Barbarella

Barbarella is called upon by the President of the Republic of Earth to find the runaway mad scientist Duran-Duran and bring him back to earth before he destroys, well, everything with his newly created weapon (a ray of some sort, I forget).

But first, she must undress in zero gravity, very slowly, to music.

Throughout the remainder of the film, she will change from one skimpy outfit to the next and sleep with every man that helps her in any way (more or less). Also, she is the ditziest of blondes.

Then the peace-loving earthling is given weapons for her mission. This does not make her particularly happy, but she takes off in her spaceship anyway. The inside of the spaceship appears to be covered in muppet skin (Fozzy Bear) or deep shag carpeting.

Barbarella crash lands on her target planet, where she is taken by a group of children, tied up in a cave and attacked by creepy dolls. She is, however, saved in the nick of time by a catcher who - you guessed it - catches children. As a thanks he suggests sex, but not the new, clean earth kind, but the savage old-fashioned way. This is so old, it is new to Barbarella, but she concedes. She loves it.

Next she crashes into the labyrinth, the exile in which all the good creatures live. One of them is a blind angel. With her spaceship all trashed, she looks to him for help. Alas, he has lost the desire to fly. The solution for this particular problem is sex, of course. ('An angel doesn't make love. An angel is love.')

Revived by this encounter he flies Barbarella to her final destination. Basically a creepy, bad town, run by the great tyrant, who turns out to be a woman. Among the things that happen next are: the angel gets crucified, which elicits the wonderful line, "De-crucify him or I will melt your face!", Barbarella joins the revolution (led by a rather hapless idiot), she gets 'tortured' by the concierge by a sort of organ that will kill her with physical pleasure. Also, the concierge is Duran-Duran and he wants to get rid of the great tyrant to take over this planet and then maybe the earth and then, who knows?, the entire universe.

Big shoot-out.

Barbarella and the great tyrant are flown to safety by the blind angel, who has been previously tortured by the tyrant, but 'An angel has no memory'.

The End

No, seriously.

2/10

Spider Baby or, The Maddest Story Ever Told

The beginning credits may be reminiscent of 1960's comedies - with a lovely song set to various cartoon images - but, make no mistake, this is not a comedy. It is a disturbed horror film...inbreeding, deserted house, cannibalism and all.

Caretaker Bruno cares for the Merrye children - Elisabeth, Virginia and Ralph - afflicted by an illness that reverts their mental development when they reach the age of 10. So, however old they may appear, mentally they are children. The illness is named after their family, since this is the only group of people that appear to suffer from it - Merrye Syndrome.

Brone cleans up their messes, including games getting out of hand that result in peopel dying. Their situation becomes considerably more difficult when an onslaught of relatives arrives with a lawyer, eyeing the family property. This, unsurprisingly leads to a night of horror for the newcomers.

Mental illness and other afflictions have always been fascinating subjects for the horror genre and, I imagine, will continue to drive the stories of many-a film to come. I'll gladly watch them.

The film has become somewhat of a cult and sports its own 'Official Home' on the web.

3/10

From Russia with Love

The second James Bond film revolves around a cryptograph, quite a handy device with the cold war going on and such. The evil SPECTRE empire devises a plan to steal on such thing from the Soviets and then sell it back to them. In a film full of agent and double agents the big, bad, mysterious mastermind is only referred to as "Number 1". Yet we are treated to a shot of the (iconic!) white cat!

The bond girl, Tatiana Romanova, is recruited by SPECTRE's number 3 Rosa Klebb as a means to fool the Brits. Poor Tatiana (Tania to her friends) is led to believe she is doing it for Mother Russia, thinking Klebb to be working for SMERSH (whaterever that may be). Incidentally, Klebb is played by one Lotte Lenya, who was born in my hometown of Vienna.

The adventure begins in Istanbul and takes Bond and Tania (with an unfortunate contact from Turkey) via train, truck (already without their Turkish friend) and powerboat all the way to Venice. Hot on their heels is one SPECTRE minion, a well built blond agent.

Now, what is it with people laying out the entirety of their plans to someone they intend to kill? It is one of those story devises I always found rather puzzling and, ultimately, annoying. Here it is used through the blond guy, who thinks himself about to do away with 007. Oh, well.

In the end, British coolness prevails - girl, cryptograph and all.

6/10

Vargtimmen (Hour of the Wolf)

I have only recently started watching the brilliant works of Ingmar Bergman. Hour of the Wolf is only his third film I have watched, the others being The Seventh Seal and Through a Glass Darkly.

All three feature the wonderful Max von Sydow, who has worked with Bergman many times. In Hour of the Wolf he portrays the painter Johan Borg. Together with his pregnant wife Alma (played by Liv Ullmann) he spends the summer on a remote island. Over the course of the story he encounters several strange people that either contribute to his descent into madness or are a side effect of it. I assume it is the first, as Alma meets several of them at a dinner party.

This is defined as being drama and horror, the horror stemming from the feeling of claustrophobia the film conveys and Johan's nightmarish vision. The (English) title refers to the time just before dawn, during which many births and deaths occur (according to Johan).

The film is excellent, although for me it does not quite reach the brilliance of The Seventh Seal. My discovery of Ingmar Bergman will definitely not stop here.

7/10