Barbarella

source: Barbarella

Trailer—Barbarella

Barbarella

This film is beautiful. From the gorgeous Jane Fonda, and sexy Pygar to the wonderful costumes, and the very shiney sets, there is nothing ugly in the whole thing. Unbelievably silly it has some fantastic lines of dialogue like "de-crucify the angel or I melt your face!" Great characters, a killer lava lamp, fur lined space ship and a villain called Duran Duran. The evil organ of desire scene, and the opening strip tease still manage to be erotic, even though this film is dated. Cult with a capital C, this is never going to appeal to a mainstream audience, and yet remains my favourite movie of all time. A classic. And very pretty pretty.

Of course it is silly but after a rather dull patch some 30 minutes in we are off on a splendidly colourful and quite delightful flight of fancy with wonderful sets and glowing, swirling colours. Insignificant, of course, and yet it is good to have some souvenir from that period of the sixties when all became so psychedelic and LSD influenced. For a couple of years everything seemed to have an hypnotic swirl of crazy colours and we now look back with wonder at some of the dresses, shoes and advertising. Well, here it all is, non stop plus that free love element, a moment when beautiful young girls could be beautiful young girls and nobody (well, hardly anyone) complained. The now 'responsible' and prissy seeming Jane Fonda just has to glance back at this now and again and be so pleased that someone caught her so beautifully in her heyday.