In Focus... Barbarella
Sky Movies Classics has a mission - to bring you the finest films from the Golden Age of filmmaking. And some of these films are so good, we have dedicated entire features to them, exploring what just makes them brilliant and why they have stood the test of time. To earn a place at the table, the films just have to be a superlative example of their genre. Click below for enlightenment and watch the films again with fresh eyes...This month, get groovy with Barbarella.
Before Hanoi Jane and workout tapes, Jane Fonda was Barbarella, and she was never lovelier than as the wide-eyed space adventurer innocently tumbling from one risqué sexcapade to another as she searches the Universe for bonkers boffin Durand Durand.
But, Jane is not Fonda Barbarella. Seventies political radicalism and eighties female empowerment do not sit well with a character who is nekkid before the opening credits elapse and is often as sweaty as in those exercise tapes but for very different reasons.
Also, the fact that Barbarella became a workout tape for adolescent boys must have irked Fonda, who didn't make a film as frivolous until Monster-In-Law in 2005.
And never again would Fonda milk her sex appeal so blatantly. The opening credits play over Barbarella tastefully peeling off layer after layer of spacesuit in zero gravity, and the first twenty minutes have her on all fours beyond what can be reasonably expected.
A naive sexpot, Barbarella must have played some part in inspiring those slightly suspect Japanese manga characters whose eyes are as big as their cosmic mini-skirts are short. She is also a living can of Red Bull, at one point literally giving the blind angel Pygar wings after a celestial session.
Fonda's 1970s filmography looks like an apology for Barbarella, filled with bold statement movies (Tout Va Bien, Coming Home) or sexual critiques
(Klute) and only Fun with Dick and Jane and California Suite standing out as light relief.
But, even with the dodgy Austin Powers sexual politics Roger Vadim's psychadelic masterpiece has dated far less than it deserves, given its drippy hippy sloganeering, now-lethal attitudes to "free love", outrageous fashions and squawky hop-head jazz score.
What saves the film is a witty, satirical script (co-written by Terry "Dr Strangelove" Southern) full of genuine imagination and verve, based on Jean-Claude Forest's popular French comic.
A plot as scant as the female actresses' costumes has Barbarella searching for Durand Durand (a mad eye browed Milo O'Shea, and yes we know, Simon Le Bon nicked the name) and reclaim the "positronic ray", a weapon that spells doom for the Galaxy.
But, this is so much MacGuffin upon which to hang episodes of titillating naughtiness, ribald comedy and the best gallery of goofballs this side of Star Wars, including a lesbian vampire queen, the magnificent Pygar and rubbish revolutionary Dildano (David Hemmings), who gets hot under the collar just going palm-to-palm with the titular Babs, and maybe the best cinematic depiction of those useless student firebrands who failed to change the world at the fag end of the 1960s.
The most outrageous slice of saucy silliness has Barbarella trapped in a giant organ (the church kind), the playing of which will pleasure her to death. Needless to say, the plucky heroine is too much for this Orgasmatron, which blows a fuse before it blows her mind.
Such patently fake, yet wonderful looking sets and props give the film an authentic comic book look rivalled only by Mario Bava's similarly barmy and pop-arty Danger: Diabolik!
The 6ft 5ins, classically handsome John Phillip Law was the titular Diabolik and also appeared here as Pygar; his two most famous roles both landing in his lap in 1968. Although he worked solidly in the decades after, it was these movies and his season ticket status at the Playboy mansion that kept him famous.
The film was cut and re-named Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy for the post-Star Wars child-friendly re-release, but in these jaded times Barbarella may be a little tame, with only some razor-toothed child-dolls posing any problems for younger teens.
The film is currently enjoying renewed interest due to the on-off-on-again-off-again remake. 
To be directed by Sin City helmer Robert Rodriguez with Rose McGowan in the lead role (after speculation that Drew Barrymore or Kate Beckinsale would slip into the skimpy skirt), Universal balked at the $82m asking price and ditched the idea.
But, Jane is adamant she won't be appearing in any remake, and well she shouldn't. Barbarella is a time-capsule film: shagadelic before the word was coined, rose-tinted and acid-jazzed, and camper than a row of pink tents.
Only if Rodriguez agrees to retain the subversive, scattershot free spirit of the original, objectified partially clad extras and all, should he be given keys to the kingdom. And even then, only if he signs Lindsay Lohan as Babs.
Rob Daniel
