Thelma, Louise & Kageena

First there was “Thelma & Louise,” a movie about female road buddies who dealt with men like they were spiders crawling toward the baby.

Then there was “Basic Instinct,” the story of a crazed, violent, bisexual nymphomaniac who chopped up guys like ice cubes.

And now come the quintessential male dominators, the superwomen of tomorrow, the big, the brawny, the fearless . . . “Deadly Amazons!”

You still with me?

Just when you think you’ve seen everything off-beat and unreal in L.A., along bops a guy like Dan Shiva.

He has produced a series of movies, such as the aforementioned “Deadly Amazons,” which feature muscular women over six feet tall.

The video cassettes are based solely on Amazonic characters and sell through mail-order coupons carried in traditional American periodicals of culture like “Wrestling Ringside” magazine.

I mention Shiva because he told me of his plans two years ago and I scoffed. That’s my job, scoffing. I also scoffed at a character named Ice-T who once tried to tell me about a new form of music called “rap.”

“It is dirty, violent, non-melodic and it will never sell,” I predicted without hesitation.

That was in 1985. I went on scoffing over the years at $7.50 an hour, barely getting by, while Ice-T went on rappin’ to bigger and bigger audiences and now has more money than everyone in Delaware.

Shiva is a former real estate broker who once owned a nudist apartment building in downtown L.A. before he decided he wanted to produce non-pornographic videotape movies about big women.

I figured this was just one more oblique and unlikely turn of events in the City of Angles, even though when I first met him Shiva was accompanied by two women whose combined height totaled 13 feet.

I don’t usually do columns based on what appear to be transitory gimmicks in a town where everyone is jumping up and down shouting “Look at me, look at me!” But it was a slow day so I wrote about Shiva in 1990 and forgot him.

Then recently came a call from an unfrocked comic named Eddie Cress, who said something like “Guess what, the guy with the Amazons made a movie.”

Sure enough.

I met the other day with Shiva in his closet-sized office on the eighth floor of the musty old L.A. Athletic Club. He assured me that not only has he made movies, he has sold 3,000 of them around the world at $50 each.

“Now I am able to afford these magnificent quarters,” he said with a sweeping gesture around the cramped room into which two Amazons, a co-producer and writer-director were also jammed.

When I asked what was the thrust of his movies, he replied, “Female domination.” There is nothing subtle or mysterious about Dan Shiva.

He added: “They’re for men who like big, strong women to lift them, overpower them and crush them between pythonic pillars of passionate persuaders.” Pause. “That’s their legs.”

So I took “Deadly Amazons” home to watch, much to the dismay of my wife, Cinelli, who says I am always bringing junk home. “Don’t you know any philosophers or biochemists?” she asks.

Well, I knew a college professor once who was trying to teach human speech to a dog, but the dog died and the professor committed suicide. Who would have dreamed they were in love?

At any rate, I chose “Deadly Amazons” to watch because it was reviewed in Daily Variety by one Lawrence Cohn who wrote, “Acting is amateurish, but the target audience probably won’t care.” I’ll buy that.

“Amazons” consists of three stories.

They’re all about big women who kick the pus out of small, cowardly men, but only because they’re muggers, rapists, spies or animal-killers. That’s all you have to know of the stories. That’s about all there is.

The dialogue is equally compelling. An Amazon to a purse-snatcher: “Give that lady back her purse or I’m gonna peel your face like a banana.”

When a hunter shoots a lion belonging to Kageena of the Jungle: “My God, you’ve murdered the guardian of a jungle goddess!”

And, by the guy who shot the lion: “I was just trying to have a good time reasserting man’s dominion over nature.” Makes sense to me.

Kageena is subsequently captured and brought to Hollywood where, in cinema verite, no one even looks twice at a knife-wielding, barefoot, 6-foot-tall, deeply tanned woman in an animal skin bikini.

Kageena escapes but then, alas, she discovers shopping and kissing and it’s goodby lioness of the jungle, hello pussycat of the malls.

Nice try, Dan, but Cinelli is right. I’m going to have to get to know some philosophers and biochemists next.