Attack of the Naked Space Commies.
What would you get if you combined the talents of Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian schlockmeister behind such cinematic landmarks as Conan the Barbarian, Flash Gordon, and Orca: The Killer Whale, with those of Roger Vadim, the man who gave the world Brigitte Bardot, and Terry Southern, counter-culture writer behind the screenplays for Easy Rider and Dr. Strangelove, as well as such famous dirty books as Candy and Blue Movie? The answer: Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy. This awesome piece of 1960s cheese is perhaps most famous for providing the name of Duran Duran, an awesome piece of 1980s cheese.
Starring Jane Fonda, America’s sexiest traitor, as Barbarella, a French comic strip heroine, who’s been sent by the President of Earth to find a rogue scientist named Duran Duran. She lands on this obscure planet on the outskirts of the galaxy, where the indigenous life forms are rabbits that have been painted blue. Here she has to contend with psychotic children, killer dolls, lesbian come-ons, bird torture, a giant orgasm machine that looks like a pipe organ; and the Matmos, and giant evil being that looks like the inside of a lava lamp.
The film is supposed to be some sort of psychedelic sci-fi sex farce, so along the way, she meets Mark Hand, the man responsible for watching the feral children. Since we have free love in the future, she readily agrees to sleep with him. However, in the future, we apparently have sex by pressing our palms together and concentrating, so Mark Hand teaches her how to do it the old fashioned way. Later she has palm sex with a revolutionary named Dildano, and the regular kind with an Angel named Pygar. There’s also some Lesbian innuendo when Barbarella is captured by the evil Great Tyrant, played by Italian model Anita Pallenberg, who was famous at the time for having been Brian Jones’s girlfriend until shortly before he died, when she ditched him for Keith Richards. Then Duran Duran tries to orgasm Barbarella to death in his “pleasure machine,” but apparently the machine is not man enough for her, as it shorts out before it can kill her. There are also some chicks smoking a giant hookah with a dude inside it. When Barbarella asks what they’re doing, they respond, “smoking essence of man.” Ever since I saw this movie I’ve wanted to walk up to a girl and ask her if she wants to smoke some essence of man.
Another reason this movie is slightly famous is because Hanoi Jane does a zero gravity strip tease over the opening credits. However, the credits are strategically placed so as to cover her naughty bits.
It still makes me want to get my Mao hat, though. The movie also has this terrible psychedelic lounge music score by Bob Crewe of the Four Seasons. The theme song is this Bacharachesque tune that contains the lyrics “Barbarella, psychedel-a/there’s a kind of cockleshell-a/about you…” There’s also a lot of really goofy peace and love talk to go along with the psychedelic nonsense. Overall, this is definitely the best 60s psychedelic Euro trash sci-fi sex picture I’ve ever seen.
