fight they were gonna do in Indiana Jones?  Why not put that in there?  What other movie could get away with that?

And you mentioned the dancing at the beginning, that could have come back in some way, like she's gotta do a dance for the bad guys and starts laying 'em to waste, sort of like Planet Terror?

This is a case when a Comic Book should STAY as a Comic Book.

With the exception of the opening scene, I'm sure that Pam wanted to tone down the nudity so that she would be taken as a "serious" actress and not have to rely on her 'assets'. Since I never saw the movie in the theater, I would assume that the Unrated Version is that a good chunk of the Rain Dance was added back into the overlong sequence. It's a fairly long opening, about 4 minutes to cover the entire dureation of the song 'Word Up!' . As for the rest of her  "n u d e"  scenes in the movie, they are as you said 'hidden in shadows', be it soap suds or a quick cutaway and these little tricks to hide everything just screams out that the opening was indeed extended for the DVD release. They just don't match up. She goes from "look at me in all my wet glory" to "blink and you'll miss what I got".

This was NOT the movie to take on if she wanted to be taken seriously as an actress, this was the one where she she should have embraced what people thought about her and messed with their expectations.

They were talking about maybe rebooting it in HDTGM and I'm sure eventually they'll come around to it (though I don't know who the next Pam Anderson is, and maybe it's a good thing for mankind and womankind if there isn't one)... I'm sure now you could get away with all kinds of crazy nonsense.  It might do better if they uncoupled the heavy sexual element from it.  Right now I can picture it being a low-budget actioner with Zoe Bell as Barb (or "Bob" I guess, with her accent).

I keep thinking about the rain dance b/c there's no water-centric dance in my stripper script, mostly because of this movie (it's such an unhealthy amount of water, even though I like the fact that the waiters had to wear slickers) and obviously Flashdance.  Don't wanna invite comparisons.