Cheesy SciFi Double Feature: Flash Gordon (1980) and Barbarella (1968)
After I told my friend that I had not seen Flash Gordon, she declared she scrapped her jaw off the floor and insisted that we have a movie night. She decided to throw Barbarella in there, too, just to round the night out.
The result was an uber-cheesfest of scifi fabulocity.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
In Flash Gordon, a famous football star and a hot reporter get kidnapped by a mad scientist who takes them on a rocket ship to battle the evil Emperor Ming, who is bent on destroying earth for his own pleasure. The rocket ship falls through the most ginormous and awesome lava lamp ever and crash lands on the planet Mongo, where the reporter promptly gets kidnapped for the emperor's pleasure and Flash must fight bravely to save her. Flash encounters the emperor's femme fetale daughter, beer-drinking brid men and a group of people who all dress like Robin Hood (but who aren't nearly as nice). Flash flies around on an over-sized jet ski and saves the day. And everyone learns a valuable lesson (except for Ming who may or may not be dead. All of this set to a soundtrack created by Queen. (o.O)
FLASH! ah-AHHHHHHH-ah!
In Barbarella, a gorgeous blonde astronaut performs a zero gravity strip tease just because she can. She receives a message from the President and is asked to track down Durand-Durand on the planet Lythion. So she falls through the most ginormous and awesome lava lamp ever and crash lands on the planet. Then ensues a continuing round of instances designed to allow her the infamous costume change. Barbarella is kidnapped and attacked and her clothes are all torn up -- costume change. She has sex with a gentlemen who helps her -- costume change.
Rinse and repeat. Seriously, we counted at least eight separate ridiculous costumes, each designed to show off Jane Fonda's legs and curves. One costume was particularly distracting, because there was her boob, just chilling there in a plastic bubble.
She meets a crazy array of characters, from evil children to a blind angel to a bad-ass lesbian queen. Although, she has the very loose goal of tracking down Durand-Durand, there doesn't really seem to be any point of her adventures except to explore a variety of strange encounters. Each encounter and strange situation seems to want to be saying something, to be a metaphor for society or human behavior or the '60s, but I'm not sure what they are trying to say, because I'm too distracted by the oddity of it all.
It would be easy to say that this movie objectifies woman. Barbarella herself is practically an object in all her adventures. However, this is slightly inaccurate, because the truth is that Barbarella objectifies everything. Not only women, but men, too. Take the blind angel in a loin cloth, who is hardly anything more than eye-candy. Or perhaps take the scene in which a half dressed man floats and roles in a giant bulb and group of women sit around smoking his essence from this hookah pipe. I would argue even ideas get objectified in this whole thing, like sex and innocence and evil. It all gets made capture-able. It all turns into this giant playhouse of pleasure, and what kind of pleasure is good and what kind of pleasure is evil is sort of unclear and blurry.
The one disappointment that I had with the film is where they didn't take it far enough. Because there was a lesbian queen who had the hots for Barbarella (and Barbarella had no problem getting it on with several of the men she met along the way), I was seriously hoping that Barbarella would have a tryst with the lesbian queen, too. She's so free love and open about sex that I can't see that she would object on the grounds of gender (rather in this case she objects on the ground that the queen was evil). I can see how it would be a stretch too far for the film to have an actual lesbian encounter, due to the era in which it was made, but I can't help but be disappointed.
At any rate. Both of these flicks were delightfully absurd. I giggled and laughed and sat on the edge of my seat watching them, loving every minute.
* * *
As a footnote, the Internet Movie Database shows that there is a remake of Barbarella in development, which could potentially be released in 2012. This troubles me, because I know that any modernizing of the film means that all the weirdness will be swept away, cleaned up and made all glossy and slick. There are whole levels of ruining that I see happening here. It makes me sad.
The result was an uber-cheesfest of scifi fabulocity.
WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
In Flash Gordon, a famous football star and a hot reporter get kidnapped by a mad scientist who takes them on a rocket ship to battle the evil Emperor Ming, who is bent on destroying earth for his own pleasure. The rocket ship falls through the most ginormous and awesome lava lamp ever and crash lands on the planet Mongo, where the reporter promptly gets kidnapped for the emperor's pleasure and Flash must fight bravely to save her. Flash encounters the emperor's femme fetale daughter, beer-drinking brid men and a group of people who all dress like Robin Hood (but who aren't nearly as nice). Flash flies around on an over-sized jet ski and saves the day. And everyone learns a valuable lesson (except for Ming who may or may not be dead. All of this set to a soundtrack created by Queen. (o.O)
FLASH! ah-AHHHHHHH-ah!
In Barbarella, a gorgeous blonde astronaut performs a zero gravity strip tease just because she can. She receives a message from the President and is asked to track down Durand-Durand on the planet Lythion. So she falls through the most ginormous and awesome lava lamp ever and crash lands on the planet. Then ensues a continuing round of instances designed to allow her the infamous costume change. Barbarella is kidnapped and attacked and her clothes are all torn up -- costume change. She has sex with a gentlemen who helps her -- costume change.
Rinse and repeat. Seriously, we counted at least eight separate ridiculous costumes, each designed to show off Jane Fonda's legs and curves. One costume was particularly distracting, because there was her boob, just chilling there in a plastic bubble.
She meets a crazy array of characters, from evil children to a blind angel to a bad-ass lesbian queen. Although, she has the very loose goal of tracking down Durand-Durand, there doesn't really seem to be any point of her adventures except to explore a variety of strange encounters. Each encounter and strange situation seems to want to be saying something, to be a metaphor for society or human behavior or the '60s, but I'm not sure what they are trying to say, because I'm too distracted by the oddity of it all.
It would be easy to say that this movie objectifies woman. Barbarella herself is practically an object in all her adventures. However, this is slightly inaccurate, because the truth is that Barbarella objectifies everything. Not only women, but men, too. Take the blind angel in a loin cloth, who is hardly anything more than eye-candy. Or perhaps take the scene in which a half dressed man floats and roles in a giant bulb and group of women sit around smoking his essence from this hookah pipe. I would argue even ideas get objectified in this whole thing, like sex and innocence and evil. It all gets made capture-able. It all turns into this giant playhouse of pleasure, and what kind of pleasure is good and what kind of pleasure is evil is sort of unclear and blurry.
The one disappointment that I had with the film is where they didn't take it far enough. Because there was a lesbian queen who had the hots for Barbarella (and Barbarella had no problem getting it on with several of the men she met along the way), I was seriously hoping that Barbarella would have a tryst with the lesbian queen, too. She's so free love and open about sex that I can't see that she would object on the grounds of gender (rather in this case she objects on the ground that the queen was evil). I can see how it would be a stretch too far for the film to have an actual lesbian encounter, due to the era in which it was made, but I can't help but be disappointed.
At any rate. Both of these flicks were delightfully absurd. I giggled and laughed and sat on the edge of my seat watching them, loving every minute.
* * *
As a footnote, the Internet Movie Database shows that there is a remake of Barbarella in development, which could potentially be released in 2012. This troubles me, because I know that any modernizing of the film means that all the weirdness will be swept away, cleaned up and made all glossy and slick. There are whole levels of ruining that I see happening here. It makes me sad.