User Reviews

If you're looking for a cult classic, they don't come much stranger than sexed-up and super-silly BARBARELLA, the peculiar tale of an intergalactic secret agent (Jane Fonda) sent to a rebel planet to find a mad scientist named Duran Duran (Milo O'Shea.) Directed by Fonda's then-husband Roger Vadim, the film is less concerned with creating a coherent storyline than it is in finding inventive ways to strip Fonda of her already skimpy outfits.

In this it is remarkably successful, and Fonda actually has both enough sex appeal and round-eyed innocence to carry the thing off, emerging as something like a Barbie doll; John Philip Law strikes a similar note as the sexy but equally innocent "angel" Pygar. The designs are 1960s psychedelic with as many Freudian twists as the film's makers can come up with, and when all is said and done you can't help but roll your eyes in amusement.

True enough, BARBARELLA was probably much more entertaining back in the days LSD, and indeed one might read the entire thing as an acid trip time machine. No one in the cast takes the film very seriously, and neither should you; when all is said and done it has all the depth of a pancake, not so much funny as merely amusing and appealing to a very high-camp sensibility. But as cult movies go, it ranks right up at the top. Give a party and show it on a double bill with FLESH GORDON! Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Comic Strip brought appropriately to life . Tremendous fun, amusing scenes , psychedelic frames and many other things . In the far future, the year is 40,000. The protagonist is a highly sexual woman named Barbarella (Jane Fonda , Sophia Loren turned down the title role) is tasked with finding and stopping the evil Durand-Durand (character famously inspired the band name of 1980s pop stars Duran Duran), a missing scientist (Milo O'Shea). Along the quite sexy way she encounters various unusual people . As Barbarella (whose costume was inspired by designer Paco Rabanne) travels to the evil city called SoGo, it is a reference to Biblical cities Sodom and Gomorrah. On her dangerous trip she teams with blind angel Pygar (John Philip Law), and fights the Great Tyrant (Anita Pallenberg) along with numerous sexual torture devices , but she has to save the world .

Naif Sci-Fi plenty of colors , thrills , brilliant cinematography by Claude Renoir and fantastic images ; surprisingly, for such a diverse melange, it actually works. Knowingly Camp version of comic-book sci-Fi classic written by Jean Claude Forest . In the original comic, Barbarella was not a secret agent but an outlaw, and the movie omits some of the adventures she had on Lythion, including an encounter with an earlier villainess called the Gorgon, whose face changed into a duplicate of the face of anyone who looked at her. Unlike the other space movies of the time, this film emphasized sets and costumes rather than visual effects, and as a result its overall look dates less than many space operas of the late seventies/early eighties .Jane Fonda is simply unbelievable as gorgeous heroine , she plays a feisty Barbarella , a futuristic girl from Earth . The scenes during the opening credits where Barbarella seems to float around her spaceship were filmed by having Jane Fonda lie on a huge piece of plexiglas with a picture of the spaceship underneath her. It was then filmed from above, creating the illusion that she is in zero gravity. Performance-wise, everyone seems to be camping it up like an end-of-term pantomime, though Milo O'Shea somehow seems to give his villain a deliciously style . Barbarella was the first science fiction hero from the comics to be adapted into a feature film as opposed to a serial , Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers, her male predecessors, had only appeared in serials up to this point. A bit later on , there was realized by Mike Hodges ¨Flash Gordon¨ (1980) in similar aesthetic and a TV series titled ¨Buck Rogers¨ . Jolly and catching musical score , including commercial songs , by Charles Fox, who co-wrote the songs for this film, also wrote the theme song for another Sci/Fi flick of 1968, The Green Slime, and future Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour was one of the session musicians who performed the film's original score. The motion picture was originally directed by Roger Vadim who married Brigitte Bardot , in fact , the original author Jean-Claude Forest based the character of Barbarella on Brigitte Bardot - who ironically was director Roger Vadim's previous wife ; Vadim subsequently married Jane Fonda . However this film is listed among The 100 Most Amusingly Bad Movies Ever Made in Golden Raspberry Award .

If you're looking for a quality science fantasy experience, you will probably be disappointed in BARBARELLA, which tells a typical story of an intergallactic astronaught who is sent on a mission to save a brilliant scientist from the clutches of an evil force that threatens to destroy the universe.

On her quest she finds daunting foes, unexpected comrades and twists and turns like any good superhero story should have. The only problem is that her world is made up of Christmas lights, cellophane and balsa wood, and it's all held together with scotch tape.

However what some might consider schlock entertainment, I saw it as pure camp all the way, with some hysterical situations and outrageous costumes draped over not-so-difficult-to-look-at actors (especially our babe-o-naught Ms. Fonda), and to top off the cake we have an icing of infectious music by comedic composer Charles Fox (9 to 5, Foul Play) and singer/songwriter Bob Crewe.

This is pure candy all the way so don't expect any nutrition here, but if you let it happen instead of looking for more, you may find yourself inspired to watch it again and again, when you don't feel like using any brain cells in this dimension.

I first saw 'Barbarella' on TV as a small child in the 1970s and along with 'The Omega Man', 'One Million Years B.C.', and 'Jason and the Argonauts' the movie blew my tiny little mind! I think my interest in cult and bizarre began from seeing this classic slice of 1960s psychedelic trash for the first time. This is one of the silliest movies ever made, but still one of the most entertaining. Jane Fonda, then at the peak of her sex kitten period (history lesson - this was before "radical Jane" and "corporate Jane"), has never looked lovelier than in this movie, and manages to really pull off Barbarella's wide-eyed innocence. Anita Pallenberg (co-star of 'Performance' and then Keith Richards' "old lady") is stunning as The Great Tyrant, even if her voice is dubbed, and her handful of scenes with Fonda are unforgettable. The rest of the eclectic supporting cast includes cult favourites John Phillip Law ('Diabolik') as Pygar, the blind angel, David Hemmings ('Profondo Rosso') as Dildano a revolutionary, and Milo O'Shea ('Theatre Of Blood') as renegade Earth scientist Duran Duran. 'Barbarella' contains some of the most striking and surreal images of the 1960s (the doll attack scene is one of my all time favourites!), and is definitely one of the most bizarre science fiction movies ever made. Like many of the 1960s more excessive movies it is a real love it or hate it proposition. I love it of course, and think it, Russ Meyer's 'Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!', and Roger Corman's 'The Trip' are the three greatest 1960s trash classics. This is simply absolutely essential viewing for all 1960s buffs, science fiction or otherwise. Long live 'Barbarella'!

In the year 40,000, a stunningly attractive adventurer named Barbarella (Jane Fonda) is assigned by the President of the Republic of Earth (Claude Dauphin) to track down an evil scientist. This scientist has invented a weapon in an era of pacifism in this intergalactic society, and has disappeared into an area dubbed Tau Seti. Barbarella will have many interesting experiences, and encounter a rich variety of characters, such as winged man Pygar (John Phillip Law), a nasty but sultry villainess (Anita Pallenberg), and a sadistic Concierge (Milo O'Shea).

The opening striptease by Jane (with the opening credits moved around to help obscure her nudity) may play a pivotal part in why this is so beloved as a cult classic 50 years later. But in truth, this off the wall science fiction tale is plenty goofy, enough so that the movie does have a real sense of fun going for it. It amps up its sex appeal and its psychedelic qualities to the nth degree, and its production design (by Mario Garbuglia) and cinematography (by Claude Renoir) are first-rate. Along with amusing special effects, this results in a non-stop assortment of futuristic and exotic eye candy. Based on a best-seller by Jean-Claude Forest, the script (bearing contributions by EIGHT credited individuals) contains some endearingly literate but silly dialogue.

Jane is appealing, playing a character who is not all that heroic; she needs saving more than once, and often must rely on the help of others. Her wide-eyed innocence (and that of the likeable hunk Law) is contrasted by the lascivious qualities of the production and the delicious villainy of the characters played by Pallenberg and O'Shea. (Trivia note: a certain 80s rock band took its name from the name of O'Sheas' character.) Memorable contributions are also made by Marcel Marceau, David Hemmings (very funny as a comedy-relief revolutionary), and Ugo Tognazzi.

Complete with a catchy, groovy score and songs (by Charles Fox and Bob Crewe), and Roger Vadim (Janes' husband at the time) directs with great style.

Overall, quite engaging, although clearly not something to be taken seriously.

Seven out of 10.

This is a movie you have to see, or you will not believe it. Categories like "good" or "bad" simply do not exist in the aesthetic limbo in which this film was made. I should mention I saw Barbarella in a movie theatre in Montreal, and there is no other city in the world where Barbarella's "parlez-vous français?" (uttered twice!) sounds more hilarious.

Just what were they on? "Barbarella" is one of those sixties films (the Beatles vehicle "Help!" is another) which, although it makes no explicit references to the decade's drug culture, nevertheless leaves the indelible impression that the director, the scriptwriter, the set designer, the costume designer, the cameramen and most of the cast were under the influence of mind-expanding drugs throughout the entire shooting period.

I first saw the film at university in the early eighties when a student film society organised a screening. Interest in it at that time may have been aroused by the release in 1980 of "Flash Gordon", another ultra-camp science fiction film which was undoubtedly influenced by it, and by the fact that one of the leading British pop groups of the era had called themselves Duran Duran in homage to their origins in a now-defunct Birmingham nightclub called Barbarella's.

The film is based on a French series of comic books, which I must admit I have never read. (Unlike, say, the "Asterix" or "Tintin" series, the Barbarella comics have never had much of a following in Britain). The action takes place in the 40th century. Barbarella, a beautiful young female astronaut, is ordered by the President of Earth to travel to the planet Tau Ceti to find a scientist named Durand Durand, from whom the band took their misspelled name. Durand is the inventor of a weapon known as the Positronic Ray, which the President fears may fall into the wrong hands.

The rest of the film is taken up with Barbarella's increasingly bizarre adventures on Tau Ceti. She goes ice-skiing across the planet's frozen surface, pulled along by an octopus-like creature, is menaced by flesh-eating dolls with razor-sharp teeth, seduces a blind angel (or "ornithanthrope"), meets the predatory lesbian Queen of a decadent city and survives an attempted execution by means of an "orgasmatron", a machine designed to kill by an excess of sexual pleasure. (Barbarella's capacity for sexual pleasure is so great that she blows its circuits). We are not, of course, meant to take any of this seriously; the whole thing is intended as a sort of tongue-in-cheek exercise in high camp surrealism, Salvador Dali meets Edna Everage. The surreal nature of the film is emphasised by the use of psychedelic lighting effects. (The opening song even includes the rhyme "Barbarella Psychedella").

Barbarella is played by Jane Fonda, who at the time was married to the director Roger Vadim, clearly a man with the knack of attracting beautiful women. (He had previously been married to Brigitte Bardot and had been the lover of Catherine Deneuve). I wonder if, when Fonda was taking her wedding vows, she realised that Vadim's interpretation of "for better or for worse" included casting his wife in eccentric films like this one. Her devotion to her wifely duties seems to have been at the expense of her career; she later revealed that her commitment to "Barbarella" meant having to turn down the leading roles in two more serious films, "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Rosemary's Baby". Moreover, many of the heroine's adventures seem to have been designed with the express purpose of showing off Fonda's figure in a series of provocative outfits, leaving her with a lasting "sex kitten" image. This was something she was never comfortable with, especially when she was trying to reinvent herself as a feminist and left-wing activist a few years later.

This is far from being Fonda's best film, yet she is about the only cast member who emerges with any credit from it, playing the heroine as a sort of wide-eyed innocent abroad. John Phillip Law, who plays the ornithanthrope Pygar, is so wooden that I wondered if he was under instructions to play his role with a deliberately deadpan lack of emotion. David Hemmings as the resistance leader Dildano shows us just why his career never really took off in the way it was expected to after his early breakthrough in "Blowup". (Hemmings's costume, looking like a pair of leather Y-fronts, is just as bizarre as anything worn by Fonda). Marcel Marceau shows that his talents as a mime did not extend to acting in spoken roles. Anita Pallenberg, better known for her relationships with several members of the Rolling Stones, was cast as the wicked Queen, but Vadim did not trust her to speak her own lines; the Queen speaks with the unmistakable contralto tones of Joan Greenwood.

"Barbarella" was a failure on its release, both at the box office and with the critics, yet despite the dodgy acting and the nonsensical plot it has since 1968 acquired the status of a cult movie. (Even back in my student days it was regarded as sort of historic artifact). Cults, whether religious or cinematic, can be baffling to everyone except ardent devotees, yet I must confess that I have a soft spot for this surreal relic of the hippie era. It is an ideal film to watch when returning from the pub late at night. Particularly if one is drunk. 6/10

When space-kitten, Barbarella (our astronaut-heroine of the 41st century) lands on the planet Lythion and earnestly sets out to track down the diabolically evil villain, Durand Durand, in the city of Sogo (where a new sin is invented every hour) here's what our beautiful space-angel encounters.....

The "Excessive Machine" (a genuine "sex" organ on which an accomplished artist playing its keyboard can literally drive a victim to certain death by pleasure)....

A lusting, lesbian queen, wearing an eye-patch, who, in her fantastic dream chamber, can will her most deliciously wicked fantasies to take form.

Believe me, Barbarella is one wild, Sci-Fi, sex farce that seems to stand out (in all of its zany audacity) on its very own.

One can't help but be tickled pink by the cheesiest special effects imaginable - As well as the various ways that were found to tear off what few clothes our heroine, Barbarella, already had on.

This is eye candy from start to finish-- *including* one of the most baroque title sequences ever concocted (long before digital technology made this kind of playful titling standard). It's Franco-Italian design all the way through, a celebration of petroleum products and the best of the lava lamp aesthetic. Hard to tell if it's a parody of sci-fi or a parody of porn, or same difference is probably the point. There are some very stylized, sadomasochistic uses of Jane Fonda's long legs, at the same time that Fonda delivers the wittiest lines, in a very witty screenplay by Terry Southern (of Doctor Strangelove fame): "Decrucify my angel immediately!" (Kids, see if you can spot the Chucky in this 1968 precursor.) Skeptics should stay the course to learn what Duran Duran has to do with Barbarella. And Barbarella with the Black Queen. And the Black Queen with the Rolling Stones. And if you don't know what camp is, then you have to see Barbarella: even if the film is more sublime than camp, a kind of psychedelic Brechtian fantasia. (If that's not a contradiction in terms, then this isn't on my sci-fi shortlist.) One to own, to watch again and again.

Take a kaleidoscope to your eye, let it dwell, at the night sky, after a while you just might see, colours conjured, so wild and free, imagination is the game, often wildly insane, a pinch of salt may be required, but this is elegance inspired.

It's as daft as it's delirious, and to some mildly nefarious, but Jane Fonda is a star, and this is an early car, that delivers all her talents, all the things that make her balance, with many tongues in many cheeks, it's most always, worth a peek.

A wonderfully wild ride through a universe long since forgotten, and seldom revisited, that indelibly reminds us of a a time when boundaries needed breaking, and often were.

This turkey bombed right after the opening credits closed. I couldn't sit through more than 15 minutes of this insubstantial celluloid silliness. Boring, and I mean deadly dull, dialogue, though spoken in English [for the most part], made no real sense at all. Yes, Jane looked great but how long can one be expected to stare at her before that glossy figure becomes commonplace? Before I exited all I saw the woman do was repeatedly take tumbles and do glamorous close-ups for the camera. Don't bother is my advice.

First off, let me say this movie is also a italian production, and i'm italian. This movie infact actually have two of the greatest italian actors, Ugo Tognazzi (also a great comedian, chef and director) and David Hemmings. Why David Hemmings? Is not the guy from the Gladiator? Yes, but in Italy we know him because he made the movie Gigolo and he worked with Antonioni (Blow-Up, a masterpiece of the 60's) and Dario Argento (Deep Red, did you remember that, with that scary soundtrack by the Goblins?)

The director here is the always great Roger Vadim (in USA we know him for his role in the John Landis extravaganza Into the Night) and in the cast we find his wife at the time Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law and Hemmings himself. Also this movie is a cult because he gave us the name of one of the most great band of the 80s: The Duran Duran!

This movie is a masterpiece and if Vadim didn't shot it em today we don't have The Wild Boys! Wild Boys, Wild Boys, Wild Boys!

Really like this movie, perhaps not the best movie but it brings joy. Seen it many times and it's because it charms you. Enjoy the imagination and weird places Barberella visits.

I'm not sure if I liked this film or hated it!! It reminds me of "Danger:Diabolik", that flash trash movie also with John Phillip Law. It is bright and loud and trashy with a little soft porn thrown in for good measure. It does tend to hold your interest throughout, maybe because you can't wait to see what outrageous scene will assault your senses next. And oh, all that phallic symbolism! Roger Vadim certainly exploited Jane Fonda in this one and she would probably like to forget the whole thing....but you've got to admit she doesn't look too bad in that plastic see-through bustier. John Phillip Law, who is a handsome devil(oops, angel), plays the part of the blind angel, Pygar, without emotion or feeling....but he played every character he ever portrayed exactly the same way. He wasn't much of an actor but it works here. This film screams the 60's, so turn on, tune out, plug in your lava lamp and take a look at it. You'll love it or hate it but you are guaranteed to have fun with it. It's the epitome of pop art!

Very much a film of its age, this film is relentless, unmitigable shite from beginning to end, and yet it is a delight to watch.

It will particularly appeal to anyone who thought the special effects in the original Flash Gordon TV series were over the top.

The plot-holes are gargantuan, the continuity errors are abysmal, most of the story is absolute nonsense and yet this film is an absolute pleasure to watch. The fantastic excuses used to divest Jane Fonda of various pieces of her costume will have you choking into your popcorn.

The seventies' view of a future of decadence is a breath of fresh air and the idea of absolute, insane evil is camped up to the max. You'll either love it, loathe it, or do both simultaneously.

Saw film yesterday (2002) on TV, after seeing on cinema "Attack of the clones". Barbarella a 34 years old film is so bad made that's really funny (just the opposite to Lucas one. Too well made that's boring). All special effects are hand made, one can see the background screen used on some scenes (i.e. when the angel flights), the gravitation effect at the beginning is filmed over a glass (reflection can be seen easily), the starship is made in "porexpan" and paper. If you like serious sci-fic films (i.e. Blade Runner) just forget about Barbarella, but if you want to laugh and enjoy for the standard 94 minutes, just rent the film and open your mind. Sexuality is a main key part of the film. Some images are quite surprising for a 1968 film, even for today (see when some women are smoking "man scent"). Highly funny is also see the sex machine playing against Barbarella (guess who wins...)

In 1968, cinema history was graced by the birth of an indubitable Sci-Fi classic, Kubrick's 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, a visionary ground-breaker, while on the other end of genre's gamut, we also witnessed this French-Italian sexploitation adaptation of the racy French Sci-Fi comic strip. BARBARELLA, a French-Italian co-production, directed by Frenchman Roger Vadim and starring his then-wife Jane Fonda as the titular heroine, presented in an unspecified future, it is as outlandishly lavish of its setting, as goofily puerile of its bare-bones story.

The opening gambit introduces Barbarella, an earth astronaut, strips herself from her space suit inside under the zero-gravity environment, against Seurat's famous pointillistic painting, a pastiche of high art and low pleasure to pander to audience's sensorium rams home immediately. Barbarella is sent to a galaxy far far away to look for an earthling named Durand Durand, an inventor of a deadly weapon which the President of Earth (Dauphin) thinks might fall into wrong hands.

Her adventure consists of a nexus of chance encounters with various characters on the 16th planet of Tau Ceti, as a hapless and somewhat dimwit, but perennially spirited damsel-in-distress, saving from the assault of creepy dolls with razor-sharp teeth controlled by evil kids by the hirsute Catchman Mark Hand (Tognazzi), she consents to Mark's love-making proposal, not the pill- inducing high-tech consummation, but the old-fashioned way, which turns out to be quite toothsome, please, suspend your disbelief! Further on, she meets a blind angel Pygar (Law) who has lost the will to fly, Professor Ping (French mime icon, Marcel Marceau), an outcast living in a slipshod labyrinth, the leader of the resistance Dildano (Hemmings), the Great Tyrant and Black Queen of Sogo (Pallenberg), and her devilish concierge (O'Shea),

Barbarella uses sex as a means to express her gratitude, Mark aside, she cannot keep her hands off the Adonis-like Pygar and through sex, she endows him the renewed strength of flying, and with Dildano, their coiffure-remodeling palm sex is so otherworldly steamy that it stuns an awkward bystander. The only savior she doesn't reciprocate in putting out is the one-eyed wench, the Great Tyrant in disguise, although lesbianism is explicitly hinted (the Tyrant keeps referring her as "Pretty Pretty") to tease out the male gaze. In the main, sex is Barbarella's strongest suit, in a crashingly bawdy episode, her unquenchable sexual drive can even render the infamous orgasm killing machine overload, in a way, sex becomes her lethal weapon eventually, which prefigures a forthcoming era of sex liberation.

Mario Garbuglia's production design is as outré as one can imagine, along with Fonda's wardrobe showcase, while the film's rough-hewn special effect inevitably looks like a child's play, but together they confer a retro, varicolored splendor to today's spectators in the face of the props' overtly tacky tangibility. The plot is the film's underbelly, a rushed ending is atrociously wheeled out, but Fonda, in her most gratuitously sexed-up endeavor, delivers an open-faced seriousness and immediacy, she really cares to find out Durand Durand! However barmy it seems, at any rate, BARBARELLA doesn't shortchange its source material, a low-brow cartoon wallows in its high kitschy style with admirable candor, aka, the spirit of space camp!

This is probably the most baffling and frustrating movie I have ever seen.

It has all the elements to be a camp classic. The production design is bizarre and original. Terry Southern's screenplay is often witty. Jane Fonda and Anita Pallenberg are wonderful. I ought to love it. Instead, I find it almost intolerable.

From the opening credits, which go on too long, and the first bars of that execrable music, you sense something is seriously amiss with this movie. The camera seems to be in the wrong place all the time and the wrong shots are held too long. It often seems as if that they simply shot footage with no idea how it was going to fit together. You suspect that weeks may have passed between shots so that nobody could remember what had come before or what would come after. Faced with this hopeless material, the editor was in despair and just gave up, so nothing cuts together properly. At best, the picture looks like the roughest of rough cuts. At worst, the editing seems to be almost completely random.

As a result, there is no pace or rhythm, either in individual scenes, or in the movie as a whole. People wander about from scene to scene with no purpose or point. Soon, all the energy drains out of the picture and you find yourself stranded in a weird limbo in which nothing seems to be happening, even when it is, nothing connects with anything else and time stretches out endlessly before you. At times the boredom is so intense it makes your teeth ache.

I have seen and commented on some of the most incompetent movies ever made (Fire Maidens, The Flying Saucer, Mesa of Lost Women) but this movie seems to be inept in ways that transcend even those notorious turkeys. Although Roger Vadim had made at least a dozen pictures before this one, it feels like it was assembled by people that had never even seen a movie before, let alone made one. Of one thing I am sure - it could never have been made in America. It is purest Eurotrash.

I have finally posted my response to this unaccountable movie, but I know I will be coming back again and again to edit it, because I realise I haven't even come close to identifying what makes it such a uniquely stultifying experience.

Barbarella is a cult classic, no doubt. The movie is based on Jean-Claude Forest's comics, and if you're familiar with French comics you surely know that they are far more artistic than most of the American ones, full of fantasy and wonder and some pleasing bizarre uniqueness. Produced by Dino De Laurentiis - even just this name is enough to attract my attention, since he's behind quite many of my favourite movies - Flash Gordon, Army of Darkness, Conan The Barbarian, Conan The Destroyer, King Kong... Not to mention the gorgeous Jane Fonda. I just love her in Cat Ballou. And here in Barbarella - oh, she's a real goddess! The perfect combination of innocence and seductiveness! Even after all these years she's still damn hot! We also have aggressive, domineering and voluptuous Black Queen. And for ladies - here goes the blind, nearly naked angel ;) The whole movie itself is full of quite erotic moments. The astronaut suit striptease in the beginning - hell yeah! And Duran Duran's machine... The sets and models are not so impressive from today's point of view, but with a little imagination you can deal with that. And I even find a kind of nostalgic sci-fi beauty in them. There are also scenes with masterfully shot psychedelic pictures of moving colors and fantastic forms - it is worth watching the whole movie even just to see them. The story itself is a little bit naive, but that's a part of the charm of this film - nothing like the good old times. That's why Barbarella really is a Queen of the Galaxy!

Boy oh boy, that Jane Fonda certainly has the X-factor! This film is really sixties-naff at the same time as being sixties-kitsch and sixties-sexy. I watched it all the time when I was a teenager and appreciated Kylie Minogue's pastiche of the opening striptease in her pop video for 'Put Yourself in My Place'. The film also gave the Eighties band 'Duran Duran' its name. No longer just a film, bit an icon of a short period of history when Anglo-Saxons overcame their fear of sex...

This is an extremely silly movie with terrible acting (hard to imagine Jane Fonda acting that poorly) and an equally terrible script. The effects are cheesy and sometimes unnecessarily long (the dream room sequence comes to mind: how long is Jane going to walk in front of psychedelic displays before something happens?). The story line is ridiculous. The space ship looks like something made by a third grader. I could go on…

Oh yes, don't forget the music! Personally, I feel the 60s was an era of both tremendously creative and embarrassingly bad music; I'll let you guess which category Barbarella's soundtrack falls into…

Why did I give this movie three stars? (update: this movie really is terrible so it should get a 1. I bow to local peer pressure). It's so bad it's really great. This isn't your grandmother's "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians": when was the last time you saw a dumb sci-fi flick with a really hot actress who just can't seem to keep those skin tight space suits on her body? If you get bored between breast shots (which could easily happen), try counting the phallic symbols.

Have a few beers (better yet, a smoke), get together with your male buddies, and watch a movie Ed Wood would be proud of.

Oh those Europeans, they are so Naughty. This French/Italian Production is a Post-Hays-Code Production that went with that New Found Artistic Freedom and never looked back. It looks Fantastic. No amount of Imagination or Color was spared and the Movie just Vibrates with Fun and Frolic.

Jane Fonda became an International Icon with Her Role as a Sexy Aviatrix from Future Earth where War has been Eradicated and the Official Greeting from the Shapely Astronaut to the President of the Republic of Earth is, arm extended...palm out..."Love".

There is much to Love in this Psychedelic Picture and every Scene had an Artistic Aesthetic that is Founded in Mind Altering Drugs and Lava Lamps. The Costumes are so Bizarre that description Fails on just about any Level. There is Action and Violence, done with a Wink but there still remains a distinctive Bite.

There are Flying Winged Angels that don't make Love, they ARE Love and have no memory. There is an Underground Revolutionary Group that Exists in a Secret Lair, with Secret Passages, Secret Radios, Secret Keys, Secret Codes, and most of all Secrets.

It is just one Mind-Mesmerizing Scene after another and it is so Playfully Artistic that it cannot be anything but Gaudi, Trashy, and Tantalizing. The Movie is Funny and Sexy. A Cult Item to be sure. But that just means that most don't see what's at Play here and are Unfairly Harsh, but there are others who are just Laid-Back enough to just let the Film Massage their Senses with its Innocent and Curious Romp.

"You are so good that you made the Matmos vomit."

I don't even really know where to begin with this one. The space adventures of Jane Fonda's sexy Barbarella are hard to review, because this has to be one of the most WTF movies that I've ever seen in my life. Every scene either had me laughing out loud or scratching my head and wondering what kind of powerful narcotics the writer/director/everyone involved with making this was OD'ing on. 

The story is ridiculous. Barbarella is some kind of space traveler/astronaut, and she's been charged with finding a missing scientist named Durand Durand. That's right Durand Durand. Along the way, she encounters ravenous dolls, a man in three-fourths of a Chewbacca outfit, a blind angel (one of the more inspired and hilarious parts of the movie), a rousing musical performance that she ends up participating in in a rather intimate fashion, an invisible key to an invisible wall, and about 10 different wardrobe changes. It has to be seen to be believed.

The whole movie is campy, from the special effects, to the sets, to the costumes to the music. And the surreal plot and characters are just the icing on the cake. If you're fond of the particular brand of trippy 60's weirdness, then Barbarella is a must-see. It's like Star Wars mixed with Austin Powers, a hot blonde, and some LSD.

"Barbarella" was famous (or rather infamous) when it came out because Jane Fonda was naked, her husband directed the movie and it was therefore quite controversial. Now it's come out that she/her book/tabloid magazines claim Roger Vadim used to make her have threesomes with other women. Somehow, it seems appropriate given the nature of this movie.

It's intended to be an erotic adventure and the opening credits depict Fonda cruising around floating through her space craft absolutely naked.

That's really all the movie is. Fonda running around (or floating around) wearing little, if anything at all.

If that's your sort of thing, you'll probably dig this. Otherwise, stay far, far away.

2.5/5