Barbarella, an astronaut from the 41st century, sets out to find and stop the evil scientist Durand Durand, whose Positronic Ray threatens to bring evil back into the galaxy.
Three go-go dancers holding a young girl hostage come across a crippled old man living with his two sons in the desert. After learning he's hiding a sum of cash around, the women start scheming on him.
Paul, a conservative young lawyer, marries the vivacious Corie. Their highly passionate relationship descends into comical discord in a five-flight New York City walk-up apartment.
Elizabeth Winfield is a retired teacher and matriarch of a problematic family who desperately tries to keep her family together, after many years they separated from each other. While she's... See full summary »
Director:
Fielder Cook
Stars:
Bette Davis,
J. Ashley Hyman,
David Huddleston
The year is 40,000. After peaceful floating in zero-gravity, astronaut Barbarella lands on the frozen planet Lythion and sets out to find renowned scientist Durand Durand in the City of Night, Sogo, where a new sin is invented every hour. There, she encounters such objects as the Excessive Machine, a genuine sex organ on which an expert artist of the keyboard, in this case, Durand Durand himself, can drive a victim to death by pleasure, a lesbian queen who can make her fantasies take form in her Chamber of Dreams, and a group of ladies smoking a giant hookah which dispenses Essence of Man through a poor victim struggling in its glass globe. You can not help but be impressed by the special effects crew and the various ways that were found to tear off what minimal clothes our heroine seemed to possess.Written by
alfiehitchie
Inside Barbarella's space capsule, usually seen in the left side, is depicted the right hand portion of the famous painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte - 1884" by pointillist painter Georges Seurat. Seurat was a contemporary of fellow Frenchman, and famous impressionist painter, Pierre-Auguste Renoir - the grandfather of the film's Director of Photography, Frenchman Claude Renoir. The painting was later the inspiration for the Stephen Sondheim musical "Sunday in the Park with George." See more »
Goofs
When Barbarella encounters a redheaded woman smoking "Essence of Man" from an enormous hookah and settles down on a pillow next to her, the redhead draws on the hookah again. She is holding the tube with both hands, her left hand on top. The next shot is a close-up on her, but she is suddenly holding the tube with her right hand only. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
videophone:
Stand by for a message from Dianthus, President of Earth and Rotating Premier of the Sun System.
See more »
Crazy Credits
In the opening credits, the letters in the words move around in an attempt to obscure Barbarella's nudity. See more »
Alternate Versions
The version now on video in Australia is of the Laser Disc version which has a more "nude" opening credit scene. The difference in the credits occurs when 'David Hemmings' credit appears, from then on the floating titles reveal more of Jane Fonda than the original version and video did. See more »
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 .
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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 .