Barbarella

Barbarella, Queen of the Galaxy (1968)

Directed by: Roger Vadim
Written by: Terry Southern, Roger Vadim, Vittorio Bonicelli, Clement Biddle Wood, Brian Degas, Tudor Gates, Jean Claude Forest, Claude Brule, based of the comic strip by Jean Claude Forest
Starring: Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Anita Pallenberg, Milo O'Shea, Marcel Marceau

Well, you just know a movies going to be good when it has eight writers. I can't believe I actually sat through it, to be honest. It's the most despicable, piece of sexist pornography I've seen in a while.

The plot follows the adventures of Barbarella (played by Jane Fonda for God's sake) on some weird planet as she searches for Duran Duran. No, really. So she crashes her space ship on said planet, fucks a guy in a bear suit, fixes her space ship, crashes it again, fucks a blind angel, goes to an SM convention, gets hit on by the Evil Tyrant or whatever, wanders around in a Marilyn Manson video for a while, psychically hand fucks the leader of an underground revolution in the basement (don't ask), gets put in a fuck machine, out fucks the fuck machine, survives the Natmos.

As you can imagine, I had no idea what the hell was going on most of the time. I've read several good reviews of this movie that call it "fun and campy". They were probably written by a bunch of dirty little men with dirty little minds (just like the movie!), and it certainly isn't any camp that I'd ever want to go to (ha ha ha. I'm so very witty. I'm killing myself here).

I also can't imagine why any self respecting woman would want to be in a movie like this, or why any woman respecting man would cast his wife in a role like that. Of course, the only other Roger Vadim movie I know about was a pornographic version of Carmilla, starring his other wife, Annette. One of his other wives, anyway. He had about six, and an affair with Catherine Deneuve.

It wasn't even that nice to look at. Okay, the Marilyn Manson video parts were alright, but without the Marilyn Manson music, they don't really work. That's another thing about this movie. The music really, really sucked. It all just smacks of the lame part of the sixties.

Because this really is a sixties movie. I don't have anything against the sixties, really, but they made a lot of weird, weird movies.

Anyway, the whole thing made me want to throw up. It's made for nerds with erotic minds (who I know quite a few of, actually). I happen to be a psychotic feminist biotch, so I find no entertainment from such things.

The upshot of everything is, I have a new movie to abuse for the rest of the year (if that really is an upshot). I was getting kind of tired of beating up on whatever the hell my last punch-monkey was. Dear Lord, I've forgotten it... good thing I've got a new one.

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