Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Pretty Pretty Barbarella - Movie Review

Barbarella - Okay

For being made in 1968 this movie wasn't as bad as it could have been. Here is a quick synopsis:


Jane Fonda plays the title role of a space vixen/astronaut in the 41st Century the distant yet sixties-fied future. When genius but mad scientist Dr. Duran Duran disappears, Barbarella is sent to track him down and given weapons she has no clue how to use (war has been outlawed for ages) and little warning of the planet she'll be landing on.


The part of the planet she lands on is filled with evil children with cannibalistic dolls and she is rescued by a tough man in furs who fixes her space ship to get her where she is going. She then has to make her way to a city called Sogo where she is looking for Duran Duran in a city of evil, avarice, and sin, and is eventually caught by Dr. Duran and put through such tortures as a cage of pecking budgies to the doctor's notorious and sensual machine for execution by sheer pleasure to a lake of liquid evil whose effects look to have been done by lava lamp. Along the way she meets various helpers (most of whom she ends up sleeping with), including a blind angel named Pygar.


Barbarella's costumes vary with each scene, all skin-tight and definitely satirizing the garb of women of golden-age science fiction. On the whole, the movie pokes fun at the field of early science fiction rather well with a heaping helping of sixties hippie culture thrown in for good measure.


Barbarella is by no means a good movie, but it is excellent fare for fans of campy sci-fi and quite humorous when taken with a grain of salt.

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