KNONK

it was the 90s

Barb Wire

1996

06 Mar 2026

So me and some of KNONK’s younger members went to this Pam Anderson appreciation night. I would link to the organisers but I actually can’t find them or even remember what the night was called. It was kind of an accident we were there.

The night featured some burlesque (which was great) a silly game involving a kid’s bike (they couldn’t get a motorcycle into the venue) and a showing of the 1996 action flop Barb Wire with Pamela Anderson.

The audience participation elements (making vroom vroom noises whenever the motorcycle appears, etc.) were kind of lost on me, but I thought it was interesting to rewatch this in light of Ms Anderson’s knock-out comeback with The Last Showgirl in 2024. Clearly, the woman can act, or she can now.

So Barb Wire was not a success in the nineties, and I’m certainly not here to argue that it is “good”. It is not “good”, but it’s also not so bad that it’s unwatchable. It’s a plot-light, boob-heavy trashy action flic based on a comic book that plays very much like a trashy action flic based on a comic book.

The titular Barb is a badass. That’s it. That the one note she gets. She glowers and kills a guy with her shoe and she’s emotionally unaffected by the story. She has a bar in the last free city in a post-apocalyptic America ruled by fascists. She moonlights as an assassin/bounty hunter who gets close to her targets by posing as a sex-worker. She loses the bar. It hardly matters.

The action finale involves a fork lift picking her up with her motorcycle, which is then picked up by a crane, and they brawl it out on this floating fork lift platform. Is there a video game? Also her boobs are in it. A lot.

I don’t know what to tell you, man! Is it worth watching? No. Did I have a good night? Yes. Recommended if you like: